Over the years, Tesla¡¯s Autopilot system has been blamed for many crashes on the roads. On several occasions, the US EV maker has argued that instead of the driver assist system, it is the driver at fault for not paying attention to the road while driving. A recent example of this is a crash of a Tesla Model S in North Carolina with a police vehicle.
That is because the driver behind the wheel of the Tesla Model S involved in the recent crash admitted to watching a movie on his phone while using Autopilot.
The incident took place in Nash County, North Carolina, as a Tesla Model S collided with a Nash County police vehicle. The police vehicle, along with a Highway Patrol trooper, was attending a call to a previous crash on the highway and was hence stopped on the road.
Images revealed by the NC Highway Patrol show that there was a major impact between the cars. The impact was big enough to push the police vehicle into the Highway Patrol trooper¡¯s car. The crash sent the two law enforcement officers to the ground.
No one was reported to be injured in the crash.
A report by CBS mentions that the Tesla driver admitted to watching a movie on his phone while driving the car with the help of the available Autopilot system.
¡°The Highway Patrol said the Tesla¡¯s driver, identified as Devainder Goli of Raleigh, said he was watching a movie on his phone while the car was on auto-pilot when the collision occurred,¡± the report mentions.
Post the crash, the driver has now been charged with ¡°move over law violation¡± and a ¡°location of television in vehicle¡± violation. The former deals with the fact that drivers are required to move over a lane when a vehicle is stopped on the side of a highway. The latter prohibits the placement of a screen in a vehicle at a place from where the driver can see it.
As mentioned earlier, this is not the first time that such an accident has taken place during the use of Autopilot. While it is true that the autonomous technology by Tesla has managed to substantially bring down the number of car accidents, people often tend to misunderstand and hence misuse the system on their vehicles.
While the system, at its present state, is a driver assistance system, people often misuse it as a fully self-driving vehicle tech and tend to take their attention off the road. Neither Tesla, nor the government allows this for now.