The TL;DR in one quote:
Job cuts at the US traffic safety regulator instigated by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency disproportionately hit staff assessing self-driving risks, hampering oversight of technology on which the world’s richest man has staked the future of Tesla.
An interesting quote from a Tesla manager:
“Letting Doge fire those in the autonomous division is sheer madness—we should be lobbying to add people to NHTSA,” said one manager at Tesla. They “need to be developing a national framework for AVs, otherwise Tesla doesn’t have a prayer for scale in FSD or robotaxis.”
Cars aren’t safe anymore by standards and tests, they are now safe by declaration.
And Us American declarations are the best declarations in the whole world.
Therefore all the world is going to trust in Us American cars, finally.
And they are so much safer now than European cars, because Us American declarations are so superior to European safety standards and tests.
It’s been going on a long time, look at how cozy Boeing was with regulators
Boeing want cozy with them, it employed them, and when they spoke up about it, they ended up dead. Whether from a conspiracy, or depression at the state or their careers and conscience, Boeing and the agency capture that allows shitty planes to exist bears the responsibility.
Man, idk. If I buy a foreign car, say a Hyundai Ionique (the new sexy one) how do I know it’s manufactured to other international standards and not specifically American standards?
how do I know it’s manufactured to other international standards and not specifically American standards?
Well, you don’t need to know anymore now :)
But if you are in Europe, the standards are still in force. No cars may be sold that do not meet these requirements. The manufacturer must declare the conformity for each model, and in addition they are tested by independent organisations sometimes.
Presumably before you buy something as expensive as a new car, I’d assume you’d look at reviews.
You’d be able to see the car’s Euro NCAP ratings, which, to be frank, were always much more comprehensive in testing than NHTSA anyway.
This isn’t foolproof.
The same car might be manufactured in multiple factories for multiple markets, to multiple levels of certification.
Your “new car” in one country, could be the previous years European model if the euro regs have changed.
That’s true.
They say regulations are written in blood.
Elaine Chao is a conservative government official who is famous for not enforcing safety rules or following up on safety complaints and may have violated ethics laws while Secretary of Transportation under Trump’s first regime. While in that role, she rubber stamped a sketchy driver control system implemented by Tesla that later helped kill her own sister (in addition to drunk driving).
Can the lightning bolt of consequences strike twice?
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Back in the day where giving Mitch McConnel’s wife a cushy job was path to fascism.
You couldn’t make this shit up…
sheer madness
I would expect nothing less! We elected a mad king on purpose. Thus, I fully expect the finest anti-intellectualism Elon can buy.
In case you need another reason not to buy a Tesla.
It’s almost as if the fascist apartheid baby has an agenda behind all of this.
Be car reliant nation Remove car safety
Hilarious
Tbh this is really frustrating. As many car crashes I ran in my 15 years in EMS, NHTSA has probably saved more lives in the last twenty years than the Dept of Public Health, especially once you consider how for much of America, there really is no alternative to driving.
This would be REALLY CORRUPT if Elon was the President! FORTUNATELY that’s NOT the Case! They would NEVER let an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT like HIM to do that!
I do not see a conflict of interest. 🙈
Plot twist: NHTSA are the only people that approve new designs, so Tesla can’t sell any more cars.
Well we can dream.
I think this is unironically what they are going for everywhere: delegating regulation to industry, as is the case to some extent in aviation. If they get their way, they won’t need approval from the NHTSA or any other agency, because they will self-approve and likely even shape regulation themselves.
Boeing (just one example) has been pushing for lower or self regulation for a while.
That was part of what led to the 737-MAX issue:
Airlines concerned for safety will be moving away from Boeing if the deregulation continues.
The libertarian BS is going to set America back a century - in many respects.
To be completely fair the American government currently does this with inflation, among other things. Actually inflationary item? Whoops we removed it from the calculation. All good here, boss. Sweeping something you don’t want to account for “under the rug” is practically normalized in this government. It isn’t right- obviously… but this isn’t really shocking either.
The elephant? Where? In this room?! We don’t talk about that.
Ahh, the sole reason I can stomach the way auto prices have inflated over the past 20 years.
FFS, someone end this already
I won’t buy any American car newer than 2024.
Neither will the rest of the world, if their cars fail the safety requirements in all the other countries.
Do the cars not have to be certified? It seems to me that fewer employees just means longer delays for certifications, not easier certifications
The NHTSA doesn’t actually certify anything.
They write the standards that vehicles and products must follow, but it’s up to the manufacturers to certify themselves as being compliant.
This explains how the cyber trucks, with no third party testing, are considered road legal in the US and basically no other country.
So Elon is not firing regulators that will deny his cars a certification, he’s firing regulators that decide what the requirements will be.
Thats so much worse.
Source for anyone interested. It’s a reply to a man wanting to import air bags, but the letter does give a nice overview of the laws.
The Cybertruck doesn’t violate any US laws, there’s nothing to disallow it, and independent testing gave it 5 star saftey rating.
And while OEMs do self certify, they get spot checked to ensure compliance. There’s too many new vehicles and variants for the NHSTA/EPA etc. to ever check every single one in detail.
Edit: and if you really wanna get into it, most of the other OEMs everyone wants to love actually put defeat devices for said spot checking to lie and kill us sooner with bad air for $$$
I’d love to see self certification go away entirely. They do the same thing with motorcycle helmets.
NHTSA does not approve helmets, or any other motor vehicle equipment, instead relying on a self-certification process. However, we conduct tests on some helmets to make sure they meet our standard.
They release reports about those checks and a guy online aggregates them and they have a 43.9% failure rate as of 2023. With helmets we can just grab something with the DOT rating and one of the other ratings that aren’t self certified.
Yikes that’s a bad rate.
It would be nice to get rid of it, but it will cost a lot more money that no one wants to pay even if it’s actually a good use of it.
