Tesla has recorded 273 vehicle accidents since July last year involving advanced driving assistance systems, more than any other automaker, according to data from U.S. auto safety regulators released on Wednesday.
Automakers and technology companies have reported more than 500 accidents since June 2021, when the US road safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), issued an order demanding the information.
The current report contains “a ‘basket’ of data with many caveats, making it difficult for the public and experts to understand what is being reported,” Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said in a statement.
“Tesla collects a huge amount of high quality data, which could mean they are overrepresented in the NHTSA launch.”
NHTSA has ordered automakers to quickly report all accidents involving advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and vehicles equipped with automated steering systems being tested on public roads.
Of the 392 accidents reported by a dozen automakers since July, six fatalities have been reported and five serious injuries. Honda identified 90 accidents.
The companies also reported 130 accidents involving prototype automated driving systems, while 108 involved no injuries and one accident with serious injuries.
NHTSA said Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo reported 62 accidents involving vehicles with automated steering systems, while General Motors’ Cruise reported 23.
Waymo said its crashes were not high-severity and a third were in manual mode. Airbags were deployed in only two accidents.
Cruise said it “has logged millions of kilometers in one of the most complex urban traffic environments”.
NHTSA said in releasing the first batch of data that it has already been used to trigger investigations and recalls and has helped inform analysis of existing defects.
The NTSB reiterated a five-year recommendation that the NHTSA requires automakers to provide standardized accident and usage data. It initially made the recommendation after a fatal accident in 2016 killed a Tesla driver who was on autopilot.
The agency emphasized that accidents are tracked by individual automakers in different ways and discouraged performance comparisons between automakers, in part because there are no comprehensive metrics on how widely each system is used.
Tesla did not comment on the matter. Honda said it found no defects in the systems and that its failure reports were based on unverified customer statements “to meet the NHTSA’s 24-hour reporting deadline.”
NHTSA is reviewing Tesla’s Autopilot and said last week it was updating its investigation into 830,000 Tesla vehicles equipped with the system, a necessary step before it can request a recall.
The regulator has opened a preliminary assessment to check the system’s performance after about a dozen accidents in which Tesla cars hit parked emergency vehicles.
Separately, NHTSA has opened 35 special investigations into accidents involving Tesla vehicles in which ADAS may have been triggered. A total of 14 crash deaths were reported in these investigations involving Tesla vehicles, including a May crash in California that killed three people.
Tesla says Autopilot allows vehicles to automatically brake and keep within lanes of roadways, but that doesn’t make them able to drive themselves.
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