The New York Times published a pair of articles this weekend highlighting the rising number of deaths of cyclists riding electric bikes. However, in one of the most impressive feats of victim-blaming I’ve seen from the publication in some time, the NYT lays the onus on e-bikes instead of on the things killing their law abiding riders: cars.
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Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Programs, made a rare comment on the recent and evolving situation around his project at the automaker. He said that it’s been “a dark couple of months” for his team after the death of Joshua Brown, the Model S owner involved in an accident in Florida while driving on Autopilot, and the subsequent media coverage of the tragic event.
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Ever since the very publicized fatal Florida accident in a Model S while the Autopilot was activated, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver assist system has been getting its reputation tarnished in the media. Autopilot took blame for a few subsequent incidents, despite nothing currently pointing to the system being the cause of any of the accidents – though NHTSA is now probing the Autopilot over two of them.
Now we learn of yet another crash where the Autopilot was reportedly at play. A Tesla Model X crashed in Montana Saturday night resulting in the SUV driving through a guardrail and going off the road. The driver blames the Autopilot but Tesla has yet to chime in…
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Yesterday, we reported on a strange article in which Fortune Magazine tried to make the case that Tesla should have disclosed the fatal Model S accident on Autopilot before raising capital through a secondary offering a few weeks after the fact. The publication claims that the accident was material to Tesla’s stock and therefore, it should have been announced when the company learned of the event and not when NHTSA decided it would launch a preliminary evaluation on June 30.
Elon Musk argued against it being material to Tesla’s valuation in an email to Fortune, but now the publication is somehow trying to use a boilerplate statement from Tesla to prove that Musk and the company previously considered the accident a material event, which is not necessarily the case.
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A Tesla Model S driver published a video of his car crashing into a van while on Autopilot which acts as a great PSA to remind Tesla drivers not to always rely on the Autopilot and be ready to take control at all time. In this particular case, the video shows quite clearly what went wrong and the data could actually be useful to Tesla to help prevent the event from happening again.
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The story of a Tesla Model S crashing into the back of a trailer while the ‘summon’ feature of the Autopilot was activated has been making the headlines since last week. Tesla placed the blame with the driver, but now the automaker pushes an update to its fleet to add a step to the Summon feature that could potentially have prevented the accident.
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A Tesla Model S crashed at high-speed in the guardrails on the highway between Abensberg and Siegburg in Germany yesterday. Fortunately, the driver was reportedly (via Focus.de – German ) only “slightly injured” and her life was not in any danger.
What is particularly interesting about this crash is that the local fire department used the incident as an example of how to respond to an electric vehicle crash and even shared pictures on their website.
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A man tragically died last night after his Tesla Model S got hit by a dump truck in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The accident is likely the first instance of a death in the Model S under “regular traffic conditions”.
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