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Tesla: Model X Accident Caused By Driver Error, Not Autopilot (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla has responded to a recent report from a Model X owner claiming their vehicle suddenly accelerated at "maximum speed" by itself, jumped a curb and slammed into the side of a building while his wife was sitting behind the wheel. They said it analyzed vehicle logs, "which confirm that this Model X was operating correctly under manual control and was never in Autopilot or cruise control at the time of the incident or in the minutes before. Data shows that the vehicle was traveling at 6 mph when the accelerator pedal was abruptly increased to 100%. Consistent with the driver's action, the vehicle applied torque and accelerated as instructed. Safety is the top priority at Tesla and we engineer and build our cars with this foremost in mind. We are pleased that the driver is ok and ask our customers to exercise safe behavior when using our vehicles." When will people stop lying about Tesla's Autopilot mode crashing their cars? One Tesla owner recently filed a Lemon Law claim against the company over a high number of quality control issues.
Not being funny...
but if the logs show 100% acceleration, that just reflects the sensor value. Not that the user - or indeed anything else like a dropped handbag - actually pressed the pedal that far.
Although I'm always the one to shout "user error" first, and that's quite likely in this case, the logs alone are not sufficient to prove fault. Only to act like a flight recorder and say what the sensors recorded and what the machine did in response to that input.
How the sensor got that reading could still be manufacturing fault, cable fatigue, or a million and one other things not the fault of the driver.
I did this a few weeks ago.... I was driving along a fairly empty road and had to go past a parked vehicle, so I tapped the brake and to my horror the car went faster! I realised afterwards that I'd been driving for a while and I wasn't sitting completely straight to the wheel, so my feet weren't aligned with the pedals. Then I moved my foot across, too far, and now I was punching between the clutch and the brake (pressing both pedals, but weirdly because they have different pressures) - nothing was working, total madness! It was dark and i couldn't see my feet, and I sailed past the parked car at speed before I finally realigned and got back in control.
Whereupon I straightened myself up, slowed down, and spent the rest of the journey muttering shit...shit...! It'd never happened before, I didn't even consider it a risk. Scary.
Serious question... is this open information that the driver or owner of the car can read, or is this super secret encoded info that only Tesla has access to?
Do we simply take their word for what the logs say? Is there any way to check via 3rd party that this is in fact what happened and there is a secure means of ensuring the data isn't changed?
This is important, sooner or later it'll end up in court and this will come up. "Trust us" is not an answer.
That was my question exactly.
Why does no one object when I place a camera on the floor of a factory for safety reasons?
But everybody gets hysterical when I place that same camera in the employee toilet looking directly at the employees taking a dump?
What's up with that?
His suggestion was that *everyone* puts fashion before safety, and that the difference is primarily because social norms prevent males from wearing similar footwear. That you somehow interpreted it as "women are the only ones who put fashion before safety" is intriguing and rather telling.
> The car was 5 days old, it takes more time than that to become intimately familiar with the car.
This is a key piece. I was astonished when I bought a new car how different everything felt for a few weeks. I'd had the old car for 12 years and everything was second nature in it but it takes a while to get used to a new vehicle's layout and handling.