NTSB cites drivers in fatal Tesla Autopilot crash, and photos tell the harrowing story

Investigators who looked into a 2019 crash that killed the driver of a Tesla Model 3 that slammed broadside into a semi trailer on a Florida freeway determined that the crash was caused by the truck driver’s failure to yield to the car’s right of way — combined with the Model 3 driver’s inattentiveness while relying on Autopilot, the partially autonomous driver-assist system.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators also chastised Tesla for failing to limit the use of Autopilot to conditions for which it designed, and it cited the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to develop a way to verify automakers’ system safeguards for partially automated driving technologies.

It also released images pulled from the Model 3 that show the semi truck obscuring the roadway in the final seconds before the car struck the trailer and passed underneath it, shearing off its roof. This is what the inattentive driver apparently never saw, and Autopilot never reacted to:

“The Delray Beach investigation marks the third fatal vehicle crash we have investigated where a driver’s over-reliance on Tesla’s Autopilot and the operational design of Tesla’s Autopilot have led to tragic consequences,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.

Autoblog sought comment from Tesla.

The fatal crash occurred just before sunrise March 1, 2019, when Jeremy Banner, 50, was driving his Model 3 to work on U.S. Highway 441 in Delray Beach, Florida. The semi trailer was traveling east and had pulled out into the southbound lanes of the freeway when Banner's car slammed into the trailer, shearing off the roof of the Model 3, which coasted to a stop nearly a third of a mile later. Banner died at the scene.