Tesla CEO Elon Musk and another company executive have come out to refute a story published by The Washington Post that suggested Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta was behind a tragic crash that killed an employee.
Yesterday The Washington Post published a lengthy story about Hans von Ohain, a Tesla employee that was killed in a tragic car crash in 2022. Ohain and a friend were returning home from a day on the golf course when the Tesla they were in veered off the road and caught fire. While the passenger, Erik Rossiter, was able to exit the vehicle, Ohain was not as lucky as a tree was blocking the driver’s door, leading to his death in the ensuing fire.
The story only came out now after the police investigation concluded, which found no evidence that FSD Beta was engaged at the time of the crash, but did find that Ohain’s blood alcohol level was 0.26, more than three times the legal limit. Rossiter’s witness testimony said Ohain was using “Full Self-Driving” at the time of the crash, but Tesla nor the police could not confirm this as the logs from the vehicle were lost in the fire, and not sent to Tesla over-the-air (OTA) due to the remote location of the crash.
Following the publication of the article, which attempted to place some of the blame on Tesla’s FSD feature, Elon Musk and another company executive have come out to refute that accusation.
In a post on X on Tuesday night, Musk said that FSD was never installed on the employees car, despite claims to the contrary published by The Washington Post.
He was not on FSD. The software had unfortunately never been downloaded. I say “unfortunately”, because the accident probably would not have happened if FSD had been engaged.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2024
After Musk’s post, many users on X pointed out that the article also pointed out that Tesla in their report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that a driver-assist feature was active in the 30-seconds leading up to the crash.
However, Tesla’s Vice President, Public Policy and Business Development, Rohan Patel, later clarified that the report was made to the NHTSA based solely on Rossiter’s testimony that it was active, and not based on any actual data, with Patel pointing out the deficiencies in the NHTSA’s reporting protocol.
A tragic loss of one of our team members and inaccurate reporting on it years later. ⁰⁰Apart from FSD beta software not being downloaded on the car, data from the incident was not retrievable.
— Rohan Patel (@rohanspatel) February 14, 2024
Notwithstanding the lack of information, as per NHTSA “SGO” requirements, Tesla… https://t.co/RrW7VkJNpU
