Did The First Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash Actually Happen Back In January?
It had been thought the first ever fatal crash for a Tesla under the control of Autopilot happened in May when Model S owner Joshua D. Brown lost his life, but that might not be the case. Reuters reports that Tesla is investigating a fatal accident that happened in Beijing, China, way back in January.
23-year-old Gao Yaning died when his Model S hit the back of a road sweeper, however Tesla has stated that it’s impossible to know whether or not Autopilot was enabled. “Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers,” the company said.
Warning: The video news report below contains footage of the fatal crash. Viewer discretion advised
Tesla noted that in its investigation it has been trying to work with Gao’s father, the owner of the car, but “he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so.”
Since no evasive action was taken, it does make you wonder if Gao was relying on Autopilot at the same time. If that was the case, we can only speculate as to why the system failed to spot the road sweeper.
Find out more about how Autopilot works in our video below:
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
the last thing ill do is turn on autopliot cuz guess what ILL DIE
There was one that happened earlier in Florida.
Instead of using drivers as Lab rats…why we dont use the Tesla employees as test subjects for the autopilot? ¿would you sell a car without steering wheel but instead a holographic wheel that handles with gestures?
If every other drivers were not computers too, no AI are smart enough to predict human beings behind the wheel. Unfortunately, not many people seem to realize that