NHTSA determines sudden acceleration complaints in Tesla vehicles were due to driver error
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has determined the reports of sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) involving four different Tesla models were due to user error.
The NHTSA first began investigating the claims last January, shortly after Brian Sparks requested the agency recall all Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles made during or after 2013. In its review, the NHTSA analyzed the 232 SUA complaints Sparks provided to the agency, as well as 14 other complaints and all available crash data.
The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation has now determined that all of the crashes involving SUA that Sparks cited were caused by the driver. Therefore, the NHTSA is denying Sparks’ petition to formally review 662,109 vehicles and potentially recall them.
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Former President Lyndon Johnson was probably not the first, nor certainly the last, to note that more Americans have died on the nation s roads than in all of its wars combined. He called it the highway disease in a speech in 1966, when he signed legislation that aimed to curb the slaughter.
At the time, more than 50,000 Americans were dying annually in traffic crashes. A new highway safety bureau, later named the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, was created to set vehicle safety standards, oversee recalls of defective cars and trucks, conduct safety research and consumer education, and distribute traffic safety grants to states all helping to reduce the body count.