Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
Tesla probably shouldn&#x27;t be saying anything about this at all, even just to avoid giving it more news cycles.  But if they were going to say something, here&#x27;s what they should have said the first time.<p>----<p>We take great care in building our cars to save lives.  Forty thousands Americans die on the roads each year.  That&#x27;s a statistic.  But even a single death of a Tesla driver or passenger is a tragedy.  This has affected everyone on our team deeply, and our hearts go out to the family and friends of Walter Huang.<p>We&#x27;ve recovered data that indicates Autopilot was engaged at the time of the accident.  The vehicle drove straight into the barrier.  In the five seconds leading up to the crash, neither Autopilot nor the driver took any evasive action.<p>Our engineers are investigating why the car failed to detect or avoid the obstacle.  Any lessons we can take from this tragedy will be deployed across our entire fleet of vehicles.  Saving other lives is the best we can hope to take away from an event like this.<p>In that same spirit, we would like to remind all Tesla drivers that Autopilot is not a fully-autonomous driving system.  It&#x27;s a tool to help attentive drivers avoid accidents that might have otherwise occurred.  Just as with autopilots in aviation, while the tool does reduce workload, it&#x27;s critical to always stay attentive.  The car cannot drive itself.  It can help, but you have to do your job.<p>We do realize, however, that a system like Autopilot can lure people into a false sense of security.  That&#x27;s one reason we are hard at work on the problem of fully autonomous driving.  It will take a few years, but we look forward to some day making accidents like this a part of history.