Two US transportation safety agencies said on Monday they had launched investigations into the fatal crash in Texas involving a Tesla in which there was apparently no one behind the wheel.
Read also: Tesla annoys German bureaucracy
The vehicle was traveling at high speed when it crashed into a tree in Spring, near Houston on Saturday night and caught fire, destroying it entirely. Initial evidence from the preliminary investigation by local police shows that no one was driving the vehicle, Harris County Police official Mark Herman told local media. According to him, the authorities found only two individuals, one in the passenger seat and the other in the back seat.
The US road safety agency, NHTSA,
"immediately launched a special investigation team,"
according to a message sent to AFP on Monday.
"We are actively discussing with local law enforcement and Tesla to learn more about the details of the crash and will take appropriate action when we have more information,"
NHTSA added.
The National Bureau of Transportation and Safety of the United States (NTSB) for its part indicated on Twitter that it had sent two investigators to the scene.
They will focus
"on the operation of the vehicle and the fire that followed the collision
.
"
Doubts about the driver assistance system
Local investigators had not yet determined on Sunday whether the driver's seat airbag had deployed and whether the vehicle's driver assistance system was engaged at the time of the collision. On its website, Tesla warns that the driving assistance systems they offer, under the names Autopilot and Full Driving System Capability, do not make the vehicle autonomous and that the active supervision of a driver remains necessary.
However, his boss Elon Musk regularly praises the advances made by his group on driver assistance technologies. A few hours before the incident on Saturday, he referred on Twitter to a quarterly count made by the group, commenting:
“Tesla driving with Autopilot engaged are now nearly ten times less likely to have an accident than a normal vehicle. "