The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a fresh probe into Elon Musk-owned Tesla's 2.88 million self-driving vehicles after a series of reported traffic violations, including driving on the wrong side of the road or running red lights. Elon Musk, the world's richest person, has promised to introduce hundreds of thousands of such self-driving Tesla cars by the end of next year.

The agency said that it will examine 58 incidents in which Tesla vehicles reportedly violated traffic safety rules while using its Full Self-Driving system, leading to 14 crashes and 23 injuries.

This new probe would add to many other open investigations into Musk's company that might impact the billionaire's plan to turn millions of his cars into completely driverless vehicles.

The agency has reportedly seen reports of Tesla self-driving cars passing through red traffic lights and driving against the proper direction of travel during a lane change. It said many Tesla vehicles "approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and were subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection."

The regulators have also said in the probe that many of the Tesla drivers who were involved in accidents claimed that the vehicles did not warn them about the unexpected behaviour.

Last year, NHTSA opened a probe into driver-assistance features in Tesla cars after a series of crashes in fog and other low-visibility conditions. Earlier this year, the agency launched an investigation into a "summon" technology that claimed to enable drivers to ask their Tesla vehicles to drive to their location and pick them up after reports of many fender benders in parking lots.

This investigation is a preliminary evaluation, but it is still the first step for the agency to demand a recall of the Tesla cars if it finds that the vehicles are a risk to safety.

Notably, Tesla has not yet commented on the new probe, however, the company issued a software update to FSD earlier this week.