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Tesla Model S Owner Claims Vehicle Went Rogue Causing An Accident By Itself (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: A Tesla Model S owner is laying blame on the company and its product for an accident involving his pricey electric vehicle and a parked trailer. Jared Overton claims that on April 29th, he parked his Model S on the side of the road and ran some errands. He was parked behind a trailer at the time. A worker from the business he was visiting greeted him outside after which he went inside the establishment. Roughly five minutes later, he came out to find his Model S slammed into the trailer in front of it. How exactly did his Model S start-up on its own and roll several feet down the road crashing into another parked vehicle? Good question. Overton was not happy about the accident, which smashed the car's windshield, so he decided to contact Tesla to tell them that his vehicle had "gone rogue." Tesla responded and cited owner error. According to the vehicle's logs, Overton had put the vehicle in Summon mode right before exiting the vehicle, which is activated by "a double-press of the gear selector stalk button, shifting from Drive to Park and requesting Summon activation." Those are understandably deliberate actions that must be taken to invoke Summon, so either Overton didn't remember doing all of that (unlikely) or his Model S simply spazzed out (possible).
The trailer bed was up high with significant overhang of the rear axle while the car sensors are down low - that's how it tucked up under the trailer and damaged the windshield. News footage with pictures.
But tesla doesn't claim it to be a full autonomous system and even specify that the car will not see high objects such as those hung from a roof. Summon mode is meant to be used while the controller of the vehicle is in line of sight and has cleared it of objects the tesla can't detect. It's a great system for shoving the car into small spaces not a full autonomous system.
The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display; however, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle. Three seconds after that, the driver's door was closed, and another three seconds later, Summon activated pursuant to the driver's double-press activation request.
Yeah, this guy screwed it up (although it's kind of surprising how much information Tesla collects).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Or at least that's what he's claiming.
Seems like there's a third option the summary didn't list: Overton intentionally put the car in summon mode in a situation it wasn't suited for, with predictable results, and now wants repairs under warranty anyway.
The Verge has an article with more details on the timestamped sequence of events in the car's log.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5...
Unfortunately, these warnings were not heeded in this incident. The vehicle logs confirm that the automatic Summon feature was initiated by a double-press of the gear selector stalk button, shifting from Drive to Park and requesting Summon activation. The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display; however, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle. Three seconds after that, the driver's door was closed, and another three seconds later, Summon activated pursuant to the driver's double-press activation request. Approximately five minutes, sixteen seconds after Summon activated, the vehicle's driver's-side front door was opened again.
Also, despite the summary's claim, it seems like it would be pretty easy to trigger summon mode accidentally - a double-press of the shifter button could easily occur while getting something out of the passenger seat while distracted. And then there's the key fob option - "press-and-hold then press another button" isn't exactly a complicated tap code - butt-dialing your cell phone requires a more complicated sequence of coincidences. It seems to me like it would be smart to have some sort of active confirmation required before autonomous actions take place.
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Since these things record actions and report them, it's simple for Tesla to see if the driver was responsible or not. In this case, he was.
In most countries it is illegal to park facing oncoming traffic as there is no safe way to drive off later.
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