WASHINGTON — A man allegedly watching a Harry Potter movie in a Tesla on “autopilot” was killed when the car slammed into a semi’s trailer on May 7, a witness said, in what the U.S. government says is the first reported death involving a self-driving vehicle.
Joshua D. Brown of Canton, Ohio, the 40-year-old owner of a tech firm who nicknamed his vehicle “Tessy” and had praised its Autopilot system just one month earlier, was killed in Williston, Fla., when his car’s cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn’t activate its brakes, according to government records.
Truck driver Frank Baressi, 62, said the Tesla driver was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.”
“It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter-mile down the road,” Baressi said, though he acknowledged he couldn’t see the movie, he only heard it. Tesla Motors Inc. said it is not possible to watch videos on the Model S touch screen and initial police reports didn’t mention it.
Brown was a member of the Navy SEALs for 11 years until 2008, and founder of Nexu Innovations Inc., working on wireless internet networks and camera systems. Brown was enthusiastic about his 2015 Tesla Model S and in April credited its Autopilot system for avoiding a crash when a commercial truck swerved into his lane on an Interstate. He published a video of the incident online. “Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent,” Brown wrote.
Tesla described Brown in a statement as “a friend to Tesla and the broader EV (electric vehicle) community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla’s mission.” It also stressed the uncertainty about its new system, noting that drivers must manually enable it: “Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert.”
Shares of Tesla Motors Inc. fell $6.77, or 3.2 percent, in after-hours trading on news of the crash.
Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, said the accident is a huge blow to Tesla’s reputation.
“They have been touting their safety and they have been touting their advanced technology,” he said. “This situation flies in the face of both.”