There is a reason why there is so much scepticism around Tesla's autonomous technology. It still isn't bulletproof and the consumers who use these technologies compound issues around safety by being alarmingly careless. Here's another one - in the US, North Carolina to be precise a Tesla driver rammed his car into two police vehicles while he had left the autopilot mode on and he watched a movie instead.
Tesla has always specified that the people who are driving its vehicles must always pay attention even when the autopilot is on. The ironic bit of this situation is that the police cars which were damaged were responding to another crash on the same road. The Tesla didn't only damage the police cars, but also struck the officers, said a report by CBS17.com.
"The Highway Patrol said the Tesla's driver ... said he was watching a movie on his phone while the car was on auto-pilot when the collision occurred," said the report which also clarified no one was injured. "It was a simple lane closure and then suddenly death was at our footsteps," Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone told CBS17.
This happens at a time when the Tesla stock is soaring new heights and it has become the most valuable automotive company on the planet. Elon Musk has also now become the third wealthiest person on the planet with a net worth of over $115.4 billion.
Since July, this is the second instance of a Tesla being involved in a crash while it was being used on autopilot. In July, it was a car in Arizona and coincidently, it was a police car even in that case.
Many experts have repeatedly said that the coining of autonomous technology itself has implications to what a driver understands. Many insurance companies have indicated that self-driving and autonomous cars need to be rebranded so as it the level of automation is clarified to the potential customer so that such incidents don't take place.
