The cooperation with Tesla is good, said the new head of the US traffic safety agency NHTSA recently, after the series of procedures for the autopilot system this year gave the impression that the company had been targeted. However, the praise does not change the fact that the authority is now investigating another accident in which the Tesla assistant may have played a role. There were also two other similar incidents this week that also killed people.
3 fatal accidents involving Tesla
On Thursday, according to US media, the NHTSA announced that it had started a special crash investigation into an accident in California in early June, in which a man in a Tesla Model 3 took off after running over a red light and a curb and hit a pedestrian. The woman died and the driver was arrested on suspicion of drugs. Nevertheless, the special investigation is part of the NHTSA’s preoccupation with advanced driver assistance systems, which began in 2016 after a fatal accident involving a Tesla Model S in Florida; reported the agency, Bloomberg.
In addition, another Tesla accident occurred in the same state this week, which is ugly and reminiscent of 2016. For unknown reasons, two people in a Model S rammed a truck parked at a freeway rest area. A photo by Fox35 shows that the red Tesla has pushed itself under the trailer up to the B-pillar. The driver and her passenger died. According to a Reuters report, the NHTSA is also aware of this case and claims to be in contact with Tesla about it.
So, despite the parallels to the 2016 case in which a Model S ran under a crossing track, it’s not known if the agency sees evidence of prior Autopilot use. The same applies to another fatal accident involving Tesla in the USA. According to MSN, a motorcyclist died on Thursday after being hit from behind by a Tesla Model Y on a freeway near Los Angeles. The driver of the electric car was not injured.
Autopilot dominates special investigations
Previous rear-end collisions of Teslas with stationary emergency vehicles, which they say have been confirmed to activate the autopilot system, led to the NHTSA beginning a preliminary investigation last August (the photo above shows one in Connecticut from 2019). As of this June, five more such cases have been added and the process has moved to the next stage, making a recall more likely.
The special investigation of the current pedestrian accident in California could also provide the authority with material for this. According to Bloomberg, as of the latest, there are currently a total of 45 such procedures related to possible assistant accidents, and Tesla is said to have been involved in only nine of them.
If you like our news and you want to be the first to get notifications of the latest news, then follow us on Twitter and Facebook page and join our Telegram channel. Also, you can follow us on Google News for regular updates.