Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Unless there's a celebrity involved, a traffic accident - even one involving a casualty - doesn't normally get this much attention from the media. The one that happened on May seven and was made public on July the first deserved all the coverage it got, though, since it was the first of its kind.
Unlike what some people think, there is no anti-Musk conspiracy. The reason most publications turned their attention towards the Model S crash isn't that they hate Tesla's CEO, but because we've all said from the beginning that entrusting drivers with the Autopilot was a dangerous game. So the crash was basically a sad "I told you so" moment we just couldn't miss.
Despite an initial drop in share value, the aftermath of the incident was pretty limited. It's true, Tesla did pull a classic PR move and only released the information the Friday before the 4th of July weekend, so that might partly account for the reduced recoil. But it couldn't have been just that. It was probably also the fact that everybody understands the main culprit here was the driver himself.
And Tesla is well covered against any claims that Mr. Joshua Brown's family might think about raising: nobody forced him to use the Autopilot and, most importantly, he was well aware of the fact that he wasn't supposed to take his hands off the wheel and eye off the road. He knew what he should have and should not have been doing, made a choice and paid the ultimate price. But Tesla hasn't shied away from saying the Autopilot function is still in a "beta testing" phase. One that takes place on real streets, filled with real people.
But let's imagine for a second that instead of crashing into the side of a large truck, the heavy Model S rolling at over 80 mph (130 km/h) failed to notice a smart fortwo with a mother and her young daughter on board, stopped because of a malfunction in the middle of the lane. With an absent-minded driver, the two-tone EV would simply run through the small city car, with fatal consequences for those inside. The Tesla driver would still be the one to blame, but the Palo Alto company would have a proverbial public relations s**t storm on its hands.
Tesla drivers basically sign an EULA every time they switch on the Autopilot, but those around them don't. Nobody asked you whether you're OK with allowing some dude to decide if he wants to pay attention to where his 95% of the time autonomous car is going. He might have agreed to act as a beta-tester, but the rest of us haven't.
Despite an initial drop in share value, the aftermath of the incident was pretty limited. It's true, Tesla did pull a classic PR move and only released the information the Friday before the 4th of July weekend, so that might partly account for the reduced recoil. But it couldn't have been just that. It was probably also the fact that everybody understands the main culprit here was the driver himself.
And Tesla is well covered against any claims that Mr. Joshua Brown's family might think about raising: nobody forced him to use the Autopilot and, most importantly, he was well aware of the fact that he wasn't supposed to take his hands off the wheel and eye off the road. He knew what he should have and should not have been doing, made a choice and paid the ultimate price. But Tesla hasn't shied away from saying the Autopilot function is still in a "beta testing" phase. One that takes place on real streets, filled with real people.
But let's imagine for a second that instead of crashing into the side of a large truck, the heavy Model S rolling at over 80 mph (130 km/h) failed to notice a smart fortwo with a mother and her young daughter on board, stopped because of a malfunction in the middle of the lane. With an absent-minded driver, the two-tone EV would simply run through the small city car, with fatal consequences for those inside. The Tesla driver would still be the one to blame, but the Palo Alto company would have a proverbial public relations s**t storm on its hands.
Tesla drivers basically sign an EULA every time they switch on the Autopilot, but those around them don't. Nobody asked you whether you're OK with allowing some dude to decide if he wants to pay attention to where his 95% of the time autonomous car is going. He might have agreed to act as a beta-tester, but the rest of us haven't.
Google News