A Tesla driving in “autopilot” mode crashed in March when the vehicle sped up and steered into a concrete barrier, according to a new report on the fatal collision, raising fresh concerns about Elon Musk’s technology. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that four seconds before the 23 March crash on a highway in Silicon Valley, which killed Walter Huang, 38, the car stopped following the path of a vehicle in front of it. Three seconds before the impact, it sped up from 62mph to 70.8mph, and the car did not brake or steer away, the NTSB said. Walter Huang, who died in the Tesla crash, with his wife. Photograph: Hand-out/Minami Tamaki LLP The report – which said the Tesla battery was breached, causing the car to be engulfed in flames – comes after after the company has repeatedly sought to deflect blame on to the driver and the local highway conditions. Musk has also aggressively attacked journalists writing about this crash and other recent autopilot collisions, complaining that the negative attention would discourage people from using his technology. The NTSB report, however, has once again raised serious safety questions about the limits and performance of the autopilot technology, which is meant to assist drivers and has faced growing scrutiny from experts and regulators. Mark Fong, an attorney for Huang’s family, also said the report appeared to “contradict Tesla’s characterization” of the collision. Following numerous embarrassing autopilot crashes, including Teslas colliding into a police vehicle and firetruck, the company has pointed to its manual which warns that the technology cannot detect all objects and that drivers should remain attentive. After the fatal crash in the city of Mountain View, Tesla noted that the driver had received multiple warnings to put his hands on the wheel and said he did not intervene during the five seconds before the car hit the divider. Emergency personnel at the scene of the crash in Mountain View, California. Photograph: AP But the NTSB report revealed that these alerts were made more than 15 minutes before the crash. In the 60 seconds prior to the collision, the driver also had his hands on the wheel on three separate occasions, though not in the final six seconds, according to the agency. As the car headed toward the barrier, there was no “precrash braking” or “evasive steering movement”, the report added. Fong said in a statement: “The NTSB report provides facts that support our concerns that there was a failure of both the Tesla Autopilot and the automatic braking systems of the car.” “The Autopilot system should never have caused this to happen,” he added. “There’s clearly a technology failure,” said Erick Guerra, an assistant professor in city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. “The technology is just not up to doing as much as people hope it can do.” Tesla declined to comment on the NTSB report. In previous statements, the company emphasized that the highway safety barrier had been damaged in an earlier crash, contributing to the severity of the collision. The NTSB confirmed this previous damage. Some critics have argued that the Tesla “autopilot” branding and Musk’s hype about his technology can be misleading and problematic given that the current capability of his cars continues to be fairly limited. Experts say the development of autonomous technology is entering a particularly dangerous phase when drivers are lulled into a false sense of security but expected to intervene to avoid crashes and other problems. “In an ideal automated system, it should really be taking over when the driver fails … rather than forcing the driver to take over when it fails,” said Guerra, who was not involved with the NTSB report. The NTSB, which has publicly feuded with Tesla over the release of information during the investigation, said it intended to issue safety recommendations to prevent similar crashes. The problems with the damaged highway divider do not “absolve Tesla of responsibility”, said Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and expert in autonomous cars. “That doesn’t mean they are off the hook.” Tesla’s designers may not have anticipated this specific kind of crash, he added: “The technology is being deployed before there is a clear sense of … what is adequately safe.”<doc-sep>The driver of a Tesla vehicle using the company's partially self-driving technology did not touch the steering wheel in the six seconds before he was killed in an accident in Mountain View, Calif., and the vehicle did not alert him to do so, a federal panel said Thursday. The Model X driver, Walter Huang, died March 23 when his vehicle crashed into a concrete lane divider and careened into oncoming lanes, obliterating the crossover and igniting a fire. The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday in a preliminary report on the crash that Tesla's system "did not detect the driver's hands on the steering wheel" for 26 of the final 60 seconds leading up to the collision, including the final six seconds. Tesla instructs users of its partially self-driving system, dubbed Autopilot, to keep their hands on the wheel at all times to stay safe. The system — which steers, brakes and accelerates in highway lanes — is designed to deliver audible and visual alerts when the driver does not comply. Days after the crash, Tesla said in a blog post that "the reason this crash was so severe is because the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had been crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash." More:Safety investigators boot Tesla from probe into fatal crash of SUV on autopilot More:Tesla stock dives as feds investigate deadly