At the end of last month, the Tesla Model S electric car had an accident, as a result of which the driver died. Then the car crashed into a barrier fence of the road, which, given the high speed of the vehicle, led to the death of a person. The deceased, as it turned out, has a brother, and now he is trying to prove that the cause of the accident is an error in the automatic control system of the electric vehicle.
In order to prove his point of view, the man drove along the section of the highway where the accident happened, on exactly the same electric car. Tesla Inc.
refutes the words of the relative of the deceased, arguing that the Autopilot behaves objectively and correctly on the road of almost any complexity. Tesla confirmed that at the time of the accident the electric car was driving under the control of the autopilot system, which gave the driver sound signals, demanding that we put our hands on the steering wheel in order to take control of the car.
The accident in question occurred on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California, USA. The deceased's brother claims that he repeatedly heard Tesla driver's complaints that she leads strangely in a zone with a separator near the barrier. Apparently, this time the driver simply did not take care of his safety or forgot about the problem. According to the brother of the deceased, he even drove his car to the dealership, where he asked to solve the problem with the autopilot and its incorrect work.
In the center, nothing could be done because the problem could not be reproduced. Recently, Tesla said that the appeal in question was not registered, that is, it was not. Confirms the words of the management of the Center and the headquarters of the company.
Representatives of Tesla Inc. lead statistics, according to which the problem place of the company's cars drove tens of thousands of times (only 85 thousand) and no one was hurt, the electric cars worked in normal mode. A little later, the company made another
statement . According to representatives of the automaker, the driver, having received signals about the need to keep his hands on the steering wheel, did not do this, although he had about five seconds and 150 meters in order to remedy the situation and avoid colliding with the bump stop.
Not believing the company, I decided to check a statement about a computer crash while driving and a journalist who owns the exact same car as the driver who died in an accident - Tesla Model S. The journalist decided to share the results of his tests. The video shows that shortly before approaching the fence, the autopilot begins to make a strange maneuver: it gradually shifts to the left of its lane. Seeing this, the driver puts his hands on the steering wheel and removes the car from the autopilot, avoiding an accident.
The problem on the said section of the road is that there is almost no visible markings showing the edge of the roadway. But the markup, which shows the edge of a parallel roadway, located in the meter, is clearly visible. The driver, who conducted the Tesla tests in this location, believes that the autopilot of the car simply takes the next markup as “native” and is further oriented on it.
A similar situation occurred in Chicago, USA, with the same electric vehicle model. The markup is also erased on the Chicago road, its damage is even stronger than in Mountain View. And Tesla Model S, when passing the road in the autopilot mode, behaved in the same way - it began to deviate towards the marking, which is much better visible.
Anyway, the police are on the side of Tesla Inc. for the time being. Not so long ago, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
published statistics on the safety of the Tesla autopilot system safety system. According to police, the frequency of airbag incidents has fallen by almost half after installing the autopilot system.
In any case, the rules of operation of the electric vehicle Tesla states that the Autopilot system is only a digital assistant driver. During his work hands should be kept on the steering wheel, and not rely on the computer, doing their own thing. Hands can be removed from the steering wheel while driving for no more than a few seconds, followed by an audible signal warning of the need to take control of the car.