Tristan Bove
Thu, August 11, 2022
The man who forever changed vehicle safety standards in the U.S. has a scathing new message for Elon Musk and Tesla’s self-driving car technology: He thinks it’s dangerous, and regulators should get involved.
Musk has been touting self-driving cars as the next big thing for years, saying in 2015 that autonomous vehicles would be on the road within two years. While that timeline hasn’t come to fruition, Musk has not yet given up on his dream, nor has he tempered his ambitions. In May 2022, he stated that full self-driving (FSD) cars should be available by the same time next year.
But Musk’s big goal to accelerate the deployment of self-driving cars has not been without controversy. Now, Ralph Nader, four-time presidential candidate and a forefather of modern vehicle safety standards, has made his view on FSD vehicles clear.
Nader has called Tesla employing FSD systems in its cars “one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades” and that Tesla should “never have put this technology in its vehicles,” in a statement released Wednesday on his personal website.
He also urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to recall FSD technology from every Tesla vehicle in circulation.
“I am calling on federal regulators to act immediately to prevent the growing deaths and injuries from Tesla manslaughtering crashes with this technology,” he wrote.
Tesla did not immediately reply to Fortune’s request for comment.
A powerful adversary
Nader has long been one of the most influential figures in the American automotive industry.
He has been both a celebrity and a pariah for carmakers ever since 1965, when he published his bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a scathing look at the automobile manufacturing industry and its refusal to implement and recommend safety features such as seat belts, airbags, and antilock brakes.
Nader’s book called for more government oversight of manufacturers and stricter regulation of vehicle safety standards, eventually leading to the formation of the federal agency that would become the NHTSA, a group that describes its mission as “save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes.”
For his contributions to vehicle safety, Nader was even inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2016.
Self-driving controversy
Despite the delays in bringing self-driving cars to market, Musk is still convinced that the technology will become a crucial component of Tesla’s business.
“The overwhelming focus is solving full self-driving,” Musk said during an interview last June. “That’s essential, and that’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.”
But Nader’s criticisms of automated vehicles are only the latest in a string of doubts and obstacles for Tesla’s FSD ambitions, as owners have reported that the vehicles have been known to brake on highways without reason, while others have said the cars have faulty sensors causing them to unexpectedly come to a full stop and misidentify objects on the road.
Tesla’s self-driving cars have been the subject of an NHTSA investigation since last year, when the agency opened a “preliminary evaluation” over 11 reported crashes caused by Tesla vehicles equipped with its Autopilot or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control features. The accidents injured 17 people and killed one woman.
Last June, the agency upgraded its investigation to an “engineering analysis” status, which will open the company and the Autopilot system to a higher level of scrutiny. At the time, the NHTSA said it was investigating as many as 35 crashes that occurred with Autopilot engaged, including nine fatal ones leading to 14 deaths, the New York Times reported. The agency clarified that it has not confirmed whether these accidents were directly the result of Autopilot defects.
Also in June, the NHTSA announced that it had received 400 crash reports in the past 10 months involving vehicles with FSD systems, of which 273 were Teslas.
In his statement, Nader urged the public to get the government involved and called for stricter regulation of the use of FSD in Tesla’s vehicles.
“Together we need to send an urgent message to the casualty-minded regulators that Americans must not be test dummies for a powerful, high-profile corporation and its celebrity CEO. No one is above the laws of manslaughter,” he wrote.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Despite the delays in bringing self-driving cars to market, Musk is still convinced that the technology will become a crucial component of Tesla’s business.
“The overwhelming focus is solving full self-driving,” Musk said during an interview last June. “That’s essential, and that’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.”
But Nader’s criticisms of automated vehicles are only the latest in a string of doubts and obstacles for Tesla’s FSD ambitions, as owners have reported that the vehicles have been known to brake on highways without reason, while others have said the cars have faulty sensors causing them to unexpectedly come to a full stop and misidentify objects on the road.
Tesla’s self-driving cars have been the subject of an NHTSA investigation since last year, when the agency opened a “preliminary evaluation” over 11 reported crashes caused by Tesla vehicles equipped with its Autopilot or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control features. The accidents injured 17 people and killed one woman.
Last June, the agency upgraded its investigation to an “engineering analysis” status, which will open the company and the Autopilot system to a higher level of scrutiny. At the time, the NHTSA said it was investigating as many as 35 crashes that occurred with Autopilot engaged, including nine fatal ones leading to 14 deaths, the New York Times reported. The agency clarified that it has not confirmed whether these accidents were directly the result of Autopilot defects.
Also in June, the NHTSA announced that it had received 400 crash reports in the past 10 months involving vehicles with FSD systems, of which 273 were Teslas.
