“If the question is, will this affect the federal government’s ability to understand the safety case behind Tesla’s vehicles, then yes, it will,” one terminated National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) engineer told the Washington Post. The engineer was one of between 70 and 80 people who will lose their jobs at the NHTSA due to cuts by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Three of the eliminated employees worked on a seven-person team overseeing autonomous vehicles like the ones Tesla produces.
Musk’s Cuts Reduce Oversight
Fired workers who spoke with the Post said they did not believe they were fired because their team examined driverless cars, but one said the result is the same: less scrutiny. The loss of three of the seven employees will result in a reduction in oversight that will directly benefit Tesla. The team was put together under the
, during a period of growth at the NHTSA which saw the agency’s numbers swell by some 200 employees to the roughly 800 people who were working there before DOGE cuts.
The NHSTA frequently clashed with Tesla and said in April last year that it found numerous deadly crashes involving Autopilot, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving software. A December 2023 investigation also led to a recall of 2 million Tesla vehicles. Meanwhile, President Trump’s new Department of Transportation head Sean Duffy said that autonomy can make roads safer if done right.
DOGE Cuts Affect More Than Just Autonomous Cars
Cuts elsewhere include many other aspects of the NHTSA’s safety work. One engineer worked with crash test dummies, another worked with states on safety grant funding, and one was a research psychologist working on drunk driving and speeding. “It was just very jarring to go from saving lives one day to being locked out of your computer the next,” said another terminated employee.
“The amount of people in the federal government who are able to understand this [autonomous driving] adequately is very small. Now it’s almost nonexistent.”
Cuts to the new autonomous vehicle team will also reduce oversight on the industry as a whole, comprised of massive tech companies and their self-driving subsidiaries like Alphabet-owned
, and Amazon’s Zoox autonomous taxis. Both have also faced regulatory oversight from the NHTSA in recent years ranging from crash investigations to recalls.
TopSpeed’s Take
Duffy says that cuts are being “made without compromising safety,” but the NHTSA’s record with autonomous vehicle companies stands in direct contrast to this. The federal employees working to regulate autonomous vehicles were also doing exactly what Elon Musk said he wanted to do before the election: creating a government framework for
. If anything, the cuts stand to directly benefit Musk companies while also reducing the NHTSA’s ability to safely regulate the vehicles on our roads today.
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