NOT SELF-DRIVING

NTSB: Driver in Fatal 2018 Tesla Crash Was Video Gaming

The board’s chair asserted that Tesla’s autopilot function does not enable cars to drive themselves.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the driver of a Tesla SUV was playing a video game on his phone when his car crashed two years ago. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt added during a hearing Tuesday that Tesla’s autopilot function does not enable the cars to drive themselves. “If you own a car with partial automation, you do not own a self-driving car,” he said at the hearing set to determine the cause of the March 2018 crash. “This means that when driving in the supposed ‘self-driving’ mode, you can’t read a book, you can’t watch a movie or TV show, you can’t text and you can’t play video games.” The Tesla Model X SUV crash killed the driver, Apple engineer Walter Huang, when it rammed into a concrete barrier on a highway in Silicon Valley, California. The automatic emergency brakes were not triggered when the car swerved off the freeway lanes right before the vehicle crashed, the NTSB said, adding that there needed to be stronger monitoring systems.