The nation’s top auto safety regulator said on Wednesday that it had begun an investigation of a second crash involving a Tesla Motors car equipped with Autopilot technology, a system designed to let vehicles drive themselves for brief periods.
In the nonfatal crash, a Tesla sport utility vehicle rolled over last Friday on the Pennsylvania Turnpike after hitting barriers on both sides of the highway. Safety officials continue to investigate a fatal Florida accident in May. The driver of the Pennsylvania vehicle told the Pennsylvania State Police that he was operating it in Autopilot mode.
The accidents have put new scrutiny on Tesla’s Autopilot system and raised questions about whether the technology, which the company describes as only an experimental “beta” test, lulls drivers into a false sense of security.
Although Tesla drivers have posted YouTube videos of themselves operating the vehicles completely hands-free — even climbing into the back seat — the company has cautioned that Autopilot is meant only as an “auto-assist” feature that requires drivers to keep their hands on or near the steering wheel at all times.
In the Florida crash, the first known fatality involving an autonomous driving system, the driver was killed when his Tesla Model S sedan struck a tractor-trailer that was crossing the roadway.
An account given on Wednesday by a witness to the Florida accident seemed to indicate that the Autopilot system continued operating the car at highway speed, even after the vehicle’s top was sheared off by the impact and the Tesla went under the trailer and continued down the road.
