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Tesla under investigation for vicious Detroit car crash

Photo by: Austin Ramsey/Unsplash

Tesla is under probe after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started checking on the serious car crash in Detroit last week. The accident involves a semi-truck and white Tesla car that was totally wrecked.

The launch of the investigation

As per Reuters, the NHTSA revealed on Monday, March 15, that the news about the Tesla crash in Detroit has already reached the agency. Thus, they have subsequently launched an investigation.

“The NHTSA is aware of the violent crash that occurred on March 11 in Detroit involving a Tesla and a tractor-trailer,” the auto safety agency stated. “We have launched a Special Crash Investigation (SCI) team to investigate the crash.”

At any rate, this is actually just another case that the U.S. auto safety administration is investigating. It has already started at least a dozen investigations on Tesla car crashes. The NHTSA is checking if the incidents are linked to the car’s advanced Autopilot feature.

They are looking to the possibility that Tesla’s driver assistance system could have played a part in the accidents. But then again, it was clarified that it is not certain yet if the Autopilot may have been a factor in the crash that happened in Detroit.

While the authorities can’t say yet if the Autopilot system was in use before or during the collision on March 11, it was revealed that based on the previous cases, it was found that Tesla cars with Autopilot systems have run into large vehicles and even stationary objects on multiple occasions.

CNBC noted that while Tesla’s Autopilot has significantly changed over the years, it remained a subject of regulatory scrutiny since 2016. It started when Joshua Brown lost his life while driving his Tesla Model S while in Autopilot. His car crashed with a tractor-trailer.

The details about the Detroit crash

On the morning of March 11, police arrived at the site in Southwest Detroit and saw a horrible scene where a Tesla car was stuck underneath a semi-truck. The crews had a hard time extracting the vehicle as it was deeply wedged under the trailer. The WWJ News Radio reported that the incident took place around 3:30 a.m. that day at Fort Street near Livernois.

The police could not determine which direction the wrecked car was traveling to when it collided with the truck trailer. The passengers, a man, and a woman, were rushed to the hospital, and the latter is said to be in critical condition.

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