NTSB slams Tesla for lack of safeguards in autopilot crash probe

Elon Musk’s Tesla might have prevented a fatal March 2018 crash — despite the fact that the driver was likely fiddling with a video game at the time of impact — a federal accident investigator said Tuesday.

The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday blasted Tesla’s self-driving “Autopilot” system for lacking safeguards that might have helped save the life of 38-year-old Apple software engineer Walter Huang, who’s Tesla Model X slammed into a safety barrier on a highway just 15 minutes from Tesla’s headquarters.

Huang was likely playing a video game on his iPhone at the time of the crash, the NTSB revealed for the first time on Tuesday. But Tesla’s Autopilot made it easier for Huang to not pay attention to the road when his car veered from the lane and accelerated while approaching the barrier, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwal said.

Tesla — unlike five other auto manufacturers, including BMW and Nissan — ignored safety recommendations issued by the NTSB in 2017, including one that asked automakers to design driver-assist systems in such a way that they would prevent drivers from being able to engage them without paying attention to the road, Sumwal said.

“It’s been 881 days since these recommendations were sent to Tesla. We’re still waiting,” Sumwalt said.

He also criticized his own agency and sister agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for their “scant oversight” of the self-driving feature, suggesting that not enough has been done to protect drivers from potential dangers of the feature.

“If you own a car with partial automation, you don’t own a self-driving car,” Sumwalt said. “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. Yet that’s precisely what we found that this driver was doing.”

Tesla Autopilot has been involved in five fatal crashes since 2016, including the accident in Mountain View. Autopilot helps Tesla drivers steer, accelerate and brake automatically in their lane, but requires them to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) last month called on Tesla to rebrand Autopilot, calling it “an inherently misleading name” because the cars cannot fully drive themselves.

Drivers have been getting around the hands-on-wheel requirement by resting only one hand on the wheel, tying a weight to the wheel “and wedging a water bottle or an orange” into the wheel, Markey claimed.

Sumwalt also noted that Apple, Huang’s employer, does not have a distracted driving policy and he said the board “will discuss ways to spur employers” to address the safety issues raised by portable electronic devices.