The Tesla owner, who died in a horrific crash of his Model 3, posted a video of himself riding in a vehicle without his hands on the wheels or legs. Tesla says both “autopilot” and “full self-driving” are not completely autonomous and that drivers need to pay attention.
“When I was in the vehicle, I was going at about 37 miles per hour,” he said. “It felt like it was accelerating at the normal rate. It seemed like a normal acceleration to me. It took some time to get used to the acceleration.”
He acknowledged he may be “jumping to conclusions” but said “the accelerations felt like they were normal to me”.
The company has insisted that autopilot doesn’t remove the need to pay attention and drivers must still monitor the vehicle.
A Tesla spokesperson said: “The driver must remain engaged at all times by paying attention to the road and remaining prepared to take action to avoid collisions. Autopilot only functions with the driver in the driver’s seat and the vehicle operating in ‘all-electric mode.’
“The driver must remain engaged and ready to take over at any time, so we encourage all drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while using Autopilot to minimize the risk of driver inattention or distraction.”
The autopilot in Tesla cars works by sending radar and camera data to an artificial intelligence system. The AI then automatically steers the car, slows down or speeds up the car as necessary, and makes a judgement about whether it should intervene.
The company says the system may not operate if the car is speeding, if the software detects the car is moving too slowly or if the driver’s hands leave the wheel.
Autopilot is also restricted by a set of rules which the company says “apply even when using Autopilot”.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the crash. The agency on Tuesday said it will not publish a preliminary report until it has completed its investigation.
A Tesla engineer told the board that the car was travelling at about 130km/h (80mph) as it entered the right turn and was being closely monitored by the driver, but was at a speed where it could have safely made the turn without alerting the driver.
Tesla says drivers must keep their hands on the wheel to activate autopilot. ( AP: Susan Walsh )
The NTSB said the Tesla was one of two vehicles involved in the crash. A second vehicle, a Toyota Prius, had been travelling in the opposite direction, and was hit when the Tesla turned into the other lane.
The NTSB is investigating the incident in a field near the small town of Williston, South Carolina, near the Georgia state line, which it said may have been due to fatigue.
"We don't know what happened, and we have no way of reconstructing what happened in the seconds before the accident," David Walker, the chairman of the NTSB, told CNN.
0 Reviews: