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Tesla's Autopilot was Engaged when Model 3 Crashed into Truck, Report States

posted by martyb on Friday May 17 2019, @09:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the keep-your-eyes-on-the-road-and-your-hands-on-the-wheel dept.

Fnord666 writes:

Tesla's advanced driver assist system, Autopilot, was active when a Model 3 driven by a 50-year-old Florida man crashed into the side of a tractor-trailer truck on March 1st, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) states in a report released on Thursday. Investigators reviewed video and preliminary data from the vehicle and found that neither the driver nor Autopilot "executed evasive maneuvers" before striking the truck.

[...] The driver, Jeremy Beren Banner, was killed in the crash. It is at least the fourth fatal crash of a Tesla vehicle involving Autopilot.

This crash is eerily similar to another one involving a Tesla in 2016 near Gainesville, Florida. In that incident, Joshua Brown was killed when his Model S sedan collided with a semitrailer truck on a Florida highway in May 2016, making him the first known fatality in a semi-autonomous car.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determined that a "lack of safeguards" contributed to Brown's death. Meanwhile, today's report is just preliminary, and the NTSB declined to place blame on anyone.

Source: The Verge

Also at Ars Technica.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @04:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @04:20PM (#844762)

    Were it any brand other than Tesla human controlled vehicle without an autopilot, this would be a non-story about two bad drivers.

    FTFY.

    There was nothing wrong with the original phrasing. The so-called "autopilot" is nothing more than a sexily-named glorified cruise control. Blame Tesla marketing for that. The driver is expected to stay focused on driving. Anyone dumb enough at this point to believe that the sexy name means full autonomous driving just means that Tesla has found a means of identifying people ripe for natural deselection.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Friday May 17 2019, @10:05PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Friday May 17 2019, @10:05PM (#844851)

    Yes, yes, we know that "The so-called "autopilot" is nothing more than a sexily-named glorified cruise control", as you rightly say. But the point is that the focus of the story would still have been the incapability of computer controlled cars, whatever name you give the system and whatever the name of the company that made it.