U.S. safety agency unhappy with Tesla crash data release

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board stated on Sunday it was “unhappy” that electric automaker Tesla Inc made public information about the accident of its Model X vehicle on Autopilot that killed the driver in March.

The agency “needs the cooperation of Tesla to decode the data the vehicle recorded,” NTSB representative Chris O’Neil stated. “In each of our investigations involving a Tesla vehicle, Tesla has been highly cooperative on assisting with the vehicle data.”

“However, the NTSB is unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla,” he included.

A Tesla spokesperson refused to discuss.

The board’s response to Tesla was first reported by the Washington Post Sunday evening.

O’Neil was replying to Tesla’s announcement on Friday that the Tesla Model X associated in the crash had activated its Autopilot system sometime before the March 23 accident.

The driver, 38, died at a nearby hospital after the vehicle struck a concrete highway divider near Mountain View, California. The accident involved two other vehicles.

“The NTSB is looking into all aspects of this crash including the driver’s previous concerns about the autopilot,” stated O’Neil. “We will work to determine the probable cause of the crash and our next update of information about our investigation will likely be when we publish a preliminary report, which generally occurs under a few weeks of completion of field work.”

Recently, the company stated that a search of its service records did not discover “anything suggesting that the customer ever complained to Tesla about the performance of Autopilot. There was a concern raised once about navigation not working appropriately, but Autopilot’s performance is not related to navigation.”