The Navigator

More than five years after Joshua Brown's death, life signs are emerging at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Brown was decapitated when his Tesla Model S drove itself under a tractor-trailer while he wasn't paying attention. In the intervening years, there have been dozens of crashes where Tesla's Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) setup was active. Until recently, NHTSA has done nothing to reign in how Tesla and other automakers deploy such systems. Just weeks after the agency issued an order for all companies developing or deploying partially or highly automated driving systems to report all crashes, it has opened (as of this writing in mid-August) a formal investigation into Teslas slamming into parked emergency vehicles.

Sadly, the meme of Tesla's plowing into the back of fire trucks and police cars on the side of the road has become something of a running joke in the last few years. The new NHTSA investigation is specifically focused on at least 11 such incidents. Chances are similar that incidents have occurred with other OEMs' vehicles as well, but at this point we simply don't have the data to know. I recently asked General Motors' Duncan Aldred, the global VP of GMC and Buick, if there have been any crashes with vehicles where the automaker's hands-free Super Cruise system was active. He sidestepped the question, providing no response.