For the second time this year, Tesla has issued what is termed a recall notice at the behest of federal regulators due to safety issues with its driver-assist software. This time, the recall affects nearly all of the two million vehicles Tesla has sold in the United States.
Specifically, the recall is regarding Autosteer, a component of Autopilot which is available as an add-on package with every Tesla. Despite the name, Autopilot does not drive the car by itself. It is only available for use on highways and other limited-access roads and drivers are supposed to remain alert while it is activated. In theory, if the car doesn’t detect the driver’s hands on the wheels, it will sound alarms and eventually hand control of the vehicle back to the driver.
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In practice, drivers have long misunderstood the capabilities of Autopilot, especially after Tesla released a separate software upgrade called “Full Self-Driving Beta” that, like Autopilot, must be supervised by an attentive driver but unlike Autopilot can be enabled on most kinds of roads including city streets. In addition, some Tesla owners have been experimenting with how to disable or circumvent the features that attempt to ensure the software is being used properly for at least five years.
But, just in time for the holidays, here comes the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration right down Transportation Safety Lane. Wrapping up a two-year-plus investigation, in which NHTSA said it reviewed logs from nearly 1,000 crashes involving Autopilot, the agency has slapped Tesla on the wrist yet again, resulting in Tesla issuing an over-the-air software update to two million vehicles in the U.S. that will “incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged.”
The recall notice is somewhat vague on what exactly this will result in, but it does say vehicles will now have visual alerts with more “prominence,” simpler engagement and disengagement of Autosteer, and “additional checks” that Autosteer isn’t being used on roads it is not intended for, an issue the Washington Post recently detailed.
In February, Tesla issued a NHTSA-initiated recall for approximately 362,000 vehicles enabled with Full Self-Driving Beta because the vehicles using the experimental software on public roads sometimes ran through “stale yellow” lights. In both recalls, Tesla did not agree with the agency’s analysis but volunteered to issue the recall anyways in order to close the issue.
