consumer safety

The auto industry’s top safety regulator said Wednesday that it had received reports of nearly 400 recent crashes in which advanced driver-assistance features were engaged during or immediately before the incident. More than two-thirds of those crashes happened in a Tesla vehicle, it said. Tesla was among the first in the auto industry to roll out its driver-assistance features at scale, offering them on vehicles built as far back as late 2014. The National Highway Traffic Safety…

The auto industry’s top safety regulator said Wednesday that it had received reports of nearly 400 recent crashes in which advanced driver-assistance features were engaged during or immediately before the incident. More than two-thirds of those crashes happened in a Tesla vehicle, it said. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cautioned against using the data to draw conclusions about the safety of any company’s technology given a series of limitations. Those include that the data, which is company-reported,…

U.S. auto-safety regulators have escalated an investigation into Tesla Inc.’s TSLA 2.53% Autopilot, after identifying new crashes that occurred with first-responder vehicles at emergency scenes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a notice published Thursday that it was expanding a probe begun last August into a series of crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stopped emergency vehicles. The agency…

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. GT -0.99% has told U.S. auto-safety regulators it is recalling a tire that has been linked to at least eight deaths and several dozen injuries, after years of resisting such a move and defending the tire as safe.Goodyear, in a notice published Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said the recall campaign covers 173,000 tires made between 1996 and 2003 and sold for use on motor homes under the G159 model name. The…

NHTSA issued a letter to Tesla after receiving 758 reports that its most popular vehicles brake for unexpected reasons. Photo: Mark Hertzberg/Zuma Press…

A legal tussle over animal testing in Europe is threatening to jeopardize what has become a key marketing tool for cosmetics companies: selling their shampoos and skin creams as “cruelty free.”The European Union banned animal testing for cosmetics in 2013, a move that was cheered by activists and sparked a string of copycat legislation elsewhere. But the European Court of Justice is now considering a case in which the EU’s chemicals regulator asked a manufacturer to conduct animal tests on two cosmetics ingredients to…

Abbott Laboratories will release about 300,000 cans of a specialty infant formula for children in urgent medical need, while U.S. health regulators cleared the import of about 2 million cans of formula from the U.K. to try to mitigate a shortage. Abbott, of Abbott Park, Ill., said Tuesday it is releasing limited quantities of EleCare, an amino acid-based powder for infants with severe food allergies or gastrointestinal disorders. The company…

The attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, alleging that he participated in decision-making that led to the Cambridge Analytica data breach. Filed in D.C. Superior Court, the suit echoes charges that the office of Attorney General Karl Racine leveled last year, when it sought to name Mr. Zuckerberg as a defendant in a lawsuit it filed in 2018 against…

Ford Motor Co. F 0.55% said Thursday it is recalling about 39,000 large SUVs and advising owners to park affected models outside and away from structures, after receiving multiple reports of under-the-hood fires while the vehicles were parked and off. Ford, filing a recall notice with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week, said the recall campaign covers 2021 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs built…

A nationwide baby-formula shortage has exposed the shortcomings of a multibillion-dollar government program aimed at providing formula at no cost to families, said lawmakers and recipients, prompting efforts to revamp it.Some low-income parents who rely on the federal Women, Infants and Children program said that shortages of approved baby formula have left them paying hundreds of dollars to purchase formula outside the program, while they navigate a patchwork of changes made to the WIC program in recent months in…