What happened

34-year-old Landon Embry was killed after his Harley-Davidson motorcycle was rear-ended by a Tesla on Interstate 15 near Draper, Utah.

The Tesla driver had merged into Embry's lane on Interstate 15 and struck the back of his motorcycle, sending him cascading off his bike.

Why it happened

The incident happened primarily because Tesla's Autopilot system failed to detect the Harley-Davidson motorcycle on the road.

Tesla's driver-assist system relies entirely on camera-based vision sensors rather than radar or LiDAR, which limits its ability to detect smaller vehicles like motorcycles, especially at night. 

Motorcycles with close-set tail lights and low visibility features can be misidentified or go undetected by the system. 

In the Utah crash, the Tesla Autopilot did not recognise the motorcycle ahead, leading the Tesla driver to be unaware of the motorcycle’s presence until the collision occurred.