Tesla is currently being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after several of its electric cars crashed into stationary emergency vehicles while Autopilot was engaged. The premise of the investigation itself is enough to whet the appetite of every Tesla skeptic since the idea of Autopilot crashing consistently into parked emergency vehicles makes for a compelling narrative. Tesla later released an update, enabling Autopilot to detect and slow down for stationary emergency vehicles. The NHTSA responded by calling out the company for not issuing a recall when it released its proactive over-the-air software update.
What was lost amidst the spread of the Tesla NHTSA investigation story was the fact that the relatively minor Autopilot update, which simply allowed vehicles to slow down when they detect things such as a police car or a firetruck parked on the side of the road, is already saving numerous lives. This is because there is a deadly problem on America’s roads, and it is something that very few seem to be acknowledging. Emergency personnel are dying on the job at a frighteningly frequent basis. They are dying because cars crash into them while they’re parked on the side of the road. And disturbingly enough, very little is being done about it.
The Flaws of HumanPilot
*Author’s Note and Trigger Warning: The succeeding sections of this article contains links to footage and other online references that may cause distress to readers. Discretion is advised.
One thing that truly stuck out while writing this piece was the sheer frequency of the accidents that happen to emergency personnel while they are responding to someone in need. This was despite the fact that all 50 states in the USA have a “Slow Down Move Over (SDMO)” Law in place. The premise of the SDMO law is simple: Upon noticing an emergency vehicle’s sirens or flashing lights on the side of the road, drivers are required to move away from the emergency vehicle by going into the next lane. If that is not possible, drivers must slow down to reduce the chances of an accident happening. The SDMO law is based on a very simple premise, but it is one that gets violated on a consistent basis.
This is partly due to states interpreting the law differently, with some adopting a “Slow Down and Move Over” model while others are following a “Slow Down or Move Over” system. But ultimately, there have been zero fatalities involving a vehicle that actually slowed down and moved over when they spotted a stationary emergency vehicle. This suggests that the law works, provided that it does get followed.
But when the Move Over Law gets violated, the human toll becomes disturbingly real. A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicates that about 8,000 injuries involving a stationary emergency vehicle have been reported in one year. As of this year alone, a total of 57 emergency responders have been killed while addressing a roadside issue. Posts from the National Struck-By Heroes Facebook group, which highlight the aftermath of Struck-by injuries (SBIs) are heartbreaking, and videos and posts shared by companies whose staff are killed while on the job are harrowing. This is something that was highlighted by James D. Garcia, the creator of the Move Over Law and an SBI survivor, who shared some of his insights with Teslarati.
“This year is the 25th anniversary of the first Slow Down Move Over Law, passed in South Carolina in 1996. Every state in the US has had an SDMO Law since 2012, and yet this year, we have already reached a record 56 responder deaths (This number has since risen to 57 as of this writing). Since 2018, there have been over 45,000 collisions with stationary roadside objects. Every seven seconds, an object is struck. Every other day, a responder is struck and injured. Every five days, a responder is killed.”
“If you ask the general public the most dangerous risk to a police officer, most would say the chance of being shot in pursuit. If you ask the biggest danger to a firefighter, most envision being trapped in a burning or collapsing building. But statistics prove the real story. Across all agencies, responders are twice more likely to die in an SBI than any other category of work-related injury. It is by far the most dangerous aspect of our job,” Garcia noted.
A DIY Solution
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching thing about the whole situation is the fact that SBIs are not even collected, considered, and analyzed formally by an official government agency, despite it being the leading cause of death and permanent injury for public safety and roadway responders. This situation has been so prevalent that James W. Law, a 32-year-veteran in the emergency roadside response industry and a specialist researcher in the Move Over Law, opted to develop a light sequence he fondly dubs as “E-Modes” to help drivers inform other vehicles that a parked emergency vehicle is nearby. Simply put, the problem of drivers not following SDMO laws is so real and deadly that emergency responders are DIY-ing a solution themselves — because they cannot count on anyone else.
Responding to roadside problems on America’s roads for the past 32 years is no joke, and over this time, Law has encountered the worst drivers possible. Law shared with Teslarati that over the course of his career, he has been personally involved in an accident four times, the first of which happened when he was just 18 years old. In what could very well prove the point that humans are bad drivers, one of Law’s experiences actually involved a driver intentionally crashing into him because he felt upset that traffic was disrupted due to an incident. Law’s legs broke the irate driver’s headlights because of the crash, and the driver wanted to accuse the roadside responder of damaging his car. The police were fortunately reasonable, and Law was not charged. The irate driver, on the other hand, received a $500 ticket for using his vehicle as a weapon.
