The autopilot of Tesla cars is investigated after a series of accidents. The United States traffic agency is investigating the sensor of Tesla automatic cars that allows them to move without anyone driving them after a figure of 11 accidents in similar circumstances that in addition to 17 injured, has claimed the life of a person.
Tesla car autopilot investigated after series of accidents
For years, Tesla electric cars have been considered the closest thing to the concept of autonomous driving on the market, but letting them take the driver’s seat entirely is not safe. The latest warning comes from an investigation opened by the US authorities against the manufacturer and the precision of its autopilot system, the set of sensors, chips and software that allows vehicles to orient themselves in the space around them without anyone. drive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the United States has considered 11 cases of accidents that occurred in recent years , in which vehicles belonging to Tesla, the Elon car brand, have been involved. Musk and emergency vehicles. The hypothesis that the investigation is considering is that there is a fault in the autopilot in Tesla cars.
The incidents that led NHTSA to initiate investigations are characterized by very similar dynamics. In all cases, the cars were set in automatic or assisted driving mode, and in all cases they collided at night with one or more emergency vehicles , such as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars. One of the hypotheses is that the hardware-software system created by Tesla has difficulty managing the unexpected of a vehicle stopped on the road and at the same time being disoriented by the flashing lights of emergency and assistance vehicles.
A possible confirmation will come from the investigation that will be developed in two phases: in the first, the statistical data of more than 750,000 vehicles of the Tesla Y, X, S and 3 models from 2014 to date will be analyzed in search of possible accidents; If the information allows the NHSTSA to doubt the reliability of the autopilot under certain conditions, technicians will conduct a deeper investigation to understand why . If the findings confirm the researchers’ hypotheses, the NHTSA could impose restrictions on the use of the autopilot mode on Tesla cars, to prevent it from activating in places or situations where automatic driving could be a risk.
