A 56-year-old Snohomish man had set his Tesla Model S on Autopilot and was looking at his cellphone on Friday when he struck and killed a motorcyclist in front of him in Monroe, court records show.
A Washington State Patrol trooper arrested the Tesla driver at the crash site on Highway 522 at Fales Road shortly before 4 p.m. on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, according to a probable cause affidavit.
The motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen, 28, of Stanwood, died at the scene, records show.
The Tesla driver told a state trooper he was driving home from having lunch in Bothell and was looking at his phone when he heard a bang and felt his car lurch forward, accelerate and hit the motorcyclist, according to the affidavit.
The man told the trooper his Tesla got stuck on top of the motorcyclist and couldn’t be moved in time to save him, the affidavit states.
The trooper cited the driver’s “inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward,” and trusting “the machine to drive for him” as probable cause for a charge of vehicular manslaughter, according to the affidavit.
The man was booked into the Snohomish County Jail and was released Sunday after posting bond on his $100,000 bail, jail records show.
Modern cruise control makes it much less taxing to drive. You can focus only the necessities while leaving things like lane centering and maintaining a proper distance up to the ecu.
Tesla fsd is really just advanced cruise control. The problem is you can’t program out the idiots, and Tesla’s fsd should be considered advanced cruise control and not imply that the operator doesn’t need to pay attention.
But if it’s marketed to change lanes, adjust speed, avoid obstacles, stop, signal, and everything else a driver does… then it’s being marketed as far more than “advanced cruise control”, is it not?
Quite literally their website says: “Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features, and full self-driving capabilities.”
“The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.”
“When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you.”
They are telling you the car will drive without someone even being in it!
Why are they even allowed to get away with this kind of marketing? Getting people killed along the way.
*May run over a Grandma just trying to walk into Trader Joe’s.
“You must agree to the TOS before driving this vehicle.”
I agree that’s is marketed as fully autonomous and it shouldn’t be. I think the states dmv should have stepped in and not allowed a vehicle to be registered as anything but having cruise control unless they OK’d it because there are idiots behind the wheel that are simply ignorant of the fact that they are moving multiple tons of mass at speeds that are faster than they can react.
I think y’all are focusing on the wrong feature in this case. Regardless of the limitations of automated driving, or whether it was human or computer doing the driving, obstacle avoidance is meant to prevent hitting things
I agree. You should see the tests of these cars slamming into pedestrians. Why they are allowed to be on public roads is beyond me.
Fsd? You mean the service tesla itself named “Full self driving?”
Sure seems like the company is very intentionally misleading its customers, no matter how many disclaimers they have added over the years as more and more people get killed by their cars.
Your point will have more merit when Tesla drops that dangerously misleading name. Until then, they are partially culpable.
I agree. The state should stop allowing new teslas to be registered on their roads until that moniker is corrected. They should prevent advanced cruise control systems from being misleadingly labeled.
I agree there should be a law against it and sanctions, but Tesla is also capable of making these changes.
The fact they won’t tell you everything you need to know about how Tesla sees itself and its customers.
At the risk of giving you more ammo, there are two different levels
But also, there’s a more general question here. Regardless who is in control of the car or who should be, obstacle avoidance should have helped avoid running over a motorcyclist. We don’t know the scenario but if I’m approaching a motorcycle and the car gets worried, it sets off an alert. If I don’t fix it asap, the car hits the brakes that’s what should have happened.
What was this scenario?