Calif. crash More:Elon Musk says Tesla will soon open body shops and a Shanghai factory, but not motorcycles Tensions between NTSB and Tesla escalated following the company's public statements, and the panel said it would no longer communicate with Tesla about its accident investigation. Tesla, which said it had withdrawn from the investigation, said it would file a complaint with Congress and accused the agency of being more concerned with "press headlines" than promoting safety. In its preliminary report released Thursday, NTSB acknowledged that the crash attenuator flagged by Tesla had been "previously damaged" in a single-vehicle crash 11 days earlier. The panel did not say whether it triggered the severity of the incident. NTSB said it had not yet identified a "probable cause" of the incident or any recommendations on responses. Tesla on Thursday declined to comment beyond its March blog post. The company's Autopilot system has faced intense scrutiny over its safety performance. CEO Elon Musk has bristled at news coverage that has placed a spotlight on Autopilot, saying that conventional cars are much more dangerous. For the last 18 minutes, 55 seconds of the driver's 32-minute trip, Autopilot was "engaged" the entire time, NTSB said. The system alerted Huang three times to put his hands back on the steering wheel — each time occurring 15 minutes before the accident, according to NTSB. The driver had set the adaptive cruise control to 75 miles per hour — and in the three seconds leading up to the crash, the Tesla accelerated from 62 to 70.8 mph after it was "no longer following a lead vehicle" that was there a few seconds earlier, according to NTSB. The panel also noted that the Tesla's battery system was breached in the crash and became engulfed in flames shortly after bystanders removed Huang from the vehicle. The battery also reignited five days later in a holding pen and was extinguished by local fire officials, NTSB said. Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.<doc-sep>Federal investigators said Thursday in a preliminary report about a fatal Tesla crash in California that the driver did not have his hands on the wheel for six seconds before he collided with a highway barricade. The National Transportation Safety Board's initial report also stated that the vehicle, a Tesla (TSLA) Model X, had the Autopilot function engaged ahead of the March 23 crash. Tesla's Autopilot feature is not fully autonomous. It handles some functions, such as keeping a car in its lane or braking behind other vehicles, but not all. Drivers are expected to keep their hands on the wheel and engaged at all times when the feature is activated. The NTSB said on March 27 that two officials would conduct a field investigation into the incident. Its initial findings, posted online Thursday, back up what Tesla said in the days after the accident, which left the 38-year-old driver dead. But the report does not draw an explicit conclusion about the cause of the crash. Related: Tesla stock up 10% after Elon Musk promises Model 3 production has turned a corner The NTSB's preliminary report states that all "aspects of the crash remain under investigation as the NTSB determines the probable cause, with the intent of issuing safety recommendations to prevent similar crashes." A Tesla spokesperson declined to comment on the NTSB report, and instead pointed to a blog post the company issued on March 30. The blog post states: "The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." Related: Elon Musk tells shareholders Tesla won't run out of cash any time soon The NTSB report offers some details about the moments leading up to the fatal impact: The Model X's autopilot was set to keep the car's speed at 75 mph. About eight seconds before the crash, the Tesla was traveling behind another vehicle that was traveling 65 mph, which likely would have caused Autopilot to keep the Tesla at a slower pace. Then, at four seconds before the collision, the Tesla was no longer trailing another car, according to the report. The vehicle then began to accelerate in the moments before the vehicle collided with the highway barrier. The driver's hands were on the wheel for about 34 of the last 60 seconds before impact, the report states, and they were not detected on the wheel at all in the final six seconds. Related: Tesla Model X was in autopilot before fatal crash Earlier in the drive, the Tesla did emit two visual and one auditory alert to the driver to take control of the wheel. "These alerts were made more than 15 minutes prior to the crash," the report states. Tesla has faced criticism for calling its system Autopilot because the name implies the car can drive on its own. Some say it lulls drivers into a false sense of security, making them vulnerable to a crash. But Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, have slammed press reports about crashes. "The consequences of the public not using Autopilot, because of an inaccurate belief that it is less safe, would be extremely severe," Tesla's March blog post said. Tesla has repeatedly referred to a government report from January 2017, which has been widely criticized, that found that Autopilot reduced crash rates for Tesla by 40%.