An employee of Tesla may be the first person to die in a car crash involving one of the company's self-driving cars, The Washington Post reported.
Hans von Ohain, 33, was killed in the 2022 crash in Colorado after his Tesla swerved off the road he was on while using the auto-drive feature. Although his blood alcohol level was three-times the legal limit, investigators say the accident wasn't a simple case of drunk driving.
"Regardless of how drunk Hans was, [Tesla founder Elon] Musk has claimed that this car can drive itself and is essentially better than a human," von Ohain's widow Nora Bass told The Post. "We were sold a false sense of security."
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Von Ohain, who was reportedly a Musk super fan, was returning from playing golf and was riding with a friend when the crash occurred. The friend, Erik Rossiter, said before the crash the car sometimes drove erratically, causing von Ohain to clasp the wheel several times during the "uncomfortable" trip.
"The first time it happened, I was like, 'Is that normal?'' he recalled asking von Ohain. "And he was like, 'Yeah, that happens every now and then.'"
Just hours later, the car cashed into a tree, killing von Ohain.
Rossiter told investigators that they were using the Full Self-Driving feature which, if true, would make von Ohain's death the first ever in a self-driving vehicle.
Read the full story over at The Washington Post.
