Tesla has stood by its Autopilot driver-assist technology during the investigation of a crash involving a Tesla Model X SUV that occurred during the afternoon of the 23rd of March on a motorway in Mountain View, California. The 38-year-old driver died at a nearby hospital shortly after his Tesla collided with a highway barrier.
Tesla has stated that they will work with authorities in order to recover the logs from the computer within the vehicle to try and collect more information regarding what went wrong and to conclude whether the vehicle had been put in Autopilot mode during the crash. In a statement Tesla expressed:
“We have been deeply saddened by this accident, and we have offered our full cooperation to the authorities as we work to establish the facts of the incident”
As for their reasons they are defending their technology, Tesla wrote in a blog post following the crash:
“Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015 and roughly 20,000 times since just the beginning of the year, and there has never been an accident that we know of.”
However, it wasn’t just their autopilot that came under question as after the crash the car set fire, leaving people to question the safety of the vehicles. Although Tesla has not only argued that its battery pack performed as expected – as they are designed to slow the fire down if one is to occur – but the main reason the crash was so catastrophic was due to the fact that a collision barrier on the highway was either taken away or restricted before the accident. Stating:
“We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash”
adding:
“[on whether the battery slowed down the fire] That appears to be what happened here as we understand there were no occupants still in the Model X by the time the fire could have presented a risk.”
For now we will have to wait until the investigation develops before we can start to criticise the developing technology.
