Announcement from NHTSA comes just days after Senators sent letter urging the agency to act on Tesla Autopilot

Washington (April 26, 2024) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) released the following statement after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it was opening a query into the effectiveness of Tesla’s December recall of its unsafe Autopilot feature. On April 18, 2024, the senators led four of their colleagues in a letter to NHTSA, detailing the December recall’s insufficiencies and calling on the agency to act more urgently on making Tesla’s Autopilot safer.

“Within days of Tesla’s December recall of Autopilot, it became clear the company had not done enough to protect drivers and all road users from the dangers of this unsafe technology,” said Senators Markey and Blumenthal. “That is why, last week, we sent a letter to NHTSA urging the agency to more urgently steer Tesla towards safety. As part of NHTSA’s new query, the agency should require Tesla to restrict its Autopilot feature to the roads it was designed for. We urge the agency to take all necessary actions to prevent these vehicles from endangering lives.”

In August 2021, Senators Markey and Blumenthal sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), calling for it to launch an investigation into Tesla’s advertising of driving automation systems. In February 2022, Senators Markey and Blumenthal sent a letter to Tesla Co-founder and CEO Elon Musk following numerous reports of dangerous braking flaws in Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems and amid several federal safety investigations, voicing serious concerns with the implementation of the company’s technology. In June 2022, the two lawmakers issued a joint statement applauding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for upgrading its investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot system from a preliminary evaluation to an engineering analysis after identifying additional crashes at first responder sites. In December 2023, the senators sent a letter to Tesla calling on the agency to recall all vehicle components with known safety risks.

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