Federal investigation into Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature
Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change
Developing: a major or severe case captured in the last 72 hours. Later changes are logged on the corrections page.
Status: no action reported
No source states: loss or records, agent tool, could do, deployer.
Severity major: tier: a regulator is involved, as a federal investigation by NHTSA is under way.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature, a Level 2 technology, is the subject of a federal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The investigation examines the feature’s ability to respond to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and four crash reports prompted it. NHTSA has been looking at nine separate crashes and has upgraded the probe to an engineering analysis, which indicates a problem may exist. Investigation documents show that the feature did not detect reduced visibility conditions and failed to alert drivers until just before impact. Tesla has told the agency that a software update would have affected about a third of those crashes, but NHTSA is not convinced that updates would have cured any potential defects. The investigation covers 3.2 million vehicles. The outcome is not yet decided: the agency may find no defect or may require a recall or other action.
What happened
What was done
No source states an action or fix.
Risks
Primary43 incidents
Sorted by rule from the case's fields; not yet read from the sources.
Controls
Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:
Harness ApplicationPhysical safety interlocks · Human approval for high-impact actions · Live behaviour monitoring · Adversarial testing before deployment
Similar incidents
Evidence
No source states: when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off, what was done.
Show the full account: 7 items from the primary sources
What happened, in order
- 2020 OOIDA sent a letter to NHTSA expressing concerns over the feature.
- 2024-04 A group of senators urged NHTSA to regulate autonomous vehicles, citing crashes involving the FSD feature.
- 2025-04 While the investigation was ongoing, Tesla announced it will use the system for driverless robotaxis.
Not dated in the sources:
- California passed a law that effectively bans Tesla from marketing its vehicles as fully self-driving.
- NHTSA launched an investigation into the FSD feature.
- Four crash reports involving the FSD feature prompted the investigation.
- NHTSA recently upgraded the investigation to an engineering analysis.
Show every field, with its source and grade
The AI system
What happened
Impact
Context
Notes on gaps
The sources do not give dates of the crashes, the investigation opening date or the disclosure date, so no event dates are set. No injuries, losses or counts of affected third parties are stated, so those fields are left out.
LR-2026-0521 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON