The report said the NTSB confirmed the Model S driver was using the advanced driver assistance features Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer lane-keeping assistance at the time.
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The NTSB’s report stated that the driver, 40-year-old Josh Brown, did indeed have Autopilot initiated at the time of the crash.
Israel-based technology firm Mobileye and Tesla Motors Inc. will end their collaboration on developing the Autopilot self-driving technology. In January, Tesla did add restrictions to Autopilot so that cars can not drive faster than 5 miles above the posted speed limit on residential roads or roads without center dividers.
The NTSB’s initial findings are consistent with how Florida police have already described the crash.
“I think in a partnership, we need to be there on all aspects of how the technology is being used, and not simply providing technology and not being in control of how it is being used”, Mobileye chief technical officer Amnon Shashua said while speaking to analysts after the company released its second-quarter earnings.
The separation between the companies, however, is believed to be the result of the auto crash that involved a Tesla Model S while it was in Autopilot.
Joshua Brown was killed when his vehicle drove under the truck and trailer unit.
A Florida Highway Patrol investigation is continuing and the police force has no plans to criminally charge the truck driver, Sergeant Kim Montes said Tuesday. “After exiting from underneath the semitrailer, the vehicle coasted at a shallow angle off the right side of the roadway, traveled approximately 297 feet, and then collided with a utility pole”. The automotive tech company that builds chips and software for driver-assistance systems said that it is not in the company’s best interest to move forward with the Palo Alto electric vehicle maker.
The agency sent a slew of questions to Tesla earlier this month about how many complaints it has received about Autopilot from owners.
Some have speculated that the rift between the two companies may be rooted in the fatal May 7 accident involving a Tesla Model S that crashed into a tractor-trailer. Mobileye manufactures chips for the electric vehicle maker’s semi-automated Autopilot system.
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Mobileye’s current system relies heavily on a single camera, but its next-gen system will fuse data from other sensors, notably LIDAR, the laser-imaging system that Google cars use and that most automakers are experimenting with now.
