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Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving

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The Verge logo. Authorities in Texas say two people were killed when a Tesla with no one in the driver’s seat crashed into a tree and burst into flames, Houston television station&nbsp;.The cause of the crash, which happened at about 9PM local time in Spring, Texas (near Houston), is under investigation. in Houston, first responders had to use 30,000 gallons of water over four hours to put out the fire, as the Tesla’s battery kept reigniting. Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.Two men dead after fiery crash in Tesla Model S.“[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact,” Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said. “They are positive.” — Matt Dougherty (@MattKHOU)Preliminary reports suggest the car was traveling at a high rate of speed and failed to make a turn, then drove off the road into a tree. One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, the other was in the back seat, according to KHOU. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC that “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla at the time of the crash. It’s not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on Sunday. The company dissolved its press office and doesn’t usually respond to media inquiries, however. , Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that “data logs recovered so far” suggest that Autopilot was not engaged at the time of the crash, nor had the vehicle’s owner purchased the company’s “Full Self-Driving” option that may have allowed the use of Autopilot on local roads. There have been at least under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but this appears to be the first fatal crash where there was no driver in the driver’s seat. Tesla has previously cautioned its customers that Autopilot is not an autonomous driving system and still requires constant attention to the road while in use. The company’s cars only check that attention with a sensor that measures torque in the steering wheel, though, leaving room for misuse — something the National Transportation Safety Board .Tesla has previously provided who encounter fires involving its EV batteries. can be a problem, because unlike gas-powered vehicles, even if the fire is extinguished, an EV battery still has stored energy. Tesla’s guidance suggests it’s better to let the fire burn out than continuing to try to put it out. In the past, calls from Tesla engineers to add better safety monitoring when a vehicle is in Autopilot, such as eye-tracking cameras or additional sensors on the steering wheel, saying the tech is “ineffective.” He said in 2018 that Tesla would regularly release safety data about its Autopilot feature, but added that “negative” press coverage about it might persuade customers not to use it. “When there is a serious accident it is almost always, in fact maybe always, the case that it is an experienced user, and the issue is more one of complacency,”. “They just get too used to it. That tends to be more of an issue. It’s not a lack of understanding of what Autopilot can do. It’s [drivers] thinking they know more about Autopilot than they do.”Update April 19th, 6:04PM ET: Added Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet about the crash. Most PopularDiOS 16 should let us swipe down for notifications.Antonio makes an excellent point here that completely slipped by me in the months I’ve been using the iOS 16 betas. Swiping down on the home screen is part of my muscle memory for Spotlight, but now that there’s an always present button on the home screen to launch Spotlight, the swipe down gesture could easily be repurposed for Notification Center. Or at least give us the option.With iOS 16 apple now gives you TWO different ways to do a search on your home screen (swipe down from center and tap the pill button at the bottom). This would have been the perfect chance to switch that down swipe to pull down the notification shade, which is all I want in iOS— Antonio G. 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The Verge logo. Authorities in Texas say two people were killed when a Tesla with no one in the driver’s seat crashed into a tree and burst into flames, Houston television station&nbsp;.The cause of the crash, which happened at about 9PM local time in Spring, Texas (near Houston), is under investigation. in Houston, first responders had to use 30,000 gallons of water over four hours to put out the fire, as the Tesla’s battery kept reigniting. Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.Two men dead after fiery...

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The Verge's Weekend Editor Kim Lyons is a Pittsburgh-based journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was the first-ever digital news editor. She's a fan of coffee, hockey and startups, in that order. Ethics statement: Kim’s husband is currently employed by Whole Foods. She therefore doesn’t report on or edit stories about Whole Foods or its competitors.

Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving

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