A Tesla car in Houston, Texas, USA, was involved in a fatal crash on Saturday night, running off the road and slamming into a large tree, killing two people. Authorities said no one was in the driver’s seat at the time of the accident, but whether the car’s driver assistance system was being used, authorities are investigating to confirm.
No one was driving the car at the time of the accident
A Harris County police officer told a Houston television station that one person was in the passenger seat and another in the back seat after the wreck around 9 p.m. Saturday in suburban Houston, according to the Associated Press.
Harris County Precinct 4 police officer Mark Herman said authorities determined that no one was driving the car at the time of the accident: “They were confident in the location of the bodies of the victims that no one was driving that car.”
Police said the car was driving fast and failed to swerve before running off the road, hitting a tree and catching fire and burning. The identities of the victims had not been released as of Sunday afternoon. Tesla did not immediately respond to an email from the media requesting comment.
Is the Autopilot feature “driverless”?
Federal traffic safety officials are investigating several accidents in which Tesla’s Autopilot feature may have been used.
The company is warning customers that its driver assistance system, called Autopilot, is not a self-driving program and that customers must be aware of it and be prepared to take control of their vehicles.
However, the National Transportation Safety Board said last year that the system is designed to allow drivers to avoid concentrating and does not limit the scenarios in which Autopilot can be used.
The brother-in-law of one of the victims reportedly said it took them four hours to put out the fire. Authorities said the car’s battery reignited several times, and Herman said first responders called Tesla to ask how to put out the fire, and Tesla posted information for first responders and pointed out the location of high-voltage lines inside the car.
The battery fire was so difficult to control that firefighters had to let it extinguish itself
The two victims, ages 59 and 69, have not been identified, according to ABC News. Earlier Saturday, they dropped their wives off at a nearby house and told them they were going for a ride in a Tesla, Herman said, adding that the two men appeared to be showing off the electric car’s features.
Investigators said the car appeared to be going very fast when it lost control and landed more than 100 feet from the highway, based on evidence at the scene. The car then exploded and firefighters spent four hours and 30,000 gallons of water trying to put the flames out, Herman said.
The battery acid fluid in the car was very flammable, making the fire difficult to control, investigators said. In the end, firefighters had to let the fire extinguish itself.
Investigators are now trying to download data from the car and have contacted Tesla and multiple federal agencies as part of the investigation.
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