The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-accident reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla, according to documents seen by ReutersA move that could affect the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.
Musk, the world’s richest man, spent more than $1 billion to help Trump win the presidency in November. Eliminating the crash-disclosure provision would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported more than 1,500 crashes — to federal safety regulators — under the program. Tesla has been targeted in a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation, including three that stemmed from the data.
The recommendation to kill the accident-reporting rule came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. The group called the measure a mandate for “excessive” data collection, the document noted Reuters shows
The Trump transition team, Musk, and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Reuters It could not be determined what role Musk might have played in the transition team’s recommendations or the administration’s likelihood of implementing them. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents most major automakers except Tesla, has also criticized the requirement as burdensome.
A Reuters An analysis of NHTSA crash data shows that Tesla accounted for 40 of the 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15.
Among the Tesla accidents investigated under the NHTSA provision was a 2023 fatal crash in Virginia where a driver using the car’s “Autopilot” feature crashed into a tractor-trailer and a crash in California the same year where an Autopiloted Tesla crashed into a firetruck, killing the driver. and injured four firefighters.
NHTSA said in a statement that such data is critical to evaluating the safety of emerging automated-driving technologies. Two former NHTSA employees said the crash-reporting requirements were pivotal to the agency’s investigation into Tesla’s driver-assistance features that led to the 2023 recalls. Without the data, they said, NHTSA cannot easily detect crash patterns that highlight safety problems.
NHTSA said it has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency instituted the rule in 2021. The data influenced 10 investigations at six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies.
In one example, NHTSA fined self-driving startup Cruise, owned by General Motors, $1.5 million in September for failing to report a 2023 incident in which a vehicle hit a pedestrian who was hit by another car. GM said this week that the Cruise will halt development of self-driving technology.
Crash reporting
NHTSA’s so-called Standing General Order requires automakers to report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies are engaged within 30 seconds of impact, among other factors.
In addition to repealing the reporting rule, the recommendations call on the administration to “liberate” autonomous-vehicle regulation and implement “ground rules to enable the growth” of the industry.
In an October Tesla earnings call, Musk called for a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles” instead of a patchwork of state laws that are “incredibly painful” to navigate. He said he would use his position as government-efficiency czar, which Trump has promised, to push for such regulatory changes.
After the election, Trump named Musk to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency to provide advice from “outside government” on reducing federal personnel, spending and regulations.
More data, more crashes
Tesla is one of the most prominent automakers to develop advanced driver-assistance features that can assist with lane changes, driving speed and steering.
Tesla’s Autopilot and “full self-driving” systems, which are not fully autonomous, have come under intense scrutiny in the case and a DOJ criminal investigation into whether Tesla exaggerated its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, misled investors and harmed consumers. .
Tesla ignores the crash-notification requirement, believing NHTSA presents data that misleads consumers about the automaker’s safety, two sources familiar with the thinking of Tesla executives said. Reuters.
In recent years, Tesla executives discussed with Musk the need to push to scrap the crash-reporting requirement, according to one of the sources. But after Biden officials expressed enthusiasm for the program, Tesla executives ultimately concluded they needed a change in administration to get rid of the requirements, according to the source.
Tesla finds the rules unfair because it believes it reports better data than other automakers, which appear to be responsible for a large number of accidents involving Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance systems. (AP Photo)
Tesla finds the rules unfair because it believes it reports better data than other automakers, which appear to be responsible for a greater number of crashes involving Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance systems, a source said.
NHTSA cautions that the data should not be used to compare one automaker’s safety to another because different companies collect data on crashes in different ways.
Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who focuses on autonomous driving, said Tesla collects real-time crash data that other companies do not and likely reports “a much larger proportion of their incidents” than other automakers.
Tesla also has a greater frequency of accidents involving driver-assistance technologies because it has more vehicles on the road and drivers often engage the systems, Smith said. That means vehicles can often “go into situations they’re not going to be able to handle,” he said.
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