Lawyers for Tesla have filed a motion asking a judge to throw out a public information request that would require the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to release data about crashes that occurred while its vehicles were under the control of automated or semi-automated driving systems. Tesla misleadingly calls its systems Autopilot and Full-Self Driving. Tesla asked the judge to dismiss the motion on the grounds that competitors could use the data to “assess the efficacy” of Tesla’s hardware and software, which could lead to “financial and economic harm.”
The Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) suit was brought by The Washington Post last year in an effort to obtain additional data about vehicles that were under the control of driver assistance systems (either Autopilot or Full Self-Driving) when a crash occurred, Reuters reports. With Tesla lobbying the Trump administration to end existing reporting requirements for self-driving vehicle accidents, it’s a case with a lot of eyes on it.
Tesla’s motion argues that competitors would normally have to pay a lot of money to learn what Tesla has over the course of developing its driver aids, and that by releasing crash data, NHTSA would effectively be handing a watered-down version of that (valuable) accumulated data to competitors, allowing them to essentially “read ahead” in their own development process by learning from Tesla’s progress (or perhaps more accurately in this case, its public mistakes).
“These are precisely the types of competitive harms long recognized by courts in this circuit,” Tesla argued in the motion.
But it really comes down to this: if NHTSA releases Tesla’s crash data to the public, it may (whether directly or indirectly) deter people from buying its cars, and it would be unfair to compel the company to reveal them.
“Tesla has explained (and as NHTSA has concurred), competitors may review the disclosed information and draw speculative conclusions about the quality of Tesla’s ADAS technology with respect to a certain version or feature—which may very well be flawed given that the disclosed information may reflect only preliminary investigations—and use that to improve or tout their technology at the expense of Tesla’s,” the motion says.
“Thus, even under Plaintiff’s articulation, Tesla and NHTSA have established a reasonable likelihood of disparagement harm resulting from the disclosure of the withheld information,” it concludes.
It’s a neatly packaged argument that has the benefit of support from the very agency the Post is suing, but it compels us to ask a far more fundamental question: Is NHTSA’s duty to protect the private interests of a multi-billion-dollar corporation, or the public safety of America’s roadways?
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