Thread by @latimes

In 2019, a college student was pulled over by a state trooper, police lights flashing.

Then: Smack! Something hit her car, shattering her rear window.

A Tesla running in Autopilot mode slammed into the state trooper’s cruiser, knocking it into her car. latimes.com/business/story…

No one was injured in that crash, but it’s part of a sweeping investigation launched in August by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

@russ1mitchell reports: latimes.com/business/story…

NHTSA is looking into a dozen similar episodes over three years in which Tesla vehicles traveling at a range of speeds ran into stationary police cars, firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, injuring 17 people and killing one. latimes.com/business/story…

NHTSA noted that all of the Tesla vehicles involved were running on either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control, systems that allow the driver to relinquish control of speed and sometimes steering while staying ready to intervene. latimes.com/business/story…

NHTSA said it would be looking into such factors as how the vehicle makes sure drivers are paying attention and how it detects visual cues of a crash scene such as flashing lights and flares — details that an alert human driver would be unlikely to miss.

But NHTSA investigators will also be digging into a question involving a more basic technology:

Why isn’t Tesla’s forward collision avoidance system better at preventing crashes like the college student's — at least when the computer is driving? latimes.com/business/story…

Tesla calls its vehicles “the safest cars in the world.”

But when it comes to the forward collision avoidance system, Tesla owners have been reporting problems at a substantially elevated rate compared with similarly equipped cars. latimes.com/business/story…

In 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, NHTSA received 131 complaints about Tesla’s system, compared with 55 for Mercedes-Benz, 28 for Audi and 14 for Volvo. latimes.com/business/story…

“Teslas are running into stationary objects,” said the head of Princeton’s driverless car engineering program.

If the cars can’t avoid crash scenes marked by flares or traffic cones, he said, “how can you trust anything else they do with Autopilot?” latimes.com/business/story…

One possibility, according to Missy Cummings, who studies human-machine interaction at Duke University, is that Autopilot is designed to preempt or suppress emergency braking to minimize what’s known as phantom braking.

@russ1mitchell reports: latimes.com/business/story…