Tesla car crash in California kills driver while running on autopilot

A Tesla vehicle driving in autopilot mode crashed into a roadside barrier and caught fire in a test carried out in California – according to a report by the BBC.
April 3, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

The driver of the Model X car died soon after the incident which occurred on the 23 March 2018.

In a statement, the company confirmed that autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. Several visual and one audible hands-on warning were sent to the driver whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel six seconds prior to the collision.

“The driver had about five seconds and 150 metres of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken,” the statement added.

The severity of the crash is believed to have been the result of the crash attenuator’s state at the time of the accident. The highway safety barrier, which aims to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had not been replaced since being crushed in a previous accident.

Tesla’s autopilot system is said to carry out some of the functions of a fully autonomous machine such as braking, accelerating and steering under certain conditions, but operates as a driver assistance system. The company highlighted that it is not intended to work independently and that motorists are required to have their hands on the wheel at all times.

 

Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • Columbus, Ohio is named Smart Cities Dive’s city of 2018
    December 5, 2018
    Columbus, Ohio has been named City of the Year in the Smart Cities Dive website’s awards for its work on transit and electrification. The US city won the US Department of Transportation’s inaugural Smart City Challenge two years ago – and is rolling out a variety of smart city-related programmes. Smart Cities Dive said the city’s “biggest area of progress this year” has been its increased reliance on electric vehicles (EVs), including in its bus fleet and other government vehicles. City authoritie
    Read More
  • IAM responds to illegal phone use study
    February 26, 2015
    The UK’s Institute of Advanced Motorists has responded to the Department for Transport study carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) into the prevalence of illegal mobile phone use while driving, saying that the results are disappointing but not at all surprising. The figures show that, in 2014, 1.1 per cent of drivers in England and Scotland were observed holding a phone in their hand with a further 0.5 per cent observed holding the phone to their ear, equating to more than 470,000 motorists
    Read More
  • Kapsch to demonstrate V2X
    August 26, 2014
    Kapsch will use the ITS World Congress Detroit to show for the first time the company’s V2X end to end capabilities by demonstrating the full V2X system integration, incorporated into its Dynac Traffic Management solution. (Communication from Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) or vice versa (I2V), or from Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) is commonly called "V2X".) The solution has been designed to enable seamless communication over TCP/IP, ITS-G5 5.9GHz, and Bluetooth at the same time. Ready for the global marketplac
    Read More
  • Kapsch debuts V2X system integration
    September 7, 2014
    Kapsch is using the ITS World Congress Detroit to show for the first time the company’s V2X end-to-end capabilities by demonstrating the full V2X system integration, incorporated into its Dynac Traffic Management solution. (Communication from Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) or vice versa (I2V), or from Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) is commonly called “V2X”.)
    Read More

Highlighted Content