Yet another Tesla crash has made its way into the headlines, and this one actually occurred before the first reported fatal crash of a Model S in Florida this May. Now, Tesla is investigating a fatal Model S crash that occurred in China this past January, although it remains unclear if Autopilot was involved.
A 23-year-old man was killed after hitting a street sweeping truck while driving down a highway in his father’s Tesla Model S. Police found no indication that the Tesla braked before colliding with the truck, reports Eletrek. It’s unclear if Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash.
Tesla has issued the following response in a statement to Motor Trend:
“We were saddened to learn of the death of our customer’s son. We take any incident with our vehicles very seriously and immediately reached out to our customer when we learned of the crash. Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers and we therefore have no way of knowing whether or not Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash. We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so.”
The driver’s family has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Tesla.
Before this report came out, the fatal crash in Florida was considered to be the first known fatality in a Tesla on Autopilot. Reports had also surfaced earlier of another Tesla Model S crash in China. The driver in that crash, who wasn’t injured, blamed the semi-autonomous driving technology for the accident. Meanwhile, Tesla did confirm the car had been using Autopilot at the time of the crash. Tesla was criticized for overstating the capabilities of its Autopilot technology, and soon removed the term “self-driving” from its Chinese website for the Model S. Tesla recently announced changes to the Autopilot feature, which will rely more on radar than the front-facing camera going forward. The system will now also deactivate if a driver ignores three warnings to place his or her hands on the wheel within one hour. Since its introduction, Autopilot has warned users that they need to be alert at all times.
A Chinese news segment ran dashcam footage taken from inside the car, which shows the impact and appears to confirm authorities’ conclusion that the car did not brake before the collision. We’ve included the video below, but be warned that the crash did tragically result in the driver’s death.
We’ll update this story as more details become available.
The post Reports of Fatal Tesla Crash Earlier This Year in China Surface appeared first on Motor Trend.
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