Inquiry into Tesla Autopilot being expanded by US safety officials

San Francisco : After discovering fresh incidences of Tesla’s Autopilot advanced driver assistance system colliding with parked first-responder vehicles, US federal safety officials have “upgraded” their probe.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in a notice on Thursday that it was expanding its preliminary evaluation of Tesla Autopilot systems to an engineering analysis, reports TechCrunch .
This means that NHTSA will extend its existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets and perform vehicle evaluations as well as evaluate whether Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioural safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision, according to the agency, the report mentioned.
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Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement from NHTSA, the agency issued a reminder that “no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves”.