Tesla’s vehicles are considered some of the safest out there, but a new incident in East China’s Zhejiang Province shows that even a safe car can’t stop a driver from making mistakes – some of which are even fatal.
A driver in a black Tesla sedan (allegedly a Model X via Silicon) struck a vehicle carrying two on-duty police officers on May 17, injuring one and leaving one dead, as reported by China’s official government newspaper, the Global Times.
The cause of the accident was determined on Sunday by the Taizhou Public Security Bureau, which said that the accident was not related to the car itself and that the driver must take full responsibility.
Tesla with Autopilot Engaged Nears 10x Lower Chance of Accident Than Average Car: Musk https://t.co/tLbT1pLrZ9
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) April 18, 2021
Following a comprehensive investigation from Taizhou police and from a third-party company that inspected the vehicle, authorities found that the accident was due to illegal driving rather than any faults of the vehicle itself.
The news follows several reports of Tesla’s vehicles crashing in recent months, bringing the company’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) safety claims into question.
Tesla also saw increased scrutiny over its vehicle quality in China, where a woman stood atop a Model 3 at Auto Shanghai in protest to the company’s alleged “faulty brakes,” which she said almost killed her family – all despite Tesla later releasing the information involved in the woman’s crash, showing that speed, not their brakes, were the causal factor for the accident.
