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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.
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.
There's nothing preventing "45 year old wives" from knowing something about the machines they operate. Actually, I do expect people operating machinery that can lead to accidents that endanger the lives of others to know enough about them to operate them safely. Independent of gender, race, age... you get the idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Users are also capable of not telling the truth. The logs are almost certainly accurate.
That doesn't entirely rule out a fault - if the system erroneously reads a 100% accelerator pedal depression, then it will record that and act on it; the error then being in the sensor, not the logging or action taken by the car.
But when somebody is parking, they are going to press the brake to stop - and if they find they are not stopping, or accelerating, they'll press it harder. So a 100% depression is also consistent with someone mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brake.
When you make it possible to the blame the car, some people are going to do so instead of taking responsibility. On balance, I'm inclined to believe this was user error.
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.