How did Tesla die that day?

In March 2018, an Apple employee who was driving autonomously using an autopilot on a Tesla Model X crashed into a wall at a junction of a highway and died.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Commission (NTSB) released a final report on the cause of the accident at the time and said that the driver was playing games on a smartphone. The report was compiled by investigating the accident for two years. The site of the accident was due to a concrete wall at a V-shaped fork going down from Highway 101 to Highway 85, a short distance from San Jose, California.

The driver of the accident vehicle was driving from a lane where only carpool vehicles with multiple people could run, moving to the left lane and changing to State 85. It is thought that it was running faster than the normal driving lane, but it is said that the speed at the time of the accident was 114 km/h. In this accident, Model X was cut into two front and rear and collided with two subsequent vehicles, and Model X fired due to the ignition of the battery. It is said that only one dead Apple employee was found in the vehicle.

NTSB said it appears to have believed that the driver will be able to drive fully automatically with the autopilot turned on. Tesla has proposed a new standard system to monitor drivers, and Apple has proposed creating rules that prohibit all employees from using mobile phones while driving only in an emergency.

Tesla does not define autopilot as an autonomous driving system. This feature holds the hand on the steering wheel and pays close attention to allowing a person to switch to driving at any time. Tesla’s vehicle urges the driver to always control the vehicle with visual and audio warnings when the driver releases his or her hand from the steering wheel, but the deceased ignores these warnings while driving, and the steering wheel was not touched for six seconds before the crash.

There was also a case where a driver who was driving autonomously while drunk and drowsy was arrested, although it did not lead to an accident. While there are statistics that 71% of Americans do not believe in autonomous driving, people who ride are still overconfident of the new technology, the autopilot function. Related information can be found here .