Beijing Car Crash Involving a Tesla Car on Autopilot Mode

Aug 11, 2016 07:19 AM EDT | Jomar Teves

The driver of the crashed vehicle says to Tesla staff that the vehicle took control of manual driving mode, thereby resulting to car crash.

Tesla wants to investigate further about the incident that happened, by reviewing the data that is inside the car. This will be done to prove whether the car was really in autopilot mode.

Based on the further investigations that went through, some results points out to the mismanagement of the driver on the controls, stating that the driver has the capability to control the vehicle. On this specific incident, the hands of the driver were not found to be on the steering wheel.

This is the first reported Tesla car crash in China, after the fatal car crash that happened in Florida, which was also due to the alleged autopilot mode. This puts more pressure to auto manufacturing companies to improve rules and regulations regarding the automated driving experience.

The driver of the crashed Tesla electric vehicle that was in autopilot mode is Luo Zhen, a programmer that is 33 years of age. He was driving to work and engaged the autopilot mode for some unknown reason.

According to the statement of Luo Zhen, he used the function a lot of times in Beijing highways. Luo Zhen was fortunate enough to have a dashboard camera that filmed the whole incident. It shows that it hit a vehicle that is improperly parked, with a protrusion on the road.

The accident resulted to the damage on the vehicle's side mirror, as well as minor scrapes on the bodies of the two vehicles. There were no injuries that took place.

Luo Zhen, the driver of the Tesla vehicle blames the autopilot system for the accident, stating that the sales staff of Tesla promotes that it is capable of full "self-driving". Mr. Zhen says, "The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn't assisted driving."

Other drivers from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou says that the message of the frontline staff of Mr. Zhen did not match with the other staffs that they have encountered,  as it is not "self-driving", but instead, has an advance driver assistance system (ADAS).

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