The US authorities have opened a new investigation into a fatal accident involving a Tesla Model Y. The car, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Nhtsa), could have caused the accident because it had the autonomous driving system active.
The incident occurred on July 21st. The man driving the Tesla was killed after the car hit a truck in Warrenton, Virginia. The suspicion is that the Tesla was driven with a driver assistant at the time. Despite the name, Tesla’s features still require the driver to always remain involved and ready to regain control of the car at any moment.
From 2019 to today, 739 accidents in the US have involved Tesla in Autopilot
The US authority has been investigating incidents of this type since 2016. On May 7 of that year, in fact, the first fatal accident aboard a Tesla was recorded, and the dynamics immediately turned on the Nhtsa headlights on Tesla’s Autopilot. That of last July, however, is the 23rd under investigation by the American authorities. So far there are hundreds of accidents allegedly caused by Tesla’s Autopilot.
Last June an analysis by the Washington Post, based on data from the US authority, revealed that as of that date there were 736 accidents in the United States alone attributable to Tesla’s “Autopilot” mode. The data taken into consideration started from 2019. And the newspaper highlighted how the numbers were constantly growing in the 4 years analysed. But it is also true that the increase in accidents is somehow linked to the increase in the number of cars produced by Elon Musk’s team on the market year after year.
Wp: the number of dead and seriously injured is growing
The number of deaths and serious injuries associated with Autopilot has also grown significantly, according to The Washington Post. When American authorities first published a partial account of accidents involving Autopilot in 2022, they counted three deaths definitely linked to this technology.
The most recent data includes at least 17 fatal accidents, 11 of them since May 2022, and five serious injuries. The case of the Model Y involved in the accident last July in Virginia was excluded from the count.
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