Key Points:
- Two U.S. senators formally asked NHTSA to review and examine Tesla’s self-published FSD crash statistics.
- Lawmakers labeled the data weak and misleading, citing investigative reports on exaggerated safety claims.
- The letter demands that NHTSA verify whether it evaluated the automaker’s underlying crash numbers.
- Critics claim the safety data relies on flawed comparisons, including airbag deployments versus all minor crashes.
US Senators ask the nation’s premier auto safety regulator to immediately investigate Tesla’s self-published crash statistics for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, calling the data weak and misleading. Democratic Senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a strongly worded joint letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The lawmakers cited recent investigative news reports that exposed how the electric vehicle giant systematically exaggerated its safety records to secure regulatory approvals. They warned that these inflated claims have created an urgent public safety problem by giving drivers a false sense of security.
The congressional letter demands that the safety agency write back by July 7 with detailed answers regarding its oversight of the automaker. Specifically, the senators want to know if the safety regulator has formally evaluated the manufacturer’s self-published safety assertions or requested the raw, underlying crash data used to compile those statistics. The lawmakers also urged the agency to establish far more robust reporting requirements for all companies testing automated driver assistance systems (ADAS) on public roads. They argued that under the current loose rules, the regulator has no objective way of knowing whether public safety claims bear any relationship to reality.
The central argument of the congressional pushback focuses on the flawed methodology the carmaker uses to claim its software is up to 10 times safer than human drivers. Independent traffic-safety researchers revealed that these statistics collapse under close mathematical scrutiny. To inflate its safety margin, the automaker compares a highly selective rate of crashes in FSD-equipped vehicles that triggered airbag deployments with the national average of all U.S. road accidents, which includes minor, non-severe fender-benders where airbags never deploy. This “apples-to-oranges” comparison artificially inflates the software’s safety performance by a factor of three.
Additionally, the company’s safety comparisons introduce another major statistical distortion by comparing its brand-new, high-tech fleet with the average vehicle on U.S. roads. The average car operating in the United States is currently about 12 years old, meaning it lacks the basic, modern active safety features—such as automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assist, and electronic stability control—that are standard across all new vehicle models. By comparing its brand-new vehicles with decades-old, obsolete models, the automaker attributes standard structural safety improvements to its autonomous driving software, misleading both consumers and regulators.
This congressional pressure follows recent revelations that the automaker presented these exact same inflated safety statistics to European road regulators. Public records requests in Europe uncovered correspondence showing that the company’s policy managers used these disputed statistics to lobby road authorities in Sweden and the Netherlands for FSD approval. The company’s presentation slides asserted that widespread adoption of its FSD software could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries in the U.S. alone. Ten out of eleven independent traffic-safety researchers who reviewed the slides labeled them as misleading marketing rather than a serious safety study.
The senators’ letter lands as the automaker already faces an intensive, ongoing federal safety probe. In October 2025, the national safety regulator opened a formal investigation covering approximately 2.88 million vehicles equipped with FSD software following reports of numerous traffic violations. The agency documented at least 58 distinct incidents where the software ran red lights, made illegal turns, or drove directly into oncoming traffic. The regulator set a strict March 9 deadline for the company to submit comprehensive data for each incident, including video logs and black box data starting 30 seconds before each violation, which has kept the company’s executive team under immense regulatory pressure.
This is far from the first time that Senators Blumenthal and Markey have targeted the self-driving car industry. In December last year, the two lawmakers introduced the Stay in Your Lane Act, a piece of federal legislation designed to prohibit self-driving and semi-autonomous systems from operating outside the specific road conditions and environments for which they were designed. The senators pointed out that while more cautious developers restrict their vehicles to pre-mapped, divided highways, this automaker allows its experimental software to operate on complex city streets, cross traffic, and school zones, placing passengers and pedestrians at immense risk.
The growing congressional and regulatory backlash highlights a permanent turning page for the autonomous vehicle industry. The comfortable era when technology companies could deploy unverified, experimental software on public roads and use self-published statistics to ward off government regulators has officially ended. By demanding independent, peer-reviewed verification of all safety claims, lawmakers are finally forcing the industry to prioritize transparency over marketing hype. As the safety regulator prepares its response to the congressional query, the outcome of this investigation will determine whether the automaker must completely redesign its software or face severe, multi-million-dollar federal penalties.
