By FireRescue1 Staff
SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — A police report found that a Tesla car that crashed into a fire truck sped up without warning before the crash occurred.
Associated Press reported that the vehicle, which had its autopilot mode activated, picked up speed for 3.5 seconds before colliding with a parked fire truck, according to police.
The vehicle accelerated from 55 mph to 60 mph, suggesting that it moved out of the way after following a slower vehicle, and then resumed the higher speed the autopilot system had been set at.
The vehicle’s log recorded that driver Heather Lommatzch’s hands had been off of the steering wheel for 80 seconds before the crash, and she told police that she had been looking at her phone and that the Tesla did not warn her that a crash was about to occur.
Lommatzch applied the brakes less than a second before the vehicle crashed into the fire truck that was parked to block traffic from interfering with another crash scene.
The driver of the fire truck suffered a minor whiplash injury, according to police, and Lommatzch suffered a broken ankle. She was cited for a misdemeanor traffic violation.