Another day, another federal probe into Elon Musk\u2019s troubled EV company. This week, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reportedly announced that it was looking into one of Tesla\u2019s automated driving modes, which is charmingly called \u201cMad Max.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t heard of \u201cMad Max,\u201d that\u2019s probably because it\u2019s new. Ars Technica notes that<\/a> it and another mode, \u201cSloth,\u201d were added to cars by a firmware update issued earlier this month. Well, Reuters now reports<\/a>\u00a0some folks on social media have been complaining that Teslas using the driving mode were exceeding the speed limit (that certainly sounds like something Max would do<\/a>). Now, the government is looking into it.<\/p>\n \u201cNHTSA is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information,\u201d the agency told Reuters. \u201cThe human behind the wheel is fully responsible for driving the vehicle and complying with all traffic safety laws.\u201d There\u2019s not a whole lot of information available other than that, but Gizmodo reached out to Tesla for comment (although the company dissolved<\/a>\u00a0a majority of its communications team years ago), and to the NHTSA for more information.<\/p>\n Who would have thought that a semi-automated driving mode named after a vengeful dystopian drifter with a lead foot might someday catch the eye of federal regulators? Not I. Sarcasm aside, Tesla\u2019s FSD function has been probed by federal regulators for years<\/a> so, for that reason too, this isn\u2019t all that surprising. FSD has been criticized<\/a> because, despite its name, it does still require the driver to\u2026you know, drive.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the NHTSA also opened an investigation into Tesla over dozens of reports that alleged its vehicles were running stop signs while engaged with FSD, CBS previously reported<\/a>. Tesla also recently lost a wrongful death lawsuit involving Autopilot that will reportedly cost them $329 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another day, another federal probe into Elon Musk\u2019s troubled EV company. This week, the U.S. National Highway Traffic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[136861,28,57289],"class_list":["post-251262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-automotive-safety","tag-business","tag-tesla-autopilot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}