The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation into the fatal crash involving Tesla, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch. The investigation, which began in July, is the latest in a long line of investigations into crashes involving Tesla vehicles by NHTSA’s Special Investigations Project. A pedestrian was killed in the fatal crash involving a 2018 Tesla Model 3 in California.
NHTSA’s Special Collision Investigation (SCI) program focuses on cases where special crash situations or outcomes are studied from an engineering perspective. The agency currently has 45 open SCI cases involving advanced driver assistance systems or autonomous driving. Of those, 36 involved Tesla vehicles. Of those, 11 crashes resulted in 15 deaths.
Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot, has come under increasing scrutiny from U.S. federal agencies. Last month, NHTSA escalated its investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot system after discovering that the new electric vehicle slammed into a parked emergency vehicle.
The agency noted in a notice that it is expanding its initial assessment of Tesla Autopilot to include an engineering analysis. According to the agency, this means that NHTSA will expand its existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets and conduct vehicle assessments and assess whether Autopilot and related Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors by undermining the effectiveness of driver oversight or Behavioral Safety Risk.
This escalation is a critical and necessary step before NHTSA issues a recall order. An estimated 830,000 Tesla vehicles were involved in the investigation, according to agency documents.
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