US police investigate another fatal Tesla accident
The California Highway Police are investigating a fatal accident involving a Tesla vehicle. The California Highway Patrol announced that the vehicle had crashed into an overturned truck.
The 35-year-old driver was killed in the process. The truck driver and a helper were seriously injured. The authorities did not say whether the Tesla’s autopilot was on.
She is currently investigating 24 accidents in which Tesla vehicles with the autopilot switched on were involved. Tesla has not yet been reached for comment.
A TV report about the accident:
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Five minutes before the fatal crash, a truck overturned on the highway and blocked two lanes, Reuters quoted from the police report. A 50-year-old truck driver and a 30-year-old motorist who stopped to help the casualty sustained serious injuries when the 35-year-old Tesla driver apparently crashed into the overturned vehicle at high speed and was killed.
New autopilot software
Tesla boss Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized that a Tesla that is operated with autopilot is safer than a car that is only controlled by a human driver.
The autopilot is not about fully autonomous driving, but rather an assistance system in which the driver has to keep his hands near the steering wheel in order to be able to intervene at any time. Steering, braking and speed control are partially automated.
In the US, since last October, a few Tesla owners have had the opportunity to test the latest autopilot software called FSD (Full Self Driving) as a beta version. According to CEO Elon Musk, there are now several thousand customers, as US media recently reported. The FSD software is not yet available in Europe.
According to Musk, the start of a larger test phase depends on how the current run works, the Tesla boss announced via Twitter. However, he would be surprised if a major beta phase started later than June 2021.
(dsc/sda/reuters)
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