Another Week, Another Tesla Crash - Autopilot Involvement Unknown

If you've been tracking the series of traffic incidents involving Tesla cars, then the scenario will appear familiar. The car's systems fail to detect a stationary object on the left side of the highway, and the EV goes plowing straight through with all of its impressive weight.

Only so far, neither the authorities nor Tesla or the witnesses have confirmed whether the vehicle was indeed using the Autopilot function - or, indeed, whether this particular car even has it installed. What has been rumored, however, is that the driver, a 50-year-old man from Vestfold, was busy with his cell phone just before the crash occurred.

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TheSteve - 9/20/2016 1:56:50 PM

+2 Boost

The media sure has a bad case of Tesla-itis -- the obsessive need to report anything Tesla, mostly focusing on anything that could be interpreted badly.

No reports of "another Chevy crashing" or "another Mustang owner showing off and denting his car." Judging by media reports, you'd think that Teslas were crashing just as soon as you got them off the lot!

Car4life1 - 9/20/2016 5:14:13 PM

+1 Boost

I totally agree with you, however, if Tesla is going to make bold statements and name features that aren't exactly up to par like "AutoPilot", then they have to be ready for scrutiny and backlash when these bold statements/features fail. And their PR could be better claiming a Tesla car was not put together properly which caused a fire a week ago...now as buyer id wonder if my Tesla was put together properly...

Side note just a couple of weeks ago had a widely publicized crash in Russia involving a CLS and BMW, in which it appears the CLS driver allegedly attempted to take out Putin, actually killing Putin's top driver, however the CLS driver survived after running into the Bimmer head on at speeds upward of 65 mph...

Anyway that was just a side note but notice how they market their products and even pulled an ad campaign that suggested the car drove itself, instead dubbing the feature "Intelligent Drive" and Drivers Assistance Systems, thus covering their butt and not misleading owners, ensuring the systems function as they should.

Not to mention Chevy has had its fair share of negative media from recalls with dominated 2013-15 and lets not forget Toyota's unintentional acceleration, every dog has its day, however Tesla is a little too new to the game to have already started cutting corner like fully developing an autopilot feature which if fails could be pretty bad as we have seen...

SanJoseDriver - 9/24/2016 3:45:48 PM

+1 Boost

I will say the number of people that died while using autopilot properly is 0. The 1 case of a fatality while using autopilot was on a road where the system was not supposed to be used.

MDarringer - 9/20/2016 9:51:13 PM

-2 Boost

Tesla is sh!t paper that needs to be flushed. It's an arrogant company with poorly engineered products bought by Hillary supporters with more dollars than brains.

TheSteve - 9/21/2016 1:42:57 PM

+1 Boost

Give the story time to play out, Matt. After all, there are still people buying Blackberry shares and bidding the price up! The next Tesla stock offering -- over US$1B needed to shore up their bleeding red ink and negative cash flow -- should stir investors and current Tesla stock holders, whose investment becomes diluted by the flood of new shares.