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
It’s not as if the Tesla system killed him, it just didn’t save him. And who knows how many people Tesla saved. Tesla will of course improve the system untill it is faultless. But I think it is already better than a lot of drivers out there.
Yeah right…
This is very sad for the victim and his family, but I for one would never trust such a system.
There are so many things that could happen on the road that a computer would fail to determine correctly, such as what happened in this case where the system saw a bright white sky and a white truck crossing the path of the car. There presumably wasn’t enough contrast for the car to determine that a large object was in its path, and it drove under the truck. An attentive human would quite likely have seen and understood the difference and taken evasive action.
Anyone who thinks a computer is able to make complex, split second decisions as competently as the human brain can is fooling themselves.
How to not die in a self driving car: Sell it, then buy a BMW E36 M3 and learn to fall in love with the driving experience
Yup E36 E30 or E46 M3 and learn to actually drive. Don’t let a computer do it for you. If I was givven a choice between a Tesla (no offense) and an older BMW M3. I would Hands down go for the M3. Plus the exhaust sounds much better. The Tesla doesn’t even have an exhaust.
Tractors can just pull out on highways?!
I havent heard anybody ask if this was even an avoidable crash. Was it? It seems like the semi was at fault. Was the trail Tesla speeding?
I never trusted them dang computers anyway! The more wires in a car, the more trouble!
Is a ‘tractor’ in the US the same vehicle as it is in the UK (generally very slow agricultural vehicle with bigger rear wheels), or is it an articulated lorry?
This is why i dont trust self driving cars.
Elon’s statement was mostly trying to defend himself.