Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
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Title: Tesla is trying to stop certain self-driving crash data becoming
public

Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2025 15:09:46 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/transportation/tesla...

Tesla has asked a judge to block a request for the National Highway
Transportation Safety Administration to disclose certain data related to
crashes involving vehicles that have self-driving features, as Reuters
reports. The company claimed in a filing the information is confidential, and
that releasing it publicly would give competitors the ability to analyze the
effectiveness of each version of the self-driving tech and potentially figure
out the number of crashes that are linked to various systems.

The Washington Post last year filed a lawsuit against the NHTSA last year to
obtain access to more details about crashes that happened while driver-
assistance systems, such as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), were
engaged. The agency has said the data being requested is exempt from public
records laws. The Post contended that while the NHTSA does publish
information regarding crashes, it "withholds critical details about the
technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the crashes.ΓÇ¥

Tesla has argued that the company and the NHTSA should be able to keep
certain information related to crashes private. This includes details about
driver behavior and road conditions, as well as specific versions of driver-
assistance tech that may have been in use.

However, the Post's lawyers claimed that information about the versions of
hardware and software that may have been in use at the time of crashes isn't
confidential information, since drivers can access that through their vehicle
dashboards. Tesla argued in its filing this week that, "Even where TeslaΓÇÖs
individual vehicle owners might know certain information about their own
vehicles, such as the version of the ADAS software installed, where a safety
incident occurred, the conditions of the road during the accident, and what
they were doing leading up to the accident, this information is shared with
Tesla with the expectation that it will be kept private."

According to Electrek, Tesla takes advantage of NHTSA loopholes to have most
data relating to crashes involving its vehicles redacted. The company
contends that its "self-driving" tech doesn't make its cars autonomous and
that drivers are required to actively supervise its use. In other news, Tesla
expects to start deploying its first Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, this
month.

Until late May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the de facto head of the Department
of Government Efficiency. That initiative is said to have cut about 10
percent of the NHTSA's staff at the beginning of this year ΓÇö including
about half of a small team that oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/transportation/tesla...
driving-crash-data-becoming-public-150946549.html?src=rss

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