On Tuesday, Tesla Motors dropped nearly 5% after U.S. senators called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to review safety data related to the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system.

Previously, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it had launched a special investigation into a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model 3. The accident occurred on the evening of June 19 in Katy, Texas, when a Tesla Model 3 left the roadway and crashed at high speed through the front room of a brick home. The collision fatally injured 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside the residence at the time. She was airlifted to a hospital but later died from her injuries.

Two federal senators — Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — sent a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requesting a comprehensive independent audit of Tesla's FSD safety statistics, with a deadline of July 7 for a complete response. The lawmakers allege that Tesla's widely cited claim — that FSD is up to 7 times safer than human drivers, with vehicles traveling approximately 5.5 million miles between major collisions versus 660,000 miles for human-driven vehicles — contains fundamental methodological flaws and misleading comparisons. Industry experts noted that Tesla's data compares new intelligent EVs equipped with advanced safety hardware against the US fleet average vehicle age of 12 years, creating an inherently biased baseline.

NHTSA has confirmed receipt of the letter and initiated a review.

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