Advocates of driverless cars worry that the fatal crash of a Tesla Motors Inc. vehicle in self-driving mode will provoke additional regulatory oversight and slow deployment on U.S. roads of the rapidly advancing technology. The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration aims this month to release a framework for regulating self-driving cars, which could include requiring auto makers to win approval for their technologies before releasing them. That sort of approval process wasn't applied to Tesla's Autopilot system to enable hands-free driving on highways, which the electric-car maker made available on Tesla vehicles via a software update in October. Regulators said Thursday that an Ohio man was using Autopilot when his Tesla Model S crashed into a 18-wheel truck in Florida on May 7, killing him. "There will be repercussions" in regulations, said Dean Pomerleau, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has worked on driverless cars for 25 years and led several NHTSA research programs.

The man killed in a crash while using the autopilot function of a Tesla Model S electric vehicle posted a YouTube video a month before the fatal crash showing the technology saving him from another collision and wrote that he was "very impressed." I have done a lot of testing with the sensors in the car and the software capabilities," Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, wrote on April 5 in comments posted with the 41-second video. "I have always been impressed with the car, but I had not tested the car's side collision avoidance," he said. Then on May 7, Brown, a former Navy Seal, was killed when his Tesla crashed into a tractor trailer in Williston, Fla. Federal regulators said Thursday they had opened an investigation into the fatality, thought to be the first in the auto industry involving an autonomous driving feature. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its Office of Defects Investigation was conducting a preliminary evaluation of the autopilot function. The agency is expected to issue guidelines for autonomous vehicles this month. Automakers do not need to have autonomous driving functions approved by NHTSA but must certify their vehicles meet safety standards. Calling Brown's death "a tragic loss," Tesla said it was the first-known fatality involving its autopilot feature. The technology, which is in public beta testing and must be activated by the driver, has been used in 130 million miles of driving without a fatality, the company said. The crash took place at 3:40 p.m. May 7 on U.S. Route 27A during clear and dry conditions, according to the accident report from the Florida Highway Patrol. Brown's vehicle was headed east when a tractor trailer driven by Frank Baressi of Palm Harbor, Fla., traveling in the opposite direction, made a left turn onto a side street. The Tesla's roof hit the underside of the tractor trailer. The car skidded under the truck and off the road, plowing through two wire fences before crashing into a utility pole, the accident report said. Baressi told the Associated Press that Brown was "playing'Harry Potter' on the TV screen" in the car when the crash took place. Kim Montes, a spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol, told The Times that a portable DVD player was found in the Tesla but said she did not know whether it had been in use. "At the time of the impact, we don't know what the status of that DVD player was.

Attackers are developing an aggressive new ransomware program for Windows machines that encrypts user files as well as the computer's master boot record (MBR), leaving devices unable to load the OS. The program is dubbed Satana -- meaning "Satan" in Italian and Romanian -- and, according to researchers from security firm Malwarebytes, it is functional but still under development. Satana is the second ransomware threat affecting the MBR and seems inspired by another program, Petya, that appeared in March. The MBR code is stored in the first sectors of a hard disk drive, contains information about the disk's partitions and launches the operating system's boot loader. Without a proper MBR, computers don't know which partitions contain the OS and how to start it.

The crash that killed a Tesla driver in Florida on Thursday when his car struck a tractor-trailer may mark the world's first fatal accident in which a computer was at the wheel. The crash occurred when the truck turned left across the 2015 Model S Tesla's path and the car's autopilot failed to slow down. The deadly accident, which took the life of 40-year-old Joshua David Brown of Ohio, is bound to raise a lot of questions about vehicle automation and the future of car travel. It may be tempting to describe this as a driverless car crash, but don't give in. There's a big difference between assisted driving technologies and full automation, and what we have here is the former. We'll get into that below, but let's start first with the nuts and bolts of the autopilot technology at the center of the crash.

Pretty much every cinematic portrayal of artificial intelligence has been less than encouraging. HAL 9000 kills the crew members on the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, making us all a little bit afraid of handing the reins over to computers. Sonny kills his creator in I, Robot, increasing worldwide scepticism about the integration of humans and their smart robots. Even real life AI has given us pause. For example, when an IBM computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, it was definitely a cause for concern.

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2015 file photo, a Tesla Model S is on display on the first press day of the Frankfurt Auto Show IAA in Frankfurt, Germany. Federal officials say the driver of a Tesla S sports car using the vehicle's "autopilot" automated driving system has been killed in a collision with a truck, the first U.S. self-driving car fatality. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicate the crash occurred when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at a highway intersection. NHTSA said the Tesla driver died due to injuries sustained in the crash, which took place on May 7, 2016 in Williston, Fla. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File) The Associated Press

U.S. transportation authorities are investigating the deadly collision of a Tesla Model S car. And many reports say the fatal crash has heightened concern about self-driving cars. As NPR's Sonari Glinton points out, what Tesla's Model S has are self-driving features, autonomous elements meant to assist drivers rather than replace them. Virtually all major car and tech companies are pursuing self-driving technology as the future of transportation. But Tesla and Google are the earliest innovators, taking very different approaches.

The U.S. announced Thursday the first fatality in a wreck involving a car in self-driving mode. The government said it is investigating the design and performance of the system aboard the Tesla Model S sedan. Model S with Autopilot engaged. The Ohio man who died while using the "Autopilot" feature on his Tesla electric car was watching Harry Potter when he was fatally injured in a wreck while the car was in self-drive mood, according to a witness. Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, died from injuries he sustained when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of his 2015 Tesla on a highway near Williston, Fla., in May.

The U.S. announced Thursday the first fatality in a wreck involving a car in self-driving mode. The government said it is investigating the design and performance of the system aboard the Tesla Model S sedan. A file picture dated 30 April 2015 shows a Tesla Motors Model S on a parking lot of the Tesla Motors Headquarters in Palo Alto, California, USA. Questions abound in the wake of the first death of a driver of a Tesla car with its self-driving features engaged. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has begun a preliminary evaluation into the fatal May 7 crash of a 2015 Model S electric car, said its probe centers on the car's'Autopilot' feature.

A day after the disclosure of the first death in a crash involving a self-driving vehicle, BMW on Friday announced plans to release a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles by 2021. In a partnership with Intel and Mobileye, the German automaker said its planned iNEXT model won't require a human in the driver's seat. That marks a different course toward self-driving vehicles than Tesla, which offers a self-driving "autopilot" feature -- though drivers are supposed to stay engaged and keep their hands on the steering wheel. That system was in use during a fatal crash in Florida in May in which a Tesla Model S failed to detect a big rig in its path and apply the brakes. BMW Chief Executive Harold Krueger addressed the Tesla crash during a news conference in Munich, Germany, on Friday, saying his company is not yet ready to roll out partially or fully autonomous vehicles.