The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Wednesday that it will open an investigation into the Florida crash that killed a 66-year-old Tesla owner and a 67-year-old passenger. A 2015 Tesla car rear-ended a parked trailer, killing two people, both in the car.
A spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol said it was uncertain whether Autopilot was on at the time. Since Tesla started using Autopilot in 2016, NHTSA has launched 37 investigations involving Autopilot, including two that were added today. Of those, 30 were Tesla-related, including 11 fatal crashes with 15 fatalities.
In the filing, NHTSA also said it was investigating another crash, which occurred in June in California, and was related to a 2018 Model 3. Not only that, but NHTSA will dispatch a team to investigate the Cruise self-driving car crash in California in June.
NHTSA director Steven Cliff said last week that they are working to understand the risks posed by self-driving technology so that drivers, passengers, and pedestrians can be better protected. He also said that self-driving systems can save lives, such as automatic emergency braking.
In June, NHTSA released data showing that over a nearly 10-month period, about 400 crashes were related to cars equipped with some Autopilot assistance systems, including 273 Tesla vehicles. In second place is Honda, with 90, which says it has about 6 million vehicles on U.S. roads with partially automated driver-assistance systems.
NHTSA argues that the data should not be tied to a specific automaker because it doesn’t take into account how many cars the manufacturer has partially self-driving systems or how many kilometers those cars travel. NHTSA explained that it seems that Tesla’s data is not good, or even increased, but Tesla will monitor the car in real-time and get the crash report at the first time, other cars may not have such a function.
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