US federal highway regulators have decided they will no longer let speeding Teslas blast booming fart noises at people. Gaze upon government working as intended.
Specifically, the recall concerns Tesla’s “boombox” feature which lets drivers play pre-recorded audio through the front speaker in place of its horn. First introduced back in a 2020 update, the feature reportedly allows users to pick through pre-recorded song clips as well as sounds of an assortment of other sounds like goats bleating and, yes, farts discharging.
A brief reminder here that Tesla, the fart car company, attained a $ 1 trillion valuation late last year.
Anyways, the problem — as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration saw it — was that these boombox sounds could potentially drown out pedestrian warning sounds required in Teslas and other electric vehicles if used while the vehicle was in motion.
“While Boombox can enhance the conspicuity of the vehicle to pedestrians, a vehicle that uses Boombox when in motion may cause the PWS [pedestrian warning system] to be noncompliant with FMVSS 141 [vehicle sounds requirements], which could increase the risk of a collision. ” the NHTSA wrote in a recall filing.
Thankfully, Tesla wasn’t aware of any crashes, injuries, or deaths, resulting from the boombox sound, farts or otherwise. The recall applied to 578,607 Teslas and can be fixed via an over-the-air update. Tesla won’t remove the feature entirely but will disable it when vehicles are in drive, neutral, or reverse according to the NHTSA. So, don’t worry Tesla owners, you can still park your car on the side of a road and fart at pedestrians if that’s your thing.
Tesla has had its fair share of recalls in the past few months, some with far more serious implications than some rogue highway farts. Last week, Tesla was forced to recall 53,822 of its vehicles equipped with Full Self Driving over concerns its new driving profiles were causing some vehicles to roll through stop intersections. Prior to that, Tesla had to recall 475,000 vehicles over its potentially dangerous camera and front trunk issues. Meanwhile back in November a glitch in FSD causing some vehicles to unexpectedly slam on the brakes resulted in a recall of 11,704 vehicles.
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