Posted on 06/30/2016 6:32:42 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Joshua D. Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday.
Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen" at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that "he went so fast through my trailer I didn't see him."
"It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road," Baressi told The Associated Press in an interview from his home in Palm Harbor, Florida. It was not immediately clear whether Tesla's systems would allow a movie to play while the car was being driven and there were no references to the movie in initial police reports.
Brown's published obituary described him as a member of the Navy SEALs for 11 years and founder of Nexu Innovations Inc., working on wireless Internet networks and camera systems. In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed Brown's work with the SEALs and said he left the service in 2008.
Brown was an enthusiastic booster of his 2015 Tesla Model S and in April credited its sophisticated Autopilot system for avoiding a crash when a commercial truck swerved into his lane on an interstate. He published a video of the incident online. "Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent," Brown wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
;’)
I think I saw this in one of those Ron Burgundy movies.
Reminds me of the wealthy guy who bought the Segway business.
He was trying it out in his backyard...his house was built on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean.
Nobody told him ride on a smooth surface only......that if one wheel left the ground, he’d lose control.....
On the rocky path behind his house, he did lose control and was ditched over the cliff headlong into the ocean.
His wife later went looking for him ....they found his body in the ocean.
Is the govt just going to allow these cars to kill people. What happens when one of these things hits a school bus? Who will be sued into oblivion? Who will face criminal neglect charges?
Trust But Verify...
The cars do not have to be perfect.
They only have to have a safety record better than the average driver.
Sounds like they are beating that standard by a large amount.
No wonder he is smiling -
I saw a Tesla just a couple days ago. EH! It is a car.
Big Rig: 1
I think a more important question to ask is why a 40-year-old man was watching a harry Potter movie.
“The cars do not have to be perfect. They only have to have a safety record better than the average driver. Sounds like they are beating that standard by a large amount.”
Lol, this statement. I mean.... It hit a tractor trailer - broad side. Lol
There is a weird fetish a few people have with this fragile technology that is hilarious. They’ll make any wild prediction and create excuses like, “a five year old may have stopped when he saw something blocking the road, but this technology is superior because........ Safety!”
AI road rage!
That also could mean the tractor trailer was making a left hand turn (they turn really wide) and the driver was going too fast and because of watching the movie just didn’t see the truck to slow down and break.
Was stuck in LA traffic yesterday and got a good look at a Model X. It looks like a grown up Prius. Fugly.
Cars don’t kill people. Stupid people behind the cars kill people. Just because drunk drivers kill people does not mean you ban wooden barrel.
may have been a SEAL but he lacked common sense
I work in this area. I was really surprised when Tesla made this “feature” available as a paid software update - they only have cameras. This is not sufficient, none of us believed it was.
I think they’re going to get hammered by NHTSA. Time to short TSLA?
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