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A complaint filed with federal safety regulators claims that over 100 Tesla vehicles have gotten into accidents due to unintentional acceleration.
While the complaint was filed on December 19, it wasn’t posted until January 17. According to the complaint, three different models have been involved in the accident: The Model S, Model 3, and Model X.
The complaint alleges that 110 accidents have occurred as a direct result of this unintentional acceleration, and that 52 people have been injured in those accidents.
According to the complaint, most of the accidents recorded therein occurred when parking the vehicle or leaving a parking space.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, has stated that they might investigate the claims. The party or parties that filed the complaint have not been identified, and their reports have not been confirmed.
The NHTSA will decide if there’s enough evidence to open a formal investigation.
The NHTSA has often found that, when investigating cases of unintentional acceleration, the problem can often be attributed to driver error. In such cases, the driver may think they have their foot on the brake, but instead they have their foot on the accelerator.
Similarly, many drivers who are in accidents where they don’t understand what they did wrong will claim that the acceleration was unintentional and unpreventable, despite this not being true.
However, this isn’t to say that unintentional acceleration complaints are always bogus. Notably, Toyota had a massive series of recalls back in 2010 when it was found that accelerators were sticking for a variety of reasons. That recall affected over 2.3 million vehicles and cost the company tons of money.
Toyota’s own hesitance to own up to the design flaws that led to the issue only made the recall that much messier and uglier.
Tesla stock has been soaring recently, and, during morning trading after this news broke, did little to change. Due to the small sample size of the accidents and the relatively tame nature of the recorded accidents, investors don’t seem to think this story merits a large response.
If Tesla stock could survive Elon Musk smashing his own “bulletproof” Cybertruck’s windows in the vehicle’s hilariously disastrous demo, then the company may be untouchable.
