The United States National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation into a fatal car crash involving a Tesla Model X car. On March 23, a Tesla car crashed into a freeway divider, killing the driver, causing a fire and shutting down two lanes of Highway 101 near Mountain View, Calif. It’s not clear if Tesla’s automated control system, Autopilot, was active at the time of the crash, the NTSB said in a tweet.
2 NTSB investigators conducting Field Investigation for fatal March 23, 2018, crash of a Tesla near Mountain View, CA. Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash. Issues examined include: post-crash fire, steps to make vehicle safe for removal from scene.
— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) March 27, 2018
“We have been deeply saddened by this accident, and we have offered our full cooperation to the authorities as we work to establish the facts of the incident,” a Tesla spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
This investigation comes shortly after a fatal accident involving one of Uber’s self-driving cars in Tempe, Ariz. prompted the NTSB to send over a field team. According to the NTSB’s most recent update, the team was meeting with representatives from Uber, the NHTSA and Tempe Police Department. The department also said it was gathering and collecting information about the test vehicle’s technology, the pedestrian and the safety driver.
Here is the scene on Highway 101S in #MountainView where a #Tesla caught on fire pic.twitter.com/ksnidlFgsw
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Last year, the NTSB looked into a 2016 accident involving Tesla’s Autopilot system in Florida. The NTSB partially faulted Tesla for the fatal crash, saying the system operated as intended but that the driver’s inattentiveness, due to over-reliance on the Autopilot system, resulted in the accident.
