NHTSA Opens File DP26010 on Tesla Robotaxis in School Zones, Roughly 1,000 Vehicles in Scope

NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation opened defect petition DP26010 on Friday, October 9, 2026, to decide whether Tesla's Robotaxis speed through active school zones. The agency estimates the population at about 1,000 vehicles, a count that includes both the Model Y and the Cybercab.

The number that matters here is the denominator. Four logged incidents across a fleet of roughly 1,000 vehicles is a small sample, and NHTSA's own summary records no crashes, injuries or fatalities. It also means the petition is a request for the agency to look, not a finding that anything is wrong.

What the file covers

The petition reached NHTSA on September 23, according to Electrek, which reported the file first among the outlets we checked. It names model-year 2026 Robotaxis operating with Tesla's Automated Driving System engaged. Not a Tesla App reports the same dates and the same fleet estimate.

The evidence is thin by design at this stage. The petitioner, who is not named in either report, linked three social media videos. NHTSA's own tally adds one formal complaint, for four incidents in all.

Item	What the reports say
File number	DP26010
Petition received	September 23, 2026
File opened	October 9, 2026
Vehicles in scope	About 1,000 (Model Y and Cybercab)
Incidents logged	4 (1 complaint, 3 social media reports)
Crashes, injuries, deaths	None recorded

The clock and what a grant would do

Under 49 CFR Part 552, NHTSA has 120 days to grant or deny a defect petition, which Electrek puts at about January 21, 2027. Not a Tesla App does not mention the 120-day window, so the date rests on one outlet's reading of the rule. A grant opens a formal defect investigation, and that can end in a recall. A denial ends the matter without one.

Neither report includes a statement from Tesla on DP26010. NHTSA has not said whether it has found a defect.

Third federal action in about five weeks

Electrek counts this as the third federal action on Tesla's driverless fleet in roughly five weeks. The earlier two concern how the no-steering-wheel Cybercab was certified; our earlier piece on Audit Query AQ26002 covers what that paperwork review examines. Those two reviews look at whether Tesla's reading of federal safety standards was valid. DP26010 asks something different: how the cars behave on a street outside a school.

The two reports differ on one detail. Electrek says Tesla's answers to a separate Special Order were due September 30 and have not been published. Not a Tesla App says a Tesla deadline of October 30 applies to a separate Cybercab probe. We could not reconcile the dates from what we fetched, so neither is used as a milestone here.

The comparison NHTSA staff and readers will reach for is Waymo. Electrek reports that Austin ISD counted about 20 cases of Waymo vehicles illegally passing stopped school buses, and that Waymo answered with a voluntary software recall in December 2025. That is a different behaviour from speeding in a zone, but it shows the route a school-safety complaint can take from a log entry to a recall. For how deployment limits shape that fleet's growth, see our piece on what caps Waymo's robotaxi growth.

Tesla's history is also in the record. Videos from the June 2025 Austin launch showed cars over the posted limit, and NHTSA said it was in contact with Tesla. In October 2025 the agency opened a separate investigation of Full Self-Driving over traffic-law violations.

What would change this read is the incident count. If NHTSA's tally grows past the four it lists before the January 21 window closes, a grant becomes likelier; if it stays at four and Tesla supplies logs showing speed compliance in zones, a denial is the ordinary outcome.