NTSB blasts Tesla, CalTrans, and NHTSA for Autopilot death

On Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board met to discuss its investigation into the March 2018 crash that killed Tesla owner Walter Huang. The hearing followed a recent release of a trove of documents related to the investigation, which revealed that Huang had in the past repeatedly experienced the same glitch that caused his Tesla Model X to veer out of its lane and into a concrete highway gore, as well as the fact that he was playing a game called Three Kingdoms on his iPhone in the minutes leading up to his death.

During the hearing, the NTSB was highly critical of Tesla for what it sees as misleading marketing of its driver assistance system and a lax attitude toward the system's operational design domain. But there was plenty of blame to share—the board also excoriated the National Highway Transportation Agency for providing utterly ineffectual oversight when it comes to so-called "level 2" driver assists, as well as California's highway agency CalTrans, which failed to replace a damaged crash attenuator in front of the concrete gore, which would in most likelihood have saved Huang's life.

"This tragic crash clearly demonstrates the limitations of advanced driver assistance systems available to consumers today. There is not a vehicle currently available to US consumers that is self-driving. Period. Every vehicle sold to US consumers still requires the driver to be actively engaged in the driving task, even when advanced driver assistance systems are activated. If you are selling a car with an advanced driver assistance system, you’re not selling a self-driving car. If you are driving a car with an advanced driver assistance system, you don’t own a self-driving car," said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt.

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