January 12, 2022 – Tesla asked the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for an exemption from having to provide reports of its autonomous drives carried out by vehicles running Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta. The manufacturer argued that since a driver is always needed at the wheel, it therefore technically wasn’t autonomous driving, and the agency agreed.
The argument seemed to hold at first, although Tesla’s communications with the DMV weren’t all that clear, now the DMV is reconsidering granting this exemption. The state agency says this was prompted after it came across ‘videos showing dangerous use’ of FSD Beta.
Sen. Lena Gonzales, chair of the California Senate’s transportation committee personally asked the DMV in December to clarify why the agency had accepted the exception, in spite of the fact that there were numerous videos that showed Teslas on FSD performing potentially dangerous maneuvers in traffic. She specifically asked for FSD Beta safety data, which the DMV was not able to provide since it had received hardly any.