US Senators Ask NHTSA to Review Tesla’s FSD Safety Claims Following Reuters Investigation

Two longtime Tesla critics are once again turning their attention to the automaker’s driver assistance technology, this time asking U.S. regulators to examine the safety claims Tesla has made about its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system.

Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have sent a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) urging the agency to review Tesla’s publicly cited FSD safety statistics. The request follows a recent Reuters investigation that questioned the methodology behind several of Tesla’s most frequently repeated claims, including statements that FSD is seven to ten times safer than human drivers.

Following that report, a Dutch Minister has defended the Netherland’s decision, saying it was based on their own independent data.

The senators argue that Tesla’s analysis may be overstating the system’s safety performance and want NHTSA to determine whether the company’s claims are statistically sound.

“For years, [Elon] Musk has promised that Tesla vehicles would soon become fully autonomous, even though Tesla continues to warn that currently enabled FSD features — despite the misleading name — require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter asks NHTSA whether it has independently reviewed Tesla’s safety claims and whether the agency has requested the underlying data, assumptions, crash definitions, and methodologies used to generate those figures.

Tesla isn’t their only target. Markey and Blumenthal are also pushing for broader reporting requirements across the autonomous vehicle industry. They argue that companies currently provide limited data to regulators, making it difficult for NHTSA to verify public safety claims or compare performance across different systems.

According to the senators, “Misleading safety statistics can encourage drivers to over-rely on FSD, obscure whether the technology is creating safety defects, and undermine NHTSA’s ability to evaluate risks associated with vehicles already operating on public roads.”

The senators have requested answers from NHTSA by July 7 on the following questions:

1. Has NHTSA independently evaluated Tesla’s public FSD safety claims, including claims that FSD is seven or ten times safer than human driving, for statistical validity or methodological soundness?
2. Has NHTSA requested, as part of any ongoing investigation, that Tesla provide the underlying data, assumptions, crash definitions, exposure metrics, and methodology used to generate its public FSD safety statistics? If so, please provide the date of each request and describe Tesla’s response.
3. Has NHTSA evaluated Tesla’s use of a five-second disengagement window in its FSD safety calculations, despite the SGO’s 30-second reporting window? If so, what conclusions has NHTSA reached?
4. Has NHTSA evaluated whether Tesla’s reliance on automated telemetry may omit crashes or safety incidents when connectivity is unavailable or vehicle communication systems are damaged? If so, what conclusions has NHTSA reached?

NHTSA has confirmed it received the senators’ letter and is reviewing the request. Tesla has not publicly responded.

Familiar Criticism From Senator Markey

While the latest letter focuses on Tesla’s safety statistics, it is far from the first time Senator Markey has publicly criticized the company.

Markey has been questioning Tesla’s driver assistance systems for years. In 2019, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on self-driving technology, he criticized Tesla’s Autopilot system and raised concerns about drivers using workarounds to bypass safety warnings. At the time, he argued Tesla should address what he described as design flaws that allowed inattentive drivers to misuse the system.

A few months later, Markey again targeted Tesla, calling on the company to rename Autopilot because he believed the branding could mislead drivers into thinking the system was fully autonomous. He also urged Tesla to implement additional safeguards to prevent misuse.

Tesla has since been forced to rename Autopilot by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) after the agency determined it was misleading. In response, Tesla rolled out a software update that included an “Autopilot Naming Update.”