According to local officials, a Tesla Inc. electric car that “no one” claimed to be driving crashed late Saturday in Texas, erupting in flames and killing the two passengers. In a telephone interview, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said one victim was found in the front passenger seat of a 2019 Model S and the other in the back. After driving at high speeds and failing to make a right, the car crashed into a tree in the Carlton Woods neighborhood near The Woodlands.
According to Herman, the victims’ positions, comments, and other physical evidence indicate that “no one was driving the car at the time of impact.” “It’s all being looked into.”
Herman said his office is working with federal agencies, but wouldn’t say which ones, and that he didn’t know if the Autopilot feature was turned on. He added that the fire, which lasted four hours, needed more than 30,000 gallons of water to put out.
A request for comment from Tesla on Sunday went unanswered.
Tesla has been chastised by federal regulators for the fire risks associated with its battery packs and for failing to do enough to prevent drivers from abusing the driver-assist feature. “It’s time to avoid allowing drivers of every partially automated vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars,” the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said at a hearing last year.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has defended the safety record of his company’s vehicles. On Twitter this week, he posted a study claiming that a Tesla with Autopilot activated now has a “10 times lower” accident risk than a typical car.
Keep reading the Daily News Capsule for more updated news.
An insatiable fanatic of cars and bikes. Her never-ending love for cars and bikes has landed her to finally start writing about them. When not reading/writing about cars, you would definitely find her reading any Sidney Sheldon book.