Tesla has been cleared of liability in a crash in Spring, Texas, in 2021.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a final report on its investigation of a Model S crash that occurred on April 17, 2021, determining that Tesla’s Autopilot mode did not cause the crash. The crash was due to excessive speeding and alcohol impairment.
Initial police reports of the crash suggested that the accident happened with no one in the driver’s seat, as the driver was found in the back seat of the car, indicating that the vehicle could have been on Autopilot, according to Ars Technica.
“Our preliminary investigation is determining — but it’s not complete yet — that there was no one at the wheel of that vehicle,” Harris County Constable Mark Herman told The Wall Street Journal following the crash. “We’re almost 99.9 percent sure.”
However, NTSB investigators found security video footage from the driver’s home security camera, showing the two men that entered the car were in the front seats before driving away and that the driver was in the backseat, presumably trying to escape after the crash.
Tesla provided the NTSB with a remote telemetry stream that records the car’s Autopilot status, alerts, and safety system interventions, Ars Technica said.
“Review of the data indicated no use of the Autopilot system at any time during this ownership period of the vehicle, including the timeframe up to the last transmitted timestamp on April 17, 2021,” the NTSB said.
The crash was recorded on its event data recorder, with the final five seconds showing that the car accelerated from 39 mph to 67 mph before crashing into a tree at 57 mph. It also showed that both passengers had their seatbelts buckled and the front airbags deployed.
“The application of the accelerator pedal ranged from 8% to 98% during the 5 seconds of recorded data, and there was no evidence of braking,” wrote the NTSB.
The NTSB said that Tesla’s “Autopilot feature could not have been engaged on the roadway where the crash occurred, due to the lack of lane markings,” according to Reuters. The report also said the Tesla’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control would not let it reach the speeds it hit on the specific road of the crash, as the maximum speed on the roadway was 30 mph.
The crash was blamed on excessive speed and loss of control from “impairment from alcohol intoxication in combination with the effects of two sedating antihistamines, resulting in a roadway departure, tree impact, and post-crash fire.”
