Tesla Autopilot Was Key Factor in Driver's Death, Finds National Transportation Safety Board

With autonomous vehicles racing towards commercialization, there are sobering findings by the National Transportation Safety Board in the death of a Tesla driver who was killed in an accident in which the driver was using — or in this case, over-relying -- on Tesla’s vehicle automation system.

This is the third death linked to the automation system of Tesla. The company says, "All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."

Probable Cause Found by NTSB

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The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the Williston, Florida, crash was the truck driver’s failure to yield the right of way to the car, combined with the car driver’s inattention due to overreliance on vehicle automation, which resulted in the car driver’s lack of reaction to the presence of the truck. Contributing to the car driver’s overreliance on the vehicle automation was its operational design, which permitted his prolonged disengagement from the driving task and his use of the automation in ways inconsistent with guidance and warnings from the manufacturer.

Rhode Island Initiative

On Tuesday, The Rhode Island Department of Transportation and Governor Gina Raimondo kicked off the Little Roady autonomous vehicle pilot project in Providence. 

The research project to evaluate autonomous mobility technology, which went into service on Wednesday, May 15, will operate seven days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with 12 stops between Olneyville Square and Providence Station. The Little Roady shuttles will run on a continuous, 5.3-mile loop on low-speed roads with an average wait time of about 10 minutes. Trip time will be about 20-25 minutes each way from Providence Station to Olneyville Square.

Details of the Tesla Crash As Reported by the NTSB

At 4:36 p.m. eastern daylight time on Saturday, May 7, 2016, a 2015 Tesla Model S 70D car, traveling eastbound on US Highway 27A (US-27A), west of Williston, Florida, struck a refrigerated semitrailer powered by a 2014 Freightliner Cascadia truck-tractor. At the time of the collision, the truck was making a left turn from westbound US-27A across the two eastbound travel lanes onto NE 140th Court, a local paved road. The car struck the right side of the semitrailer, crossed underneath it, and then went off the right roadside at a shallow angle. The impact with the underside of the semitrailer sheared off the roof of the car.

After leaving the roadway, the car continued through a drainage culvert and two wire fences. It then struck and broke a utility pole, rotated counterclockwise, and came to rest perpendicular to the highway in the front yard of a private residence. Meanwhile, the truck continued across the intersection and came to a stop on NE 140th Court, south of a retail business located on the intersection corner.

The driver and sole occupant of the car died in the crash; the commercial truck driver was not injured.

System performance data downloaded from the car indicated that the driver was operating it using the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer lane-keeping systems, which are automated vehicle control systems within Tesla’s Autopilot suite.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) became aware of the circumstances of the crash when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began a defect investigation on June 28, 2016, which focused on the automatic emergency braking and Autopilot systems of the Tesla Models S and X, for model years 2014–2016. On learning of the May 7, 2016, Williston crash that prompted the NHTSA investigation, the NTSB initiated our investigation, which focused on the use of the Autopilot system.

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