The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Monday it has asked Tesla to provide more information after one of its vehicles crashed into a fire truck in California, Bloomberg said. reported.
The agency wouldn’t confirm to TechCrunch what kind of information it’s looking for, but NHTSA likely wants to determine if one of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), Autopilot, or the full autonomous driving (FSD) beta. ), was activated at the time of the crash.
Contra Costa County Fire Department tweeted about the incident on Saturday, asking road users to slow down and pull over when approaching emergency vehicles.
“Truck 1 was struck by a Tesla while blocking the lanes of I-680 from a previous accident,” the tweet read. “Driver declared dead at scene; the passenger was extricated and transported to the hospital. Four firefighters also transported for evaluation.
The tweet included photos of the accident, including several of a completely wrecked Tesla.
NHTSA has opened dozens of Special Accident Investigations (SCIs) in Tesla vehicles where Autopilot was suspected to be used. Of the 48 SCIs that opened and closed between June 2016 and July 2022, 39 involved Teslas. And of those 39, only three were confirmed not to have involved Autopilot. NHTSA still has many open investigations into accidents involving Teslas, some of which were fatal. The agency does not comment on open investigations.
This latest fatal crash comes just days after Tesla issued a recall on 362,758 vehicles to update its FSD software after regulators said FSD could allow vehicles to act unsafely at intersections and cause accidents. The recall followed a Super Bowl ad put out by Tesla’s biggest foe, The Dawn Project, calling on regulators to ban FSD until critical safety flaws are fixed.
Tesla has come under scrutiny from a variety of federal and state regulators over the safety of its ADAS. Earlier this month, the Justice Department requested information from Tesla about Autopilot and FSD, possibly as part of a criminal investigation into the company.
