Even members of Congress know the celebrity CEO would gladly manipulate the data to show that his car company was not at fault in the death of two people this past week.

Congress can send all the letters they want, he will do what he wants to do because there are zero repercussions.

Elon Musk

Tesla

CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver’s Seat

Consumer Reports engineers easily tricked our Tesla Model Y this week so that it could drive on Autopilot, the automaker’s driver assistance feature, without anyone in the driver’s seat—a scenario that would present extreme danger if it were repeated on public roads. Over several trips across our half-mile closed test track, our Model Y automatically steered along painted lane lines, but the system did not send out a warning or indicate in any way that the driver’s seat was empty.

“In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn’t tell if there was a driver there at all,” says Jake Fisher, CR’s senior director of auto testing, who conducted the experiment. “Tesla is falling behind other automakers like GM and Ford that, on models with advanced driver assist systems, use technology to make sure the driver is looking at the road.”

Our demonstration comes as federal and local investigators continue to probe the cause of a fatal crash Saturday in Texas in which an apparently driverless 2019 Tesla Model S struck a tree, killing the vehicle’s two occupants. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman, who was on scene at the crash, told CR that he’s almost certain that no one was in the driver’s seat when the vehicle crashed. (The Model S in the crash and our Model Y are different models, but they both have Autopilot.)

We tried to reach Tesla to ask about the Texas crash but did not hear back. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Monday evening that data logs recovered from the crashed Model S “so far show Autopilot was not enabled,” and he suggested that it would not be possible to activate Autopilot on the road where the crash took place because of the lack of painted lane lines. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash, which occurred on a winding road in Spring, Texas, outside of Houston. – Source

The 2nd victim in the Tesla crash in Texas has been named. Elon Musk and police still don’t agree if the car was driving itself.

The second victim in a Tesla crash in Texas has been named, as police and CEO Elon Musk continue to offer conflicting accounts of how the vehicle was being driven.

The 69-year-old Everette Talbot is one of two people who died in the incident in a Houston-area suburb Saturday evening, according to ABC News.

Talbot’s name was reported two days after that of the other victim, his close friend 59-year-old William Varner. They crashed just a few hundred yards away from where they set out in the Tesla Model S.

The car, traveling at high speed, failed to negotiate a bend and came off the road on Hammock Dunes Place, a residential street in an upscale Houston suburb. The car crashed into a tree and burst into flames.

Police say they are sure that at the time of the crash nobody was driving the car, which is able to partially operate itself.

But Musk has said that data from the car shows that its Autopilot mode was not engaged, prompting questions about what was happening behind the wheel.

Constable Mark Herman of Harris County Precinct 4 told local outlet KHOU 11 that deputies who recovered the bodies “are 100% certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact.”

Herman said that the bodies were in the front passenger seat and a rear seat. An unnamed family member told local news outlet that KPRC 2 that the owner had backed out of the driveway, and then may have moved to the back seat.

In a tweet on Monday, Musk said: “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD.”

FSD is Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode. – Source


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