While Tesla's response to the accident has been very aggressive (to the point of being rude), transparency is also important. Not being able to talk about an accident for an entire year would be a disservice to the community and most likely lead to rampant speculation considering how high profile these accidents are.
In this case Tesla has handled the entire incident rather poorly, but it makes sense that they would want to abstain from the investigation to be more transparent about what happened. Keep in mind that in a year from now the data about the accident will be mostly irrelevant.
It's pretty misleading to defend Tesla in the name of transparency: so far, Tesla has been nothing but opaque regarding this incident. There's a whole lot of spin, unsupported claims, blaming the driver, and refusing to acknowledge Autopilot problems like veering into crash barriers post-update. That's the whole reason why the NTSB "fired" them: they were trying to create confusion around a transparent investigation.
> lead to rampant speculation considering
> how high profile these accidents are
High profile? NTSB routinely handles aircraft crashes with hundreds dead. This is not even moderate profile for them. They do things a certain way because it works. If you start talking publicly, witnesses get intimidated, contractors and manufacturers get tight-lipped, speculation causes changes that are actually not safety-improving. NTSB has ZERO rulemaking power, by design. They have one job only - figure out what happened and make completely non binding suggestions on what could be done to prevent such cases in the future.
...but it makes sense that they would want to abstain from the investigation to [place their spin on events before the official investigation has completed].
In this case Tesla has handled the entire incident rather poorly, but it makes sense that they would want to abstain from the investigation to be more transparent about what happened. Keep in mind that in a year from now the data about the accident will be mostly irrelevant.