• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Driver in Tesla Autopilot Crash May Have Been ‘Playing Harry Potter on TV’

July 4, 2016
Reading time: 3 minutes

Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

 
Steve Jurvetson/Flickr
Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

Tesla Motors shares fell 2.5% late last week after news broke that a Model S driver in Florida had died at the wheel in May, after the vehicle’s autopilot failed to spot a large, white tractor trailer crossing its path.

The incident, the first fatal accident in 130 million miles of roadway experience, is now under investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In a blog post last Thursday, Tesla noted that conventional vehicles record a death every 90 million miles.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

“What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S,” the automaker reported. “Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly-lit sky, so the brake was not applied.”

In the post, Tesla took great pains to emphasize that it “disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is a new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled,” RenewEconomy reports.

The disclaimer specifies that Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times,” and that “you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle” while using it. But within days of the initial blog post, Electrek was reporting that the driver—Model S enthusiast Joshua D. Brown of Canton, Ohio, who’d previously credited the autopilot feature with saving his life in a near miss caught on video—may have been watching a movie when the fatal crash occurred.

Brown was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” and “went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him,” Okemah Express LLC driver Frank Baressi told AP. “It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter-mile down the road.” Baressi “acknowledged he couldn’t see the movie, only heard it,” the news service notes.

Electrek points out that the police report on the incident “made no mention of a movie playing,” adding that the video playback in the Model S “is locked to only work for the rear camera feed.” The Florida Highway Patrol later reported that a portable DVD player was found in the car.

The crash was just the latest in a series of announcements that have taken some of the sheen off Tesla’s flawless public image. Earlier in June, the company’s stock dropped 6% on reports that the NHTSA was investigating its suspension systems. Tesla said NHTSA was engaging in “routine screening”, and denied that the non-disclosure clause attached to some of its free repairs was designed to prevent customer complaints to the federal agency.

The company “pledged to work with the safety agency to amend the wording of its non-disclosure agreements,” CBC reported at the time. “The NHTSA confirmed it is looking into Tesla’s non-disclosure agreements.”

The New York Times described the “introduction of a nondisclosure agreement into the relationship between car owner and automaker” as “an unusual practice by an unconventional company whose founder, Elon Musk, has roots in Silicon Valley, not Detroit.” After the NHTSA described the provision as “troublesome”, a Tesla spokesperson told the Times that “‘to remove any doubt,’ the automaker would modify the language of the documents to make clear that the goal ‘is to benefit customers, while not harming us for doing a good deed.’”

In May, meanwhile, CBC picked up a San José Mercury News report that Tesla would “look into allegations that a subcontractor at one of its paint facilities was paid as little as US$5 an hour in an unsafe work environment.”

Americans doing similar work in the same part of the country would average US$52 per hour.

“Ostensibly coming to the U.S. in a supervisory role at a BMW plant in South Carolina,” an employee from Slovenia “instead found himself working in numerous hands-on positions at Tesla’s facility in California, which led him to have many injuries, including two broken legs and a concussion suffered during a third-storey fall,” CBC reported. Musk responded that he “will investigate” the story and “make it right.”



in Auto & Alternative Vehicles, Climate & Society, Demand & Distribution, Health & Safety, Jobs & Training, Jurisdictions, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mike Mozart/Flickr
Ending Emissions

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
322
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures
Canada

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
322
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
124
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
121
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
341
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
313
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
322
Next Post

Past presents warning on greater warming

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}