It appears the attacks on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Autopilot technology keep coming. Earlier, we reported on how a claim by California senate candidate, Dan O’Dowd, said FSD “mows down children”, but was disproved by an actual FSD beta tester.
Now, former presidential candidate and well-known consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader issued a call to action to U.S. regulators on Thursday, requesting that they recall Tesla’s deployment of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta.
As reported by The Verge, Nader criticized Tesla’s FSD system, calling it “one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades.”
Nader says that federal regulators should use their power to recall vehicles to order Tesla to remove the FSD system in all of its vehicles.
Tesla FSD Beta 10.69 Release Date: August 20 https://t.co/edkkC6gfll
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) August 7, 2022
In the statement issued by the Center for Auto Safety, Nader said, “I am calling on federal regulators to act immediately to prevent the growing deaths and injuries from Tesla manslaughtering crashes with this technology.”
In the report, Nader added that over 100,000 Tesla owners are beta testing FSD on public roads, out of the roughly three million the company has in the world. Nader first gained popularity after releasing the 1965 critique of the U.S. auto industry Unsafe at Any Speed.
In June, the NHTSA released driver-assist crash data for the first time, though the agency also admitted that the report was still lacking in context. The agency is also investigating 16 crashes involving Tesla’s standard driver-assist system, Autopilot, which account for a total of 15 injuries and one fatality.
Back in May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said “political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months,” and these recent anti-FSD stories suggest attacks have turned to his company.
Political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022
