Tesla driver using autopilot mode dies in first fatal crash

The first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motorson Thursday evening, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry. The 7 May accident occurred in Williston, Florida, after the driver, Joshua Brown, 40, of Ohio put his Model S into Tesla’s autopilot mode, which is able to control the car during highway driving. Against a bright spring sky, the car’s sensors system failed to distinguish a large white 18-wheel truck and trailer crossing the highway, Tesla said. The car attempted to drive full speed under the trailer, “with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S”, Tesla said in a blog post. An early May police report in the Levy County Journal said the top of the vehicle “was torn off by the force of the collision”. The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, of Tampa, Florida, was uninjured, the Journal reported.

America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an inquiry into the accident. Brown owned a technology company called Nexu Innovations and was a Tesla enthusiast who posted videos of his car on autopilot on YouTube. One video showed his car avoiding a collision on a highway, racking up 1m views after it was tweeted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
In its 537-word statement on the incident, the electric vehicle company repeatedly went out of its way to shift blame for the accident. The first paragraph notes that this was Tesla’s first known autopilot death in some 130 million miles driven by its customers. “Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles,” the company then notes. It goes on to say that the car’s autonomous software is designed to nudge consumers to keep their hands on the wheels to make sure they’re paying attention. “Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert,” the company said.
At the end of its blog post, Tesla stated: “The customer who died in this crash had a loving family and we are beyond saddened by their loss,” the company said. “He was a friend to Tesla and the broader [electric vehicle] community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla’s mission.”
The accident comes at a time when Americans have just started to become more comfortable with letting machines take the wheel. Tesla has generated enormous fanfare with its autopilot mode and inspired consumers – despite the company’s warnings – to see just how much they can do while letting the car drive.