Aug. 17, 2021—The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal safety probe into Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, Reuters reported. 

The investigation into 765,000 Tesla vehicles in the US comes after a series of crashes involving emergency vehicles. The NHTSA said that since January 2018 it had identified 11 crashes in which Tesla models "have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes."

The probe could lead to a recall, which would effectively impose limits on how, when and where Autopilot operates, the report said. Any restrictions could narrow the competitive gap between Tesla’s system and similar advanced driver assistance systems offered by established automakers.