A Tesla Driver Has Died In The First Ever Fatal Crash For A Self-Driven Car
Tesla has revealed that a Model S driver died in an accident on 7 May while Autopilot was activated, in what’s thought to be the first fatal crash involving an autonomous vehicle. The driver - 40-year-old Joshua D. Brown - was on a divided highway in Williston, Florida, when a tractor pulled out, at which point neither Brown nor Autopilot reacted.
The Model S passed under the tractor’s trailer, with the bottom of the trailer hitting the windscreen. The car then continued down the road, before leaving the highway and hitting a fence. He died at the scene.
In a statement released on Thursday, Tesla said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has started a “preliminary evaluation” into the performance of Autopilot during the crash. “This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated,” Tesla said, adding, “Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles.”
Brown was well known in the Tesla community, and just a month before the fatal crash had posted a video on YouTube (below) of Autopilot successfully averting an accident. The video quickly clocked a million views.
Tesla’s Autopilot is at the moment intended to be a driver assist, and more of a ‘semi-autonomous’ mode that requires the driver to be holding the steering wheel at all times. In the statement Tesla notes that “Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert,” but that hasn’t stopped some well-documented abuses of the system. It’s been heavily criticised in some corners for lulling its users into a false sense of security. Earlier this year, a senior Volvo engineer slammed Autopilot, labelling it an “Unsupervised wannabe” that “Gives you the impression that it’s doing more than it is.”
At this early stage of the investigation, it’s not known exactly why Brown didn’t brake himself. Tesla’s statement speculates that he simply did not see “The white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky,” however in a report in the Associated Press, the 62-year-old driver of the tractor claimed to have heard one of the Harry Potter films playing from the car at the crash scene. Tesla responded to the claims, stating that it isn’t possible to watch videos on the main screen found in the Model S.
Find out more about how Autopilot works by watching 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
Soon in the news there will be “driver killed by wheelbarrow” 😂😂😂
And thats why people drive and not machines
It was the truck drivers fault not the car
Nice
Is physically driving a car really that bad? I mean, dont want to drive get a chauffeur. Or better yet a taxi or a bus ffs
rip
‘Machines will turn against us’ I mean really, this is new technology here, unexplored. I fully agree that cars like personal cars should be controlled by humans. Its not only freedom but also a privilege that the technology of our new cars makes us forget.
Imagine cabs, buses and trains being autonomous. This development should not stop, but we need to learn from it. One person dies and everyone says no, its unsafe. There is a lot more dangerous things in peoples workplace, that more frequently takes lives. I hope Tesla programs their cars how to behave when situations like this occurr and so they can handle most if not all dangerous situations. Not blaming anyone is the only way to learn from this. Thougts are with Joshua and his relatives.
YOU DIPSTICK!
What is your Channal name
If you feel like it’s a 2 years old child, then you shouldn’t be surprised when it tries new stuff, like…. What if I jump off this ramp?