Early this morning in Baarn in the Netherlands, a 53-year old Tesla Model S driver tragically died in a crash. His Model S left the road and hit a tree at high speed. The vehicle caught on fire and the driver was reportedly dead by the time the firefighters were on the scene.
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Fatal accidents involving the Tesla Model S are fortunately rare, thanks to its several segment-leading safety features, but tragic accidents do happen. The latest happened today when a Model S was rear-ended at high-speed by a large SUV on the 405 Freeway leaving a 7-year-old 10-year-old girl dead and a 13-year-old girl in critical condition.
The girls’ father, the driver of the Tesla, has been taken to the hospital, but his life is reportedly not in danger.
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You might remember when we reported on a Tesla Model S driver in Switzerland publishing a video of his car crashing into a van after the vehicle Tesla’s Autopilot was following swerve halfway off his lane to pass a van on the side of the road.
Now a very similar accident happened in China and the Model S driver also caught the fender bender on his dashcam.
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With Tesla’s fleet rapidly increasing in numbers, it is not too surprising to see more accidents involving its vehicles, but these days it looks like there’s one spectacular (scary) accident every week. The latest happened in Newark, Delaware this morning when a tractor-trailer flipped on its side after hitting a Tesla Model S.
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Late last night, a Tesla Model S was involved in an serious frontal accident with BMW in a tunnel in Switzerland. Unfortunately, the BMW driver was injured and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance – though 20 minuten (German) reports that his injuries were minor.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a statement last week confirming that it will investigate the recent Tesla Model X rollover accident in Pennsylvania after the driver claimed that the Autopilot was activated during the crash.
Last week, Tesla said that they couldn’t access the data logs remotely because of the damage on the vehicle, but a spokesperson also said that they “have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident”.
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After the Consumer Watchdog calling for the Tesla to disable the Autopilot following the recent fatal Model S crash while the system was activated, now the respected Consumer Reports magazine is weighing in and also asking Tesla to walk back some of the Autopilot features.
Tesla already responded to the publication saying that they are taking decisions based on “real-world data, not speculation by media”.
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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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Following the news of the fatal crash in a Model S in May, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) implied that Tesla could be planning to disable the Autopilot when drivers are not using it properly, but now Elon Musk gave a quick interview to the publication (Paywall) and says that the company has no plan to disable the Autopilot.
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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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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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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a statement confirming that it will investigate the recent Tesla Model X rollover accident in PA “to determine whether automated functions were in use at the time of the crash.”
Tesla also updated an earlier statement to clarify its review of the accident citing very little information about the event due to a lack of contact with the driver.
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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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Yesterday we reported on an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike where a Tesla Model X hit a guard rail, the concrete median and then rollover. The two occupants came out alive and after the fact, the police said that the driver claimed that the Autopilot was activated when the vehicle crashed.
Tesla has now reviewed the logs and says that there’s “no data to suggest that Autopilot was engaged at the time of the incident.”
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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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Following the news of the fatal accident in a Tesla Model S on Autopilot, which happened in May but only came to light last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims that about half of the approximately one million people who died in auto accidents last year would have been saved if the Tesla Autopilot was universally available.
He made the comment in a somewhat strange email conversation with a retired journalist.
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Just as the first fatal crash in a Tesla with the Autopilot activated came to light last week, we revealed that the automaker is planning to release its software version 8.0. Tesla refers to the update as the most important to its touchscreen since the launch of the Model S in 2012, but it will also feature significant improvements to the Autopilot.
While Tesla has obviously been working on the update before the highly publicized crash, which happened in May, the timing is still interesting as Tesla’s semi-autonomous system is now subject to more scrutiny than ever before.
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Following a fatal Model S crash on Autopilot reported earlier this week, one of Tesla’s main supplier for the Autopilot program, Mobileye, commented on the accident and explained that its Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) wasn’t meant to avoid the impact.
Tesla has since responded to Mobileye’s statement, which we added to our article on the comment, but it’s worth elaborating on the differences between the systems as we recently learned more about them through tests earlier this week, and the tragic accident which is only now coming to light.
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The first reported death in a Tesla Model S crash while the Autopilot was activated has been shaking the Tesla and self-driving car community since yesterday. The tragic accident happened May 7th in Florida, but we only learned about it yesterday when Tesla revealed that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched preliminary evaluation in Tesla’s Autopilot system.
We don’t pretend to know everything about the accident, but based on the information released by the Florida Highway Patrol, Tesla and NHTSA, we try to convey our best understanding of the events and the possible impact of the regulator’s probe on the Autopilot.
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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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There are several different approaches to developing self-driving cars. Some companies are gradually releasing more and more advanced autonomous and semi-autonomous features leading to a fully autonomous system, like Tesla’s Autopilot, and others, like Google, are aiming to only release a system once the technology is ready for a fully (level 4) self-driving car.
Following a few recent accidents in the past weeks, Tesla received some criticisms over its approach on releasing semi-autonomous features. One of the most severe criticism came from renowned scientist Andrew NG who said that it was plainly “irresponsible” for Tesla to ship the Autopilot.
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