NTSB Faults both Trucker and Motorist in Fatal Tesla Crash
Joshua Brown’s Tesla sedan, after the crash with a truck that took his life. Photo: NTSB/Florida Highway Patrol
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Joshua Brown’s Tesla sedan, after the crash with a truck that took his life. Photo: NTSB/Florida Highway Patrol
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The National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that a truck driver’s failure to yield the right of way and a car driver’s “inattention due to overreliance on vehicle automation” are the probable cause of the May 7, 2016, collision of a tractor-trailer and a Tesla Model S 70D sedan operating in autonomous mode.
The first fatal crash of an autonomous car in the U.S., the accident claimed the life of the Tesla’s driver, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, of Canton, Ohio.
In its determination, issued on Sept. 12, NTSB also found that the operational design of the Tesla’s vehicle automation “permitted the car driver’s overreliance on the automation, noting its design allowed prolonged disengagement from the driving task and enabled the driver to use it in ways inconsistent with manufacturer guidance and warnings.”
“While automation in highway transportation has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, until that potential is fully realized, people still need to safely drive their vehicles,” said NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt III in a statement. “Smart people around the world are hard at work to automate driving, but systems available to consumers today, like Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’ system, are designed to assist drivers with specific tasks in limited environments. These systems require the driver to pay attention all the time and to be able to take over immediately when something goes wrong.”
He added that “safeguards, that should have prevented the Tesla’s driver from using the car’s automation system on certain roadways, were lacking and the combined effects of human error and the lack of sufficient system safeguards resulted in a fatal collision that should not have happened.”
Per NTSB, the report’s findings include:
The Tesla’s automated vehicle control system was not designed …Read the rest of this story
