Why the Media Love a Tesla Crash

On the 1st of July 2016, Joshua Brown, was driving through Florida when he was involved in an accident that, tragically, ended in his death.  Mr Brown was one of many that died that same day across the US, and one of approximately 33 thousand people that die every year on their roads, yet Mr Brown made headlines around the world; why?

The answer is simple, Mr Brown was driving a Tesla Model S using the "autopilot" feature.

But why was the car so important?  The answer to that question is, regrettably, that the media fundamentally misunderstand the technology, or perhaps worse, make use of general public mis-understanding in order to create sensational headlines.  What most of the stories really wanted to say was that Mr Brown was killed by his car through no fault of his own, that he was let down by technology and that driverless vehicles are unsafe.  Autonomous vehicles are a hot topic and a large proportion of the driving readership are apprehensive about their introduction, so such an event would be "big news".  However, the truth is more mundane, if still tragic.

Firstly, let's look at Tesla's "Autopilot".  The name is perhaps unfortunate because it does conjure an image of autonomous driving, but the reality is that the technology involved is common in many other cars and has been around for many years.  Tesla's Autopilot really does only three things:

• It acts as an "adaptive" cruise control, maintaining a set speed and responding to the speed of vehicles in front of it.
  
• It can maintain position within a lane using the steering.
  
• It can perform lane-changing maneuvers triggered by the driver.

That's it.  That's the lot.  So how different is that from any number of other modern cars?  Adaptive cruise control has been around for at least 12 years.  Mercedes were fitting a version to their cars as early as 2004 and it is now a common feature on most higher-spec cars.  So it's common, and not specific to the Tesla.

Lane keeping is available from Ford, Mercedes and VW to name but three.  So no, that's not specific to the Tesla either.

Actual lane-changing seems, for now, to be the preserve of the Tesla, but it's coming to Mercedes (of course) in the next E-class and others will follow.  Importantly, in the case of Joshua Brown, it appears no lane-changing was involved and, since the move requires driver action (you have to indicate), it's about as far from "autonomous" as you can get.

So, in short, although the accident was awful and a man died, ultimately it was little different from any of the other accidents that occurred that day, and could happen, has happened and will happen many more times to drivers of other vehicles.  Of course, these accidents won't make headlines around the world because, well, they're not really news are they?