Reuters: Tesla Shared Its Own FSD Safety Data With European Regulators — Experts Call For Independent Verification

Tesla provided self-produced safety data for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to regulators in the Netherlands and Sweden while seeking broader European approval, Reuters reports. Independent road-safety researchers who examined the materials described them as misleading, and an earlier Reuters analysis found several of Tesla’s public safety comparisons to be flawed or overstated.

What Tesla submitted
Tesla approached RDW, the Dutch road authority, in late 2024 to begin the approval process and linked a safety report in a November 2024 letter that claimed increased FSD usage “leads to safer roads.” The company sells FSD as a subscription and says the system can operate the vehicle in some situations while requiring the driver to remain attentive and ready to intervene.

Regulatory response
After more than a year of testing and discussions, RDW approved FSD for use in the Netherlands in April and is seeking EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf. RDW told Reuters it does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics when making decisions, and that it performed its own tests, analyses and verifications on public roads and test tracks. The regulator said it "validated, tested and audited" Tesla’s collected data, but did not detail exactly which datasets it examined or whether it reviewed Tesla’s US crash statistics.

Concerns raised by researchers
Independent experts and road-safety researchers told Reuters the figures Tesla submitted — and broader claims made by company leaders — were misleading. Reuters’ prior review noted Tesla executives had cited figures suggesting FSD could be up to ten times safer than human drivers. The researchers argued those claims relied on questionable comparisons and assumptions.

Examples of disputed methodology include comparing airbag-deployment crashes in FSD-engaged Teslas with overall US crash rates that include many lower-severity incidents, and comparing Tesla vehicles to the average US vehicle despite significant differences in vehicle age and onboard safety technology.

Reuters also reported a presentation from Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac, shared with Swedish regulators after the Dutch decision, that repeated claims that Teslas running FSD could travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average US human driver. The presentation additionally suggested FSD could have prevented 32,000 deaths and 1.9 million injuries — figures researchers called highly misleading because they assume, unrealistically, that every US vehicle would be replaced by an FSD-equipped Tesla and that every Tesla would be uniformly safer than the vehicle it replaced.

Calls for independent verification
Dudley Curtis of the European Transport Safety Council said his organisation was "certainly concerned" that Tesla presented US-derived safety data to Swedish regulators and urged Tesla to submit its data for independent academic verification before making broad safety claims. Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, said regulators look beyond headline figures and assess the overall body of evidence.

Tesla did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, according to the report. The article was originally published by Just Auto, a GlobalData-owned brand, and republished by Reuters in the coverage cited here.

Note on use
This article summarizes the Reuters reporting and responses from regulators and safety groups. It aims to present the known facts while highlighting where independent review has been recommended.