The rule is to submit a report within five days. It takes Tesla months.
It turns out it’s actually possible for a corporation to drag its feet for so long that even the Trump administration takes issue with it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it will investigate Tesla’s habit of taking months to submit accident reports that involve the company’s driver-assistance technology, according to a report from Reuters.
Just how late is Tesla getting its crash report information to the NHTSA? The agency asks that companies submit reports within one to five days of receiving notice that a crash occurred. Tesla has been taking “several months or more,” according to a notice published by the agency. That has probably produced a lot of “Hey, just circling back” emails as the NHTSA tries to get Elon Musk’s company to comply.
As a result, the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation has opened an audit into the issue as part of an effort to “evaluate the cause of the potential delays in reporting, the scope of any such delays, and the mitigations that Tesla has developed to address them.