<doc-sep>Back in March, a Tesla Model X crashed into a highway barrier while reportedly operating on Autopilot, killing the driver of the vehicle. An independent review of the incident by the National Transportation Safety Board has reached a preliminary conclusion, and found that the Tesla’s Autopilot may have actually caused the crash. According to the report, the Tesla was following another car on the highway with the adaptive cruise control setting on. While cruise control was set to 75 mph, the car was moving at only 65, keeping pace with the car in front. While coming up on a left-hand exit, the Tesla began steering left approximately seven seconds before the crash, diverting into the area between the main highway and the exit road. At four seconds before the crash, the Tesla began speeding up because there was no car in front of it to trigger adaptive cruise control. At the time of impact, the car was moving at 70.8 mph into a barricade. Here is the full timeline of events from the NTSB review: The Autopilot system was engaged on four separate occasions during the 32-minute trip, including a continuous operation for the last 18 minutes 55 seconds prior to the crash. During the 18-minute 55-second segment, the vehicle provided two visual alerts and one auditory alert for the driver to place his hands on the steering wheel. These alerts were made more than 15 minutes prior to the crash. During the 60 seconds prior to the crash, the driver’s hands were detected on the steering wheel on three separate occasions, for a total of 34 seconds; for the last 6 seconds prior to the crash, the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. At 8 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was following a lead vehicle and was traveling about 65 mph. At 7 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla began a left steering movement while following a lead vehicle. At 4 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was no longer following a lead vehicle. At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected. The report also notes that the crash was made worse by a damaged crash attenuator, which normally secures the sides of highways to reduce the severity of impacts. However, the crash attenuator that the Tesla impacted had been damaged a week prior, when another car hit the barrier at the same spot. These are only preliminary findings, and the investigation still raises some questions, such as why the vehicle’s driver never put his hands on the wheel before the crash. It’s also an open question whether this crash will lead to Tesla implementing some changes to its Autopilot software to prevent similar incidents. But hopefully, whether thanks to a software update or more cautious users, this type of crash will never happen again. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>
A navigation mistake by Autopilot contributed to the grisly death of a Tesla Model X owner in Mountain View, California, according to a preliminary report released today by the National Transportation Safety Board. Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was traveling south on US Highway 101 on March 23rd when his Model X P100D smashed into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. The front end of his SUV was ripped apart, the vehicle caught fire, and two other cars crashed into the rear end. Huang was removed from the vehicle by rescuers and brought to Stanford Hospital, where he died from injuries sustained in the crash. The agency says that Huang’s hands were detected on the steering wheel for a total of 34 seconds, on three separate occasions, in the 60 seconds before impact. NTSB also confirms Tesla’s position that the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering wheel in the six seconds before the crash. There were two visual alerts and one auditory alert for the driver to place his hands on the steering wheel, but those alerts were made more than 15 minutes before the crash. Huang’s Model X was following a lead vehicle using adaptive cruise control and autosteer, and traveling about 65 mph, eight seconds before the crash. A second later, the Tesla began a left steering movement. Then the vehicle the Tesla had been following moved, causing Huang’s vehicle’s speed to increase from 62 mph to 70.8 mph. There was no braking or evasive steering detected prior to impact. A Tesla spokesperson declined to comment on the preliminary report, and instead pointed to the company’s prior statement on the deadly crash. In that statement, the company said that a damaged safety barrier, called a crash attenuator, contributed to the severity. Tesla also said that Huang had “about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view” of the concrete divider with the crushed safety barrier before the incident. Huang’s family has retained a law firm and is exploring their legal options, local reports say. a left steering movement NTSB confirms the attenuator had been damaged in the previous week when a Toyota Prius crashed in the same location. The damage likely made the attenuator ineffective and contributed to Huang’s death. The battery from the totaled Model X began to smoke later that afternoon while in the impound lot, according to the NTSB report. “The battery was monitored with a thermal imaging camera, but no active fire operations were conducted,” NTSB says. “On March 28, [five] days after the crash, the battery reignited.” Firefighters responded and extinguished the blaze. The report follows the decision by NTSB to boot Tesla from its investigation into the deadly crash, which the agency claims was because Tesla had released “investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by” the agency. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also reportedly hung up on the head of the agency during a heated call concerning the investigation. The NTSB said Tesla is still a party in two other ongoing investigations into non-fatal accidents: one from January 22nd, 2018 involving Autopilot, and one from last summer involving a battery fire. In May, Musk vowed to begin releasing a quarterly safety report about Autopilot.