Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to help reelect Donald Trump, and he now has a job running the Department of Government Efficiency. Separately, Musk’s Tesla has long wanted federal safety regulators to drop a car-crash reporting requirement, and—what’s that we’re hearing? The Trump transition agrees!
Reuters reports that the president-elect’s transition has recommended 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing the reporting rule, claiming the data collection is “excessive.” Of course, what one group of people might call excessive, another might call pretty important in preventing individuals from being 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed by autonomous cars.
Per Reuters:
A Reuters analysis of the [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15. Among the Tesla crashes NHTSA investigated under the provision were a 2023 fatal accident in Virginia where a driver using the car’s “Autopilot” feature slammed into a tractor-trailer and a California wreck the same year where an Autopiloted Tesla hit a firetruck, 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing the driver and injuring four firefighters.
NHTSA said in a statement that such data is crucial to evaluating the safety of emerging automated-driving technologies. Two former NHTSA employees said the crash-reporting requirements were pivotal to agency investigations into Tesla’s driver-assistance features that led to 2023 recalls. Without the data, they said, NHTSA cannot easily detect crash patterns that highlight safety problems. NHTSA said it has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency established the rule in 2021. The data has influenced 10 investigations into six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies.
As Reuters notes, nixing the crash-reporting requirement “would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes—more than 1,500—to federal safety regulators under the program.” The Trump transition, Tesla, and Musk did not respond to requests for comment from the outlet.
In an interview with Time magazine published this week, the incoming president was asked if it was a conflict of interest to give Musk “the power to oversee the agencies that regulate his companies.” Trump responded: “I don’t think so…. I think that Elon puts the country long before his company. I mean, he’s in a lot of companies, but he really is, and I’ve seen it. He considers this to be his most important project, and he wanted to do it. And, you know, I think…he’s one of the very few people that would have the credibility to do it, but he puts the country before, and I’ve seen it, before he puts his company.”
