DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government's highway safety agency is sending a team to Detroit to investigate a crash involving a Tesla that drove beneath a semitrailer.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says Monday night that a special crash investigation team will go to the city to investigate the “violent crash.” Two people were critically injured in the crash that happened last Thursday on the city’s southwest side.

The crash circumstances are similar to two others in Florida in which Teslas drove beneath tractor-trailers, causing two deaths. In both crashes, in 2016 and 2019, the cars were being driven while using Tesla's Autopilot partially automated driving software.

Detroit Police Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood could not say if the Tesla driver was using the company's Autopilot or “full self-driving” software. “It's still under investigation,” she said.

A message was left Monday night seeking comment from Tesla. The Palo Alto, California-based company has said previously that Autopilot and “full self-driving” are driver-assistance systems and that the driver must be ready to intervene at all times.

But the company has been criticized by the National Transportation Safety Board for failing to adequately monitor drivers to make sure they are paying attention. The NTSB, which investigates crashes and makes recommendations, also criticized Tesla for allowing the system to work on roads that it can't handle.

In a Feb. 1 letter to the Department of Transportation, which includes NHTSA, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt urged the agency to enact regulations governing driver assist systems as well as testing of autonomous vehicles. NHTSA has relied mainly on voluntary guidelines for the vehicles, taking a hands-off approach so it won’t hinder development of new safety technology.

He wrote that Tesla is using its owners to test “full self-driving” software on public roads with limited oversight or reporting requirements. “Because NHTSA has put in place no requirements, manufacturers can operate and test vehicles virtually anywhere, even if the location exceeds the AV (autonomous vehicle) control system’s limitations,” Sumwalt wrote.

“Although Tesla includes a disclaimer that ‘currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous,’ NHTSA’s hands-off approach to oversight of AV testing poses a potential risk to motorists and other road users,” he wrote.

Detroit police said in a statement that a white Tesla sedan drove through an intersection around 3:20 a.m. Thursday, struck the trailer and became wedged beneath it.

Both the male driver and female passenger were taken to a local hospital. The woman was in critical condition Thursday, while the driver's condition was not immediately known. Police said the information was preliminary and subject to change upon further investigation.

On 3/17 at 1:12 am, troopers from the Lansing Post investigating a car vs deer traffic crash on I-96 near Waverly Rd in Eaton County. While investigating that crash with their emergency lights on, a Tesla on autopilot strikes the patrol car.

Tesla's incredible success comes from its history of solving big problems. Electric vehicles weren't cool, weren't fast, lacked usable range, and had no infrastructure for charging. The company roundly handled each issue, creating the coolest, quickest, longest-range, best-supported range of EVs. Yet sometimes that philosophy goes too far, leading Tesla to attempt to solve a problem that never existed.

Shifting gears in an automatic, for instance, was solved decades ago. But in the interest of freeing up center console space, many automakers have started moving the shifter to the dash or steering column. Tesla's used that column-mounted shifter since day one in the Model S, borrowing from Mercedes what I consider to be the best shifting solution. It takes up little space in an area that's generally not crowded, is easy to operate, and makes clear what gear you're going into. For the 2021 Model S and Model X refresh, Tesla has replaced it with something that has none of those positive attributes.

We've known since the refresh was announced that Tesla was ditching the gear stalk. It was hard to know how they'd handle shifting, though, with only a vague Elon tweet promising a system that will "guess" which direction you want to go. Failing that, we now know what the manual alternative will be thanks to a video posted by Twitter user @hsumacher.


In it, you see that there will be a touch interface where you drag the car in the direction you want to go. Despite Tesla's usual prowess in terms of software, the control seems to be a little jittery and laggy, but this is presumably pre-production software. We can't 100 percent confirm it as real, either, since Tesla does not typically respond to any request for comment. From what we see, though, it doesn't look good.

Essentially, rather than taking up space on the steering column where nothing else lives, it's now chewing up screen real estate. The display itself does not make clear whether you've successfully shifted or what gear you're currently in, something that will probably require a look toward the driver display. So you have to look to use the non-physical control, then look elsewhere to confirm the seemingly laggy system even processed your input. All of this to solve a problem that didn't exist, or—in more realistic terms—save Tesla money by eliminating a moving part.

If Elon's promise comes true, you won't have to use this system often. Instead, you'll get to experience the thrill of pressing the accelerator knowing it can move the car in opposite directions depending on what Tesla's clearly limited AI "guesses" you might want. And should the car experience a display failure, as many Teslas have in the past, rest assured knowing that you won't have an interface to shift manually.