Tesla autopilot: first death

The victim was a famous enthusiast Joshua Brown

Crash site

The Model S car with the included autopilot system was involved in a fatal accident. This is the first case of the death of the driver when the car was moving under the control of a computer system. About the tragic loss told the company Tesla Motors in the corporate blog.

The company emphasizes that for the first time a man died in more than 210 million km that drove the Tesla Model S cars in autopilot mode.
')
According to US statistics, if you consider all cars, then a fatal accident occurs approximately every 151 million km. According to world statistics - every 97 million km.

On the fact of a traffic accident, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) initiated a preliminary investigation. It should establish whether the autopilot system was operating normally.

As soon as Tesla found out about the incident (it occurred on May 7 at 15:40 in Williston, Florida, on Highway 27 near the BP refueling station ), it immediately notified NHTSA.

At the moment, it is only known that the 2015 Tesla Model S was driving on the highway with the autopilot turned on, when a truck tractor with a semi-trailer drove into the lane perpendicular to the direction of travel. Neither the autopilot nor the driver noticed a light-colored wagon against a brightly lit sky , so the braking system was not activated . “The high ground clearance, coupled with the semi-trailer's position on the road and extremely rare circumstances, led the Model S to pass under the trailer, and the lower part of the trailer collided with the Model S windshield,” so the upper part of the Model S was blown away.

Most likely, the scheme of the accident looked like this:



There is a version that the Model S sensors that are too low are not responding due to the truck's high ground clearance.

Tesla emphasizes that if the collision had occurred on the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, the security system would probably prevent serious injuries to the driver, as in many similar incidents before.

At the moment, the autopilot is still in testing. It is disabled by default. The driver can activate it at his own risk. When driving on autopilot you need to be ready to intervene. You need to keep your hands on the wheel, otherwise the system will beep and gradually stop the electric car.

Tesla recognizes that the autopilot needs additional refinement, although it still provides a higher level of driving safety than the average in crash statistics.

Joshua Brown , a 40-year-old Ohio resident, was a great electric vehicle activist and a friend of Tesla Motors, a well-known community “a man who dedicated his life to innovation and promising technologies and who whole-heartedly believed in the Tesla mission. We want to express our deepest condolences to his family and friends, ”said Tesla Motors in an official statement.

By bitter irony, Joshua Brown - the same enthusiast who published a viral video in April, as the autopilot Tesla saved him from a collision with a truck.