Bloomberg News reports the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday ordered Dolder, Falco and Reese Partners LLC, the owners of autopilotbuddy.com, to stop selling the Autopilot Buddy, which “can fool Tesla Inc.’s semi-autonomous driving system to circumvent a warning when a driver’s hands aren’t on the steering wheel.” Bloomberg reports NHTSA Deputy Administrator Heidi King said the product is “intended to circumvent motor vehicle safety and driver attentiveness,” adding that “By preventing the safety system from warning the driver to return hands to the wheel, this product disables an important safeguard, and could put customers and other road users at risk.”
The San Francisco (CA) Chronicle reports NHTSA has ordered the company to prove that they have complied with the agency’s demand by June 29. The Autopilot Buddy website posted a message on Tuesday saying, “We are not taking orders inside the U.S.A. at this time,” though it added, “We are hopeful to resolve this by as quickly as possible.” CNN Money reports a spokesperson for Tesla said the company will “support NHTSA’s action regarding this product.” Fortune says Tesla has received criticism for introducing autonomous systems “prematurely” that have led drivers to become overly reliant on the feature.
Additional coverage included Roadshow, TechCrunch, Engadget, Cars, and The Verge.
In continuing coverage, the Detroit (MI) News reports the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered Dolder, Falco and Reese Partners LLC to stop selling the “Autopilot Buddy” because the device’s “primary function is to disable a safety feature in Tesla vehicles that monitors the driver’s hands on the steering wheel and warns the driver when hands are not detected.” NHTSA Deputy Administrator Heidi King said in a statement that products designed to disable safety systems are “unacceptable,” explaining, “By preventing the safety system from warning the driver to return hands to the wheel, this product disables an important safeguard, and could put customers and other road users at risk.” The company has placed a statement on its website saying it is “not taking orders inside the U.S.A. at this time.”
From the news release of the American Association for Justice.
