Tesla's driver assistance system does not sufficiently prevent the driver from completely disengaging from the car, according to US safety authorities. That increases the risk of accidents, so the regulatory body has sent a letter to the electric car manufacturer to recall more than two million cars and update its system. That's virtually all of Tesla's cars on American roads.
The company led by Elon Musk will have to recall Model S vehicles sold between 2012 and 2023, Model of affected vehicles is 2,031,220, according to the authorities. The manufacturer will have to update the program free of charge for customers.
The measure has been known through a letter from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), dependent on the Department of Transportation. The recall follows a two-year NHTSA investigation into a series of accidents that occurred while using the Autopilot partially automated driving system. Some were fatal. The highway safety authority reviewed 956 crashes in which Autopilot was initially alleged to have been in use, and then focused on a smaller set of 322 crashes, including frontal impacts and impacts due to possible inadvertent deactivation of the system.
The notice states that “in certain circumstances, when the Autosteer system [de dirección automática] is activated, the prominence and reach of the feature controls may not be sufficient to prevent the driver from misusing the advanced driver assistance feature.” Consequently, “when the Autosteer system is activated and the driver does not maintain responsibility for the operation of the vehicle and is not prepared to intervene if necessary or does not recognize when the Autosteer system is canceled or not activated, the risk of collision may increase” .
The problem is that automatic steering can be activated without an effective warning mechanism to ensure that the driver pays attention and prevent him from becoming inattentive, so the problem is that it can lead to “foreseeable misuse of the system.” .
Updating the software will limit the use of the Autosteer system. “If the driver attempts to activate Autosteer when the conditions for doing so are not met, the feature will notify the driver that it is not available through visual and acoustic alerts, and Autosteer will not activate,” the recall documents say.
NHTSA has sent investigators to 35 Tesla crashes since 2016 in which the agency suspects the vehicles were operating with an automated system. At least 17 people have lost their lives in them, according to AP reports.
The regulator has become more aggressive in pursuing Tesla safety problems, including a recall of Full Self Driving software. In May, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department reports to NHTSA, said Tesla should not call the system Autopilot because it cannot drive itself.
Tesla already recalled 362,000 cars in February because the autonomous driving program allowed a vehicle to “exceed speed limits or circulate [a través de intersecciones] in an illegal or unpredictable manner, which increases the risk of accidents.”
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