Fatal crash ‘a wake-up call’ for driverless cars
• The first man to die in a self-driving car accident may have been distracted because he was watching a Harry Potter movie at the time of the fatal crash, it has been claimed.
Joshua D. Brown, 40, a former Navy SEAL turned technology entrepreneur from Canton, Ohio, was killed when his electric Tesla Model S sedan plowed into a truck while in autopilot mode in Williston, Fla., about 160 kilometres northwest of Orlando.
According to a police accident report, the crash happened on a dry road in daylight.
Brown was travelling at such speed, his vehicle went underneath the truck’s trailer when it turned left in front of him.
Reconstruction of the accident shows the windshield of the Tesla hit the bottom of the trailer as the car passed underneath. It then left the road, struck a fence, crossed a field and hit another fence, before finally colliding with a pole.
Frank Baressi, 62, the truck driver involved in the crash, claimed Brown was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” at the time and “went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.”
Baressi admitted he had not seen Brown watching the Harry Potter movie, but said he could hear it.
“It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter-mile down the road,” he said.
Brown’s death is expected to have major implications for the progress of autonomous vehicles, which are being developed by a number of technology companies including Google and Uber.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was now investigating 25,000 Tesla Model S sedans equipped with the autopilot system.
Tesla said in a news release Thursday it had informed the traffic safety agency about the accident “immediately after it occurred” on May 7. But the company reported it publicly only after learning the agency had begun to investigate.
Tesla, which was founded by billionaire Elon Musk in Fremont, Calif., said it was the first fatal crash in the more than 200 million kilometres travelled by its selfdriving cars.
That compared to a death every 150 million km for all other vehicles on U.S. roads.
A Tesla spokesman said drivers were told to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times and had ultimate control.
“Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert,” he said. “In this case, neither autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor- trailer against a brightly lit sky so the brake was not applied.”
Tesla said videos could not be watched on the car’s screen. However, it was pos- sible Brown could have been watching another device.
The Florida Highway Patrol said Friday officers found an aftermarket DVD player in the wreckage.
“There was a portable DVD player in the vehicle,” said Sgt. Kim Montes.
She said there was no camera found, mounted on the dash or of any kind.
Brown had nicknamed his car “Tessy” and posted videos of journeys on the Internet, including an incident in April when the autopilot system saved him from a near crash.
At the time he said, “Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent.”
Records show the man had racked up eight speeding tickets in six years — seven times in Ohio and once in Virginia — from 2010 to 2015. His most recent citation was for driving 100 km per hour in a 56 km/h zone in northeastern Ohio last August.
Terri Lyn Reed, a friend and insurance agent in northeastern Ohio who insured Brown’s business, said Friday he was always up for an adventure and loved motorcycles and fast cars.
Reed says Brown “had the need for speed.” She describes him as “kind of a daredevil” who loved the excitement, loved speed and had no fear.
Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, a major U.S. vehicle research company, said the accident would raise public questions about safety. “This is a bit of a wake-up call. People who were maybe too aggressive in taking the position that we’re almost there, this technology is going to be in the market very soon, maybe need to reassess that,” he told The New York Times.
“They have been touting their safety and they have been touting their advanced technology. This situation flies in the face of both.”
But engineering expert professor William Harwin, of the University of Reading, said Brown’s death would not halt the advance of selfdriving cars. “Sadly, Joshua Brown joins others such as William Huskisson who was the first fatality in a train accident in 1830,” he said.
“Ultimately, Huskisson’s high-profile death did not prevent the widespread adoption of a revolutionary new technology and, I hope, neither will Mr. Brown’s.”