
Part of the growing pains of introducing new technology is that growing pains sometimes come with a steep price. Unfortunately in this case it was the loss of life. The crash involved a 40-year-old Ohio man who was killed when his 2015 Model S drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler on a highway near Williston, Florida. Understanding your policy and its limitations are part of the service that we at County Insurance Group take pride in educating our customers.

The details of the accident are likely to add fuel to the debate over whether self-driving cars are ready for the real world. Autopilot didn’t notice the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake wasn’t applied, said Tesla, which reported the May 7 incident to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In a blog post, Tesla said that the fatal crash is the first known fatality in more than 130 million miles of Autopilot driving.
If the Autopilot system didn’t recognize the tractor trailer, then Tesla will have to recall the cars to fix the flaw, said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, an advocacy group in Washington. Ditlow said that Tesla’s Autopilot system needs to be able to recognize all possible road conditions.
“That’s a clear-cut defect and there should be a recall,” Ditlow said in a phone interview. “When you put Autopilot in a vehicle, you’re telling people to trust the system even if there is lawyerly warning to keep your hands on the wheel.”
Tesla Autopilot features in October. Autopilot is a step towards autonomous or self driving cars, and includes features like automatic lane changing, auto steering and the ability of the vehicle to parallel park itself. Tesla stresses that drivers still maintain responsibility for safe driving and should keep their hands on the wheel at all times.
Google is also testing self driving cars. This will be the beginning of several discussions as to the readiness of self driving cars for our highways.