Federal investigators detonate Tesla, call for tougher safety standards

The National Transportation Safety Board has filed comments criticizing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for its permissive regulation of driver assistance systems. The letter was dated February 1 but was not spotted until Friday by CNBC’s Lora Kolodny. The letter repeatedly calls on Tesla’s autopilot for its lax safety practices and calls on the NHTSA to set minimum standards for the industry.

The dispute among federal agencies is the result of Congress allocating responsibility for transportation safety among several agencies. The NHTSA is the primary regulator of road safety: every car and light truck must comply with the rules set by the NHTSA. The NTSB is a separate agency that only does security investigations. When there is a high-profile motorway accident, NTSB investigators go to the scene to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. The NTSB also performs plane crashes and train wrecks, allowing it to apply lessons from one mode of transportation to others.

This separation of responsibilities has contributed to a cultural gap between the agencies. As the body responsible for drafting regulations, NHTSA must balance safety with other considerations such as economic costs, the lobbying power of automakers and the risk of consumer backlash. In contrast, the NTSB’s decisions are purely advisory, allowing the agency to stubbornly advocate for strict security measures.

Under then-President Donald Trump, NHTSA largely left automakers to do whatever they wanted with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and prototype driverless vehicles. NHTSA generally waited until security issues arose with the ADAS system and resolved them after the fact. The NTSB argues that the NHTSA should be more proactive and has put Tesla and Autopilot at the center of its case.

NTSB believes minimum ADAS safety standards are behind schedule

The NTSB believes the NHTSA has been too slow to develop safety standards for driver assistance systems and too slow to enforce their use in every vehicle. An increasing number of cars are equipped with automatic emergency braking systems, but these systems are not yet mandatory and different AEB systems have different capabilities.

“It is important that the agency prioritizes the development of minimum performance standards for collision avoidance technologies and requires that the systems be standard equipment in all new vehicles,” the NTSB wrote.

The NTSB is also calling on the NHTSA to require driver monitoring systems to ensure that drivers are attentive to the road while driver assistance systems are active.

“Since driver attention is an integral part of lower level automation systems, a driver monitoring system must be able to assess whether and to what extent the driver is playing the role of automation supervisor. The NTSB said. “There are no minimum performance standards for the appropriate timing of alerts, type of alert, or the use of redundant monitoring sensors to ensure driver engagement.”

Many driver assistance systems on the road today use steering wheel torque sensors as a rough way to tell if drivers have their hands on the wheel. More recently, some manufacturers have used eye tracking cameras to monitor driver attention. They are a more effective way to ensure that users are actually looking at the road, although some drivers may find them intrusive or annoying.

Finally, the NTSB argues that the NHTSA should require automakers to limit the use of driver assistance systems to the type of roads for which they are designed. For example, some ADAS systems are designed to work only on limited access highways. Yet few cars actually enforce such limitations. Many systems can be activated on roads for which the systems were not designed.

NTSB repeatedly singles Tesla

The NTSB mentions Tesla 16 times in the report, more than any other automaker. This is in part because Tesla vehicles have played such an important role in the work of the NTSB. The NTSB said it investigated six crashes involving driver assistance or autonomous driving systems between May 2016 and March 2019. Four of them were fatal. One of those four was the death of Elaine Herzberg in 2018 after being struck by an Uber autonomous driving prototype. The other three were Tesla owners who relied too much on autopilot and it cost them their lives.

In one section, the NTSB highlights the 2016 death of Tesla owner Josh Brown. Brown’s car’s autopilot software did not recognize a semi-trailer crossing in front of the vehicle. Brown’s Model S slipped under the trailer, cutting off the roof of the car and killing Brown instantly.

In its crash report, the NTSB noted that at the time of the crash, Autopilot software was only designed for use on controlled access highways, not rural highways where cars and trucks can. enter the freeway directly from the driveways and side streets. The NTSB pointed out that its report on Brown’s crash “recommended that NHTSA develop a method to verify” that companies selling driver assistance systems like Autopilot have guarantees to prevent customers from using the drivers. systems on roads for which they are not designed. Such a system could have prevented Brown from activating autopilot on the day of his death.

The NHTSA did not follow the suggestion of the NTSB. In its February letter, the NTSB does not let the NHTSA forget it: the NTSB suggests that this policy choice may have led to another fatal crash.

“In March 2019, due to Tesla’s lack of proper guarantees and NHTSA’s inaction, another fatal accident occurred in Delray Beach, Florida in circumstances very similar” to Brown’s death, wrote the agency. And the NTSB fears that the lax rules could lead to more deaths in the future.

“The NTSB remains concerned about the continued failure of the NHTSA to recognize the importance of ensuring that acceptable safeguards are in place so that vehicles do not operate outside of their operational design areas and beyond capabilities. of their system designs, ”the agency wrote. “Because NHTSA has no requirements in place, manufacturers can operate and test vehicles virtually anywhere, even if the location exceeds the limits of the AV control system.”

NTSB then called Tesla again, specifically criticizing the decision to release its “autonomous driving beta” software to a few dozen customers.

“Tesla recently released a beta of its Level 2 autopilot system, described as having full autonomous driving capability,” NTSB wrote. “By launching the system, Tesla is testing highly automated AV technology on public roads, but with limited monitoring and reporting requirements.”

Since the NTSB letter, Elon Musk has announced plans to expand the beta version of FSD to more customers.

The NTSB letter came at a crucial time, just as President Joe Biden was in leadership positions in NHTSA and the Department of Transportation as a whole. Under Donald Trump, the NHTSA has taken a decidedly neutral stance towards the regulation of driver assistance systems and autonomous driving technology. It seems likely that the Biden team will do more in this area, but it remains to be seen how aggressive they will be.