Trump transition team seeks to scrap auto accident reporting rule opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla

Trump’s transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car crash reporting requirement disputed by Elon Musk’s Tesla, according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could hurt the government’s ability to investigate and regulate safety of automated driving vehicles. systems.

Musk, the world’s richest person, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump get elected president in November. Eliminating the crash detection provision would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported the majority of crashes — more than 1,500 — to federal safety regulators under the program.

Tesla has been the target of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, including three stemming from the data.

The recommendation to drop the crash reporting rule came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for auto policy. The group called the move a mandate for “excessive” data collection, the document seen by Reuters shows.

Trump’s transition team, Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Reuters could not determine what role, if any, Musk may have played in crafting the transition team’s recommendations or the likelihood the administration would implement them. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents most major automakers except Tesla, has also criticized the request as onerous.

A Reuters analysis of NHTSA crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 of the 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through October. 15.

Among the Tesla accidents investigated under the NHTSA provision were a fatal 2023 accident in Virginia where a driver using the car’s Autopilot function collided with a tractor-trailer and an accident in California the same year in which a Tesla with Autopilot hit a fire truck, killing the driver. and injuring four firefighters.

NHTSA said in a statement that such data is essential for evaluating the safety of new automated driving technologies. Two former NHTSA employees said the crash reporting requirements were central to the agency’s investigations into Tesla’s driver assistance features that led to the 2023 recalls. Without the data, they said, NHTSA cannot easily find out crash patterns that highlight security issues.

NHTSA said it has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency imposed the rule in 2021. The data has influenced 10 investigations at six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies.

In one example, NHTSA fined Cruise, the self-driving startup owned by General Motors, $1.5 million in September for failing to report a 2023 incident in which a vehicle struck and dragged a pedestrian who was hit by another car. GM said this week that it will end development of the robotaxi Cruise and merge it into its group working on driver-assistance technology.

Crash reporting

NHTSA’s so-called permanent general order requires automakers to report crashes if advanced driver assistance or autonomous driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of impact, among other factors.

In addition to removing the reporting rule, the recommendations call for the administration to “liberalize” autonomous vehicle regulation and adopt “basic regulations to enable the development” of the industry.

In a Tesla earnings call in October, Musk called for “a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles,” rather than a patchwork of state laws that he called “incredibly painful” to navigate. He said he would use his position as government efficiency czar, as Trump had promised him, to push for such regulatory changes.

After the election, Trump named Musk co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency to advise from the “outside government” on cutting federal staff, spending and regulations.

More data, more collisions

Tesla is among the most prominent automakers to develop advanced driver assistance features that can help 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 lawsuits and a DOJ criminal investigation looking into whether Tesla exaggerated the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles by defrauding investors and harming consumers.

Tesla is dismissing the crash notification request, believing NHTSA presents the data in ways that mislead consumers about the automaker’s safety, two sources familiar with Tesla executives told Reuters.

In recent years, Tesla executives discussed with Musk the need to push for the removal of the crash reporting requirement, according to one of the sources. But because Biden officials expressed enthusiasm for the program, Tesla executives eventually concluded they would need 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 makes it appear as if Tesla is responsible for a large number of accidents involving advanced driver assistance systems, said a from sources.

NHTSA cautions that the data should not be used to compare the safety of one automaker with another because different companies collect crash information in different ways.

Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who focuses on autonomous driving, said Tesla collects real-time accident data that other companies do not and likely reports a “much higher percentage of their incidents” than other vehicle manufacturers.

Tesla also likely has a higher frequency of crashes involving driver assistance technologies because there are more vehicles on the road equipped with them and drivers engage the systems more often, Smith said. That means vehicles can more often get into “situations they’re not capable of handling,” he said.