Washington: A 40 year old man was killed in an accident occurred while driving in an autopilot Tesla car in US. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun a preliminary investigation of the fatal accident that occurred May 7 in Williston, Fla.
Tesla Motors acknowledged that a driver of one of its Model S cars operating in Autopilot mode died when the semi-autonomous system failed to detect a tractor-trailer turning in front of the luxury electric car. According to the reports this is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the U.S., there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.
Tesla’s Autopilot enables the vehicle to drive itself under most highway circumstances, but there are situations where drivers must be prepared to reclaim control. It is not clear whether the driver was alerted in this particular case.