The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal engineering analysis into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, covering roughly 3.2 million vehicles after tying nine crashes and one confirmed death to the system’s failure to detect and warn drivers about degraded camera visibility, according to NHTSA’s own investigation filing.

Key Points

• The probe, designated EA26002, was opened March 18, 2026, escalating a preliminary evaluation NHTSA had run since October 2024 after Tesla first reported a smaller set of FSD-related crashes, per the agency’s filing.
• It covers 2016-2026 Model S and Model X, 2017-2026 Model 3, 2020-2026 Model Y, and 2023-2026 Cybertruck vehicles running FSD Beta or FSD (Supervised) — an estimated 3,203,754 vehicles, according to NHTSA’s own records.
• Investigators found FSD’s “degradation detection” function repeatedly failed to recognize when sun glare, fog, dust or other conditions were impairing its cameras, and did not warn drivers until immediately before a crash, according to Insurance Journal’s reporting on the escalation.
• NHTSA also documented cases where FSD “lost track of or never detected” a lead vehicle directly in its path before a crash, Insurance Journal reported, citing the agency’s findings.

What the Data Shows

• The confirmed fatality behind the original crash set involved a 2021 Model Y that struck and killed a pedestrian near Rimrock, Arizona, in November 2023, according to PBS NewsHour’s coverage of the original probe.
• Moving from a preliminary evaluation to an engineering analysis is one of NHTSA’s final steps before it can force a recall, and a Tesla visibility-related software update only resolved three of the nine crashes under review, per Insurance Journal’s report.
• Scrutiny of FSD’s decision-making has intensified since: Tesla told NHTSA in a separate crash filing that FSD was “Verified Engaged” and executing a left turn at 24 mph moments before a March 25, 2026 crash in Batavia, Illinois, that killed 37-year-old Maggie Espinosa, according to a report on the filing.
• In that filing, Tesla redacted the crash narrative, the FSD software version and whether the intersection fell inside FSD’s approved operating area — information prosecutors in Illinois’s Kane County were still seeking as of September 1, 2026, per the same report.

Tesla has said publicly that FSD requires constant driver supervision and cannot drive itself, and the company has already issued two prior recalls tied to the software. But NHTSA’s engineering analysis represents the agency’s deepest look yet at whether Tesla’s camera-only “Tesla Vision” approach, adopted in mid-2021, can reliably flag when its own cameras stop working properly.

An engineering analysis can end in a few ways: NHTSA can close the case without action, negotiate a voluntary fix with Tesla, or order a formal recall if it determines an unreasonable safety risk exists across the millions of vehicles involved. No recall decision has been announced as of this writing.