(New York) The highway transportation regulator in California has told Tesla it plans to tighten up regulation of its driver assistance tools, which are currently being tested by a few drivers. This comes after the airing of several videos of disturbing episodes.
Posted yesterday at 5:06 p.m.
The group led by Elon Musk indeed offers a few motorists selected by him to test in real conditions driving assistance tools called Full Self Driving Beta (or FSD Beta), supposed to allow in particular to circulate in the city, s ” automatically stop at traffic lights or make turns.
Tesla specifies on its site that these tools require the active supervision of the driver. The group officially considers them to be in category 2 on the autonomy scale set by the professional organization Society of Automotive Engineers, far from the fifth step synonymous with complete autonomy.
But the California Bureau of Motor Vehicles (DMV) writes in a letter that it is “reviewing this classification decision after recent software updates, videos showing dangerous uses of the technology, investigations opened by the US agency of NHTSA road safety and the opinions of industry experts ”.
Several videos on YouTube and Twitter show in particular drivers testing FSD Beta and suddenly having to regain control of their vehicle to prevent their Tesla from hitting a pole, rolling on rails or drifting left on the lane traveling in the other direction.
The DMV will therefore “initiate a review of the latest options offered” by Tesla, continues the letter sent on January 5 to the manufacturer and unveiled initially by the Los Angeles Times.
Where appropriate, the agency will take the necessary steps “to ensure that Tesla is operating under the appropriate autonomous vehicle licenses.”
If it decides to classify Tesla’s driving assistance systems in level 3, and thus place them in the category of “autonomous vehicles”, the rules will be stricter.
Tesla should, for example, have to report all problems encountered to the agency and should identify all drivers testing its new tools.