Washington – The agency that oversees transportation security in the United States determined that the driver of a Tesla SUV that died two years ago when he crashed in Silicon Valley was playing on his cell phone at the time of the accident.
The president of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Robert Sumwalt, said at the start of a hearing on Tuesday, that partially automatic driving systems, such as Tesla Autopilot, cannot drive a vehicle by themselves, but drivers still use them without paying attention.
He added that the NTSB made recommendations to six automakers in 2017 to end the problem and that only Tesla refrained from responding.
The board will determine a cause of the crash during the hearing and make recommendations to prevent something similar from happening again.
Sumwalt said government regulators have ignored previous board recommendations to take action and prevent these mishaps.
The March 2018 accident with a Model X SUV killed Apple engineer Walter Huang when the vehicle suddenly turned and crashed into a concrete barrier that divides the highway with an exit ramp.
Just before the crash, the Tesla turned left to a paved area between the traffic lanes and the exit ramp, the NTSB added. It crashed towards the end of the concrete barrier. The car’s frontal crash did not alert Huang and its automatic emergency braking system was not activated, the NTSB added.
In addition, Huang also did not slow down and no turning movement was detected to avoid the crash, board employees reported.
The NTSB investigators had previously found that the system was confused at a highway exit and that that was a factor in the crash.
“If you own a car with partial automation, you don’t own an autonomous car,” Sumwalt said in the initial allegations. “That means that when you drive in the supposed ‘self-driving’ mode, you can’t read a book, you can’t watch a movie or a TV show, you can’t send text messages and you can’t play video games.”
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