The U.S. National Transportation Safety Council (NTSB) announced in a public hearing the most likely causes of one of Tesla’s most famous accidents. This is an accident with the Tesla Model X, which occurred in California on March 23, 2018, when an Apple employee died.
An NTSB investigation confirmed that at the time of the accident, the Model X autopilot was activated and set to 121 km / h, Carscoops writes. The car drove at a speed of 105 km / h, as it followed the car moving in front of it. At the same time, the driver, 38-year-old Walter Juan, as the investigation established, played on his iPhone 8 smartphone: he was an avid gamer and developer of computer games. The last few minutes before the accident, he did not touch the controls of the car, despite several warning signals that the autopilot gave. According to the instructions, the driver, with the autopilot system turned on, is obliged to keep his hands on the steering wheel and monitor the situation.
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About 5.9 seconds before the accident, the car automatically drove to the left, but the driver did not pay attention to it. Most likely, the Tesla maneuver was due to damage to the markings and fencing. A accident happened here a few days ago, and the road services did not manage to eliminate its consequences. Approximately 3.9 seconds before the collision, the vehicle in front was rebuilt and Tesla automatically increased speed. The electric vehicle’s sensors could not detect a half-destroyed barrier in the recent accident, so they did not activate the emergency braking system and did not give the autopilot a command to evade the maneuver. The driver also did not take control: he was busy with a smartphone and relied entirely on electronics. As a result, Model X at speeds above 100 km / h flew into a dilapidated barrier and caught fire. The driver died on the spot.
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According to preliminary conclusions, several circumstances led to the accident at once, including the imperfection of the autopilot, the sluggishness of the road services, and the lack of an effective monitoring system for Tesla’s driver’s condition. All that Model X electronics could do at that time was to try to get people’s attention with sound signals and a twitch of the steering wheel. But they are easy to ignore. In future versions of the software, Tesla introduced a feature in which if the driver does not respond to the signals for a long time, the electric car automatically pulls over and stops. And then you can continue to move only after some time. However, according to the NTSB, such measures are not enough.
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In general, despite the fact that the National Council for Transport Safety has not announced the final conclusions, it has now been decided to conduct a more detailed test of the driver assistance systems in Tesla electric vehicles and to develop recommendations for their use. It is also expected to recommend car companies to develop a more reliable system that does not allow drivers to be distracted from driving. Smartphone manufacturers are advised to provide the ability to automatically lock certain functions while the vehicle is in motion.
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