Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk presents in Hawthorne, California, on October 9, 2014, a new all-wheel drive version of the Model S vehicle.
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it “immediately” began another investigation into Tesla after a fatal crash in Spring, Texas over the weekend.
Two men were killed in the crash Saturday night and apparently no one was behind the wheel, according to several press interviews with local police.
The electric vehicle, a Tesla 2019 Model S, crashed into a tree and burst into flames. One person was found in the front passenger seat and another in the passenger seat of the vehicle.
Police and the NHTSA have not completed their thorough investigations. A preliminary report is inconclusive and questions remain about whether Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems were hired before or during the crash.
The company’s systems are marketed under the Autopilot, Full Self-Driving or Full Self-Driving beta brands. Tesla includes the standard autopilot in all of its newer vehicles. And it sells fully self-contained for $ 10,000 with a subscription option to the works.
Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD) technology do not make Tesla vehicles safe to operate without a driver behind the wheel. Some customers who purchase the FSD option also have access to a “beta” version to test the newer features that are added to the system on the public road before all bugs are resolved.
The company tells owners’ manuals that drivers should only use autopilot and FSD with “active monitoring”.
At the same time, CEO Elon Musk announces these systems as safe and continuously improving on Twitter, where he has 50 million followers and in media appearances.
In an episode of the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast in February, Musk and Rogan discussed how Tesla drivers could play chess on the touch screens of their cars while driving, though they shouldn’t. (They must press a button to indicate that they are the passenger.)
In that same episode, Musk also said, “I think autopilot gets good enough not to need to drive most of the time unless you really want to.”
The great hope for autonomous and automated driving systems currently in development is that, such as seat belts, automatic emergency braking, air cushions and other technologies that became standard, prevent accidents or they will decrease the impact. According to NHTSA data, there were 36,096 deaths in motor vehicle traffic accidents in 2019.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened up to 28 investigations into Tesla vehicle crashes to date, and approximately 24 of these are active today.
The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates accidents to determine contributing factors, has called on NHTSA to impose strong safety standards on automated vehicle technology. NTSB called Tesla for poor safety practices, specifically, on its recommendations and expressed frustration at NHTSA’s reluctance to take action after multiple fatal crashes that affected Uber and Tesla vehicles.
The fatal crashes involved in the Tesla autopilot have killed Joshua Brown in Florida, Walter Huang in California and Jeremy Banner in Florida, in addition to the two men who died in Texas. A collision with the autopilot killed Tesla driver Gao Yaning, also in China, and in Japan there was a collision with the autopilot that killed a pedestrian, Yoshihiro Umeda.
Here is the full statement an NHTSA spokesperson sent to CNBC about the Spring, Texas crash:
“NHTSA is aware of the tragic crash that hit a Tesla vehicle outside of Houston, Texas. NHTSA has immediately launched a special crash investigation team to investigate the crash. We are actively engaged with local law enforcement and Tesla for more information on the details of the will fail and take appropriate action when we have more information. “