The Trump transition team has recommended that the incoming administration drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Tesla, which could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems. The recommendation came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy and called the measure a mandate for “excessive” data collection.
The requirement, established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2021, requires automakers to report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of impact. Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes – more than 1,500 – to federal safety regulators under the program, has been targeted in NHTSA investigations, including three stemming from the data.
Tesla, which is led by Elon Musk, has been critical of the crash-reporting requirement, believing that NHTSA presents the data in ways that mislead consumers about the automaker’s safety. The company has argued that it reports better data than other automakers and that the requirement is unfair because it makes Tesla look like it is responsible for an outsized number of crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems.
The Trump transition team’s recommendation is seen as a move that would benefit Tesla, which has been targeted in NHTSA investigations and has reported a significant number of crashes involving its driver-assistance technologies. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing most major automakers except Tesla, has also criticized the requirement as burdensome.
The NHTSA has stated that the data is crucial to evaluating the safety of emerging automated-driving technologies and has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency established the rule. The data has influenced 10 investigations into six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies.
Without the crash-reporting requirement, the government would not have access to the same level of data and would be unable to detect crash patterns that highlight safety problems. The recommendation is seen as a move that would undermine the government’s ability to regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems and would benefit Tesla and other companies that are developing these technologies.
