Elon Musk’s He has been swinging in the federal government over the past few weeks, with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting budgets and In many institutions. Those affected include the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who is said to have lost 10% of its relatively small number through acquisitions and shooting.
according to 70 to 80 people left the agency, which is responsible for road safety in the United States. Those former employees are said to work in many areas such as security grant funds and crash test dummies.
Doge Cull also affects three people on a very small team that are working on the safety of self-driving cars, such as Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox and – Hey, check it out! – Elon Musk’s Tesla. One coincidental organization is led by the CEO of a well-known company that is driving cars, which has cut federal employees to assess the safety of such technologies. perhaps.
“If the problem is, this will affect the federal government’s ability to understand the safety cases behind Tesla vehicles, then, it will.” Posts. “There are very few federal governments who can fully understand this. They are hardly there now.”
During the Biden administration, the NHTSA expanded from about 600 workers to about 800. The self-driving car supervision team is part of the growth. As several of its seven or so members are new members of the federal government, their employment status is at risk due to a campaign initiative to snap up trial employees of the federal workforce, because Posts notes. Other agencies affected include the Federal Aviation Administration, which reduced about 400 trial employees last week.
Musk and President Donald Trump assured in an interview this week that the former, designated as a “special government employee,” would not participate in decisions that would mark a conflict of interest with his business.
NHTSA has been released Tesla cars (including recalls of more than 2 million vehicles over the years ). In April 2024, the agency Investigation of 14 deaths related to driver abuse of the company’s autonomous driving capabilities. Last month, Musk said Tesla will launch This June in Austin.
