Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Not all vehicle occupants are protected equally when it comes to car crashes. Until 2017, cars weren't even routinely crash-tested on the passenger side , just the driver's. There's still other low-hanging fruit, too; thousands of rear-seat passengers die in cars each year in the United States because they're not wearing seat belts, despite decades of evidence on the effectiveness of buckling up. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has now had enough and has proposed a new rule that would mean new cars, trucks, and even some buses would need to have seat belt warning alerts for all occupants, not just the driver.

Seat belts have been mandatory equipment for all seats in cars and trucks (but not buses) since 1968, thanks to the US Department of Transport. But the US has lagged behind much of the world when it comes to requiring their use; this is determined at the state level, and it wasn't until 1984 that New York became the first US state to require seat belt use.

Since then , 48 other states, along with the District of Columbia, now require front seat occupants to wear belts—New Hampshire remains unconvinced—but a total of 10 states don't require rear passengers to wear seat belts by law.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla | Airplane!)

On July 3, 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made public a letter it sent Tesla in August 2022, demanding that the company provide updated responses to some questions. NHTSA is investigating the performance of Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system after identifying more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stopped emergency vehicles . The agency is also investigating whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention when using the Autopilot system.

Following a string of notable crashes, NHTSA officially initiated an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system. And on July 3 , NHTSA wrote to Tesla again, asking the automaker for updated information by July 19. As far as anyone can tell, that didn't happen.

Recalls galore

If NHTSA decides to issue a recall, it wouldn’t be the first time. Tesla has faced a significant number of recalls over the past decade, covering various issues ranging from seatbelts to battery-related concerns.

Enlarge (credit: Wayne Eastep/Getty Images)

Women and older people are being failed by our crash test dummies, according to the US Government Accountability Office. The GAO has just published a new report on the topic and is concerned that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not done enough to fill knowledge or research gaps that would make our vehicles safer for those more-vulnerable classes of occupants. Consequently, the GAO is recommending that NHTSA create a comprehensive plan to improve that crash test dummy data.

There's no question that cars today are safer than they were even two decades ago. In addition to the crash testing required by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FVMSS), programs like NHTSA's New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Picks publicize their test scores, which has forced manufacturers to improve occupant protection to get those all-important safety scores, and now cars have to be designed to deal with offset collisions, side impacts, and rollovers, as well as head-on crashes.

But the benefits of improved in-car safety have been mostly seen by men.

Enlarge / Even Tesla says you should keep your hands on the steering wheel, but it helps if that wheel is actually connected to the steering column. (credit: Tesla)

Tesla has yet another federal headache to contend with. On March 4, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary investigation after two reports of Tesla Model Y steering wheels detaching in drivers' hands while driving.

NHTSA's ODI says that in both cases, the model year 2023 Model Ys each required repairs on the production line that involved removing their steering wheels. The wheels were refitted but were only held in place by friction—Tesla workers never replaced the retaining bolt that fixes the steering wheel to the steering column. In 2018, Ford had to recall more than 1.3 million vehicles after an incorrectly sized bolt resulted in a similar problem.

The ODI document states that "sudden separation occurred when the force exerted on the steering wheel overcame the resistance of the friction fit while the vehicles were in motion" and that both incidents occurred while the electric vehicles still had low mileage.

Enlarge / Tesla's Autopilot system is good at keeping pace with moving traffic, but it keeps crashing into emergency responders parked by the side of the road. The NHTSA wants to know why. (credit: Tesla)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system continues apace. The Associated Press reports that on Tuesday, the NHTSA sent Tesla a letter requesting further information following 12 incidents of Autopilot-enabled Teslas crashing into emergency vehicles parked by the side of the road. In total, 17 people have been injured, and one has died.

The NHTSA sent Tesla the 11-page letter asking for detailed information on how Autopilot recognizes and reacts to emergency vehicles. The company must respond by October 22 unless it asks for an extension, and the AP says Tesla could be fined $114 million if it does not cooperate.

Specifically, the agency wants to know how the system detects "a crash scene, including flashing lights, road flares, reflectorized vests worn by responders, and vehicles parked on the road." Additionally, Tesla must tell NHTSA how Autopilot works in low-light conditions and what happens if the system detects an emergency.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / A truck on Route 93 in Canton, MA, rolled over on Dec. 7, 2020. (credit: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images )

Motor vehicle traffic crashes killed 36,096 people in 2019, according to new data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). That's a 2 percent decline from the 2018 figure and a continuation of a decades-long trend toward safer roads.

Traffic fatalities peaked in the late 1970s, with more than 50,000 people dying per year. Since then, annual deaths have generally been trending downwards.

Progress on road safety saw a brief reversal between 2014 and 2016, when fatalities rose from 32,744 to 37,806. But since then, the figure has declined three years in a row—though it's still not below the record lows of the early 2010s.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images/Jonathan Gitlin)

Is one of Tesla's infotainment systems defective by design? That's a question the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hopes to answer. It has started an engineering analysis after hundreds of customer complaints of bricked systems resulted in a preliminary investigation in June .

NHTSA thinks it knows what the problem is: an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip—an SD card in other words—with a finite number of read/write cycles, fitted to its Media Control Unit. The MCU regularly writes logs to this chip and, within three or four years, reaches the lifetime number of cycles. At this point the touchscreen dies, taking with it functions like the car's backup camera, the ability to defog the windows, and also the audible alerts and chimes for the driver aids and turn signals.

After the regulator's Office of Defects Investigation received 537 complaints, it asked Tesla if it knew of any more problems with the Nvidia Tegra 3-based system, which is fitted to approximately 158,000 Models S (2012-2018) and X (2016-2018). Tesla did , handing over 2,399 complaints and field reports, 7,777 warranty claims, and 4,746 non-warranty claims.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments