Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Second accident occurs involving Tesla in autopilot mode.

The Detroit Free Press (7/5, Gardner, 1.02M) reports Michigan art gallery owner Albert Scaglione and his son-in-law, Tim Yanke, survived a Friday accident in which their 2016 Tesla Model X crashed into a guard rail and concrete median and rolled over while in Autopilot mode. The incident occurred just two days after the NHTSA announced it launched an investigation into a May collision involving a Model S in Autopilot that killed the passenger.
        The Huffington Post (7/5, Mclaughlin, 367K) reports Tesla credited the May collision to “extremely rare circumstances” where neither the vehicle sensors nor the passenger applied breaks.
        NHTSA continues to investigate fatal Tesla crash. USA Today (7/5, Woodyard, 6.31M) reports that the recent fatal crash of Tesla Model S driver has raised concerns about the need for stronger federal regulation on self-driving technology. President of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety Rosemary Shahan argued that the Model S “wasn’t ready to go out on the road.” Shahan added, “If you have a system called Autopilot that cannot distinguish between the side of a truck and the open sky, it’s not ready.” The article mentions that the NHTSA is developing guidelines on the development of self-driving cars. At the same time, the NHTSA is also “investigating whether Brown might have been distracted while his 2015 Tesla Model S was in Autopilot mode as a truck crossed his path.” NHTSA issued a statement last week that it “will examine the design and performance of the automated driving systems in use at the time of the crash.” Spokesman Bryan Thomas “declined to elaborate” further on the investigation on Tuesday.

        Tesla notified regulators about autopilot crash nine days after incident. Reuters (7/5, Sage, Lienert) reports Tesla Motors alerted regulators to a fatality in one of its Model S sedans in partial self-driving Autopilot mode nine days after it crashed in Florida, the company said on Tuesday. On Tuesday, CEO Elon Musk tweeted in response to an article by Fortune magazine about the timing of the disclosure that the May 7 fatality “wasn’t material” to Tesla. The company was obligated to disclose the fatality to regulators during its third quarter but notified them earlier, on May 16, as it was investigating. “Tesla then provided NHTSA with additional details about the accident over the following weeks as it worked to complete its investigation, which it ultimately concluded during the last week of May,” a Tesla spokeswoman said. 

No comments:

Post a Comment