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
If only the Tesla could also flip off the driver of the other car for you! And it seems that the accident occurring was possibly unavoidable
This should be a reminder of how complacent self driving cars make people. No system is infallible and people always need to be ready for possible issues that may arise, but people just get too comfortable. Granted people may make even more mistakes, but self driving cars won’t be the end of all issues like some think it might be
Well, somebody better pick up that phone.
Because I f*cking called it!
The guy driving was apparently watching Harry Potter. It isn’t the cars fault.
The world and the technology is not ready yet for full automatic drive.
Then when are we ready? If we don’t test it, we will never be ready. Technology us ready to advance, the world just needs to understand how to work and advance with it.
Is*
That may be sad but that is why cars should never drive themselves. Keep the human feel in the car please. I feel people just want to be lazy anymore.
We shouldn’t blame automated driving for this, I agree that we should just drive like we always have, but this is pretty amazing technology that just seemed to have failed at this point in time. Granted the driver also failed to do his part of paying attention to the road at all times. So far there have been a lot less self driving accidents then there have human error accidents, and I think that is getting somewhere.
I’d like to see the insurance mess
I thought tesla conduct crash tests like this where the car hits the rear guard of a lorry and stuff
Obviously we don’t quite know the full circumstances of this tragedy, but could we consider the possibility of the driver being fully aware of the impending danger, but hoping that Autopilot would stop him? Obviously it didn’t and was too late by the time he realised this…
Just a thought.
You’d have to be pretty stupid to willingly crash into a truck. The truck driver said he heard Harry Potter coming from the car and the police found a DVD player in the car.
I see why autopilot is a good idea. I also dont want to get in a car with it. Cruise control is scary enough for me
Tesla cannot be blamed for the driver not paying attention to the road. The car is semi autonomous not fully.