PALO ALTO, Calif. _ A safety barrier that protects vehicles from a concrete lane divider on Highway 101 at the carpool flyover to Highway 85 was missing at the time of the March 23 fatal crash involving a Tesla Model X, the company claimed in a blog post.
Tesla provided an image of the area of south Highway 101 that showed the missing barrier, reportedly taken the day before the crash. In a side-by-side comparison, Tesla included a Google street view image of the same location, with the barrier protecting the lane divider.
"The reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced," Tesla wrote in the blog post Tuesday. "The following image shows what the barrier looked like when the crash attenuator was in proper condition, and what it looked like the day prior to the crash, based on dashcam footage from a witness of the accident who commutes daily past this location. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash."
Tesla also wrote that it is working with authorities to recover the vehicle's logs in hopes of having "a better understanding of what happened."
Earlier Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it was investigating to see if an autopilot system was involved in the fatal crash. Two NTSB investigators will examine the post-crash fire that engulfed the Tesla Model X and evaluate the steps taken to safely remove the vehicle from the scene.
The NTSB said it is "unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash."
In the blog post, the company wrote "that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015 and roughly 20,000 times since just the beginning of the year, and there has never been an accident that we know of. There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road."
Tesla bills the Model X, which has a list price of about $79,500 and features gullwing doors, as "the safest SUV ever."
Friday morning, a San Mateo man died when his Tesla Model X crashed. Wei Huang, 38, was traveling in the carpool lane of southbound 101 around 9:30 a.m. that morning when he collided with the barrier separating his lane from the Highway 85 flyover carpool lane, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The impact caused Huang's vehicle to catch fire, the CHP said. Moments later, an approaching Mazda and Audi hit the 2017 Tesla.
Huang was extricated from his vehicle by rescue crews and taken to Stanford Hospital, where he died from his injuries that afternoon, the CHP said.
