Tesla is having a hard time turning over its FSD traffic violation data

Tesla has secured a second deadline extension from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the agency’s investigation into traffic safety violations committed by vehicles operating with “Full Self-Driving” (FSD). The new filing, dated February 20, pushes the deadline for Tesla to deliver critical crash data, including video, event data recorder (EDR), and CAN bus files, to March 9, 2026. The original deadline was January 19.

Today was supposed to be the day Tesla finally delivered all its data to NHTSA after a first five-week extension. Instead, Tesla asked for more time on February 19, the day before the deadline, and NHTSA granted it the next day.

A pattern of delays

The timeline of this investigation tells the story. NHTSA opened Preliminary Evaluation PE25012 on October 7, 2025, after connecting 58 incidents to vehicles operating with FSD, including crashes where vehicles ran red lights and crossed into opposing lanes of traffic. The probe covers roughly 2.88 million Tesla vehicles.

By December, the number of documented violations had jumped 60% to 80, drawn from 62 driver complaints, 14 Tesla reports, and 4 media accounts. On December 3, NHTSA sent Tesla a sweeping Information Request demanding data on consumer complaints, field reports, crashes, lawsuits, and internal assessments. Tesla had until January 19, 2026, to respond.

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Tesla didn’t make that deadline. On January 12, the automaker told NHTSA it still had 8,313 records requiring manual review and could only process about 300 per day. Tesla complained about the burden of simultaneously responding to multiple NHTSA probes, including separate investigations into delayed crash reporting and inoperative door handles, arguing the volume “is unduly burdensome and affects the quality of responses.”

NHTSA granted a five-week extension to February 23, 2026. At the time, sources indicated the agency positioned it as a “final accommodation.”

The second extension

That “final accommodation” didn’t hold. According to the new filings obtained by Electrek, Tesla met with NHTSA on two occasions in early February. The notes from those meetings were fully redacted, but the automaker submitted another extension request on February 19, just days before the February 23 deadline.

This time, Tesla asked for additional time specifically on Question 4 of NHTSA’s Information Request, which requires the production of CAN bus data, EDR files, PAR (Performance Anomaly Report) data, and video files related to the incidents Tesla identified.

Tesla’s justification: the total number of files couldn’t be determined until the incident list from Question 4 was complete. Tesla said it expected to finish that incident list on February 20 and only then could it begin querying for the associated data and creating readable file formats for submission.

NHTSA granted the extension to March 9, 2026. For all other questions not covered in this latest extension, Tesla’s responses were due by the original January 19 deadline, meaning those should have already been submitted.

The filing makes clear that Tesla is still struggling with the sheer volume of data NHTSA is demanding. The agency wants detailed timelines for each incident starting 30 seconds before the initial traffic violation, information about which FSD software version was running, whether drivers received warnings, and whether crashes, injuries, or fatalities resulted.

Why this matters now

This investigation isn’t happening in a vacuum. Tesla launched unsupervised Robotaxi rides in Austin on January 22, using the same FSD software stack now under federal scrutiny for traffic violations. The Austin fleet has been involved in at least 14 incidents since its June 2025 launch, according to NHTSA Standing General Order data, and Tesla continues to redact all crash descriptions as confidential business information.

Meanwhile, a viral video last week showed FSD attempting to drive a Tesla owner into a lake, racking up over a million views and adding to public concern about the software’s reliability.

The contrast with Waymo is stark. Waymo is now completing 450,000 weekly driverless rides across six cities, with a peer-reviewed study showing statistically significantly lower crash rates than human drivers across 56.7 million rider-only miles. When Waymo’s vehicles were caught passing school buses, the company filed a voluntary recall within weeks. Tesla, on the other hand, is now on its second deadline extension just to tell NHTSA about FSD’s traffic violations.

Electrek’s Take

The pattern here is hard to ignore. NHTSA asks Tesla for data. Tesla says it can’t deliver on time. NHTSA grants an extension. Repeat. We’re now on the second extension in this investigation, with the original January 19 deadline pushed first to February 23 and now to March 9 for key crash data. And remember, when NHTSA granted the first extension in January, it was reported as a “final accommodation.” Clearly, that didn’t stick.

Tesla’s justification for this latest delay, that it couldn’t determine the number of files until the incident list was done, raises questions about how the company organizes and accesses its own safety data. This is a company that claims to have collected over 8 billion miles of FSD driving data and is already running an unsupervised Robotaxi service. It shouldn’t take months to pull CAN bus and video data for known incidents.

The timing also matters. Every day Tesla delays delivering this data to NHTSA is another day its Robotaxi service operates in Austin using the same FSD software that the agency is investigating for running red lights and driving into oncoming traffic. I think NHTSA should be more aggressive about demanding timely compliance, especially when the company seeking extensions is simultaneously expanding the deployment of the very system under investigation.

But I doubt regulators will be the ones putting pressure on Tesla over its self-driving deployment. I think the courts will.