Elon Musk’s efforts ingratiating himself into Trumpworld are about to pay off.
Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has recommended that the president-elect quash a crash reporting requirement for self-driving vehicles. In an internal document obtained by Reuters, the team described the safety reporting condition as a mandate for “excessive” data collection, advising that the president-elect abolish the requirement entirely.
Doing so would radically alter the playing field for the burgeoning automated vehicle industry, decreasing transparency and making it more difficult for federal regulators to spark inquiries into dangerous practices. And Tesla would be the new policy’s biggest benefactor.
The electric vehicle company, which Musk heads, has reported the majority of automated vehicle crashes, more than 1,500, to federal safety regulators. And a Reuters analysis of data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, found that Tesla’s crash data accounted for 40 out of 45 of the fatal crashes reported through October 15.
Critics and law enforcement groups, including the Justice Department, have torched the company’s “autopilot” and “full self-driving” claims, arguing that the branding has misled investors and consumers into believing that the cars are fully autonomous when they still require an active driver behind the wheel.
In a statement to Reuters, the NHTSA noted that the crash reporting data is “crucial” to evaluating the safety of these emerging technologies. Former agency employees noted to the outlet that such data was essential to investigations that led to a 2023 recall of some 125,000 Tesla vehicles over a seat belt defect.
“NHTSA said it has received and analyzed data on more than 2,700 crashes since the agency established the rule in 2021. The data has influenced 10 investigations into six companies, NHTSA said, as well as nine safety recalls involving four different companies,” according to Reuters.
Musk’s involvement in crafting the transition team’s policy could not be determined, and it’s still unclear if Trump actually intends to strip the requirement.