Last week, two men died in Texas when their 2019 Tesla Model S hit a tree. News of the crash quickly spread when officials claimed “no one was driving” and neither person was in the driver’s seat.
This instantly raised suspicion that Tesla’s “Autopilot” system had caused the accident and claimed the life of two people.
Since then, officials have said they “are positive” no one was driving during the crash.
Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk did not give a comment on the issue until later, when Musk replied to someone on Twitter.
“Logs recovered reveal the Autopilot was not on and this customer did not buy FSD. Also, standard Autopilot would need lane lines to be on, which this street did not have., the tech entrepreneur said.
There is a lot of speculation about the exact cause of this crash. Two agencies are investigating the accident: the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Tesla’s semi-autonomous technology and marketing have been labeled as misleading and dangerous.
Also, the company’s Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” are reported to have documented flaws in terms of how easily their safety features can be used.
Whatever the true circumstances that led to this tragedy, these two men believed they could vacate the driver’s seat while their car was moving. And regardless of which systems were used, it’s hard to imagine more damning evidence against Tesla’s automated driving marketing.
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