US allows carmakers to self certify first

That’s what I’m complaining about

The US loves self regulation. It’s a crapshoot. The DOT allows self certification for motorcycle helmets as well. Their admittedly low sample count of random helmet testing still fails at a rate of ~40%.

US, the land that keeps giving.

That’s abysmal. You should look for CE marked helmets (and things in general) that have been approved for sale in the European Union.

My understanding is that the testing methods have diverged enough that very few helmets meet both the ECE 22.06 and DOT(FMVSS 218) certifications. A European helmet with only the ECE certification would not be ‘street legal’ here in the states. I own a Shoei RF-1400 with a Snell/DOT rating. I believe the EU sells it as the NXR2 (with only ECE 22.06) but while they look identical they have tiny differences for the certifications they need to pass. I think the ECE 22.06 standard is better than the DOT one by far and I wish the US would just conform with most of the world but we don’t really do that. The major problem helmets are generally not from big name manufacturers but the hundreds of ‘DOT certified’ helmets you can find on Amazon for $30-100 from brands like GIDLVV and other such gibberish. You can basically guarantee those are absolute junk but they come with the correct sticker…

That sounds like a right mess.

What the fuck?

Normally, it makes sense to allow companies to certify their compliance with these types of regulations. It would be a waste of resources to have the government inspect every new model ahead of time to make sure they have things like mirrors and steering wheels. It’s not like they can lie on the forms and no one will notice. Nor would a normal car company have any reason to, since they’d just be setting themselves up for lawsuits, fines and costly recalls.

The difference here is that Tesla decided they could issue themselves an exemption from regulations, which is not the same thing. They want to declare the car street legal without including basic items mandated by law. Other companies making self-driving cars that wanted approval for models that lacked required equipment got exemptions before they launched their models. Tesla just said “it’s fine, we gave ourselves an permission” without even consulting NHTSA.

But that’s pretty much the way Tesla operates. They have a long history of ignoring laws, lying to regulators, withholding evidence, and generally acting like they can do whatever the hell they want. It’s been backfiring on them a little in more recent years, but not nearly as much as it should.

He and Trump invented an entire government organization to cripple the people who would look into his bullshit.