A motorcyclist in Utah was killed over the weekend after a Tesla driver crashed into him from the back — while the car’s Autopilot system was turned on.
It is another added serious accident to the list of Tesla crashes being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
According to local news, the motorcyclist was hit just after 1 am on Sunday, local time. The Tesla driver reportedly didn’t see the rider, who died at the scene after having fatal injuries, according to police.
Now, the NHTSA’s Special Crash Investigations (SCI) list of collisions includes 48 crashes, 39 of which involve Tesla vehicles. In total, it’s tracking 19 deaths involving Tesla vehicles.
Sixteen of these crashes involved Tesla vehicles colliding with stationary emergency vehicles while Autopilot was turned on.
According to the regulator, it’s aware of 273 crashes involving Autopilot between July 2021 and May 2022 in the US.
The NHTSA is investigating 830,000 cars now. This comprises every single car the electric carmaker has sold between 2014 and 2021, including the Model S, X, 3, and Y.
Tesla is also going through a major restructuring. The news comes just two weeks after Andrej Karpathy, the head of Tesla’s AI department, which oversees the company’s controversial Autopilot feature, left the company without any warning.
There are obvious risks to using these driver-assistance features, especially when it comes to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving package, an optional $12,000 add-on that is being beta tested by a selected group of drivers on public streets.