National Transportation Safety Board in USA says the May 2016 accident was happened due to driver’s ignorance towards repeated warnings
A man killed in a crash last year in US while using the semi-autonomous driving system of the Tesla Model S has been found that he ignored the car system warning for seven times. The man named Joshua Brown, a former Navy SEAL kept his hands off the wheel for extended periods of time, as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has reported.
This again proves that the Tesla’s Autopilot driving system is not fully self driving technology, but a driver assisting tech only. However, in 2016 the American electric vehicle manufacturer said the Autopilot system doesn’t allow the driver to abdicate responsibility. So far, the man killed in the accident when his Model S collided with a truck is found responsible behind the mishap, not the company.
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Last year, several Tesla cars across the world were reported having accidents and fire incidents. Apart from the cars being involved in accidents while running on Autopilot, there were incidents when Tesla models erupted into flame. These incidents led to investigations and the semi-autonomous technology also faced flak.
As the NTSB reports say, the man died in the May 2016 accident was driving his car with the Autopilot on. The semi-autonomous mode remained on for most of the journey and the car’s system gave him visual warning seven times saying “Hands Required Not Detected.” While he was supposed to keep his hand on the steering wheel, he did that for only 25 seconds during his 37 minute trip.
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After the 500 page long NTSB report came out, Joshua Brown’s family is still reviewing the report and it is not clear if the brand will take any legal action against Tesla. Interestingly, another auto major aggressively researching and developing the autonomous driving technology, Swedish luxury automaker Volvo mocked Tesla Autopilot saying it is nothing but a ‘wannabe’ system that is not capable of fully running the car on its own.