US road safety agency halts Tesla probe after video games feature disabled

Washington — The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Tuesday it is closing its investigation into 580,000 Tesla vehicles over the carmaker’s decision to initially allow games to be played on the front centre touchscreen.

Shortly after the government agency opened its investigation into Tesla’s Passenger Play capability in December 2021, Tesla agreed to stop allowing video games to be played on vehicle screens while its cars are moving. The agency said on Tuesday it was not seeking a recall of the vehicles but said its analysis of data provided by Tesla “produced significant concerns about driver distraction during the time that it was available”.

The NHTSA said in closing the investigation without seeking a recall it was not indicating “a finding by NHTSA that no safety-related defect exists. Furthermore, it does not foreclose the agency from taking further action, if warranted.”

Tesla, which did not immediately respond to a request to comment, told the agency that no consumer complaints or collisions had been reported concerning the use of Passenger Play in the subject vehicles during a year of use.

The NHTSA said that a month after Tesla voluntarily disabled Passenger Play capability with an over-the-air software update it reported a 97% completion rate. The agency’s investigation covered Tesla vehicles sold since 2017 that had the feature.

The NHTSA said “apparent driver use of Passenger Play while not in Park in about a third of the trips in which the feature was in use demonstrates the importance of affirmative technology-based lockouts over administrative controls such as labelling or disclaimer screens”.

In 2014, the NHTSA issued guidelines to encourage carmakers “to factor safety and driver distraction-prevention into their designs and adoption of infotainment devices in vehicles”.

The NHTSA’s guidelines “recommend that in-vehicle devices be designed so that they cannot be used by the driver to perform inherently distracting secondary tasks while driving”.

The agency has an ongoing investigation into 830,000 Tesla vehicles with driver assistance system Autopilot and involving crashes with parked emergency vehicles.

The NHTSA said on Tuesday in the Autopilot investigation it aims “to better understand human factors with respect to Tesla interfaces and the dynamic driving task”.

Reuters