Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils a new all-wheel drive version of the Model S car in Hawthorne, California, October 9, 2014.
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had “immediately” launched another investigation into Tesla following a fatal crash in Spring, Texas over the weekend.
Two men died in an accident on Saturday night and apparently no one was behind the wheel, according to several press interviews with the 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 was in the rear passenger seat of the vehicle.
Police and the NHTSA have not completed their comprehensive investigations. A preliminary report is inconclusive and questions remain as to whether the advanced Tesla driver assistance systems were employed before or during the accident.
The company’s systems are marketed under the brand name Autopilot, Full Self-Driving or Full Self-Driving beta. Tesla includes the Autopilot standard in all of its newer vehicles. And sell Full Self-Driving for $ 10,000 with a working subscription option.
Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD) technology do not make Tesla vehicles safe to operate without a driver at the wheel. Some customers who purchase the FSD option also have access to a “beta” version to try out the latest features that are added to the system on public roads before all errors are resolved.
The company says in the owners’ manuals that drivers should only use autopilot and FSD with “active surveillance”.
At the same time, CEO Elon Musk supports 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, even if they shouldn’t. (You must press a button to indicate that I am the passenger.)
In the same episode, Musk added: “I think the autopilot gets good enough that you don’t have to drive most of the time unless you really want to.”
The great hope for developing autonomous and automatic driving systems is that – such as seat belts, automatic emergency braking, airbags and other technologies that have become standard – will prevent accidents or reduce their impact. According to NHTSA data, there were 36,096 deaths in car traffic accidents in 2019.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has so far opened about 28 investigations into Tesla vehicle accidents and about 24 of them are active today.
The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates accidents to determine contributing factors, has called on the NHTSA to impose strong safety standards for automated vehicle technology. The NTSB called on Tesla for poor safety practices, especially in their recommendations, and expressed frustration with NHTSA’s reluctance to act in several fatal crashes involving Uber and Tesla vehicles.
Fatal accidents involving the Tesla autopilot killed Joshua Brown in Florida, Walter Huang in California and Jeremy Banner in Florida in addition to the two men who died in Texas. An accident involving autopilot also killed Tesla driver Gao Yaning in China and an accident involving autopilot took place in Japan 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 accident that involved a Tesla vehicle outside the city of Houston, Texas. NHTSA immediately launched a special accident investigation team to investigate the accident. We are actively engaged with local law enforcement and Tesla to find out more about the details will be blocked and we will take appropriate action when we have more information. “