“I was just shaking”—new documents reveal details of fatal Tesla crash

Enlarge / The trailer sheared off the roof of Jeremy Banner’s car, killing him instantly.

“It really looked like I had plenty of time to go across,” an anguished Florida truck driver said in an interview transcript released by the National Transportation Safety Board this week. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

Richard Wood was driving a semi truck on the morning of Friday, March 1, 2019. He pulled onto Florida’s SR 7 from a driveway, intending to make a left turn. But as he crossed to the opposite lane, a Tesla Model 3 belonging to Jeremy Banner crashed into the side of the truck. Banner’s Tesla went under Wood’s trailer, shearing off the roof and killing Banner.

The case attracted wide attention because Banner had engaged Tesla’s Autopilot technology. Not only that, the circumstances of Banner’s death were almost identical to the first Autopilot-related death in the United States: the death of Josh Brown in 2016. Brown was also killed when Autopilot failed to stop for a semi truck crossing in front of him on a Florida highway.