Donald Trump’s transition team will make a recommendation that would sabotage the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of self-driving vehicles like those Elon Musk’s company is developing, according to a new report.
Reuters obtained a document developed as part of a 100-day strategy showing the recommendation to spike a crash-reporting requirement opposed by Musk’s company Tesla, which has accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes involving automated-driving systems reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
It’s not clear what role Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and a close adviser to Trump after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into his re-election campaign, played in developing the recommendation.
NHTSA says the data is crucial in evaluating the safety of self-driving technology, and two of the agency’s former employees said crash-reporting requirements were necessary to detect crash patterns that have led to at least nine different safety recalls involving four different companies, including Tesla.
The agency’s standing general order requires automakers to report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of a crash, but the Trump transition team calls for the administration to “liberalize” regulations and favor rules that “enable development” of the nascent technology.
Musk told Tesla investors during an October earnings call that he would use his position as a government-efficiency czar, as Trump had promised to appoint him if re-elected, to push for “a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles” instead of varied state laws that he complained are “incredibly painful” to navigate.
Tesla executives had in recent years discussed a need to end the crash-reporting requirements, the report said, citing a source familiar with the executives’ thinking, but they concluded that wouldn’t happen until president Joe Biden was no longer in office, because officials from his administration expressed enthusiasm for the rules.
The company finds the rules unfair because its executives believe they report better data than other companies, which they say looks like Tesla vehicles are more prone to crashes.
