The victim of the first reported fatality related to Tesla’s Autopilot self-driving technology may have been watching a Harry Potter movie during the crash, according to the driver of the truck the electric car collided with. Joshua Brown’s Tesla Model S electric car crashed into the trailer of Frank Baressi’s 18-wheel truck in Williston, Florida on 7th May.
Brown was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” according to Baressi, the driver of the truck that the Tesla collided with, adding that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.”
“It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road,” Baressi told The Associated Press. Though he admitted that he did not see the screen, he could hear the movie playing following the crash.
While Tesla Motors asserted that it was not possible to watch DVDs in the inbuilt dashboard screen, reports later emerged that Brown was using an external portable DVD player.
“There was a portable DVD player in the vehicle,” Sergeant Kim Montes of the Florida Highway Patrol confirmed to Reuters in a telephone interview.
Another witness, though, claims that no sound was coming from the Tesla following the crash. “There was no music. I was at the car. Right at the car,” Terence Mulligan said.
