What you’re looking at here is a Tesla Model 3, or what’s left of one, after it struck a broken-down tractor-trailer on Route 1 in New Jersey. Why didn’t Autopilot intervene? After all, we’ve seen that the system generally errs on the side of caution rather than take risks in most cases. Well, the driver says that he was using the regular cruise control and wasn’t paying attention. Business Insider reports that police were told by the driver, a 44-year-old man from Baltimore, that he had the cruise control on “when he momentarily lost focus on the roadway.”
Yes, that means that the only occupant in this horrific crash survived with only minor injuries, but again, it highlights that ignorance or just bad driving habits are more dangerous than just about any self-driving software.
