Report: Tesla Full Self-Driving System Was Complicit in 2022 Death of Tesla Employee

The Tesla employee who was killed in 2022 when his Tesla Model 3 went off the road was using Full Self-Driving mode after a day on the links in the Denver, Colorado area, a new investigation shows.
Hans von Ohain, the driver and a Tesla employee, appears to be the first known fatality using that involves and possibly implicates Tesla’s highest level of driver-assistance technology.
The automaker offers three levels of driver-assistance tech, starting with Autopilot, which includes radar-based cruise control which maintains the appropriate distance between vehicles on the highway and Autosteer, which assists in keeping the vehicle clearly marked lanes; Enhanced Autopilot, which includes the basic Auto Pilot features and adds what Tesla calls “Navigate on Autopilot,” which will take control of the vehicle from a highways’ on-ramp to its exit, including suggesting lane changes, navigating interchanges, using the turn signal throughout all of this, and taking the correct exit based on what the navigation system calls for. It will also move to an adjacent lane when Autosteer is engaged, automatically parallel park the vehicle or place it in a perpendicular spot, move the vehicle out of a tight spot so a driver and passengers can enter the vehicle, and pull out of a parking spot and find the driver in a parking lot such as at a mall or shopping center.
The there’s Full Self-Driving Capability, which will allow the vehicle to steer itself on city streets and recognize stop signs and traffic lights while taking appropriate action.
“Your vehicle will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention,” the automaker maintains on its website.
The sole passenger in the Model 3, Erik Rossiter, survived the crash.
Rossiter told the Washington Post, which conducted the investigation, that the five-mile (eight-kilometer) ride was “uncomfortable.” The car’s software was struggling with the winding roads and von Ohain had to frequently make aggressive course corrections.
”The  first time it happened, I was like, ‘Is that normal?’” Rossiter told the paper. Ohain, who was said to love everything Tesla, reportedly replied, “Yeah, that happens every now and then.”
The vehicle, apparently on what is often referred to as FSD, went off the road and barreled into a tree, exploding in flames. A 911 dispatch recording obtained by the paper indicates that Rossiter told emergency responders that von Ohain was using an “auto-drive feature” that “just ran straight off the road.”
Rossiter, a recruiter, told the Post that he believes that von Ohain was using FSD.
In a cruel twist of fate, the EV technology von Ohain loved resulted in his demise.
He reportedly received the Full-Self-Driving system early as a perk from his job as an engineer recruiter, enjoying it for free while customers forked out $10,000 for the feature.
The police investigation showed that the Model 3’s lithium battery cells may have contributed to the fireball resulting from the crash, Colorado State Patrol Sergeant Robert Madden, who was responsible for the investigation, told the paper. Madden believes that von Ohain would likely have survived the crash. The autopsy shows he died from “smoke inhalation and thermal injuries.”
The autopsy also showed that von Ohain’s blood alcohol level at the time of death was of 0.26, a figure more than three times the legal limit and a level that would certainly have left him too impaired to drive safely.
All this merely goes to show that the proclamation of the death of the driver as someone who has to be awake, sober, and paying attention to the road is somewhat premature.
While Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk likes to boast that “[T]he more automation technology offered to support the driver, the safer the driver and other road users [are],” the use of FSD is far more nuanced. Tesla , in its user manuals, publishes an extensive list of conditions under which FSD may not function properly, and that list includes winding roads. The company via the FSD software license mandates that drivers must control their cars and states that Tesla is not liable for accidents resulting from distracted or drunken driving.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)