Did The First Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash Actually Happen Back In January?

It had been thought the first ever fatal crash for a Tesla under the control of Autopilot happened in May when Model S owner Joshua D. Brown lost his life, but that might not be the case. Reuters reports that Tesla is investigating a fatal accident that happened in Beijing, China, way back in January.

23-year-old Gao Yaning died when his Model S hit the back of a road sweeper, however Tesla has stated that it’s impossible to know whether or not Autopilot was enabled. “Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers,” the company said.

Warning: The video news report below contains footage of the fatal crash. Viewer discretion advised

Tesla noted that in its investigation it has been trying to work with Gao’s father, the owner of the car, but “he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so.”

Since no evasive action was taken, it does make you wonder if Gao was relying on Autopilot at the same time. If that was the case, we can only speculate as to why the system failed to spot the road sweeper.

Find out more about how Autopilot works in our video below: