(Bloomberg) — The U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is asking Tesla Inc. to explain whether an over-the-air update to its software system to prevent collisions with emergency vehicles constituted a repair that should have been conducted by recall.
“As Tesla is aware, the Safety Act imposes an obligation on manufacturers of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment to initiate a recall by notifying NHTSA when they determine vehicles or equipment they produced contain defects related to motor vehicle safety,” the agency said in a letter to Tesla on Tuesday.
The agency launched a probe of Tesla’s Autopilot program in August after almost a dozen collisions at crash scenes involving first-responder vehicles. The regulator — which has the authority to deem cars defective and order recalls — is assessing the technologies and methods Tesla uses to monitor, assist and enforce drivers’ engagement when using Autopilot. It’s also looking into the system’s detection of objects and events on the road, and how it responds.
Tesla last month updated software in some of its cars to improve detection of emergency vehicle lights in low-light conditions, according to NHTSA.
Separately, the safety regulator said that non-disclosure agreements signed by customers participating in beta testing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system may impede NHTSA’s access to information needed to assess the program.
“Given that NHTSA relies on reports from consumers as an important source of information in evaluating potential safety defects, any agreement that may prevent or dissuade participants in the early access beta release program from reporting safety concerns to NHTSA is unacceptable,” the agency wrote to the company’s director of field quality.
Tesla recently delayed a roll out an updated version of its Full Self-Driving beta software, which until now has only been available to roughly 2,000 people.
The agency asked Tesla to submit additional information by Nov. 1.
(Updates with details of letters to Tesla, beginning in first paragraph)
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