A Tesla Model S, which the driver says was in Autopilot mode at the time, crashed into a parked police car in Laguna Beach, California. The police car was unoccupied and the driver of the Tesla suffered minor injuries. Photos of the incident were captured by the Laguna Beach Police Department. This content is imported from Facebook. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. On Tesla's website, the company describes the Tesla Model S as having "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." However, as is the company's standard practice after a crash of this sort, it also issued a press statement saying that “Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn’t make the car impervious to all accidents.” Multiple Autopilot incidents this year, including a crash with a fire truck and drivers trying to use the technology to get out of DUIs, have put the tech under increasing scrutiny. Federal investigators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have gone to Utah to gain a better understanding of the circumstances leading to a crash involving Autopilot from May. While Tesla's incidents have garnered negative press, no incident has been as damaging to reputation of self-driving cars as Uber's fatal self-driving accident in Arizona. Self-driving cars clearly have some work to do. Source: Reuters 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>The scene of the accident involving a Tesla vehicle running in autopilot mode in Laguna Beach, California on May 29th, 2018. Photo : AP A Tesla sedan running in its autopilot mode crashed into a parked police car in Laguna Beach, California on Tuesday, per the Associated Press, resulting in “minor injuries” to the driver. The officer in charge of the cruiser at the time of the crash was not inside the vehicle and thus avoided being injured. Advertisement According to USA Today, the man who was driving the Tesla said he had engaged the autopilot mode prior to the impact—the latest in a series of incidents involving the feature to some degree: [Police Sgt. Jim Cota] said the luxury electric car crashed in almost the same place as another Tesla about a year ago. The driver, he said, also pointed to the Autopilot system as being engaged. The crash comes as Tesla has been facing scrutiny involving Autopilot. Since March, a driver died when his Model X SUV crossed the center divider in Mountain View, Calif., while in Autopilot mode. And another driver in Salt Lake City was injured in a crash when her car hit a parked fire truck. In both cases, Tesla says it can tell from its logs that drivers were either distracted or ignored the car’s warnings to take control. Tesla has repeatedly emphasized that the autopilot system is only intended to assist, not replace, an alert human driver, and requires drivers to agree that they understand how to use it before it can be activated. It also insists the accidents are primarily the result of human error, not the autopilot feature itself. In a statement to USA Today, the manufacturer wrote, “When using Autopilot, drivers are continuously reminded of their responsibility to keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of the vehicle at all times.” The scene of the accident involving a Tesla vehicle running in autopilot mode in Laguna Beach, California on May 29th, 2018. Photo : AP However, last week Tesla settled a lawsuit alleging the semi-autonomous autopilot feature was “essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous.” The $5 million settlement dropped any usage of the word “dangerous,” according to Reuters, and instead was officially paid out to resolve disputes over delayed updates to the Model S and Model X autopilot features—though Tesla did seem to back away from its prior claims that media reports regarding autopilot crashes were “disingenuous,” “inaccurate,” and “sensationalist.” In April, Bloomberg reported that safety advocates were becoming increasingly skeptical of Tesla’s claims that autopilot mode reduced crashes by 40 percent, saying the company was misrepresenting National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data that itself was not fully released to the public. By May, the NHTSA was publicly distancing itself from Tesla’s use of the statistic. Another study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found a much lower reduction of 13 percent, though spokesman Russ Rader told Bloomberg they could not attribute that to any specific feature of a Tesla vehicle. CEO Elon Musk recently committed to regularly releasing safety data on autopilot, per the Verge. Advertisement Though engineers say that self-driving cars are likely going to be safer than human-piloted ones—humans are in the aggregate very unsafe drivers—there’s something about either the concept or the companies developing them that seems to send up red flags in the minds of the public. A recent AAA study found that 73 percent of respondents didn’t trust the cars in April 2018, following a string of accidents involving Tesla autopilot as well a lethal accident in March involving a self-driving Uber vehicle. [AP/USA Today]<doc-sep>"There is a serious argument that the incremental, 'level 2/3' approach to autonomous cars followed by Tesla, where the human isn't driving but might have to grab the wheel at any time, is actively dangerous and a technical dead end," tweeted, a partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The driver of a Tesla Inc TSLA.O Model S crashed into an unoccupied, parked police vehicle in Laguna Beach, California, on Tuesday and the driver told investigators the Tesla was in "Autopilot" mode at the time, police said. The driver suffered minor injuries, Laguna Beach Sergeant Jim Cota said, who posted photos of the crash scene showing extensive damage to the front end of the Tesla and the rear side of the police vehicle. Autopilot is a semi-autonomous technology that the company says is a form of advanced cruise control. “Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn’t make the car impervious to all accidents,” the company said in a statement after the accident and could not immediately confirm the driver’s report that the vehicle was in Autopilot mode. Several crashes and fire incidents involving Tesla vehicles this year has been a near constant headache for Chief Executive Elon Musk, who boasts that his company’s vehicles are among the safest in the industry. Slideshow ( 2 images ) Earlier this month, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was sending a team to investigate the crash of a Tesla vehicle in South Jordan, Utah. The driver was traveling at 60 miles (97 km) per hour when the Model S smashed into a fire truck stopped at a red light, according to police. Police in Utah said data from Tesla showed that the driver enabled Autopilot about 1 minute and 22 seconds before the crash. The report said she took her hands off the steering wheel “within two seconds” of engaging the system and then did not touch the steering wheel for the next 80 seconds, until the crash happened. NHTSA is also investigating a fatal crash in March that involved a Tesla Model X using Autopilot that struck a highway divider. The agency is also probing the January crash of a Tesla vehicle apparently traveling in Autopilot that struck a parked fire truck. Both of those incidents were also in California. The National Transportation Safety Board is also probing four Tesla crashes that have occurred since last year, including three under review by NHTSA. Tesla’s Model S owner’s manual warns some Autopilot functions “cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles or objects especially when traveling over 50 mph (80 kph)” and when a vehicle ahead of the driver “moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you.”