von Ohain Hans (Hans von Ohain)

von Ohain Hans (Hans von Ohain)

Biography

2022: Death - burned down in Tesla car that crashed into tree on Autopilot

In mid-February 2024, it became known that employee Tesla Hans von Ohain, driving an electric car 3 Model in autopilot mode, had a fatal accident. The car flew out of the way, crashed tree into and caught fire.

According to the Washington Post, the incident occurred in 2022. Ohain, along with his friend Eric Rossiter, was returning home from a golf club - both men were intoxicated. Ohain was sitting in the driver's seat, but the car was moving entirely on autopilot. At the same time, the route ran along a winding mountain road. At some point, the Model 3 on-board computer could not correctly analyze the road situation, and the car drove to the side of the road at a sufficiently high speed.

Rossiter said that as a result of an accident, a tree fell on an electric car, blocking the driver's door. The man was able to get out of the Model 3 cabin, but he failed to save Ohain: due to the collision, the battery pack caught fire, and the car was quickly engulfed in flames.

A subsequent autopsy revealed that Ohain died of poisoning from combustion products and thermal injuries. At the same time, the level of alcohol in the blood of a man was three times higher than the permissible norm. According to the results of the investigation, no traces of skid or emergency braking were found at the crash site, which means that Ohain was unable to react to what was happening and take control. In addition, it was found that even after a collision with a tree, the wheels of an electric car continued to rotate, that is, the power plant supplied power despite the accident. Tesla reported the crash to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Due to the fact that the car was completely destroyed by fire, experts could not reliably establish the cause of the fatal accident.^[1]

Notes