Speaking with Teslarati, Law admitted that he is a pretty notable Tesla supporter, and he tried his best to emulate CEO Elon Musk’s first principles thinking when he developed E-modes’ custom light sequence. He aims to donate the light sequence protocols he developed to Tesla, partly due to the fact that the company is really the only carmaker out there that seems to be actively doing something to address the deadly issue plaguing emergency roadside personnel today. This became quite evident when the company updated its vehicles to detect and respond to traffic cones on the road. This small update, Law noted, may seem minor — even marginal — to the layman, but for roadside personnel, it was a godsend.
“Tesla’s traffic cone recognition is a crucial safety feature that I take full advantage of on any and all incidents. Properly setting up cones to define the ‘Kill Zone’ offers a quick way to communicate directly to any Tesla vehicle. Unlike humans, Tesla Vision is always aware. It’s one of the ways I communicate with oncoming Teslas. If Elon adopts E-Modes, a Tesla could communicate back to me that it is situation-aware. As a safety advocate, I strongly insist that every emergency responders use cones on every scene every time because it’s the right thing to do to protect everyone,” Law said.
The Lone Problem Solver
Inasmuch as the mainstream media coverage of the NHTSA’s probe on Autopilot’s incidents with emergency vehicles is substantial, the fact is that Tesla only accounted for nine crash injuries with first responder vehicles in the past 12 months. That’s a tiny fraction of the ~8,000 injuries the GAO indicated in its report. The company has also steadily rolled out features to make its vehicles safer. With every update of Autopilot and FSD, features like traffic cone recognition get more refined, and the more refined they get, the more emergency responders they protect. Tesla’s recent Autopilot update, which allows vehicles to slow down when they detect a parked emergency vehicle, is further proof of this.
Law noted that he had been involved in thousands of close calls in his 32-year career, but the one that truly stuck out to him involved a Tesla driver from late 2019, just after the company rolled out Autopilot’s capability to recognize and avoid traffic cones. While he was defining a “Kill Zone” on the road after responding to an incident, he saw an approaching Tesla whose driver appeared to be looking down and not paying attention to the road. Law was unsure if the Tesla was on Autopilot, but the vehicle moved over to the other lane seemingly as soon as it detected the traffic cones that he set up. The veteran emergency responder noted that the Tesla driver seemed surprised as the electric vehicle avoided the cones on its own.
Such an incident, ultimately, is what makes Tesla stand apart, at least for now. It may be an inconvenient truth, especially to those who salivate at the thought of FSD or Autopilot going berserk and hunting down emergency responders, but the fact remains that Tesla is doing far more to protect both its drivers and other people on the road than any other carmaker out there. Emergency responder deaths are preventable, and as the creator of the Move Over Law noted, the lion’s share of these incidents is due to human error. It is this human error that technologies such as Autopilot and FSD are trying to solve, NHTSA probe notwithstanding.
“Ninety percent of all struck-by deaths are a direct result of poor driver behavior. That means that nine out of ten responder deaths could have been prevented if the driver had maintained control of their vehicle at a reasonable speed and reacted in a considerate and attentive manner. Twenty-three percent of lethal struck-by violators were impaired. Five percent were distracted, and another three percent were drowsy. It is important we continue to support efforts to reduce drunk driving and speak out about the rapid rise of distracted driving resulting in responder deaths. Multiple agencies have ongoing PR campaigns to address these aspects, but none are taking on the most dominant category — angry, aggressive, entitled, and selfish drivers.
“The remaining 69% of drivers that crashed into and killed a responder were completely sober. They saw the lights, they recognized the situation, yet they still felt the need to speed up and pass just a few more cars before they moved over. They were in too big of a hurry to slow down to a controllable speed and killed a responder. These drivers consciously made an intentional personal decision to carelessly disregard the life of a responder. Self-absorbed drivers have become the norm. Stronger laws, higher fines, bigger signs, and brighter lights have no effect once they get behind the wheel. We need to face this reality and develop a strategy that confronts this disregard. We must reinforce the value of a responder’s life over whatever current personal priorities are influencing these drivers’ behavior,” Garcia noted.
