Tesla boss Elon Musk counters police claims over 'driverless' car in Texas crash

A blowup continues to rumble on around Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) after boss Elon Musk countered media reports that one of the company’s cars had crashed without anyone in the driving seat. Police in Texas said they will serve search warrants on the company on Tuesday to secure data from the crash. It was reported at the start of the week that a Model S electric vehicle crashed into a tree and burst into flames in Texas, resulting in the death of two men inside, with local police saying no-one was found to be in the driver's seat. Constable Mark Herman of Harris County Precinct 4 told reporters that one of the two people in the car was sitting in the front passenger seat and the other in a back seat. He said: “Our preliminary investigation is determining—but it’s not complete yet—that there was no one at the wheel of that vehicle,” the constable said. “We’re almost 99.9% sure.” Herman said; “We have witness statements from people that said they left to test drive the vehicle without a driver and to show the friend how it can drive itself.” Tesla has stressed that its driver-assist system, called Autopilot, is not an autonomous-driving program, and drivers must be ready to take control of the vehicle at any time. The company also maintains that the system includes safety measures, including the seat monitoring weighted to ensure a driver is in place as well we hands needing to make contact with the steering wheel at least every 10 seconds. In response to a WSJ report, Musk tweeted that: “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled” and that the car owner “did not purchase FSD”, the Full Self-Driving computer that the company says is “capable of delivering intelligent performance and control to enable a new level of safety and autonomy”. Tesla’s CEO added: “Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have.” Autopilot, furthermore, is not meant to allow the car to exceed local speed limits. As the company says on its website, “Autopilot and full self-driving capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment,” noting that even with these features “no Tesla cars are fully autonomous today”. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating the crash, the 28th Telsa accident to be examined. Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle https://t.co/6lGy52wVhC — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2021 It was noted on Monday by Tesla that its electric vehicles registered one accident for every 4.19mln miles driven where the car had Autopilot engaged, which Musk pointed out was not far off 10 times lower chance of accident than average. He said earlier this year that full self-driving software will be hugely profitable for the company and that he was "highly confident" the car will be able to drive itself and be safer than the average human driver.