A fiery Tesla crash in California claimed the life of the car’s driver on Saturday morning. The crash comes as regulators in the US continue to investigate crashes involving Teslas and stationary emergency vehicles.
Saturday’s crash in Contra Costa County involved a fire truck from the county’s fire protection district that was parked across two lanes to block traffic as police officers worked to help with a car being towed, according to a spokeswoman for the district, who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.
The spokeswoman shared that the driver was pronounced dead at the scene, and a passenger in the Tesla was transported to a local area hospital and listed in critical condition.
Inside the firetruck were four firefighters, who were all wearing seat belts at the time of the crash and were all transported to the hospital with minor injuries. They have since been released, according to the spokeswoman.
Both the Tesla and the truck were heavily damaged from the wreck and were towed from the scene.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating the Tesla advanced driver-assistance system called Autopilot. For more than a year, regulators have been looking into the feature after numerous crashes at emergency scenes.
However, it isn’t known if the Autopilot feature was being used or not in Saturday’s crash, as it remains under investigation.
Still, the administration has documented other incidents that have caused concern for regulators. It told Tesla last month about those concerns, specifically related to certain roadway environments.
Last Thanksgiving, the NHTSA was investigating an accident that left 16 people injured on a California roadway. The driver of the vehicle blamed the self-driving feature for the wreck, saying that the car moved into the fast lane on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco before it stopped suddenly, causing the eight-car pileup.
In 2021 and 2022, two separate Tesla crashes occurred while the drivers were reportedly using the Autopilot feature. Both crashes involved first responder vehicles.
Late last week, Tesla announced a recall for 363,000 vehicles that have the Full Self-Driving Beta. The recall is supposed to address how the feature negotiates certain driving maneuvers.
While the issue will be resolved remotely through a software update, it is still classified as a recall, something the company’s CEO Elon Musk didn’t like, as he said in a tweet that it was “anachronistic and just flat wrong!”
The NHTSA shared on Thursday that some of the vehicles could violate local traffic laws, increasing collision risks if drivers don’t intervene. Though, they noted that it was in rare circumstances.
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