The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an official investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot following a series of crashes in which at least 17 people were injured and one person died, CNBC reports.
According to the regulator, since January 2018 there have been 11 crashes in which Tesla vehicles “found themselves in an emergency situation and subsequently collided with one or more vehicles.”
According to the document, most incidents occurred after dark. Many were accompanied by lighting interference created by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, signal flares or illuminated arrow boards.
“The document states that all involved vehicles were on Autopilot or with cruise control engaged at the time of the crashes.”
Following the announcement, Tesla’s stock fell 4.32%. At the time of writing, shares were trading around $686.17.
The report covers roughly 765,000 Tesla vehicles of all models produced between 2014 and 2021.
The federal-level review began several months after the NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board announced an investigation into the causes of the Texas crash.
Regulators have also conducted several checks of Tesla’s Autopilot, including after a Model Y operating in autonomous mode collided with a police car.
Tesla and other manufacturers have repeatedly stated that Autopilot keeps the vehicle at speed and centered in its lane, but does not provide safe operation without a driver at the wheel. A human remains responsible for monitoring the road and taking control if necessary.
The company did not comment on the initiation of the investigation.
In late June, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety deemed Tesla’s Autopilot safe based on video cameras.
In June, the head of the company’s AI division spoke about the Dojo supercomputer, designed to train computer vision algorithms for Autopilot.
In April, Elon Musk said that Tesla would become one of the largest AI companies in the near future.
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