A (Potentially) Safer Future
One can only hope that agencies such as the NHTSA could see the bigger picture with regards to vehicles and the advantages of technologies such as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. It takes an immense amount of short-sightedness, after all, to remain fixated on whether a recall was filed for a proactive Autopilot update, or on 11 incidents that involved a Tesla crashing into a stationary emergency vehicle, all while one emergency personnel is killed every five days. Focusing on Tesla and ignoring the larger problem at hand seems counter-productive at best.
In an ideal scenario, technologies such as Autopilot’s capability to identify, slow down, and potentially even move over to another lane when an emergency vehicle is detected would become mandatory for all cars on the road. As noted by esteemed auto teardown expert Sandy Munro, advanced driver-assist systems such as Autopilot and FSD have the potential to save lives on the same level as seatbelts, perhaps even more. And in this light, John Gardella, a shareholder at CMBG3 Law in Boston, MA, told Teslarati that if the NHTSA really wishes to help roll out new safety features, it would actually be a lot easier than one might imagine.
“Implementing the safety feature in Tesla’s vehicles will be easier than one might imagine. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showed earlier in 2021 through its final rule for safety features for automated driving systems that it does not wish to set onerous standards prior to many features for automated driving system (ADS) vehicles coming to market. In fact, the desire of the NHTSA was to reduce barriers to having ADS safety features come to market more rapidly, and thereby accelerate autonomous vehicles coming to mass markets. The NHTSA received some criticism for its approach. However, the NHTSA does still have the authority to interpret the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), investigate perceived defects or unreasonably safe vehicle features, and carry out its enforcement authority, including recall power,” Gardella said.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk reveals unfortunate truth of Tesla Full Self-Driving development
In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite is one of the most significant technological developments in terms of passenger travel in decades, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows, even with major strides in safety, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.
The clip shows a Model 3 traveling at over 65 mph on a foggy, rain-soaked highway when a pedestrian suddenly steps into traffic.
Full Self-Driving instantly detects the threat and swerves safely, preventing what could have been a fatal collision for both the pedestrian and the driver’s cousin.
Musk’s response was unequivocal:
“Tesla self-driving saves a lot of lives – the statistics are unequivocal. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, of course.” Even with a projected 10x safety improvement over human drivers, FSD would still prevent roughly 90% of the world’s approximately one million annual auto fatalities. The remaining 10%—roughly 100,000 deaths—would expose Tesla to relentless lawsuits. Meanwhile, the vast majority of lives saved would go unnoticed. “The 90% who are still alive mostly won’t even know that Tesla saved them. Nonetheless, it is the right thing to do.”
This “unfortunate truth,” as Musk implicitly framed it, highlights a fundamental asymmetry in how society perceives safety technology. Human drivers cause the overwhelming majority of crashes through distraction, fatigue, or error.
Tesla self-driving saves a lot of lives – the statistics are unequivocal.
That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, of course.
Even when we improve safety 10X, saving 90% of the million lives lost in auto accidents every year, Tesla will still get sued for the 10% who did die. The 90%… https://t.co/OrNB1mO5eF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 6, 2026
Yet when FSD errs, the incident becomes headline news and a courtroom target. Prevented tragedies, by contrast, leave no trace.
Survivors simply continue their journeys, unaware of the split-second intervention that kept them alive. The result is a distorted public narrative that amplifies failures while rendering successes invisible.
We have seen this through various headlines throughout the years, including the mainstream media’s obsession with only mentioning the manufacturer’s name in the instance of an accident when it is “Tesla.”
Opinion: Tesla Autopilot NHTSA investigation headlines are out of control
The video’s real-world example underscores FSD’s current capabilities. In near-zero visibility, the system’s cameras and neural network reacted faster than any human could, demonstrating the life-saving potential Musk cites.
Tesla’s latest safety data already shows FSD (Supervised) performing significantly better than the U.S. average, with crashes occurring far less frequently per mile driven.
Still, regulatory scrutiny, liability concerns, and media focus on edge-case failures continue to slow widespread adoption. Musk’s frank admission suggests Tesla is prepared to push forward despite the legal and perceptual headwinds.
As FSD edges closer to unsupervised autonomy, Musk’s post serves as both a progress report and a reality check. The technology is already saving lives today.
The unfortunate truth is that proving it and scaling it responsibly will require society to value statistical lives saved as much as dramatic stories of those lost. In the race toward safer roads, perception may prove as formidable an obstacle as the fog and rain in that viral video.
Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving v14.3 to Early Access Program (EAP) members earlier today, and I had the opportunity to see some of the improvements that were made from v14.2.2.5.
