Fatal Tesla Crash Had No One in the Driver's Seat

Well, this is a first.

We’ve seen fatal crashes with driver assistance features activated and a neglectful driver, but this is the first such accident with no one in the driver’s seat.

On Saturday, a 2019 Tesla Model S – presumably with its “Autopilot” driver assistance feature on – missed a turn and crashed into a tree, killing two passengers. One of the two was in the passenger seat, with the other in the back, but the driver’s seat was empty when the Tesla struck the tree and burst into flames.

“[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact,” Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said, with the obvious question being how this setup happened in the first place.

According to the company, “All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances,” and in the future, they’ll be able to pick you up, drop you off, and even find parking.

But no Tesla is fully autonomous (yet), and the company is quick to caution that “current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

And while I’m sure critics will browbeat Tesla about additional safety features, I don’t know much clearer the company can be that Autopilot ≠ fully autonomous.

This wasn’t even the system failing at an inopportune moment. It’s, as Elon Musk said back in 2018, “drivers thinking they know more about Autopilot than they do.”

Read more here.