The system was engaged at the time of the crash, but that is only part of the story. Brown posted many photos on his Facebook page of himself skydiving, riding motorcycles, and engaging in physical activities, often with his father, Warren.
Advertisement
The dream ride of self-driving cars in the United States without causing a single fatality have come to an end as the U.S. government announced that an accident involving a Tesla Model S Sedan has killed its 40-year-old owner after the inbuilt camera of the vehicle supposedly failed to differentiate between the bright sky and a tractor-trailer. Otherwise, the system would quit and I’d have to take full control. Semi-autonomous features can be found on high-end vehicles from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and Volvo. A former employee of Brown’s, Stan Staneski, said Brown drove fast, but he considered him a safe driver. From what we know about this particular crash, there are a number of elements at play.
The first known death involving a self-driving auto presents a dilemma: who was at fault? The transition to the new technology could radically transform how people travel in the future. While the same statistic is 94 million miles before a crash for USA. With more than 35,000 people killed on the nation’s roads a year ago, the benefits could be enormous.
The NHTSA has stressed the potential life-saving advantages of a driving system which in theory should eliminate the human errors that cause an estimated 94 per cent of the fatal traffic accidents occurring in the U.S. each year.
“Bottom line, the media attention may weigh (the first major incident was always a headline risk), but we don’t think much has changed”, he said in a client note.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was now investigating 25,000 Model S sedans that were equipped with Autopilot.
Many automakers and technology companies are trying to make autonomous cars work well in cities. Some of these systems work better than others and, in my experience, none of them work well when lane lines are hard to see or aren’t there at all.
BMW chief executive Harald Krueger said at an event in Munich on Friday that the crash shows the technology behind autonomous driving isn’ mature yet.
Tesla noted that drivers must manually enable the Autopilot system: “Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not ideal and still requires the driver to remain alert”. Situations like this are a challenge for human drivers as well as the engineers that design autonomous cars.
Still, the tragedy is not likely to slow down the self-driving vehicle industry.
Advertisement
Tesla, known for its high-end electric cars, unveiled the system past year which allows the vehicle to automatically change lanes, manage speed and even hit the brakes.
