The US agency NTSB charged with investigating the accident published an interim report on Monday. Important storage technology with data from the vehicle was completely destroyed or at least severely damaged, the authority said. According to the NTSB, a surveillance camera recorded how the owner of the car got in and took a seat in the driver’s seat. However, there is no reliable information as to whether he was behind the wheel at the time of the impact.
The second occupant got in on the passenger side, according to the report. The car only covered around 170 meters before it came off the road. It hit a tree and the battery caught fire.
Nobody at the wheel
The local police in a suburb of the city of Houston, Texas initially assumed that no one had been behind the wheel in the accident. The officers found one of the men dead in the passenger seat and one in the back seat in the burned-out vehicle.
This quickly raised the question of whether Tesla’s controversial assistance system “Autopilot” could have been active. According to preliminary NTSB findings, it can be assumed that the “autopilot” system was at least not fully activated because a crucial component on the accident route could not have worked.
«Autopilot» not activated
Tesla boss Elon Musk had denied a connection with the assistance system from the start and wrote on Twitter in April that the data available until then showed that the “autopilot” system had not been activated.
Elon Musk on the crash in Texas: “The autopilot was not switched on”(00:55)
Musk pointed out that the lane marking was missing on the road, without which the standard version of the system could not be activated. The so-called adaptive cruise control can control the speed – according to the NTSB experts, “autopilot” is only complete with the system that keeps the car in the lane. A Tesla manager said in the conference call on the latest quarterly figures that the adaptive cruise control was at least temporarily activated before the impact. At the same time, because of the deformed steering wheel, Tesla assumes that someone was behind the wheel in the accident.
Has been criticized for a long time
Efforts to investigate the accident continue in any case. All aspects would be further investigated, said the authority. Tesla’s “autopilot” and its security precautions against abuse have been criticized for a long time.
Videos are circulating on the Internet showing how drivers leave their seat in traffic. Critics find that the name “autopilot” is an exaggeration that invites negligent use. Tesla even calls the next stage of the program “full self-driving” (completely self-driving), although according to current criteria it remains just an assistance system. (SDA / bra)