Tesla receives scathing criticism from NTSB chairman over FSD brand and driver surveillance: “It’s not enough”

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In a recent appearance at CNBC’s Squawk Box, NTSB President Jennifer Homendy doubled down on her criticism of Tesla’s driver assistance systems. The recent comments from the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board came just a day after Homendy sent a letter to Tesla CEO Elon Musk explaining why the electric vehicle maker failed to respond to recommendations made by Tesla. the NTSB years ago.

In 2017, the NTSB issued two safety recommendations to Tesla following its investigation into a fatal autopilot crash. The agency concluded that the autopilot was not effectively monitoring the driver’s attention on the road and therefore recommended that Tesla limit the autopilot. The NTSB also recommended that Tesla implement better ways to determine driver engagement.

Tesla did not respond directly to the NTSB, but it has rolled out numerous safety enhancements for the autopilot in the form of tighter driver surveillance checks, and more recently the use of in-cabin cameras to determine if a driver pays attention to the road. Yet, during his appearance at CNBC’s Squawk Box, and even with the host highlighting a comment from CEO Elon Musk stating that FSD Beta users must be extremely vigilant at all times, Homendy was firm in his position that Tesla was not doing enough.

“It’s not enough. Clearly if you market something like fully autonomous driving and it’s not fully autonomous driving and people abuse vehicles and technology, you have a fault with it. design, and you have to prevent that misuse. And part of that is the way you talk about your technology. It’s not fully autonomous driving. Unless you say the driver actually drives the car. which in this case is not full self-driving technology. It is misleading, “said the NTSB official.

What’s rather interesting is that the initial NTSB recommendations for Tesla from four years ago were for Autopilot’s pilot monitoring systems. This has already been addressed by Tesla through a series of live updates, ranging from higher frequencies of visual and audible alerts to the use of in-cabin cameras. Recent issues of Homendy also appear to be focused on the full self-drive suite, which is not the same as the beta version of FSD which is currently being rolled out to a select group of Tesla owners. FSD beta is only offered to drivers with high safety scores, while fully autonomous driving is currently sold as a feature set that can be purchased today, such as Summon and Navigate. on Autopilot with Automatic Lane Changes.

What’s even more interesting is that currently more than 38,000 Americans die in car crashes a year, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The CDC further notes that an additional 3 million people are injured or disabled each year as a result of car accidents. This is the problem Tesla is trying to solve with its autopilot and FSD programs, and it’s a rather grim statistic that is apparently being ignored by the NTSB leadership until now.

Check out the NTSB Chief’s segment in CNBC’s Squawk Box in the video below.

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Tesla receives scathing criticism from NTSB chairman over FSD brand and driver surveillance: “It’s not enough”

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