Two US senators have written to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) demanding it evaluate Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) safety statistics, calling the methodology “weak and misleading” and warning it creates “an urgent safety problem”. Democrats Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal cited a recent Reuters investigation and gave NHTSA a 7 July deadline to answer a series of specific questions, including whether the agency has independently assessed Tesla’s figures. 

Among the claims made in Tesla’s presentation of the data is that FSD is seven to ten times safer than human drivers. The senators have also enquired as to whether NHTSA has obtained the underlying crash data supporting those claims. Other questions ask NHTSA if it has evaluated Tesla’s use of a five-second disengagement window in its safety calculations—despite the SGO’s 30-second reporting window—and whether the company’s use of automated telemetry will omit crashes or safety incidents when connectivity is unavailable or vehicle communication systems are damaged.

The Reuters investigation established that Tesla’s statistics compare airbag-deployment crashes in FSD-equipped vehicles against a US crash rate covering all severity levels—far less serious incidents that do not trigger airbags—while also benchmarking its modern fleet against the average US vehicle, which is on average 12 years old and lacks current safety features. 

Ten out of 11 independent traffic safety researchers who reviewed the methodology described it as misleading marketing rather than a serious safety study. Tesla’s claim that FSD could have saved 32,000 lives rests on the additional assumption that every vehicle in the US—including freight trucks and motorcycles—would be replaced by a Tesla running FSD.

It was precisely this set of inflated statistics and unrealistic claims that were presented by Tesla’s policy team to regulators in the Netherlands and Sweden as part of its campaign for European FSD approval. The Dutch road authority RDW, which approved FSD in April and is now pursuing EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf, told Reuters it does not rely on external statistics or “marketing” claims and conducts its own testing. However, it declined to confirm whether it had assessed the validity of Tesla’s submitted data. 

The senators’ letter is the latest of many regulatory pressures currently weighing down on Tesla’s self-driving ambitions. The automaker retired its Autopilot branding earlier in 2026 after California’s DMV ruled it was misleading and threatened a state-level sales ban; NHTSA currently has Tesla under a consent order with an independent compliance monitor installed following US$165m in civil penalties for delayed recalls. Its Cybercab robotaxi, for which specifications were obtained earlier in June, currently lacks clearance to be deployed in even a single US state.

It should be noted that the senators’ 7 July deadline is legally toothless: NHTSA is under no statutory obligation to respond within that timeframe or launch a formal investigation on the basis of a congressional letter. Its significance pertains more so to Tesla’s reputation and the perpetuation of negative news cycles surrounding its self-driving technology. It also puts some degree of pressure on NHTSA to heap further scrutiny on the automaker at a time when Tesla needs regulatory approval for Cybercab deployments and pan-European FSD deployment. 

Tesla’s robotaxi programme remains the most consequential dependent variable. The Texas fleet stood at 25 unsupervised vehicles as of late April—against Waymo’s 3,000-plus operating across ten US cities—with large-scale deployment deferred until FSD v15, expected no earlier than late 2026. The 14 crashes logged across approximately 800,000 Austin miles represent a rate roughly four times the US human driver benchmark by Tesla’s own metric. The company continues to redact the narrative sections of NHTSA crash reports, making independent fault assessment impossible. Senatorial scrutiny of the safety statistics is, in that context, a regulatory problem Tesla has given itself ample material to create.