Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash

Tesla is being investigated by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after a fatal crash involving the company’s Autopilot automated driving feature, which can do things like change lanes and adjust speed during highway driving for some of the company’s cars.

Tesla’s Autopilot can steer the car, detect obstacles and lane markings, and use the brakes, all on its own. It is obviously less capable than a human driver and lacks the sophistication and high-detail sensors seen in more mature autonomous car-projects like Google’s.

Tesla has been criticized for promoting the convenience of Autopilot,  the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project, Chris Urmson, has said his company’s experiments have proved that humans can’t be relied on to do that, because they quickly come to trust that the car knows what it’s doing. All the same, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said his company’s data suggests Autopilot is twice as safe as human drivers.

We don’t yet know exactly what happened in May’s fatal accident. Tesla’s statement emphasizes that the driver knew he should always keep an eye on what Autopilot was doing. But if NHTSA finds the design of Autopilot to blame, Tesla could be forced to issue a recall, or might feel it has to dumb down the feature. That could hurt both Tesla and enthusiasm for the technology in general.

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