DVD Player Found At Scene Of Tesla Model S Crash Likely To Be Cause, Not Autopilot
Not. The. Onion. 
Whether the portable DVD player was operating at the time of the crash has not been determined, however, and witnesses who came upon the wreckage of the 2015 Model S sedan gave differing accounts on Friday about whether the player was showing a movie.
Questions of why the car did not stop for a turning truck, and whether the victim, Joshua Brown, was watching the road are critical for Tesla. The Palo Alto luxury electric car maker is facing a preliminary inquiry by federal regulators over the safety of the Model S Autopilot system that was engaged at the time of the crash in Williston, Florida.
It could be weeks if not months before officials make a final determination of the cause of the crash, the first known fatality of a Model S driver while using Autopilot. Meanwhile, the accident is stoking the debate on whether drivers are being lulled into a false sense of security by suchtechnology. A man who lives on the property where Brown’s car came to rest some 900 feet from the intersection where the crash occurred said when he approached the wreckage 15 minutes after the crash, he could hear the DVD player. An FHP trooper on the scene told the property owner, Robert VanKavelaar, that a “Harry Potter” movie was showing on the DVD player, VanKavelaar told Reuters on Friday.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/03/dvd-player-found-inside-tesla-model-s-involved-in-fatal-crash/
You know those stories you see where one side automatically goes off on a shitstorm and takes the blame game way too far while more information is needed? This is that more information.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And maybe a passive aggressive one is needed like this:
"Don't watch fucking movies while you're driving!!!"
I just have a lot of experience with that stretch of road, enough to avoid it in the late afternoon. In fact, these days when I drive between Tallahassee and Lakeland I take 27-19-98 and stay on 98 all the way into Lakeland (27 and Alt-27 turn off at Perry and Chiefland, respectively' 19 continues south when 98 turns east south of Homosassa Springs).
But I don't expect it to be practical in my lifetime to have totally self driving cars. Though maybe in the next thirty years it will be a toss up as to which is safer, the human drivers or computer operators. 
This driver should have known better than to leave everything up to the Tesla - according to what I have read he's posted a lot of videos about the car and was very familiar with it and its features. If he wanted to experiment with totally self-driving that particular stretch of road was a very bad choice. A limited access highway, such as an interstate, in a much less populated part of the country would have been a much better choice.
And then watched a movie while the car was in operation, that would not be Tesla's fault would it?
