Government regulators are looking into fatal Tesla crash involving Autopilot

Tesla announced today that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a recent fatal crash of a Model S with the company's Autopilot feature activated. The accident took place on May 7th in a small West Florida town called Williston. The Florida Highway Patrol is also conducting its own investigation of the accident, according to a public affairs officer there. The same officer reported that Tesla has, since the fatal accident in May, sent engineers down to Ocala, Florida to assist investigators in accessing data they needed to evaluate the causes of the crash. Tesla offered an account of the event in a blog post titled "A Tragic Loss" that went up today, detailing the crash, an "extremely rare circumstance," which occurred on a divided highway.