Tesla is facing a federal investigation into possible safety defects with FSD, its partially automated driving system that is also known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Media, vehicle owner and other incident reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 44 separate incidents, Tesla drivers using FSD said the system caused them to run a red light, steer into oncoming traffic or commit other traffic violations leading to collisions, including some that injured people in certain cases.
In a notice posted to the agency's website on Thursday, NHTSA said the investigation concerns "all Tesla vehicles that have been equipped with FSD (Supervised) or FSD (Beta)," which is an estimated 2,882,566 of the company's electric cars.
Tesla cars, even with FSD engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.
The NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation opened a Preliminary Evaluation to "assess whether there was prior warning or adequate time for the driver to respond to the unexpected behavior" by Tesla's FSD, or "to safely supervise the automated driving task," among other things.