Safety advocacy group the Dawn Project ran a pair of Super Bowl advertisements over the weekend urging consumers to boycott Tesla Inc TSLA due to alleged safety concerns the EV maker has failed to address.
The Dawn Project founder Dan O’Dowd further explained the safety advocacy group’s public warning to consumers in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
“The full self-driving is the problem … it tries to work on all roads, but it does so very poorly,” O’Dowd said.
What To Know: The Dawn Project aired two ads in front of the eyes of 123 million viewers Sunday during Super Bowl LVIII.
The safety advocacy group claims to have proven that Tesla’s full self-driving software will hit a child crossing the road, blow past stop signs on school buses and ignore temporary road signs altogether.
O’Dowd told CNBC that the National Transportation Safety Board is “furious” about these findings but doesn’t have the power to actually force Tesla to make the necessary changes.
Tesla has been able to escape liability related to deaths that may have been caused by full self-driving by pointing to a page in its vehicle manuals that tells drivers full self-driving can only be used on highways, he said.
“Most people didn’t read that paragraph. They don’t know that and they use it on things which are not a freeway and many of them have crashed and died,” O’Dowd said.
Check This Out: Tesla Full-Self Driving Fatal Crash In Spotlight: Musk ‘Sold False Sense Of Security’
Why It Matters: The Dawn Project founder explained that all Tesla needs to do is make changes to its software that stops full-self driving from engaging if the vehicle is not on a highway. Tesla is aware of it, but they have refused to make the changes, he said, adding that he could personally write the software changes in a matter of days.
“I guarantee you if you get in a car with me and we go for a drive, at the end of it you’ll tell me, ‘This is terrible. Why is this on the road?’ … It will try to kill you, it’s amazing,” O’Dowd says.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s experimental baseline software that will try to kill you and they sold it to 400,000 consumers, telling them it will make them safer … and it does not make you safer. It drives like a drunk teenager — that is my best characterization.”
The NTSB released a statement on Monday, ordering the Dawn Project to remove the NTSB seal from its website and refrain from using it in any future commercials.
The NTSB said it had no involvement in the production of the ad, never authorized the use of its seal and does not endorse the Dawn Project’s work.
Photo: Shutterstock.
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