EVwire brief: Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised/Tesla Assisted Driving (TAD) has been approved in Slovakia, making it the ninth European Union country to allow the advanced driver-assist system on public roads.
Slovakia's Ministry of Transport officially recognized the provisional type approval that the Dutch vehicle authority RDW issued for the system in April. Now, Tesla drivers are cleared to use it on Slovak roads. The approval comes as the EU-wide decision on FSD Supervised/TAD looks unlikely before December.
Slovak Minister of Transport Jozef Ráž framed the decision around road safety:
I am glad that when it comes to modern technologies in transport, Slovakia is not lagging behind. Road safety is extremely important to us, so we will be happy to support all innovations that increase it.
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Ráž stressed that FSD Supervised/TAD is not a fully autonomous system. The software can accelerate, brake, steer, change lanes, handle intersections and respond to traffic signs and lights using cameras and neural networks. It also constantly monitors the driver's attention, warning them and switching itself off if needed.
As the minister put it:
It is not a fully autonomous system, so there is no need to imagine that the driver's seat in cars will remain empty. The driver is still fully responsible for driving. The system therefore constantly monitors his attention and if it detects that he is not paying attention to driving, it will warn him and, if necessary, turn it off.
Here’s the announcement from Slovakia's Ministry of Transport:
Slovakia joins the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, Czechia and Croatia on the list of EU countries that have individually cleared FSD Supervised/TAD. Croatia's approval came just over two weeks ago.
Each national approval adds weight to the case for a bloc-wide authorization. FSD/TAD needs a qualified majority of at least 15 of the EU's 27 member states, representing 65% of the EU population. Sweden has already signaled it will vote in favor.
However, an EU-wide vote that was once expected in October now looks unlikely before December. That makes the EU Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles' December meeting the earliest likely opportunity for a decision.
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Context:
Tesla has backed its case for FSD/TAD with real-world data. Its FSD Supervised Evidence Dashboard has pooled 102 million kilometers (63.4 million miles) of European driving. The data shows that drivers experience 4.1 times fewer collisions with FSD Supervised/TAD than manual driving.
The political momentum has been building as well. Earlier this month, Germany threw its support behind EU-wide approval, adding the bloc's most populous country to the qualified-majority math. Days later, Tesla renamed FSD Supervised to Tesla Assisted Driving (TAD) in Europe as part of its efforts to expedite the system’s approval in the continent.
Source: Slovak Ministry of Transport, Denník N
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