Tesla Goes to War With the NTSB: Transparency vs. Radio Silence

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has kicked Tesla off the board investigating the fatal crash of a car running Tesla’s “Autopilot.” Tesla claims they initiated the breakup. Self-interest aside, this sorry incident highlights the need for transparency with imperfect technology.

Last month, a Tesla Model X SUV equipped with the Autopilot “driver-assistance system” slammed into a concrete divider, killing the driver. Autopilot, which helps the car stay within the lines and a safe distance from other vehicles, requires the driver to maintain contact with the steering wheel, and the system blares several audio and visual warnings if contact is broken for too long.

Tesla maintained that the driver, Walter Huang, had no contact with the wheel for six seconds prior to the crash. The problem is that revealing this info violated Tesla’s agreement with the NTSB, which requires strict silence until its own investigation is concluded.

On April 11, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt noted on Twitter that, in a prior phone call with Tesla Chairman Elon Musk, he had “revoked Tesla's party status from the investigation.”

The NTSB did so because "Tesla violated the party agreement by releasing investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the NTSB. Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a crash...."

Tesla released a statement on the same day claiming the following:

“Today, Tesla withdrew from the party agreement with the NTSB because it requires that we not release information about Autopilot to the public, a requirement which we believe fundamentally affects public safety negatively,” the company said in a statement. “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.”

Who dumped who seems irrelevant to me. Tesla was definitely covering its own posterior. Getting out ahead of the investigation is a great way to control public opinion. But they’re 100% right about the NTSB’s sluggish pace – the agency’s findings won’t be ready for a year or more, and a year in technology is an eternity.

Tesla’s Autopilot feature is still on the roads, and withholding relevant safety information – i.e. “don’t break contact with the wheel” – is not within everyone’s best interests. The incident occurred because of a general unfamiliarity with a nascent technology – Autopilot is pretty far from a fully-autonomous driving system – and suppressing information for fear of comprising some investigation could have fatal consequences.