Nutshell:
A car crash involving a Tesla is being investigated by car safety regulators in the US to see if the auto-pilot system was active at the time.
More:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are particularly keen to see if this crash was also the result of the autonomous driving mode, as an earlier accident led to the company’s first death of a passenger while on auto-pilot.
Tesla says there’s no indication auto-pilot is to blame for this latest incident.
Context:
Self-driving cars are coming to public roads, but that isn’t what Tesla’s auto-pilot system truly is – a point reinforced by the company itself many times.
Nonetheless, if this second crash is due to auto-pilot, it’s the second bad advert for driverless cars in as many weeks.
Previously, Google’s self-driving car scrapes and near-misses had generally been due to human error, but it too had its first AI-induced accident recently. The company claimed there was error on both sides.
Keep your hands on the wheel for now, folks.
