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Recently, according to foreign media reports, the transition team behind President-elect Donald Trump may recommend eliminating the current crash reporting requirements for self-driving cars. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who contributed about $250 million to Trump's re-election effort, also opposed the reporting requirement, arguing that its rules were being used to unfairly target Tesla. The electric car maker has reported 1,500 crashes under the rule, more than any other automaker, and even led to three investigations by the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA).

The transition team wants to scrap the autopilot crash report

The recommendation to remove the accident-reporting requirement comes from a transition team tasked with developing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. According to internal transition documents seen by Reuters, the team believes NHTSA's current rules are mandatory requirements for "excessive" data collection.

The permanent rule, issued by NHTSA in 2021 as a means of collecting data on emerging autonomous driving technologies, requires automakers to report crash details to NHTSA within 30 seconds of a crash involving a vehicle with driver assistance/autonomous driving enabled.

In addition to repealing the reporting rule, the transition team's recommendations also call for the government to "liberalize" regulations on autonomous vehicles and enact "founding-level regulations that will promote the industry."

It is not possible to determine what role Musk played in the transition team's recommendations, nor is it clear how likely the U.S. government is to implement them.

During Tesla's earnings call in October, Musk called for a "federal approval process for autonomous vehicles" to replace what he described as an "excruciating" patchwork of state laws. Musk said he would use his promised job as secretary of government efficiency to push for such regulatory changes.

Previously, Bloomberg reported that Trump wants to help auto companies lower the threshold for promoting self-driving vehicles. But he also said during the campaign that self-driving cars "worry me a little bit." But after the election, Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency to advise on cutting federal agency employees, spending and regulations with an "outside of government" perspective.

Tesla says the reporting rules are unfair

Two people familiar with Tesla's leadership confirmed to Reuters that Tesla has a deep disdain for crash reporting requirements and believes that the way the traffic bureau presents reported data misleads consumers about the safety of the company's products. According to one source, Tesla executives have discussed with Musk in recent years the need to push to eliminate the accident-reporting requirement. But because of the Biden administration's insistence on the rule, Tesla executives eventually concluded that a "change of regime" was needed to achieve the goal.

One source also mentioned that Tesla believes the rules are unfair because it believes it is reporting better data than other automakers, so it appears that most advanced driver assistance system accidents are related to Tesla. NHTSA has previously warned that the data should not be used to compare technical safety differences between automakers because of the way they collect accident information.

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who specializes in autonomous driving technology, said Tesla collects real-time crash data that other companies do not provide, so the "accident percentage" reported may indeed be much higher than that of other automakers. Smith noted that a higher percentage of Tesla vehicles on the road are equipped with driver assistance technology and drivers are using the system more frequently, which makes it more likely that Tesla will be involved in related accidents. After all, the current driver assistance technology is still immature, and its adoption across Tesla's entire product line will significantly increase the chance of "unmanageable situations."

Tesla is one of the best-known automakers involved in developing advanced driver assistance features that help human drivers perform routine tasks such as changing lanes, accelerating and steering. It's important to note that Tesla's Autopilot and "fully autonomous" FSD systems, which are not truly autonomous, have previously come under intense scrutiny in lawsuits and criminal investigations by the Department of Justice. After investigating whether Tesla made exaggerated claims about the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles, the Justice Department concluded that the company misled investors and harmed consumers.

According to NHTSA's analysis of crash data, Tesla accounted for 40 of the 45 fatal crash reports received by NHTSA as of Oct. 15 this year. These include the death of an Apple engineer in California while driving a Model X due to Autopilot, and the death of a motorcyclist in a collision with a Model 3.

If the regulation is repealed, Tesla could be the biggest beneficiary among U.S. automakers.

NHTSA: Accident data is critical to safety

On the other side, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group formed by most major automakers except Tesla, has also criticized the regulations as too onerous.

Tesla isn't the only automaker affected by accident-reporting regulations, either. In April, the agency began investigating Ford's BlueCruise driver assistance technology after two separate fatal crashes. The technology is already used in Ford's Mustang Mach-E electric SUV. The BlueCruise system was activated on both occasions when it hit the stopped target vehicle.

Meanwhile, GM's self-driving taxi company Cruise paid a $500,000 criminal fine to NHTSA for failing to disclose details of an accident involving a pedestrian last October. For "obstructing, obstructing or willfully influencing the conduct of an investigation." Now, GM has announced that it is shutting down its Cruise self-driving taxi business and will instead incorporate it into its own driver-assistance technology division.

The traffic administration also said in a statement that such accident reporting data is crucial to assessing the safety of emerging autonomous driving technologies. Since the rule was put in place, NHTSA has received and analyzed data from more than 2,700 crashes. The data prompted a total of 10 investigations into six companies and nine safety recalls involving four different automakers.

Two former NHTSA employees said the crash report also made the agency determined to investigate the driver assistance feature that Tesla announced a recall in 2023. They emphasize that without this data, NHTSA will not be able to quickly detect accident patterns that pose a safety risk.

articulation

The topic of safety has always been the focus of discussion and technical improvement in the field of autonomous driving. In contrast, the constant burning of money but unable to make profits is a major dilemma facing the autonomous driving industry.

Under this problem, even the players in the first echelon of the global autonomous taxi circuit can not escape the "fall of the curse." Gm recently announced it would no longer fund the Robotaxi development of Cruise, its autonomous driving unit, citing "the significant investment of time and resources required to scale the business and the increasing competition in the autonomous taxi market."

Beyond commercialization, all autonomous driving companies need to face issues of public trust, social ethics and legal responsibility. Every occurrence of an autonomous driving accident can arouse widespread attention, which not only reflects the public's concern about the safety of autonomous driving, but also reveals the long unanswered question behind it: If an autonomous driving accident occurs, how to define and assume responsibility?

There is no doubt that autonomous driving technology has been maturing, and the application of end-to-end large models, the lightweight of sensor solutions, and the introduction of affordable smart driving models are all manifestations of progress and development. However, the entire industry still has a long way to go before self-driving cars can really operate legally in public open sections or even be promoted at scale.

Reference link:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/donald-trump-s-transition-team-wants-to-scrap-a-car-crash-requiremen t-opposed-by-elon-musk-s-tesla/ar-AA1vU5Mr?ocid=BingNewsSerp#image=2

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/reports-trump-s-transition-team-looks-to-kill-off-self-driving-crash-reporting-rule /ar-AA1vTdib?ocid=BingNewsSerp

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/12/trump-seeking-to-scrap-nhtsa-car-crash-reporting-requirement/