87-year-old Florida man dies after Tesla in Autopilot mode crashes into pond

A Florida man died after his Tesla left the road, hit an electrical box and fell into a pond while driving in Autopilot mode.The fatal crash occurred near Tampa last month around 8:10 p.m. The Florida Highway Patrol said an 87-year-old man was driving a Tesla Model Y when the vehicle veered off the road east of Infinite Drive, entered a nearby pond and was completely submerged. Emergency crews extricated the two passengers from the vehicle and transported them to hospital. The driver later died from his injuries, while a 75-year-old woman traveling with him survived with non-life-threatening injuries. The Tesla was operating on Autopilot at the time of the accident. However, investigators have not yet explained how they determined the system was active or what caused the vehicle to leave the road.The speed limit in the area is 30 mph. Officials have not said whether speed, medical emergencies, driver behavior or vehicle systems played a role in the incident. It’s unclear how long the Tesla was underwater before rescuers arrived.The driver and passenger have not been identified and the investigation is ongoing.The crash has renewed attention on Tesla’s driver-assistance technology, which has faced increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny in recent years.In a separate case in Florida, a federal judge recently upheld a $243 million jury verdict in a 2019 crash involving a Tesla Model S equipped with Autopilot. The accident in Key Largo killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and seriously injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. The jury awarded the victims and their families $200 million in punitive damages.Tesla argued during the trial that the driver was solely responsible and said it planned to appeal the verdict. The company has always insisted that Autopilot requires active supervision from the driver and is not designed to replace human attention behind the wheel. The electric car maker faces multiple lawsuits involving its driver-assistance features.Tesla CEO Elon Musk continues to push the future of self-driving technology.“Ten years from now, probably 90 percent of the distance traveled will be driven by artificial intelligence in self-driving cars. Ten years from now, actually driving your own car is going to be a pretty niche thing,” Musk said in a video last month at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv.