Traffic & Transit
Fiery Driverless Tesla Crash Kills 2
Investigators in Texas confirm that one person was in the front passenger seat and a second was in the back seat when the Model S crashed.
FREMONT, CA — A 2019 Tesla Model S, built here in Fremont, crashed in Texas over the weekend killing two men. According to police investigators at the crash site, neither man was in the driver's seat — one was in the front passenger seat while the other was in the back seat.
The men were relying on the Autopilot feature, according to the wife of one of the men who died.
To make matters worse, the car exploded in flames, with the lithium ion batteries fueling the fire for some four hours, and it took 32,000 gallons of water before firefighters finally got the fire out.
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The fire department called Tesla for guidance when the fire kept re-igniting.
With lithium ion batteries, a "thermal runaway" reaction can cause a fire to continually re-ignite. In the past, Tesla has recommended that firefighters allow such fires to burn themselves out.
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An initial investigation shows that the car was going at a high rate of speed, failed to negotiate a corner, went off the road and crashed into a tree. The crash happened in the Houston suburb of Spring, near The Woodlands.
The National Transportation Safety Board announced on Monday that it is sending investigators to probe the crash and the resulting fire.
The NTSB, in coordination with the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office, is sending two investigators to conduct a safety investigation of the fatal Apr. 17, 2021, Tesla vehicle crash near Spring, TX.
— NTSB_Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) April 19, 2021
There have been multiple instances in which deadly Tesla crashes happened when the Autopilot feature was engaged. In 2018, an Apple engineer was killed in a Model X crash on Highway 101 in Mountain View.
The NTSB also investigated a Model 3 crash in Florida, about a year after the Mountain View crash. In Florida, the driver was using the semi-autonomous driving system when it failed to steer away from a semi truck before he struck it, killing him.
Tesla warns on its website that "current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."
The company has not commented on the Texas crash.
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