‘What Needs to Go Is Reporting Crashes’: Rachel Maddow Highlights Elon Musk’s Ties to Trump Amid Tesla Probe
(Getty Images for NBC)
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow shed light on a concerning development involving Elon Musk, Tesla, and President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Maddow highlighted Monday how Musk’s close relationship with Trump could lead to the shutdown of a major federal investigation into Tesla’s “autopilot” feature.
Maddow explained that Tesla’s autopilot program has faced increasing scrutiny since its rollout to paying drivers around Thanksgiving of 2022. A series of crashes allegedly tied to the feature has triggered alarms, including a widely publicized incident in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Just a few months later, the news outlet The Intercept obtained video that showed that accident as it happened,” Maddow said. “It turns out it was a Tesla whose owner says the car was in full self-driving mode, and the car just randomly braked super hard in the middle of the tunnel.” Over the following months, government agencies began collecting crash report data and escalated the investigation into a formal criminal probe.
“Tesla already discussed in an SEC filing that it had received federal subpoenas about information for its full self-driving mode and autopilot mode,” Maddow noted. “Then, just a few weeks ago, the government announced the opening of a formal federal investigation of Tesla’s full self-driving mode in more than 2 million Teslas. More than 2 million cars. And that’s a big deal.”
Maddow pointed out that the investigation came to a head just weeks before the presidential election, which saw Trump return to office with Musk’s vocal support and contributions through a super PAC handling voter outreach.
“And so what happens now to anybody who is unsettled by the idea of a robot-controlled car driving itself into a nearby fire engine full of firefighters?” Maddow asked. “Or a robot-controlled car slamming on its brakes without warning in the middle of a crowded tunnel full of cars going 55 miles an hour while people are all driving to go see family on Thanksgiving Day?”
Maddow then referenced a report from Reuters: “Exclusive: Trump team wants to scrap car-crash reporting rule.” “The Trump transition has apparently surveyed the landscape of public policy in the United States of America and has decided, you know what really needs to go? What needs to go as a matter of priority is this thing that we’ve had for a few years now where car companies have to report it when their car is on autopilot and it crashes into something,” Maddow remarked.
The development raises concerns about the intersection of corporate interests and public safety under Trump’s incoming administration. Critics argue that eliminating crash-reporting rules could compromise transparency and accountability, leaving drivers and the public vulnerable to safety risks associated with self-driving technology.
