By Tim Higgins and Ben Foldy
U.S. safety investigators leveled a blistering rebuke of the
federal regulator responsible for overseeing the safety of Tesla
Inc.'s advanced driver-assistance system called Autopilot, which
they found contributed to another fatal crash.
Tesla's Autopilot played a role in a crash that killed the
driver of the auto maker's Model X sport-utility vehicle in March
2018 in Mountain View, Calif., the National Transportation Safety
Board said Tuesday.
The agency, better known for its investigations into airplane
crashes, has been increasingly scrutinizing the emergence of
automated-driving technologies and pushing the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration to do more to ensure the safety of
advanced driver-assistance systems.
"It's time to stop enabling drivers in any partially automated
vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars because they
don't have driverless cars," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said
Tuesday. He urged NHTSA to "fulfill its oversight responsibility to
ensure that corrective action is taken when necessary."
The NTSB detailed its findings during a meeting in Washington,
setting the stage for increased pressure on NHTSA, which regulates
cars and has the power to force Tesla to make changes. Unlike
NHTSA, which can require action by car makers, the NTSB only issues
recommendations on how to improve safety.
The NTSB faulted the regulator's investigating arm for not
thoroughly assessing the effectiveness of Tesla's driver-monitoring
system, foreseeable misuse and risks of it being used in ways it
wasn't designed to handle. It urged further evaluation of the
system.
NHTSA will review the report and considers distracted driving to
be a continuing concern, an agency spokesman said in a statement.
Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment.
The NTSB also attributed probable cause of the 2018 crash to the
driver, Walter Huang, who was likely distracted playing a videogame
on his employer-issued cellphone. His SUV veered into a road
barrier at 71 miles an hour during his morning commute along
Highway 101.
The findings won't result in any penalties or other immediate
consequences.
The NTSB and NHTSA have differed on Tesla's Autopilot in the
past as the government tries to adjust to the fast-moving world of
increased automation in the automobile. Regulators are grappling
with how to find the right balance between encouraging potentially
lifesaving technology while ensuring the public is safe.
NHTSA has opened 14 investigations into Tesla crashes involving
driver-assistance systems as part of a broader review of the
technology. Two of those investigations include Tesla vehicles
involved in fatal incidents in the past two months.
To help shape future policies, NHTSA has been soliciting
feedback on new test procedures for the technologies. Congress has
also been considering potential legislation for autonomous
vehicles. At a Senate hearing in November, Tesla's Autopilot was
singled out for criticism by both Mr. Sumwalt and Massachusetts
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who repeatedly pressed NHTSA's acting
administrator James Owens about drivers using the system
unsafely.
In 2017, NHTSA found that Tesla's Autopilot contained no defect
during a fatal 2016 crash in Florida involving Joshua Brown. The
NTSB later concluded the auto maker contributed to the incident
with a technology that allowed the driver to go long periods
without his hands on the wheel and ignore the company's in-car
warnings.
In that incident, Mr. Brown had Autopilot engaged when his Tesla
Model S ran through the underside of a tractor trailer that was
crossing the road. Investigators found that Mr. Brown made no
attempt to stop and the car's data showed the system didn't detect
his hands touching the wheel in the seconds before the impact.
On Tuesday, the NTSB reiterated its findings in Mr. Brown's
crash and highlighted other Tesla crashes in addition to the
Mountain View incident that shared similarities. The incidents
showed prolonged inattentiveness by drivers and suggested that
Tesla's monitoring system was a poor measure of engagement.
Autopilot is the marketing name for a system of functions that
allow Tesla cars to steer, brake and cruise themselves under
certain circumstances. It doesn't amount to self-driving and the
company instructs drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and pay
attention to the roadway.
Following the 2016 Florida crash, Tesla made adjustments to the
system such as reducing the time a driver's hands can be off the
wheel before getting a warning and a three-strikes policy that
turns the system off if the driver continues to ignore the alerts.
Still, Tesla has continued to come under criticism from experts and
safety advocates who say drivers are improperly using
Autopilot.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has acknowledged that some
drivers are overly confident with Autopilot, but he has vigorously
defended the system, saying his company's data shows its vehicles
are safer than others.
General Motors Co. has deployed similar technology. But its
system includes a camera that monitors a driver's eye movement to
ensure that the driver is paying attention. Tesla has rejected that
kind of technology, saying it is ineffective.
The Mountain View crash heightened concern about automation, in
part because it came soon after a fatal crash in Tempe, Ariz.,
involving a test vehicle used by Uber Technologies Inc. to develop
autonomous vehicles. In the Uber crash, a safety operator sat at
the steering wheel with the job of taking control of the vehicle in
case of emergency. That didn't happen and the Uber vehicle struck
and killed a pedestrian.
The NTSB, in November, found that the immediate cause of the
Uber collision was the failure of the safety operator to closely
monitor the car's driving system and the roadway. The driver
instead was looking at a personal cellphone. The board also faulted
Uber for a lack of a system to address safety operators'
"automation complacency."
Moments after the NTSB concluded its meeting Tuesday, NHTSA said
it took action to suspend passenger operation of 16 autonomous
shuttles operated by EasyMile after one of its passengers was
injured in an unexplained braking incident. The low-speed shuttles
operate in 10 states with safety operators onboard.
The incident occurred in Columbus, Ohio, when a company shuttle
traveling about 7 miles per hour made an emergency stop and a
passenger fell from a seat, an EasyMile spokeswoman said. "We are
running test loops on the ground for further analysis."
Following the Mountain View crash, Tesla attempted to lay the
blame for the crash on the driver of the Model X, saying the
vehicle's data didn't detect Mr. Huang's hands on the wheel in the
moments before the crash. Others have noted that the finicky system
may not have detected his hands.
"The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of
visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident
to have occurred is if Mr. Huang wasn't paying attention to the
road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so," a
Tesla spokesman said at the time in a statement.
Mr. Huang's family is suing Tesla over the crash. Their lawyer
told the NTSB that Mr. Huang had complained to his family that
Autopilot was acting up in the section of highway where his car
veered into a center divider.
Autopilot's limitations steered the vehicle into the divider and
Tesla's "ineffective" monitoring of Mr. Huang's use of Autopilot
contributed to the crash, the NTSB found.
Also on Tuesday, the NTSB said California's lack of maintenance
of the median contributed to the severity of the crash, saying Mr.
Huang would likely have survived otherwise. A different crash in
the same spot earlier in the month had previously damaged the
barrier.
Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com and Ben Foldy at
Ben.Foldy@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 25, 2020 18:35 ET (23:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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