The NHTSA has closed their investigation into Tesla’s Smart Summon. Nearly 100 crashes were reported, but government cited a “low incident” rate. Feature resulted in “minor impacts,” typically to parked cars and bollards. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has closed their investigation into Tesla’s Smart Summon feature citing “low incident occurrence and low incident severity.” In particular, the government said that “out of millions of Summon sessions, a fraction of 1% resulted in an incident.” While numerous crashes were reported, almost all of them occurred because the system or the user operating the Smart Summon session “failed to fully detect or respond appropriately to vehicle surroundings resulting in minor impacts.” Most of these ended up with Teslas striking parked vehicles, parking gates, or short parking bollards. The Office of Defects Investigation also identified two crashes that involved camera blockages due to snow. Both incidents resulted in EVs striking unoccupied parked vehicles and the government noted users didn’t command the vehicle to stop or pause despite the obstructions. Authorities went on to note the automaker added camera blockage detection in an over-the-air update in early 2025 and it was followed by additional software tweaks. In another incident, Smart Summon didn’t yield to a gate arm blocking a garage exit and the user didn’t command the vehicle to stop. This resulted in a collision and another over-the-air update to “improve vehicle reaction to dynamic gates.” All told, there were around 159 incidents and 97 crashes, although those numbers include some duplicates. That’s not many considering an estimated 2,585,000 vehicles have Smart Summon technology. However, the investigation should serve as a reminder to users to be aware of their surroundings and ready to stop their Tesla if needed.
