The evidence keeps stacking up against Tesla. As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigates crash after crash involving Tesla vehicles under the influence (or suspected influence) of Autopilot, when is enough too much?

As we reported most recently, the NHTSA has racked up 14 investigations into Tesla vehicles that collided with other vehicles, including three over the past month. Most often, it seems the Teslas mistake large emergency vehicles for empty space and plow right into them. Through a combination of the company’s seemingly flawed Autopilot system and driver inattention, the death count keeps rising. It’s time for a recall of the whole damn thing.

Human beings prove time and time again that they’re willing to over-trust any driver assistance provided to them. Whether said assistance comes in the form of ABS, an airbag, all-wheel drive, parking sensors, stability control, or automatic headlights, the public puts immediate and complete trust in whatever assistance systems their vehicles left the factory with.

It comes as no surprise that the public is treating Autopilot like the fully autonomous system it isn’t. The system allows drivers to make momentary and occasional eye contact with the road, rather than demanding it full-time. Surely, if significant driver attention were actually required, collisions with enormous parked fire trucks would not occur. And that’s why the NHTSA needs to enforce a recall in this situation. Until Autopilot works reliably around all other vehicles and demands driver attention, it’s still in the development phase. It’s not ready for prime time.

Of course, the most important improvement is required driver attention. Drivers will do whatever they can to get around actually driving, as their phones beckon them like sirens of the sea. The system as it stands is clearly too lenient: Infrequent and distracted attention to the road is not enough to provide the driver with awareness of a small obstacle like a parked fire truck. I’d recommend that after a certain number of attention violations, the Autopilot system shuts down entirely. A cool-down period punishment of eight hours should suffice. Perhaps after two or three such cool-downs, a dealer maintenance visit is required to reactive Autopilot. Just spitballing here.

But until such time as the system is fool proof for the fools behind the wheel, it’s going to continue killing people. Safety is just a system update away; the NHTSA should file that recall paperwork ASAP.

[Image: NTSB]