In his statement, Nader urged the public to get the government involved and called for stricter regulation of the use of FSD in Tesla’s vehicles.
“Together we need to send an urgent message to the casualty-minded regulators that Americans must not be test dummies for a powerful, high-profile corporation and its celebrity CEO. No one is above the laws of manslaughter,” he wrote.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Ralph Nader asks NHTSA to recall Tesla's 'dangerous and irresponsible' FSD
Rebecca Bellan
Wed, August 10, 2022
Ralph Nader, a political and consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, has issued a statement calling Tesla's "so-called" full self-driving (FSD) technology "one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades."
Nader is calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to use its safety recall authority to order that FSD technology be removed in every Tesla. Per CEO Elon Musk's recent statements, that's about 100,000 vehicles.
The author of the bestselling book "Unsafe at Any Speed," which criticized the American auto industry, cited research that found FSD malfunctions every eight minutes. That research was published in January by The Dawn Project, an organization aiming to ban unsafe software from safety critical systems that put out a full-page ad in The New York Times slating Tesla's FSD, which analyzed data from 21 YouTube videos of Tesla owners using FSD beta software.
"This nation should not allow this malfunctioning software which Tesla itself warns may do the 'wrong thing at the worst time' on the same streets where children walk to school," wrote Nader. "Together we need to send an urgent message to the casualty-minded regulators that Americans must not be test dummies for a powerful, high-profile corporation and its celebrity CEO. No one is above the laws of manslaughter."
Nader's callout comes as Tesla is gearing up to release the next version of its FSD software, version 10.69, on August 20. Musk tweeted out the announcement, saying nothing about the next iteration's capabilities other than: "This release will be big." During Tesla's Q2 earnings call, Musk also said Tesla would increase the price of the software and that the automaker was hoping to "solve full self-driving" by this year.
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Really, Nader should be targeting Tesla's Autopilot, as well. Tesla and Musk have been adamant in the past that FSD has not been responsible for any crashes or deaths. (However, a recent YouTube video from AI Addict shows a Tesla in FSD mode colliding with a bike lane barrier post.) Autopilot, on the other hand, has likely been the cause of several crashes. NHTSA is currently investigating 16 crashes in which Tesla owners were potentially engaging Autopilot and then crashed into stationary emergency vehicles, resulting in 15 injuries and one fatality. Since 2016, there have been 38 special investigations into crashes involving Tesla vehicles, of which 18 were fatal.
Other automakers have come out with similar ADAS technology, and based on NHTSA's recent ADAS crash report, appear to have far fewer crashes. It's difficult to compare how dangerous Tesla's technology is in relation to its rivals, in part because there are far more ADAS-equipped Teslas on the road than any other vehicle.
NHTSA did not respond immediately for a request for comment.
In a pair of July 28 filings, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Tesla of false advertising to promote its Autopilot and FSD technologies -- both of which are advanced driver assistance systems and do not provide full autonomous driving. While Tesla's website states that "the currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous," the DMV told the Los Angeles Times that the disclaimer “contradicts the original untrue or misleading labels and claims, which is misleading, and does not cure the violation.”
The California DMV also said earlier this year that it was revisiting its approach to regulating Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology, as the agency does with every other company that claims to pursue full self-driving and does public road testing. Tesla has gotten away without reporting crashes and system failures to the DMV for so long because its systems fall under the ADAS category, which requires a human driver must be present. However, after reviewing dozens of videos showing "dangerous use" of that technology -- and such use is informed by the way Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk speak about the technology -- the DMV decided to reevaluate.
This reevaluation is ongoing, and the DMV told TechCrunch it could not comment until it is complete. That said, based on the DMV's most recent claims that Tesla is falsely advertising, Tesla could be facing revocation of its licenses to make or sell its cars in California, in the worst case. That probably won't happen, but if it did, it would spell trouble for the EV maker. California is home to Tesla's most loyal buyer base.
Musk has had a fraught relationship with the state ever since May 2020, when Alameda County ordered Tesla to shutter its Fremont factory to stop the spread of COVID. In October last year, Musk announced Tesla would be moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
The celebrity executive has also repeatedly underlined the importance of FSD to the company, saying in June that without it, Tesla is "worth basically zero." It is likely based on the belief by many, including Nader, that FSD is not what it's cracked up to be; Nader went on to tweet Wednesday that Tesla's stock is vastly overvalued.
"Tesla and @elonmusk exposed the technological stagnation of the auto companies and broke ground with EVs and other climate-benign technologies," tweeted Nader. "However, a fast moving company can not obscure wildly speculative stock valuation on top of a general stock market bubble that could implode on pension and mutual fund savings of millions of Americans. Fundamentals can't be ignored."
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