While a lot of things got better, and I truly enjoyed using Full Self-Driving again after being stuck with the widely confusing and frustrating v14.2.2.5, Tesla still has one major problem on its hands, and it has to do with Navigation and Routing. I truly believe those issues will be the biggest challenges Tesla will face with autonomy: the car simply going the correct way, not conflicting with what the navigation says, and taking the simplest and most ideal route to a destination.
Here’s what I noticed as an improvement with my first hour with v14.3. This is not a full review, nor is it reflective of everything I will likely experience with this new version. This is simply what I saw as a noticeable improvement from the past version, v14.2.2.5.
There is also a more streamlined version on X, available at the thread below:
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 testing now: pic.twitter.com/9UuP11Fv9f
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
Yellow Light Behavior is Significantly Better
On v14.2.2.5, I had so many instances of the car slamming the brakes on to stop at a yellow light when it was clearly the safer option to proceed through. There were several times when the car would be about 20 feet from the line, traveling at 15-20 MPH, the light would turn yellow, and it would slam the brakes to stop. I would nudge it through yellow lights constantly because of this by putting my foot on the accelerator.
The instances I’m talking about here would not have been close calls — the car would have likely moved through the intersection completely before the light would turn red.
On multiple occasions this evening, FSD proceeded through yellow lights safely, without hesitation or any brake stabbing. It was refreshing:
🚨 Here’s an EXCELLENT example:
v14.2.2.5 would have slammed the brakes and stopped at this stop sign. I would have tapped the accelerator to proceed.You can see the light turns yellow and the car makes — in my opinion — the correct decision to proceed. https://t.co/hHMikimkbp pic.twitter.com/Iesta1OYoV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
This was a huge complaint with v14.2.2.5. Sometimes, it’s a safer option to go through a yellow light, especially when you have traffic behind you. It’s a great way to get rear-ended.
Parking Performance
I had four instances of parking, and FSD v14.3 really did a flawless job. I was very impressed with how solid it was, but also with how efficiently it moved into the spot. When there was traffic around with past versions, I usually chose to park manually just because FSD took its time getting into a spot. I don’t see that being an issue anymore.
I complained about parking a lot and shared several images on X and Facebook of those examples:
Still a few issues with parking on FSD v14.2.2.4 pic.twitter.com/BphvVWDPqe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 5, 2026
No issues with it this evening. 4/4. Here are two looks:
Highway Performance
FSD v14.3 passed the five cars shown in this image:
The sixth was 200-300 yards ahead of the fifth. In v14.2.2.5, FSD would usually stay in the left lane, especially on Hurry and Mad Max. It did not do that, as it instead chose to get back over in the right lane after passing the final car.
Speed was not much of a concern here, even though it was going 21 MPH over. Although it was fast, I did have a line of cars behind me traveling at the same speed, and FSD had just merged about a half mile prior, so I chose to let it continue.
There were no instances of camping in the left lane for extended periods of time. I do want to do more testing with the Speed Profiles because they were in need of some work with the previous version. I am starting to side with those who want a Max Speed setting, which was removed last year.
Navigation and Routing Still Need Work
I was heading back toward where I came from, so I turned “Avoid Highways” on to take a different way. This confused the Routing system, and instead of turning left, then right, as the Routing said, the car turned right, then indicated for another right, basically going in a big rectangle. The car ignored the second right-hand turn and continued straight. I ended up turning “Avoid Highways” off and letting the car pick the same routing option as what took me here.
I have truly complained so much about Navigation and Routing that I’m starting to feel sort of bad. It is obviously such a massive challenge for some reason, but I am confident it will improve. I recall seeing Tesla hiring someone for this role a few months back, so perhaps there is hope for it to get better.
Smarter Behavior When Approaching Exits/Routing
This probably should be grouped in with Highway Behavior, but I wanted to highlight it on its own.
The highway exit pictured was always frustrating for v14.2.2.5. In the Hurry speed profile, I have seen it try to execute passes on multiple cars with as little as 0.6 miles to spare before taking the exit.
With three cars ahead of it, it chose to reduce speed and just wait until the exit. It was refreshing to see an improvement here, so I hope this behavior persists. Sometimes there’s just no reason to pass when you’re less than a mile from getting off the highway anyway.
