--- title: "Tesla Allegedly Showed Cooked Data to Get Full Self-Driving Approved" description: "An investigation reveals that Tesla presented exaggerated US traffic safety data to regulators in the Netherlands and Switzerland." date: "2026-06-17" modified: "2026-06-17" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/tesla-cooked-traffic-data-fsd-europe" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Electric Vehicles" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "Self-Driving Vehicles" - "Tesla" - "The Industrialists" --- # Tesla Allegedly Showed Cooked Data to Get Full Self-Driving Approved ![A photo illustration featuring a close-up of a man leaving a Tesla Robotaxi.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Jay Janner / Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images* As if things couldn't get any worse for Tesla in Europe, traffic safety researchers now say they've caught the company cooking numbers they gave to regulators in order to get its "Full Self-Driving" system approved. The discrepancy was [spotted by *Reuters*](), which claims that data Tesla gave to authorities in Sweden and the Netherlands grossly exaggerated the safety record of FSD in the United States. *Reuters* reports that in a presentation meant for Swedish regulators, Tesla's policy manager Ivan Komusanac claimed that Tesla's FSD can travel over seven times farther between crashes than human drivers in the US. Using that claim as a jumping-off point, the presentation continued by claiming that Tesla's FSD could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries over an indeterminate period of time, the publication reports. Independent researchers who saw the underlying data behind that claim say the numbers are wildly misleading, because they assume that every vehicle on the road would be replaced by a Tesla in FSD mode, semi trucks and motorcycles included. While regulatory officials at the Netherlands' governmental traffic agency RDW told *Reuters* they tested Tesla's FSD mode independently, they didn't explain what that entails, or what the numbers showed. RDW [approved Tesla's FSD mode]() for supervised deployment back in April, and the Netherlands agency has since notified European regulators of its plans to seek FSD approval [throughout the European Union]().) As spokesperson for the European Transport Safety Council Dudley Curtis told *Reuters*, if Tesla wants to make outsized safety claims, it needs to "give the data ⁠to a university, have it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and then let's talk." Tesla did not respond to *Reuters*' request for comment. **More on Tesla:** *[Tesla Insiders Admit Self-Driving Is a Complete Disaster]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()