Infrastructure minister Vincent Karremans has refused to pause or reopen the Netherlands’ approval of Tesla’s self-driving software, after Reuters reported that the carmaker gave the Dutch regulator safety figures that independent researchers say are misleading.
In an investigation published on Monday, Reuters said Tesla had supplied self-published safety statistics to the Dutch vehicle authority RDW, and to regulators in Sweden, as it sought European approval for its Full Self-Driving system.
Ten of the 11 traffic-safety researchers the agency consulted called the data misleading marketing rather than a serious safety study. The figures included claims that the system is up to 10 times safer than human drivers and could have saved 32,000 lives, which researchers said rested on invalid comparisons.
Karremans told MPs on Tuesday that the figures were open to question but had not shaped the decision. The approval rested on the RDW’s own testing, he said, and the disputed statistics “played no part in the RDW’s positive assessment”.
The question was put by MP Habtamu de Hoop, of the centre-left Progressief Nederland, who asked why the Netherlands had moved faster than the rest of Europe and called for the approval to be paused. He pointed to fatal crashes involving Tesla’s driver-assistance systems in the US.
De Hoop also urged the minister to consult the European Transport Safety Council, a Brussels-based road-safety organisation.
Karremans rejected the idea, saying it would cast doubt on a system the RDW had tested independently and that he did not want to “make this process political”. He said he would consider sharing the RDW’s research with parliament.
First in Europe
The RDW approved Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on April 10, making the Netherlands the first European country to allow it on public roads. Under the system the driver must stay alert and remains responsible at all times.
The agency says it tested the software for 18 months before approval, including 3,000 hours on a test track and about 1.8 million kilometres on European roads. Karremans said around 40,000 Teslas now using the system in the Netherlands had driven a combined 24 million kilometres without notable incident.
The RDW is now seeking approval for Full Self-Driving across the EU on Tesla’s behalf. It also signed off on Tesla’s Autopilot for Europe in 2015, in a process Swedish officials later said relied on a legal loophole.
