Computer geek Joshua Brown loved his Tesla and affectionately called her Tessie

Joshua Brown near the new Tesla Model S car near his home in Ohio. He is wearing a vest with the logo of his computer company Nexu Innovation. Photo taken by neighbor Christa Kitchen

Automotive enthusiast Joshua Brown (Joshua Brown) was the first ever driver of the Tesla Model S, who died during a trip in "autopilot" mode . About the tragic loss of the company Tesla reported June 30, 2016. The accident itself happened on May 7, 2016 at 15:40 on the US 27 highway at the entrance to the city of Willison (Florida), near the gas station ( satellite map ). According to Tesla Motors, neither the autopilot nor the driver noticed a light-colored wagon against a brightly lit sky, so the braking system was not activated.



The death of Joshua Brown caused a wide public outcry - and not only because it was the first “autopilot death” in history. Joshua was a big fan of Tesla cars, he repeatedly tested the strength of a computer system. Many saw that popular video , which Joshua shot a month before his death, where the autopilot managed to dodge a truck that made a dangerous maneuver. This video otrepostil Ilon Musk himself in his twitter.
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40-year-old man in his heart remained a computer geek. Computers and technology were his life. He tenderly called his favorite car Tesla Tessie, writes the NY Times.


Joshua Brown House. Photo: The New York Times / Maddie McGarvey

He was a real beta tester, because the autopilot function is still in beta testing. Tesla Motors is not responsible for the work of this experimental function and warns drivers to always keep their hands on the wheel while the autopilot is running. As soon as Tesla rolled out this option, Joshua immediately began to test it and record video clips as the car drives without driver participation and reacts to various obstacles. In the first nine months after the launch of the new function, he hit more than 70,000 km in autopilot mode.

“I drive really MANY,” he wrote, answering a question in the comments to one of dozens of his YouTube videos on Tesla cars.

Friends say that Joshua was literally fascinated by the new technology, which seemed to come from the future, but is available now - and by how much it will increase road safety. Prior to that, in six years, Joshua was fined eight times for speeding.

For Joshua and other car owners, Tesla cars have become the subject of almost cult devotion. You can find countless videos on Youtube, where fans demonstrate various Tesla Model S features, including an automatic piloting system. Some of them, to heighten the effect, deliberately take their hands off the steering wheel and do other things ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). Joshua himself published videos, how the autopilot responds to the appearance of obstacles in the “blind zones”, fits into sharp turns and reacts to other situations that are very difficult for the autopilot to work.

In the last days after the first accident report, several details appeared. It became known that a portable DVD player was installed in Joshua's car.


Fragment of a crashed Tesla Model S car in an accident on May 7, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Barbara Liston

A resident of the house, to which Tesla Model S was attributed to 270 meters from the scene of the accident, Robert VanKavelaar said he approached the car after 15 minutes - and heard the sound of a film running on a video player. A traffic police officer at the scene reported that there was "Harry Potter". Apparently, the information about the film went from the truck driver, 62-year-old Frank Baresci - he was the first to speak about Harry Potter. Another witness, who went straight to the car and even looked into the car before the police arrived, refutes these words : there was no film there.

Disputes around the player are important to understand: did the driver actually see the approaching trailer in front of him on the highway or not? The fact is that the driver did not touch the brake pedal. Recall that in April 2016, another incident occurred when Tesla Model S crashed at speed in front of a car. In this case, Tesla Motors studied the logs and found that the adaptive cruise control system is not guilty of what happened. Logs showed that the driver pressed the brake pedal and thereby deactivated the autopilot and cruise control, which maintains a safe distance in traffic. Pressing the brake, she transferred the car to manual mode, and also turned off the emergency braking system, which was installed in all Tesla autopilot last year with firmware 6.2.

It can be assumed that Joshua Brown knew about the specific features of the autopilot and the emergency braking system - and therefore did not touch the brake pedal, so as not to interfere with automation.

The sad incident with Joshua Brown can shake Tesla car owners' confidence in the autopilot’s flawlessness. According to the law of large numbers, such accidents inevitably occur, sooner or later, even in the most reliable technology. And in the case of Tesla Motors, the numbers are really very large. These cars have traveled more than 210 million km, and so far there has not been a single fatal accident.

However, the relatives and friends of Joshua Brown from this is not easier.

After school, Joshua studied at the University of New Mexico with a degree in physics and computer science, but did not graduate from the university, but volunteered for the US Navy, where he served for more than ten years, specializing in the disposal of ammunition, as stated in the description on his IT company website Nexu Innovation . Co-workers say that he had advanced knowledge of computers and electrical engineering, although there was no education in this area.

Friends remember Joshua as a very kind, helpful person. He never refused to help friends and always stayed in touch with his comrades with whom he had previously served.

His company Nexu Innovation was engaged in connecting to the Internet houses in remote areas in mountainous and forest areas where regular communication is not available. In a sense, even his business is noble: Josh helped people who were not concerned about big companies and major Internet service providers.

Real computer enthusiast Joshua Brown died driving his Tessie car, which he loved so much.

“He said:“ In order to attract the attention of Ilona Mask, I can now die and immediately go to heaven, ” said computer-enthusiast neighbor Krista Kitchen, recalling the case when Ilon Musk released his video. “He was absolutely delighted, but after a few weeks he was gone.”

The Joshua Brown family issued a statement expressing a desire to help government experts and Tesla Motors in the investigation. Relatives want “the information obtained from this tragedy to promote further innovations that increase overall safety on the roads.”

The incident occurred a few weeks before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was about to publish the first official guidelines for unmanned vehicles and automakers. Experts suggest that the future of road transport is behind drones, and only computer control can eliminate the most common cause of death on the roads - human errors. Last year, more than 35,000 people died on US roads, of which about 94% were due to driver errors.