A Florida man died after his Tesla left the road, struck an electrical box and fell into a pond while in Autopilot mode.The fatal accident happened at around 8.10pm last month near Tampa.
The Florida Highway Patrol said an 87-year-old man was driving a Tesla Model Y when the vehicle veered off the road east of Infinite Drive before entering a nearby pond and becoming completely submerged in water.
Emergency crews pulled the two passengers from the car and took them to the hospital. The driver later died from his injuries, while a 75-year-old woman traveling with him survived with non-life-threatening injuries.
The Tesla was running on Autopilot at the time of the accident. However, investigators did not explain how they determined the system was active or why the vehicle left the road.The speed limit in the area is 30 mph. Officials did not say whether speed, medical emergency, driver actions or vehicle systems played any role in the accident. It is also unclear how long the Tesla was underwater before rescue teams arrived.
The identity of the driver and passenger has not been revealed, and the investigation is still ongoing.The crash has renewed interest in Tesla’s driver-assistance technology, which has faced increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny in recent years.In a separate Florida case, a federal judge recently upheld a $243 million jury verdict related to a 2019 accident involving a Tesla Model S equipped with Autopilot. The accident occurred in Key Largo and left 22-year-old Nibel Benavides Leon dead and her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, seriously injured.
Jurors awarded punitive damages of $200 million to the victims and their families.Tesla said during the trial that the driver alone was responsible and said it planned to appeal the ruling. The company has consistently maintained that Autopilot requires active driver supervision and is not designed to replace human attention behind the wheel. The electric car maker has faced several lawsuits related to its driver-assistance features.Tesla CEO Elon Musk has continued to promote the future of self-driving technology.“Ten years from now, perhaps 90% of the total distance traveled by AI will be driven in a self-driving car,” Musk said during a video appearance at the Samsun International Intelligent Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv last month. “It will be very special in 10 years to be driving your own car.”