The federal government is stepping in to end the use of an aftermarket product designed to let Tesla owners skirt a safety feature from the electric automaker’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system.

The Autopilot Buddy product, which is marketed with the catchy slogan “Tesla Autopilot Nag Reduction Device,” is a magnetic piece of plastic that disables the feature in Tesla vehicles that monitors the driver’s hands on the steering wheel and warns the driver when hands are not detected.

“A product intended to circumvent motor vehicle safety and driver attentiveness is unacceptable,”

Tesla’s Autopilot is not a fully autonomous driving system. Instead, the advanced assistance system

However, it also requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel, apparently a rule so annoying that owners have found all sorts of interesting ways to trick the system.

Sorry Elon Musk, there’s no clear evidence Autopilot saves lives
The feds just threw Tesla under the bus on Autopilot safety.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/05/sorry-elon-musk-theres-no-clear-evidence-autopilot-saves-lives/

Elon Musk is angry at the media for focusing on the Autopilot-related crash that occurred in March in Mountain View, California—while ignoring what he views as the clear safety benefits of autonomous vehicles.

“They should be writing a story about how autonomous cars are really safe,” Musk said in his Wednesday earnings call. “But that’s not a story that people want to click on. They write inflammatory headlines that are fundamentally misleading to readers. It’s really outrageous.”

Musk believes that negative media coverage of Autopilot puts lives in danger.

“People are reading things in the press that cause them to use Autopilot less; that makes it dangerous for our customers,” he said on Wednesday. “That’s not cool.”

So what’s Tesla’s evidence that “autonomous cars are really safe”?

“NHTSA’s safety defect investigation of MY2014-2016 Tesla Model S and Model X did not assess the effectiveness of this technology,” the agency said in an email to Ars on Wednesday afternoon. ”

This week, we’ve talked to several automotive safety experts, and none has been able to point us to clear evidence that Autopilot’s semi-autonomous features improve safety. And that’s why news sites like ours haven’t written stories “about how autonomous cars are really safe.”