(New York) The US office in charge of transportation safety, the NTSB, sharply criticized Tesla on Monday for ignoring its recommendations on the driver assistance system, issued after an accident in 2016, and said is said to be “very worried”.
The group has never explained how it plans to implement these recommendations even as it is currently experimenting with new features in real conditions, laments NTSB President Jennifer Homendy in a letter to Elon Musk and consulted by the AFP.
In addition to the Autopilot system already offered on its cars, Tesla has been testing since early October a new version of its driving assistance system, nicknamed Full Self Driving Beta (or FSD Beta), with a group of drivers selected by him, without having previously referred to the regulators.
“You said that ‘safety is always the top priority in the design of a Tesla'”, underlines Mme Homendy in his letter.
“This statement is completely undermined by the announcement that Tesla drivers can request to use FSD Beta both on highways and in urban areas when you have not remedied the design flaws” behind several accidents, she adds.
Following a collision between a Tesla Model S on which the Autopilot system was engaged and a truck in Florida, the NTSB had recommended to Tesla and five other automakers to incorporate tools in their driver assistance systems limiting their use to the conditions for which they are intended.
The NTSB had also recommended developing applications to determine when the driver is no longer attentive enough.
Only Tesla never responded, regrets the NTSB.
The company also did not react when the agency repeated these recommendations after two accidents with similar origins.
“If you are really serious about your desire to put safety at the center of the design of Tesla vehicles, I invite you to act on the safety recommendations that we sent you four years ago”, concludes Mme Homendy.