RTTNews | Aug 16, 2021 02:55PM EDT

14:55 Monday, August 16, 2021 (RTTNews.com) - Electric vehicle giant, Tesla Inc (TSLA), is being investigated by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after the agency found that there have been 17 injuries and at least one fatality due to the carmaker's Autopilot system failure.

The Office of Defects Investigation has reported 11 crashes where the car has required the assistance of first responders and "subsequently struck one or more vehiclesinvolved with those scenes". According to the agency, most of the incidents have taken place in low visibility situations while the drivers were using the Autopilot or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control. "Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones. The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes," read the report.

Autopilot, as the agency described, is an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADDS), where the driver holds on to the steering wheel as the car operates automatically. The agency looked into almost 765,000 Tesla models, manufactured between 2014 and 2021.

The interest in Tesla Autopilot grew after a Model Y vehicle struck a police vehicle in March.

The shares of the company fell 5.03% subsequently, currently trading at $681.13, down $36.04. The shares opened at $717.17 in the morning and in the 52-week period, the shares have ranged between $329.88 and $900.40.

Read the original article on RTTNews ( https://www.rttnews.com/3219103/tesla-faces-investigation-as-nhtsa-report-11-crashes.aspx)

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