Fatal accident with Tesla Model X: autopilot was switched on

• Driver disregards warnings
• Complaints about autopilot

On Friday (March 23, 2018) at 9:27 a.m. local time, the electric car hit a concrete bollard on a motorway in Silicon Valley near the town of Mountain View. However, its crash structure had not been repaired after a previous accident. The M odel X was hit by a Mazda after the collision and then collided with another car. 'We have never seen such a large damage to a Model X in any other accident,' explained Tesla. The 38-year-old driver, an Apple engineer, from San Mateo, California, died at the scene of the accident. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

Tesla driver did not respond to warnings

Tesla confirmed that the autopilot was active and that the adaptive cruise control was set to the closest distance. According to Tesla evaluation, the driver did not have his hands on the steering wheel in the six seconds before the impact, despite several visual and acoustic warnings. 'The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete partition ... but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken,' said Tesla. However, the assistance system did not automatically brake the vehicle.

After the accident, the ABC television station reported that the driver involved in the accident several times Should have complained about the autopilot. The system directed him several times on his way to work in the direction of the bollard. He is also said to have brought the complaint to his Tesla dealer, who could not understand the error.

The company itself stated that Tesla models with autopilot had passed the accident site a total of 85,000 times and around 20,000 times since the beginning of the year had - without incident. The crash is also being investigated by accident investigators from the US agency NTSB. On March 20, 2018, another fatal accident involving an autonomous vehicle operated by the driving service broker Uber made headlines. Here in the US state of Arizona a woman was run over. On board theA surveillance person sat in the Uber vehicle and did not intervene.