Texas police will hand over search warrants to Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) today to provide information that will facilitate the investigation of the company’s car crash, it told Reuters senior law enforcement officer.
The news comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said inspections had shown that the car’s autopilot system had not been turned on.
–
Harris County Police Mark Herman said evidence, including witness testimony, made it clear that no one was in the Model S driver’s seat on Saturday night when the car crashed into a tree and killed two people.
Herman said Musk issued a statement Monday afternoon saying the data extracted (so far) from the company precluded the use of the autopilot system.
“If he is writing this, if he already has the data, he has not informed us,” Herman told Reuters. “We look forward to this data.”
After the preliminary investigation, the police are “almost 99.9 percent sure” that no one was behind the wheel, the Wall Street Journal wrote.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which regulates vehicle safety, has formed a special investigation team, which it sent on the spot. In turn, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States (The National Transportation Safety Board – NTSB) visited the scene yesterday.
At the very beginning, the police admitted that it was not clear whether the driving assistance system was turned on during the accident, reminds DPA.
The crash is the 28th with a Tesla car investigated by NHTSA.
The NTSB, on the other hand, removed Tesla as a party in a previous fatal crash investigation in 2018, after the company published details of the inspections in the case without permission, Reuters noted.
In the accident on Saturday, the Tesla Model S 2019 was traveling at high speed near Houston, when it failed to overcome a turn and went off the road, crashing into a tree and exploding in flames, Herman said..
Authorities found the bodies of two men in the car, one in the front passenger seat and the owner of the car in the back seat.
Tesla’s autopilot is a driver assistance system that handles some controls and sometimes allows drivers to get their hands off the wheel. But Tesla says its features “require active control by the driver and do not make the car autonomous.”
In his tweet, Musk dismissed the idea that the semi-automated driving software was to blame: Driving), and Tesla a separate beta semi-automated driver assistance system that still requires driver supervision.
Tesla has access to operational and diagnostic data delivered to its servers at “regular intervals” from the car confiscated by the police. It is unclear whether investigators will be able to extract data directly from the event recorder in the severely burned vehicle, Reuters notes.
Just hours before the crash, Musk wrote on Twitter: “Tesla with autopilot on is now approaching 10 times less risk of an accident than the average vehicle.”
Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle https://t.co/6lGy52wVhC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2021
In his message, Musk introduced and information about the company’s car accidents in the first quarter of the year:
“In the first quarter, we recorded one crash for every 4.19 million miles traveled (1 mile = 1.61 km) in which drivers engaged autopilot. For those who drive without autopilot but with our active safety features, we recorded one accident every 2.05 million miles traveled.For those who drive without autopilot and without our active safety features, we recorded one accident every 978 thousand miles traveled.Compared, the latest NHTSA data show that a car crash occurs every 484,000 miles in the United States. “
–
