49ers coach crashed his Tesla with Autopilot on — but takes the blame himself

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was involved in a crash near downtown Palo Alto about a month ago. Right after the incident, he limited himself to a brief admission that he was at fault. At a recent press conference, however, the coach revealed an important detail: his Tesla had Autopilot engaged at the moment of the collision.

Even so, Shanahan didn't try to shift the blame onto the technology. In his words, the fault lies with him regardless of whether the driver-assistance system was working. “I've had Autopilot for nine years now, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. And who knows what happened when I turned around? Maybe the system glitched, maybe I turned it off myself — I don't know yet. But either way, it's always your fault, Autopilot on or off. You can't take your eyes off the road. Driving is a partnership; you don't just hand everything over to the computer,” the coach said.

That phrasing is notable because it captures exactly what systems like Autopilot are: despite the name, they remain assistive and require the driver to keep monitoring the situation at all times and be ready to step in. Responsibility for control never goes away.

Over the years of its existence, Tesla's Autopilot has drawn plenty of scrutiny. The Verge points out that the system has been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of fatalities, and that some of those cases have ended in settlements worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It separately notes that the NHTSA regulator is currently investigating roughly 1.2 million Tesla vehicles over reports of suspension problems — though that story isn't directly connected to the Shanahan episode.

Tellingly, in this case there were no attempts to pin everything on the “smart” technology — the driver himself reiterated an obvious rule that owners of cars with advanced assistants often forget.

Source: The Verge