For months, Tesla Motors has been under a magnifying glass after traffic incidents occurred involving their vehicles equipped with Autopilot. The car company just had a major thorn pulled from its side with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration clearing the semi-driverless technology with any defects. In fact, the report is practically a glowing commendation of the company.
The NHTSA recently concluded its investigation into the Florida car crash that occurred last year when the owner of a Tesla Model S died with the car’s Autopilot system engaged, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the agency’s findings, there were no defects in the feature and it functioned as it was intended. As a result, there was no reason to issue a recall or blame Autopilot for the accident.
There were also several minor incidents involving the feature, which thankfully did not result in serious injury. After looking into those, the NHTSA also noted that the Autopilot was working perfectly in every case. So, if the feature was working and was without any defects, the only logical conclusion was that the drivers were not using it properly.
According to Bryan Thomas, the chairman of the NHTSA, drivers need to maintain their concentration on the road even when the feature is activated. This mirrors exactly what Tesla has been telling its customers all along.
Speaking of vindication, the report filed by the agency also noted some of the Autopilot’s aspects that practically sounded like admiration, The Motley Fool reports. For one thing, the report suggested that Tesla had already predicted inattentiveness on the part of the driver and included protocols in order to address the issue.
The report also made note of how car crashes dropped by 40 percent once Autopilot was installed in the vehicles compared to Tesla units that didn’t have them. Finally, the NHTSA stressed that despite the fact that the car maker could have been more explicit about the exact nature of Autopilot, there was no shortage in warnings either.


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