Tesla Accelerated Seconds Before Slamming Into Highway Barrier, Killing Driver: NTSB

The NTSB has released its report analyzing the March 23 Tesla Model X crash in Mountain View, which ended in the tragic death of a 38 year old Apple engineer and took place while Autopilot was engaged - and while the driver had their hands off of the steering wheel. While many of the details were known previously, the most surprising revelation was that the vehicle actually sped up seconds before the crash.

As Bloomberg reports, the Model X that crashed in California while being guided by its semi-autonomous driving system, accelerated to 71 miles an hour in the seconds before the vehicle slammed into a highway barrier, according to the NTSB investigators. In the preliminary report on the March 23 crash, investigators report that the driver’s hands were detected on the steering wheel only 34 seconds during the last minute before impact.

The investigation is the latest to shine a spotlight into potential flaws in emerging autonomous driving technology.

Another NTSB probe of a self-driving Uber Technologies Inc. car that killed a pedestrian March 18 in Arizona found that the car’s sensors picked up the victim, but the vehicle wasn’t programmed to brake for obstructions. Walter Huang, a 38-year-old engineer who worked at Apple Inc., died in Mountain View, California, in the March 23 crash when his Model X struck a highway barrier as he was using the driver-assistance system known as Autopilot. The car’s computer didn’t sense his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the collision, according to NTSB.

The full NTSB report can be read here. Here are the highlights:




The NTSB report concluded:


It also confirmed the battery had been breached, causing a fire:


Even stranger was the news that the battery reignited 5 days after the vehicle had been taken off the road:



The NTSB report also appears to contradict some statements Tesla has made regarding the incident. As Twitter user @TeslaCharts pointed out, Tesla claimed on its blog the driver received "several" alerts "earlier in the drive", when the actual number, per the NTSB, was two and "earlier in the drive" was found to be "more than 15 minutes prior to the crash".

Recall that these are almost the same circumstances surrounding the recent Model S slamming into the back of a fire truck in Utah. We reported on that development on May 25.

Police results from that recent Salt Lake City crash were released weeks ago, indicating not only was the car was in Autopilot mode when it crashed into a stopped firetruck,  but also that it sped up seconds before the moment of impact.

The police report was detailed as follows:

A Tesla Model S that crashed into a parked firetruck on a Utah highway this month while in its Autopilot mode sped up prior to the accident, a police report says.

Data retrieved from the sedan shows that it picked up speed for 3.5 seconds shortly before the collision in South Jordan, according to the Associated Press. The acceleration from 55 mph to 60 mph suggests that the Tesla had been following a slower car that then moved out of the way, allowing the Tesla to resume the higher speed that the Autopilot system had been set at.

Furthermore, the car did not warn the driver ahead of the collision, even as the driver may have been taking a cue from Elon's Model 3 reveal, where he told people they could "sleep" in their car: to wit, the driver had her hands off the wheel for 80 seconds and was admittedly looking at her cell phone at the moment of the crash:

The driver, Heather Lommatzsch, told police that she had been looking at her phone and claimed the Tesla did not provide any warnings that it was about to crash. The car’s log said that her hands had been off of the steering wheel for 80 seconds leading up to the impact, and that she applied the brakes less than a second before hitting the firetruck, which was blocking the lane to protect the scene of a previous accident.

The March 23 Model X crash was similar in nature: there, the Model X suffered a gruesome and deadly crash when the vehicle hit a carpool lane barrier, leading two more cars to crashing into it, and causing the lithium ion batteries powering the vehicle to ignite and explode, at which point the vehicle burst into flames. 

We reported on these details on March 24.

Autopilot continues to be a serious point of concern for Tesla, with critics arguing that it is extremely dangerous and has been billed deceptively. This has garnered investigations and probes by both the NTSB and the and NHTSA, several of which are still ongoing.

Unfortunately, for the ill-fated driver of this Model X, they have become yet another data point in what is increasingly looking more and more like a several year long beta test of Autopilot as installed on Tesla vehicles. And needless to say, Tesla's Autopilot has been the subject of previous scrutiny following other crashes involving the vehicles.

Weeks ago, Tesla claimed its Autopilot was not engaged when a Model S veered off a road and plunged into a pond outside San Francisco, killing the driver. The NTSB has yet to confirm Tesla's version of events.


Finally, as has been discussed by analysts, the liability that Musk may have brought unto himself and to the company by giving people the impression at the Model 3 unveiling that the car would be fully autonomous, could soon come back to bite the company in a big way, resulting in a costly and lengthy recall which could quickly sap the company's dwindling cash.