...Please take a look. I base this on my experience of trying to get autopilot to fail in various scenarios. I could be wrong, but I don't think many people can guess much better than me except maybe
@TaoJones or some other autopilot addict.
Hmmm? In the face of a tragic situation, this thread, overall, has been incredibly helpful, based in no small measure upon the stellar analysis of
@TEG and others. Well done, all.
With that said, having driven that stretch a time or two (thousand) as have many here, I would just add as a reminder with regard to the driver assist features (Autopilot/AP/TACC/AS) that all it takes is one tap of the brake and AP is off. Who's to say yet that TACC was immediately reapplied or if there was a delay in also establishing AS *in the specific conditions at the time*? Then there's the discussion of automatic braking affected by/disabled if one taps/depresses the accelerator pedal - and in momentarily blinding sunlight, well...
Point being, as noted above, we just don't and can't know yet with regard to the circumstances of the accident (pending whatever Tesla is able to recover). I would extend that to any extrapolations from driving in similar conditions. Whatever one's version of AP might do is also going to be subject to adjacent traffic. If the driver had the latest firmware version, for all we know, he got the red hands "Take the wheel now" message and that, too, means AP was then disengaged.
Of all of the issues at hand (including but not limited to road conditions, signage, barrier conditions/neglect, and all of the other things that could have contributed to the accident, not to mention how the vehicle disassembled itself upon impact, and associated discussion of how anyone could possibly survive a crash of that nature (although passing later at hospital, may he rest in peace)), I don't know that the question of whether AP was engaged or not makes it into my top 20 list of concerns.
After reading through and thinking about all of the excellent contributions in this thread, my gut tells me that AP was not engaged at the time of impact, but my $0.02 in this case is arguably not even worth that much.
Lastly, I agree that it sounds like the feds are only interested in how the vehicle reacted to impact and the fire thereafter. Which is disappointing, given that you'd think they'd be interested in identifying factors that contributed to the accident in order to remediate those as needed.