Elon Musk Doesn’t Want Tesla to Have to Do Car-Crash Reporting, and—What Do You Know—the Trump Transition Agrees

Elon Musk spent greater than $250 million to assist reelect Donald Trump, and he now has a job operating the Department of Government Efficiency. Separately, Musk’s Tesla has lengthy needed federal security regulators to drop a car-crash reporting requirement, and—what’s that we’re listening to? The Trump transition agrees!

Reuters stories that the president-elect’s transition has advisable killing the reporting rule, claiming the information assortment is “excessive.” Of course, what one group of individuals may name extreme, one other may name fairly vital in stopping people from being killed by autonomous automobiles.

Per Reuters:

A Reuters evaluation of the [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] crash information reveals Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 deadly crashes reported to NHTSA by way of Oct. 15. Among the Tesla crashes NHTSA investigated underneath the availability had been a 2023 deadly accident in Virginia the place a driver utilizing the automobile’s “Autopilot” characteristic slammed right into a tractor-trailer and a California wreck the identical 12 months the place an Autopiloted Tesla hit a firetruck, killing the driving force and injuring 4 firefighters.

NHTSA stated in a press release that such information is essential to evaluating the protection of rising automated-driving applied sciences. Two former NHTSA workers stated the crash-reporting necessities had been pivotal to company investigations into Tesla’s driver-assistance options that led to 2023 remembers. Without the information, they stated, NHTSA can’t simply detect crash patterns that spotlight security issues. NHTSA stated it has obtained and analyzed information on greater than 2,700 crashes for the reason that company established the rule in 2021. The information has influenced 10 investigations into six firms, NHTSA stated, in addition to 9 security remembers involving 4 totally different firms.

As Reuters notes, nixing the crash-reporting requirement “would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes—more than 1,500—to federal safety regulators under the program.” The Trump transition, Tesla, and Musk didn’t reply to requests for remark from the outlet.

In an interview with Time journal printed this week, the incoming president was requested if it was a battle of curiosity to present Musk “the power to oversee the agencies that regulate his companies.” Trump responded: “I don’t think so…. I think that Elon puts the country long before his company. I mean, he’s in a lot of companies, but he really is, and I’ve seen it. He considers this to be his most important project, and he wanted to do it. And, you know, I think…he’s one of the very few people that would have the credibility to do it, but he puts the country before, and I’ve seen it, before he puts his company.”

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