Federal highway authorities are examining how Tesla’s semi-autonomous “Autopilot” system reacts to obstacles in its path in the wake of the first fatal crash involving the technology.
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“The driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the vehicle”, the company said in an emailed statement.
Consumer Reports, which ranks Tesla cars very highly, has called on the company to disable Autopilot.
In its statement regarding the fatal crash, the company emphasized that Autopilot must be turned on by the driver, and it “requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled”.
“By marketing their feature as ‘Autopilot, ‘ Tesla gives consumers a false sense of security”, said Laura MacCleery, vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for CR.
A USA magazine, Consumer Reports, has called on electric auto company Tesla to disable its autonomous Autopilot mode after the driverless system was involved in two different accidents in the US. It was probably only a matter of time before we started to hear reports of accidents as not long after Tesla pushed out the beta version of Autopilot, we began seeing YouTube clips of drivers taking risks they probably shouldn’t have been taking while using the driver assistance system.
The magazine says in a statement that calling the system Autopilot promotes a unsafe assumption that Teslas can drive themselves. The SEC is now looking into whether the incident had information that Tesla should have disclosed ahead of time.
Investors may want to keep an eye out for a blog post from Tesla that says it is working on. Road and Track said on its website this week that Autopilot is a technological achievement that should make America proud.
Consumer Reports noted that Tesla’s press release announcing the feature promises to relieve drivers “of the most tedious and potentially risky aspects of road travel”. The company also recommends using the feature on center divider roads.
The Model X is the second Autopilot crash that has occured in the United States, the first involving a fatal crash with between a Model S and a tractor-trailer in Florida earlier in May. “At the same time, regulators urgently need to step up their oversight of cars with these active safety features”. And now Consumer Reports is jumping into the conversation with its own opinion about Autopilot.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, has previously said Autopilot is twice as safe as humans.
Ms MacCleery said that consumers “should never be guinea pigs for vehicle safety “beta” programs”. The automatic steering function, now in beta phase, is run in nearly 70,000 Tesla vehicles and has successfully been driven over 130 million miles.
Tesla has repeatedly said that its Autopilot system had been driven 130 million miles without a fatality. As arguably the most influential publication for reviewing and recommending products, the magazine’s opinion could impact Tesla vehicle sales. Most of the deaths were children sitting in the front passenger seat, but educating consumers and improving the technology provided dramatic improvements in what is now a standard safety feature.
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The root of the problem is distracted driving, and the only proper solution is fully autonomous cars.
