Imagine what would happen if the media reported a traffic fatality in which a motorist driving a new Chevrolet or Toyota and relying on advanced safety features slammed into a trailer truck, apparently because its adaptive cruise control failed.

Tesla Motors  (TSLA) - Get Report is contending with just such an incident. So far, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said nothing publicly. Nor has the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. No outraged missives from the Center for Auto Safety. Meanwhile, Tesla hasn't apologized or recalled vehicles equipped with the Autopilot feature the driver was using when the vehicle crashed.

Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, has expressed condolences to the crash victim, who was driving a Model D sedan. An Internet star who is admired in the tech community, Musk has used his Twitter account to rebut media stories implying that the company is at fault, while questioning the automaker's lack of disclosure of the May 7 accident before the company's annual shareholder meeting and before a secondary stock offering to investors.

Little imagination is needed to know how General Motors  (GM) - Get Report, the maker of Chevrolet, or Toyota (TM) - Get Report or any global automaker would contend with a crisis like the one engulfing Tesla. They've all endured numerous legal, safety and public relations inquisitions and their executives have been threatened with criminal prosecution unless they agreed to government sanctions and paid billion-dollar fines.

Yet Tesla, at least outwardly, appears to face little in the way of pressure from regulators, plaintiff's attorneys, prosecutors or incensed owners. Not only does the company reject the possibility that its Autopilot might cause accidents, it said those using Autopilot are statistically "safer" than those not using the feature.

"Tesla is a different brand than the automakers, it's a tech company. And like most makers of high technology devices, you're directed to the owner's manual when a problem arises," said Mark Rechtin, automotive editor for Consumer Reports, which owns two Tesla vehicles for testing purposes.

"First of all, the name Autopilot is totally misleading. People think of autopilots as devices that fly airplanes and let pilots do something else," he said. "Yes, the company does explain that the driver must opt in and must pay attention -- but this still is a beta version of the software," that is, a version in development.

Large, global automakers never roll out beta versions of software, Rechtin said: "That's why the product cycles are so long, four and sometimes five years between models, because so much testing has to be done."

GM, for example, had hoped by now to offer its Supercruise driver assist feature on Cadillac models. But last January, GM officials decided that the feature wasn't ready for prime time and pushed back its introduction, probably to 2017.

"BMW just announced it plans to have a completely driverless car by 2021," Rechtin said. "I'm pretty sure if it's not ready, BMW isn't going to bring it out if they think an owner or someone else on the road might get killed."

Meantime, another accident involving a Tesla vehicle using Autopilot on the Pennsylvania Turnpike was reported on Wednesday. The two occupants of the crash survived the rollover of their Model X.

Tesla's stock price, volatile at times, looks unaffected by the Autopilot controversy. How much longer the automaker and Musk will avoid the heavy, punitive hand of public, legal and government oversight is an open question.

Doron Levin is the host of "In the Driver Seat," broadcast on SiriusXM Insight 121, Saturday at noon, encore Sunday at 9 a.m.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.