Published January 15, 2025 at 2:00 AM PST Facebook / Getty Images Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the U.S. Capitol, with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (third from right, wearing blue tie) and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., (fourth from right) last month. Musk has publicly defended Tesla's safety record too. "Inevitably when there are a lot of cars and you've got billions of miles, you do have the law of large numbers where, OK, there's a small chance of something bad happening," Musk said at a shareholder meeting last June. Still, some Tesla shareholders seem nervous about the company's approach. At that meeting last year, Musk was asked how he thinks about the "unfortunate mishaps" that have plagued other companies that are working on autonomous cars. "Those are real consequences of developing this technology, and I'm just wondering where your mind is on that," asked one shareholder who did not give his name. Musk replied that Tesla is trying to be careful with the rollout of Full Self-Driving mode. "Human driving is not perfect," he said, noting that roughly 40,000 people are killed every year on U.S. roadways. "What matters is, like, are we making that number smaller? And as long as we're making that number smaller, we're doing the right thing," Musk said. At the shareholder meeting last year, Musk touted the latest version of the company's Full Self-Driving technology. With each release, he said, the number of miles the system can drive without human intervention has increased. "It's headed towards unsupervised full self-driving very quickly, at an exponential pace," Musk said. "When you look at the sort of safety per mile, because we've got a lot of miles, it's very clear that the safety per mile is better than human driving." That's a claim Musk has made many times, though his critics note that he has never released the evidence to back it up. "I have never seen one ounce of data that would suggest that Teslas are safer than human drivers," Cummings said. "They're nowhere near ready to drive without a driver behind the wheel." An uncertain future for regulation Musk has been promising the imminent arrival of autonomous cars since at least 2016. He has been telling customers and investors for years that the cars might become fully self-driving vehicles with a future software update. And last year, Tesla unveiled the prototype of its Cybercab, a taxi that Musk says will be fully autonomous. But that's not what Tesla is telling regulators, or its customers, about its current fleet. Tesla says drivers must remain attentive at all times, even in Full Self-Driving mode. That includes an internal camera that monitors the driver's head and eyes to make sure the driver is paying attention. If the driver isn't, the car issues a series of escalating warnings. Washington State Patrol The front of Scott Hunter's Tesla sustained minor damage during the fatal low-speed collision in April 2024 outside Seattle, according to police. According to police in Washington state, that is what happened in the moments before the fatal crash outside Seattle in April. Data recovered from Scott Hunter's Tesla shows the car tried to get the driver's attention as it approached the motorcycle, which was moving slowly in traffic. But then, moments before impact, the report says Hunter pressed his foot down on the accelerator, overriding the car's automatic braking system — and kept it there for 10 seconds after the collision with motorcyclist Jeffrey Nissen, even though the car was no longer moving. "I wish this had never happened," Nissen's sister, Jenessa Fagerlie, told local TV station KING 5 last year. "And I wish people would really stay off their phones more." Hunter has not been charged with a crime by prosecutors, though the investigation is continuing, and his lawyer declined to comment for this story. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about the crash. But safety advocates say the carmaker bears some responsibility here, too. "Tesla has been overselling the effectiveness of its technology for years," said Michael Brooks, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety. "And a lot of people buy into that. They're kind of wrapped up in this belief that this is an autonomous vehicle, because it's tweeted about that way." A week after the crash in Snohomish County, investigators at NHTSA published the results of a three-year investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system. They found a "critical safety gap" between drivers' expectations of the driver-assistance system and its true capabilities. Investigators identified at least 13 fatal crashes, as well as many more involving serious injuries, in which "foreseeable driver misuse of the system played an apparent role." Regulators at NHTSA also announced an investigation into the effectiveness of Tesla's Autopilot recall and whether the company is doing enough to keep drivers engaged and off their phones. Regulators have since announced that they're also looking into a series of crashes involving cars using Full Self-Driving in low-visibility conditions. But safety advocates worry that those investigations may be in jeopardy too, along with the crash reporting requirement. Without it, they say, regulators — and the public — will know less about who is keeping their eyes on the road and who isn't. Copyright 2025 NPR