The Department of Transportation is investigating the Florida crash of a Tesla vehicle that left two teenagers dead.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed on Thursday it is gathering information on the accident in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which involved the company’s Model S, an all-electric five-door liftback.
A Tesla spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The independent National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday it’s also looking into the crash, along with Tesla accidents including a March fatality in a Model X equipped with semi-autonomous driving technology.
Founder and chief executive officer Elon Musk previously blamed the media for focusing too heavily on crashes involving autonomous vehicles.
“The thing that’s tricky with autonomous vehicles is that autonomy doesn’t reduce the accident rate or fatality rate to zero, it improves it substantially,” Musk recently told investors. “Regulators respond to public pressure and the press. So if the press is hounding the regulators and the public is laboring on the apprehension that autonomy is less safe because of misleading press, this is where I find the challenge to be difficult.”
