DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Authorities in Washington have determined that a Tesla that hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle in April was operating on the company\u2019s \u201cFull Self Driving\u201d system at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigators from the Washington State Patrol made the discovery after downloading information from the event-data recorder on the 2022 Tesla Model S, agency spokesman Capt. Deion Glover said Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe investigation is still ongoing in this case,\u201d Glover said in an email to The Associated Press. The Snohomish County Prosecutor will determine if any charges are filed in the case, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week that \u201cFull Self Driving\u201d should be able to run without human supervision by the end of this year. He has been promising a fleet of robotaxis for several years. During the company\u2019s earnings conference call, he acknowledged<\/u><\/a> that his predictions on the issue \u201chave been overly optimistic in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A message was left Tuesday seeking comment from Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the crash in a suburban area about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Seattle, the driver told a trooper that he was using Tesla\u2019s Autopilot system and looked at his cellphone while the Tesla was moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe next thing he knew there was a bang and the vehicle lurched forward as it accelerated and collided with the motorcycle in front of him,\u201d the trooper wrote in a probable-cause document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 56-year-old driver was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide \u201cbased on the admitted inattention to driving, while on Autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward, putting trust in the machine to drive for him,\u201d the affidavit said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen, 28, of Stanwood, Washington, was under the car and pronounced dead at the scene, authorities reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nissen\u2019s death is at least the second in the U.S. involving Tesla\u2019s \u201cFull Self-Driving\u201d system. In investigative documents, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier it had found one fatality and 75 crashes while the system was being used<\/u><\/a>. It wasn\u2019t clear whether the system was at fault in the fatality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tesla has two partially automated driving systems, \u201cFull Self-Driving,\u201d which can take on many driving tasks even on city streets, and Autopilot, which can keep a car in its lane and away from objects in front of it. Sometimes the names are confused by Tesla owners and the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tesla says at present neither system can drive itself and that human drivers must be ready to take control at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFull Self-Driving\u201d is being tested on public roads by selected Tesla owners. The company recently has been calling it FSD Supervised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk said last week that he did not think approval by government regulators would be a limiting factor in deploying robotaxis. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got billions of miles that show that in the future, unsupervised FSD is safer than humans, what regulator could really stand in the way of that?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous vehicle safety, said he doesn\u2019t see Tesla running robotaxis without human drivers on nearly all roads for another decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The safety record Musk cites is based on having a human driver supervise the automated system, he said. \u201cUnless you have data showing that the driver never has to supervise the automation, then there\u2019s no basis for claiming they\u2019re going to be acceptably safe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n