Distracted Drivers: NHTSA Launches Investigation into Elon Musk's Tesla over Video Game Feature

Lucas NolanDecember 22, 2021

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has reportedly launched yet another investigation into Tesla vehicles, this time after Elon Musk’s car company recently added an update that allows video games to be played on certain cars’ digital dashboards. The NHTSA says the feature “may distract the driver and increase the risk of a crash.”

Reuters reports that the U.S. auto safety regulator, the NHTSA, has announced a formal investigation into 580,000 Tesla vehicles sold since 2017 after the automaker recently pushed an update that allows video games to be played on the cars’ center touchscreen.

Elon Musk and Cybertruck (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)

Tesla Crash and fire in Mountain View, CA is being investigated by the NTSB (Twitter/Dean C. Smith)

The NHTSA stated that its preliminary evaluation relates to Tesla Model 3, S, X, and Y vehicles manufactured between 2017 and 2022. The recent update that allowed users to play video games on the cars center dashboard is called “Passenger Play,” but the NHTSA believes that it “may distract the driver and increase the risk of a crash.”

The NHTSA stated that it has “confirmed that this capability has been available since December 2020 in Tesla ‘Passenger Play’-equipped vehicles.” Before December 2020, the game feature “was enabled only when the vehicle was in Park.”

The NHTSA reportedly plans to “evaluate aspects of the feature, including the frequency and use scenarios of Tesla ‘Passenger Play.’” The agency noted earlier this month that distracted driving accounts for a large number of U.S. road deaths, causing 3,142 deaths in 2019 alone.

In 2013, the agency issued guidelines to encourage automakers “to factor safety and driver distraction-prevention into their designs and adoption of infotainment devices in vehicles.”

The 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.”

In August, the NHTSA opened a safety investigation into 765,000 Tesla vehicles over the company’s driver-assistance system called “Autopilot” following a series of crashing involving the self-driving system and a number of emergency vehicles.

Breitbart News has reported extensively on crashes involving Tesla’s Autopilot system. Breitbart reported in April that two men died near Houston after a Tesla vehicle that was believed to be operating without anyone in the driver’s seat crashed into a tree. Sgt. Cinthya Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4 said: “There was no one in the driver’s seat.”

The 2019 Tesla Model S vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed when it failed to correctly navigate a curve and left the roadway, crashing into a tree and exploding into flames, according to local television station KHOU-TV.

The fire was extinguished and authorities located two occupants in the vehicle. One was in the first passenger seat while the other was in the back seat of the Tesla, the report stated citing Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman.

In January of 2020, Breitbart News reported that the NHTSA was launching an investigation into a crash in Indiana in which a Tesla Model 3 collided with a fire truck. The crash resulted in the death of a passenger and at the time marked the 14th crash involving a Tesla that the NHTSA’s special crash investigation program suspected involved Tesla’s Autopilot system.