Board rips ‘regulators,’ Tesla in Autopilot death
The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board slammed Tesla and unnamed “government regulators” for jeopardizing traffic safety by not taking measures to prevent “foreseeable abuse” of Tesla’s Autopilot driver-assist feature.
Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the safety board, led off a board meeting Tuesday focused on the March 2019 California crash of a Tesla Model X that killed the driver, Walter Huang. Huang had Autopilot engaged and crashed into a safety barrier while playing a video game on his Apple smartphone, Sumwalt said.
“Government regulators have provided scant oversight” of Autopilot and selfdrive systems from other manufacturers, Sumwalt said. He apparently was referring to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which, unlike the safety board, has enforcement power and can recall defective cars with de
fective automotive technology.
In 2017, the safety board recommended that automakers design driver-assist systems to prevent human driver inattention and misuse. Automakers including Volkswagen, Nissan and BMW reported on their attempts to meet the recommendations, but Tesla never got back to the safety board. “Sadly, one manufacturer has ignored us, and that manufacturer is Tesla,” Sumwalt said Tuesday. “We’ve heard nothing, we’re still waiting.”
Tesla couldn’t be reached for comment.
Sumwalt also criticized drivers who use Autopilot as if it were a self-driving system. “You cannot buy a self-driving car today,” he said. “You don’t own a self-driving car so don’t pretend you do.” He warned drivers not to sleep, read, text, eat or otherwise do anything to take away attention from the task of driving while using a driver-assist system.
Family members of Huang were in the audience at the Washington, D.C., meeting. Sumwalt addressed them directly: “Our goal is to learn from what happened so others don’t have to go through what you’re going through.”
The safety board picks crashes to investigate “that can advance our knowledge of safety issues.” It’s highly selective. There are millions of highway crashes in the U.S. each year. The board is currently investigating 17 crashes, three involving Tesla’s Autopilot technology.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an arm of the federal Department of Transportation, is investigating at least 13 Autopilot-related crashes.
Autopilot is an automated driver-assist feature sold as part of what Tesla calls a “Full Self Driving Capability” package for $7,000 that can speed up, brake and change lanes automatically, although the driver is supposed to pay attention.
Other car companies make similar systems, though none is as technologically aggressive as Tesla’s, and none refers to “self-driving,” which even at Tesla remains an aspirational term. Cars that can fully drive themselves are not being sold by anyone to individual customers today, and most industry experts say it will be years until that happens. Tesla has said the upfront $7,000 buys current features plus self-drive features to be added over time.
According to safety board investigators, Huang, a 38-year-old father of two, was driving his 2018 Tesla Model X on Autopilot when it sped up from 62 mph to 71 mph and plowed into a damaged safety barrier at the end of a concrete wall. The wall divides a left-hand exit ramp that veers away from U.S. 101, known locally as the Bayshore Freeway.
Huang had dropped off his youngest child at day care and was taking his regular commuting route to Apple offices in Sunnyvale. The investigation showed Autopilot engaged for nearly 19 minutes before the crash, and that Huang’s hands were off the steering wheel in the last six seconds.
The impact twisted the car counterclockwise and into a freeway commuter lane to the right of the concrete wall. Two other cars collided with the Tesla. The front end of the Tesla was sheared off. The car’s battery burst into flame. Huang was pulled out of the Model X by three men and taken to the hospital by ambulance, where he was pronounced dead.
Two major factors contributed to the severity of the Mountain View, Calif., crash. One, with Autopilot in control, the Model X drove straight down the middle of a “gore lane,” a white striped zone where cars aren’t supposed to go, crashing headon into a flexible steel “smart cushion” that’s intended to soften the impact of a crash.
Two, the cushion already was severely damaged. After a Toyota Prius crashed into it two months earlier, the length of the attenuator was shortened, offering less protection against the 3-foot-tall concrete median wall behind it. The safety device had gone unrepaired by the California Department of Transportation until three days after Huang’s death.
The safety board already has recommended ways the department could fix broken highway safety devices more quickly.
The ramifications of Tuesday’s conclusions after the two-year investigation are yet to be determined. The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent federal agency, not part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, most notable for its investigations into airline disasters. It lacks enforcement power but its recommendations are considered thorough and are taken seriously by policymakers.
In a preliminary safety board report on a January 2018 Autopilot-related crash, where a firetruck was rearended by a Tesla Model S on the 405 Freeway, the board laid blame on the driver’s inattention, misuse of the Autopilot system, over-reliance on Autopilot, and Autopilot itself, which the board said permits driver disengagement from the driving task. No one was injured; the investigation continues.