accident

There’s a new small detail but important development in the investigation of the fatal Tesla Model S crash while the Autopilot system was activated. We now learn that the Florida Highway Patrol confirmed that both a laptop and DVD player were found in the car, but that neither were running when found at the scene.
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Update: Tesla Model X rollover accident in PA: Tesla says ‘no data to suggest that Autopilot was engaged’

Just a few days after the first fatality in a Model S accident while the Tesla Autopilot was activated came to light, we now learn of another severe Tesla crash while the vehicle was allegedly on Autopilot, but this time with a Model X and fortunately everyone survived.

The crashed happened last Friday (July 1) on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near the Bedford exit, about 107 miles east of Pittsburgh. The Model X hit a guard rail and then the concrete median before rolling over and coming to a rest in the middle lane. The driver, Albert Scaglione, told the police that the Autopilot was activated at the time of the accident.
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In a development regarding the fatal accident in Florida where a Tesla Model S on Autopilot crashed into the trailer of a truck last month, the truck driver in question, Frank Baressi, now claims that the Tesla driver was watching a movie while traveling on the highway using the Autopilot.

The accident happened last month in Florida, but it came to light only yesterday when it was announced that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a preliminary evaluation into Tesla to make sure the Autopilot worked according to expectations.
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Update: Tesla has reviewed the logs around the time of the accident and it shows that the Model X driver hit the accelerator, Autopilot didn’t crash in building on its own

Following a recent few accidents involving Tesla’s Autopilot, mainly one with the ‘Summon’ feature and another one involving ‘TACC’ (two features of the Autopilot systems), the automaker’s semi-autonomous system has been under scrutiny, and it looks like this latest accident is not going to help its cause.

A Model X owner claims that his week old SUV accelerated on its own in a parking lot and autonomously crashed into a building at high-speed in Irvine, California.
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Google published today its annual report on disengagements of autonomous mode for its self-driving car program (SDC), which is required by California’s DMV. The report details events where Google’s test drivers have taken control over the car’s autonomous system, whether it’d be because of a shutdown due to technology failure or for safety reasons.

After having driven over 1.3 million miles in autonomous mode, Google’s self-driving cars were involved in 17 reported accidents, but the company prides itself of not having been at fault in any of them. But with today’s report, we learn the self-driving cars would have caused 10 accidents during the past year if test drivers wouldn’t have disengaged the system and taken controls.
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An 85-year-old man died in Houston yesterday after crashing a Tesla Model S through a brick wall and into a swimming pool. The accident happened just a week after another reported fatality in a Model S crash, which until recently was a rare occurrence.
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DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Tesla Model S owner, had a car accident in Beverly Hills on Oct. 19. Little is known about the actual accident, but it was severe enough to break Katzenberg’s wrist, which required a surgery followed by a stay at the hospital.

Apparently the accident could have been much worse because Katzenberg felt the need to thank Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, for his car might have “saved his life.
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