First death in a self-drive vehicle means more research is needed

The driver of a Tesla vehicle was killed in Florida after colliding with a lorry which had turned in front of him. Most major automakers and technology companies, including Google and Uber, are working on fully autonomous cars, and have anxious that a highly publicized crash could hurt those efforts.

A digital video disc player was found in the Tesla vehicle that was on autopilot when its driver was killed in a May 7 collision with a truck, Florida Highway Patrol officials said on Friday.

“Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the. trailer against a brightly lit sky”, Tesla wrote, “so the brake was not applied”. In the meantime, Brown’s family does not seem intent on crusading against Tesla or self-driving cars.

A Tesla Model S driver lost his life in a auto crash that seems to have happened after the autopilot feature failed.

“For years people have been saying the technology is ready, and it’s one of my pet peeves, because no it’s not”, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of SC and an expert on autonomous driving issues.

His 537-word statement noted that this was Tesla’s first known autopilot death in roughly 130m miles driven by customers.

“Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not ideal and still requires the driver to remain alert”, Tesla said in a statement.

“They’ve always had this attitude of invincibility, and perhaps promising more than their cars can deliver, ” Joseph Phillippi, president of the consulting firm AutoTrends, told NYT.

“The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S”, the company said in a statement.

“It sounds like (Tesla) they did a fairly good job of designing into the mechanism prompts and reminders about what the deal was, and for whatever reason, this guy was not paying attention”, said Lars Noah, a University of Florida law professor. “This situation flies in the face of both”.

Officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were alerted by Tesla about the crash, and NHTSA officials first contacted the FHP last week, Montes said.

Tesla announced the fatality on Thursday and noted that U.S. safety officials had opened a probe.

But beyond Tesla, the accident could increase public skepticism about semi-autonomous and autonomous driving.

Legally, Tesla may have a solid defence under Florida law, with safeguards, telling drivers they can not cede control every time they engage Autopilot.

The technology relies on multiple cameras, radar, laser and computers to sense objects and determine if they are in the car’s way, said Mike Harley, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. The Brown crash can help focus the discussion of regulators and others on driverless technology and its limitations, he said. They also can have trouble staying within lanes in heavy rain or snow.

The companies said in a statement that “the future of automated driving promises to change lives and societies for the better” while acknowledging that “the path to get to a fully autonomous world is complex”.

Alphabet Google unit and other companies are racing to get self-driving cars on US roads. No one knows how many of those deaths could have been prevented by cars that could predict crashes before they happen and brake by themselves. “Every solution creates its own set of problems”, Smith said.

“Driving today is risky, and there is no panacea”.