On Saturday, Dr. Will Varner and Everette Talbot died when the Tesla, in which they were riding, hit a tree and caught fire. They were taking a “spin” on Varner’s Model S and this unfortunate incident occurred a few hundred yards away from the doctor’s home in spring, Texas, according to friends and family who witnessed the accident. It took place around 11.30 p.m. The car failed to make a turn, drove off the road and crashed into a tree.
According to Harris County Constable Mark Herman it took about four hours to douse the flames as per a report on KHOU.11. He also said that his accident investigators believe that no one was in the driver’s seat. He said that one man was found in the passenger seat in front while the other was in the back seat.
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.†#KHOU11 https://t.co/q57qfIXT4f pic.twitter.com/eQMwpSMLt2
— Matt Dougherty (@MattKHOU) April 18, 2021
However, Woodlands Fire Department Chief told The Houston Chronicle that their guys got there and put out the blaze within two or three minutes. He said that they had to continue to cool the car as the batteries continued to have a chain reaction “due to damage.”
On Saturday, a few hours before the crash, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla had tweeted that autopilot on Tesla were ten times less likely to cause an accident when compared with a driver behind an average vehicle.
The accident is being investigated by the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Musk tweeted that the data logs recovered so far had shown that Autopilot was not enabled and that the particular car in question had not purchased FSD. He added that standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on and the street where the accident took place didn’t have such lines.
Investigations have revealed that the car was going at a considerable speed but the exact speed has not as yet been revealed. Mark Herman said that they were eagerly waiting for data from Elon Musk and Tesla. He added that witnesses said that the car was being driven on autopilot.
