A Tesla driver who said he was asleep while using a driver-assist mode crashed into a parked patrol vehicle in an incident first reported by The Verge. CHP says two officers were seriously injured and taken to a hospital after the crash, which happened amid flares, cones and emergency lights at the scene of an earlier accident.
Video released by CHP shows the Tesla speeding past flares, cones and emergency lights at the scene of an earlier accident before hitting the back of a parked patrol vehicle.
CHP warned that, despite its name, full self-driving is not fully autonomous, and said the technology does not relieve drivers of their responsibility to safely operate their vehicles.
After numerous collisions with parked emergency vehicles, NHTSA launched an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot software in 2021. The agency eventually issued a report finding that the driver-assist features did not do enough to keep drivers engaged, linking them to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths when both the system and driver failed to respond.
The incident puts CHP’s emphasis on driver responsibility beside NHTSA’s separate finding about driver engagement.
Tesla released an update for Autopilot in 2023, adding more controls and alerts to prompt drivers to be in full control of the car when Autosteer is enabled. NHTSA then opened another investigation into whether those changes went far enough.