Larger Visibility Warnings
Tesla seems to have increased the size of these “Camera Visibility Limited” warnings. Previously, they were just small thumbnails:
🚨 The warnings of “Camera Visibility Limited” appear to be larger with v14.3
Previously, it was a small thumbnail. Haven’t seen it this magnified before. https://t.co/iKJLsZ8P4Q pic.twitter.com/qRWwFyIZNd— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
Stop Sign Behavior
This is probably the biggest improvement of all, because how it behaved at Stop Signs in v14.2.2.5 was so incredibly terrible and disruptive to the flow of a busy intersection.
There are several four-way, all-stop intersections near me. In the past, FSD would stop well behind the Stop Sign or the white-painted line on the road. It would then inch forward, stopping again at this line, essentially making two stops at a single intersection.
If there is visibility, I don’t truly care where FSD stops, as long as it stops once. Stopping twice just isn’t ideal or logical. I can’t imagine many humans would do it, I know I wouldn’t.
I didn’t have that issue this evening:
🚨 Here’s a look with some commentary – Previously, FSD would stop where it did in this video, then again at the white line, before proceeding. https://t.co/xwyVGMy28y pic.twitter.com/MObgUa7DoA
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
This was pretty tight, too, in the sense that both my car and the other one got to the intersection at the same time. FSD may have stopped first, but the other vehicle was probably around the same point that I was when FSD decided to stop. I was happy to see the assertiveness to proceed; it felt like it was ideal to just go through. I was happy it didn’t stop a second time up at the line. I’d be fine if it stopped at the line, as long as that was the only stop it made.
News
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 rolls out: here’s what’s new
We are in EAP and will be on the road with v14.3 in the coming hours, so we’ll have a lot of things to discuss over the next few days, especially coming from v14.2.2.5, which I called the most “confusing” FSD release of all time.
Tesla has officially started rolling out Full Self-Driving v14.3 to Early Access Program (EAP) members, and there are a lot of new improvements.
We are in EAP and will be on the road with v14.3 in the coming hours, so we’ll have a lot of things to discuss over the next few days, especially coming from v14.2.2.5, which I called the most “confusing” FSD release of all time.
🚨 Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 is here and it is coming with so many new features
Looks like there will be some MAJOR improvements to the general performance.
Truly seems like it will be significantly different than v14.2 pic.twitter.com/mhdfBLuDup
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
Tesla brought out a lot of improvements, according to the v14.3 release notes, which list a vast number of fixes, new features, and new capabilities.
Here’s what Tesla’s release notes for the v14.3 release state:
- Improved parking location pin prediction, now shown on a map with a P icon.
- Increased decisiveness of parking spot selection and maneuvering.
- Rewrote the Al compiler and runtime from the ground up with MLIR, resulting in 20% faster reaction time and improving model iteration speed.
- Enhanced response to emergency vehicles, school buses, right-of-way violators, and other rare vehicles.
- Mitigated unnecessary lane biasing and minor tailgating behaviors.
- Improved handling of small animals by focusing RL training on harder examples and adding rewards for better proactive safety.
- Improved traffic light handling at complex intersections with compound lights, curved roads, and yellow light stopping – driven by training on hard RL examples sourced from the Tesla fleet.
- Upgraded the Reinforcement Learning (RL) stage of training the FSD neural network, resulting in improvements in a wide variety of driving scenarios.
- Upgraded the neural network vision encoder, improving understanding in rare and low-visibility scenarios, strengthening 3D geometry understanding, and expanding traffic sign understanding.
- Improved handling for rare and unusual objects extending, hanging, or leaning into the vehicle path by sourcing infrequent events from the fleet.
- Improved handling of temporary system degradations by maintaining control and automatically recovering without driver intervention, reducing unnecessary disengagements.
Tesla also listed a handful of future improvements as well:
- Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling
- Add pothole avoidance
- Improve driver monitoring system sensitivity with better eye gaze tracking, eye wear handling, and higher accuracy in variable lighting situations
CEO Elon Musk has said that v14.3 could be “where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.” We have high expectations for this release because, in a lot of ways, v14.2’s final version was extremely disappointing and seemed to be a regression more than anything.
Nevertheless, Full Self-Driving v14.3 is going to be quite an interesting test, considering this is also the first time Musk has stated it will feel like the car will be “sentient.”
Reasoning will be a bigger piece of the puzzle with this release, although there were some elements of it in v14.2.
Tesla AI Head says future FSD feature has already partially shipped
We plan to travel plenty of miles with it over the next few days, so we’ll keep you posted on what our thoughts are.
Elon Musk reveals unfortunate truth of Tesla Full Self-Driving development
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3: First Impressions
