By Andrew J. Hawkins , transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeare

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving linked to hundreds of crashes, dozens of deaths

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2024-04-26 16:30:06

By Andrew J. Hawkins , transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.

In March 2023, a North Carolina student was stepping off a school bus when he was struck by a Tesla Model Y traveling at “highway speeds,” according to a federal investigation that published today. The Tesla driver was using Autopilot, the automaker’s advanced driver-assist feature that Elon Musk insists will eventually lead to fully autonomous cars.

The 17-year-old student who was struck was transported to a hospital by helicopter with life-threatening injuries. But what the investigation found after examining hundreds of similar crashes was a pattern of driver inattention, combined with the shortcomings of Tesla’s technology, resulting in hundreds of injuries and dozens of deaths.

Drivers using Autopilot or the system’s more advanced sibling, Full Self-Driving, “were not sufficiently engaged in the driving task,” and Tesla’s technology “did not adequately ensure that drivers maintained their attention on the driving task,” NHTSA concluded.