NTSB sending investigators to fatal Tesla-semitrailer crash

By TOM KRISHER and DAVID FISCHER
March 2, 2019

MIAMI (AP) — A federal safety agency is sending a three-member team to investigate a fatal crash involving a Tesla electric car and a semitrailer that is strikingly similar to a 2016 crash involving another vehicle made by the company.

The National Transportation Safety Board said late Friday on Twitter that the team would work in cooperation with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which is probing the Friday morning crash in Delray Beach.

A sheriff’s report says the tractor-trailer was making a left turn onto a divided highway to head north when the southbound 2018 Tesla Model 3 hit the semi’s driver side, tearing off the Tesla’s roof as it passed under the trailer. The Tesla’s driver, 50-year-old Jeremy Beren Banner, died at the scene.

The report didn’t say whether the Tesla’s Autopilot semi-autonomous driving system or its automatic emergency braking system were working at the time of the crash. Tesla released a statement Friday expressing sadness and saying the company is “working to learn more and are reaching out to the authorities to offer our cooperation.”

The circumstances of the crash are much like one that occurred in May 2016 on the opposite side of Florida, near Gainesville. Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was traveling in a Tesla Model S on a divided highway and using the Autopilot system when he was killed.

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