A federal report published today found that Tesla's Autopilot system was involved in at least 13 fatal crashes in which drivers misused the system in ways the automaker should have foreseen'and done more to prevent. Not only that, but the report called out Tesla as an 'industry outlier' because its driver assistance features lacked some of the basic precautions taken by its competitors. Now regulators are questioning whether a Tesla Autopilot update designed to fix these basic design issues and prevent fatal incidents has gone far enough. At least half of the 109 'frontal plane' crashes closely examined by government engineers'those in which a Tesla crashed into a vehicle or obstacle directly in its path'involved hazards visible five seconds or more before impact. That's enough time that an attentive driver should have been able to prevent or at least avoid the worst of the impact, government engineers concluded. In one such crash, a March 2023 incident in North Carolina, a Model Y...
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