Donald Trump’s transition team is attempting to kill a rule requiring automakers to report all accidents involving self-driving vehicles, Reuters reports.
If the rule is repealed, Tesla would be the biggest beneficiary among US automakers. It’s reported more than 1,500 accidents to federal safety regulators so far. This includes one where its Autopilot feature was implicated in the death of an Apple engineer in California involving a Model X and another where a motorcyclist was killed in a collision with a Model 3.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued the Standing General Order in 2021. It requires companies to inform the agency about collisions in which an automated driving system is active within 30 seconds of impact. Reuters says its analysis of the NHTSA crash data shows that Tesla vehicles accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to the agency through Oct. 15.
The Trump document seen by Reuters was put together by the team in charge of creating a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. It calls the NHTSA rule a mandate for “excessive” data collection. However, it’s unknown if Trump will adopt the recommendation.
Two NHTSA employees who spoke anonymously to Reuters said losing access to the information supplied by the reporting rule would hurt the agency’s ability to detect patterns in crashes.
It’s unclear if Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who donated roughly $250 million to Trump’s political campaign, influenced the team’s recommendation. In the second Trump administration, Musk will be working on the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to tackle wasteful spending in the federal government.
This comes after Bloomberg reported that Trump wants to make it easier for car companies to put autonomous vehicles on the road, even though he said on the campaign trail that self-driving cars are “a little concerning to me.”
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Tesla isn’t the only automaker affected by the NHTSA’s reporting rule. In April, the agency began investigating Ford’s BlueCruise driver assistance technology, which features in its Mustang Mach-E electric SUVs, after two fatal crashes. BlueCruise was active in both vehicles “immediately prior” to hitting stopped cars.
Meanwhile, GM’s robotaxi firm Cruise was forced to pay a $500,000 settlement to the NHTSA for providing a false record of a crash involving a pedestrian, with “the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation.” GM later pulled its funding for Cruise, effectively killing it.
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About Will McCurdy
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