According to the US police, a Tesla electric car is said to have crashed in Texas with an empty driver’s seat. But according to company boss Musk, the assistance software was not activated at all. The investigation is ongoing.
After the crash of a Tesla electric car, company boss Elon Musk denied a connection with the autopilot assistance system. “Previously available data records show that the autopilot was not activated,” wrote Musk on Twitter. It was the company’s first reaction to the accident that killed two men in Texas over the weekend. Musk also pointed out in his tweet that the lane marking was missing on the road, without which the standard version of the autopilot system could not be activated. Tesla informs the customers themselves that the autopilot is only an assistance system and that the person in the driver’s seat must therefore keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times. He should also always be ready to take control.
According to the police, no one is behind the wheel
Accident investigators from the US agency NTSB, which is active in aircraft crashes, among other things, traveled to the scene of the accident to investigate. According to preliminary investigations, the police had shown themselves to be “almost 99.9 percent certain” that nobody was behind the wheel in the accident, as a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal said. The police found one of the men in the passenger seat and one in the back seat. The car burned out. The crash immediately sparked new discussions about Tesla’s safety precautions for the autopilot system. In the past, videos repeatedly appeared on the Internet showing drivers leaving their seats in traffic.
Security measures reinforced
Tesla tightened safety measures a few years ago: the software detects when the driver is not hands on the wheel and emits warning tones after a short time. Tesla and Musk always emphasize that the statistics show that overall significantly fewer accidents occur when the drivers are on the road with the autopilot system switched on. The company is preparing the introduction of new functions in the USA, such as automatic recognition of traffic light signals and traffic signs, as well as observance of right of way rules in the city. So far, some users can test the capabilities in a beta version of the software. Tesla calls this next evolutionary stage of autopilot “full self-driving” (for example: completely self-driving), while according to current criteria it remains just an assistance system. This name caused criticism.
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