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US Regulators Investigating Tesla Over Use of 'Autopilot' Mode Linked To Fatal Crash (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the use-at-your-own-risk dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday it is opening a preliminary investigation into 25,000 Tesla Motors Model S cars after a fatal crash involving a vehicle using the "Autopilot" mode. The agency said the crash came in a 2015 Model S operating with automated driving systems engaged, and "calls for an examination of the design and performance of any driving aids in use at the time of the crash." It is the first step before the agency could seek to order a recall if it believed the vehicles were unsafe. Tesla said Thursday the death was "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," while a fatality happens once every 60 million miles worldwide. The electric automaker said it "informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred." The May crash occurred when a tractor trailer drove across a divided highway, where a Tesla in autopilot mode was driving. The Model S passed under the tractor trailer, and the bottom of the trailer hit the Tesla vehicle's windshield. Tesla quietly settled a lawsuit with a Model X owner who claims his car's doors would open and close unpredictably, smashing into his wife and other cars, and that the Model X's Auto-Pilot feature poses a danger in the rain.

27 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. There had to be a first case... by friedmud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It was bound to happen sooner or later.

    Luckily for Tesla this sounds like it couldn't have been avoided in any way.

    There will be more... but, like Tesla says, their Auto-pilot system has thus far proven VERY safe. What remains to be seen is how the world reconciles the fact that there will always be outliers...

    1. Re:There had to be a first case... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Luckily for Tesla this sounds like it couldn't have been avoided in any way.

      On the contrary, this seems like exactly the type of collision that auto-pilot systems should offer vastly improved protection from:

      "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied," Tesla wrote.

      Seems like a pathetically primitive excuse for an "electronic eye" to me.

    2. Re:There had to be a first case... by bartle · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I don't know if I agree that the accident was unavoidable. The inference of the article is that the driver wasn't paying any attention at all and had surrendered the driving completely to the car.

      My opinion is that Tesla's self-driving system is not nearly as safe as they claim. One doesn't have to look very hard to find videos like this one where the driver has to react to prevent the auto-pilot from causing a crash. I question how long, realistically, a production Tesla can stay on the highway before a human needs to intercede to prevent an accident.

      Given enough time, and enough lawsuits, I think that Tesla will shut off their self-driving feature. It needs to be a lot robust than it current is. I can't say with any expertise, but it seems like their competitors are taking their autonomous vehicle research far more seriously with plans to install a more sophisticated sensor package on their cars.

    3. Re:There had to be a first case... by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You might want to read up on the difference between compressive strength and shear strength.

    4. Re:There had to be a first case... by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Crush is not the same as shear.

    5. Re:There had to be a first case... by fluffernutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is the point of having a car with a self driving feature if you have to pay attention? Either the car drives for you or it doesn't. If it doesn't, the only way to ensure your fully involved in the drive is to drive.

      --
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    6. Re:There had to be a first case... by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Depending on how close the truck was when it left it's lane, standing on the brake might not have helped.

      The truck wasn't in a lane -- it was crossing the highway (and perpendicular to the lane the Tesla was driving in) while making a left turn (presumably from a road that intersects the highway).

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    7. Re:There had to be a first case... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed. If the car is mostly driving itself, the driver's attention will soon wander. That seems more dangerous than having the driver do all or most of the work (still having cruise control). We will have self driving cars one day, but at the current state of the art it seems more prudent to let the autopilot keep an eye on the driver rather than the other way around.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    8. Re:There had to be a first case... by Pentium100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Having the car on autopilot, but requiring the driver to "pay attention" and be ready to take over within seconds is the worst combination possible.

      If the car did not have autopilot, the driver would have been more attentive, since he would have been driving the car.
      If the car was completely on autopilot, then one hopes the computer would detect objects on the road, at least the bigger ones, like lorries and tanks.

      What is the reason one would switch the car to autopilot? Most likely so that they can be less attentive to the road. If I need to be as attentive as driving an older car, then I will not use the autopilot. The reason is that the constant minor adjustments I usually have to make (the road is not straight after all) help me to keep my attention on the road.

      If autopilot means that the driver has nothing to do most of the time, but has to react really fast when something bad happens is a problem, because boredom reduces the attentiveness.

      Also, let's say the driver was paying attention to the road. The car is on autopilot, he sees that a lorry is getting closer to him. How is he supposed to know that this is the time the computer will fail to notice a huge lorry (it noticed much smaller cars and pedestrians with no problems before) and take over?

    9. Re:There had to be a first case... by Ichijo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied," Tesla wrote.

      Why couldn't it see the tires, undercarriage, and side reflectors? And if the image was so washed out that it couldn't make out the outline, then because it couldn't see clearly, the car shouldn't have been moving so fast. It violated the Basic Speed Law just as surely as if it had been driving the speed limit in heavy fog, and that's a programming error.

      It would also help to upgrade the camera to one with a wider dynamic range and/or more resolution so the image is less likely to get washed out again.

      So there's a software fix and a hardware fix that will prevent this from happening again in the future. Unavoidable, my foot!

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    10. Re:There had to be a first case... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That seems more dangerous than having the driver do all or most of the work

      It may seem that way, but nevertheless there is overwhelming evidence that Autopilot improves safety. You should look at actual data rather than relying on gut feelings about what "seems" to be true.

       

    11. Re:There had to be a first case... by amorsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The balance is that Tesla will learn from this accident. They will change the software on the existing vehicles to try to detect this situation better, and they will undoubtedly outfit the next generation of cars with improved sensors to avoid this specific accident.

      In contrast, in a human-driven car, the only one who learned anything is dead, so the next person who gets in the same situation will likely react the same way and end up just as dead. At best, there might be a slight change to driver education because of it, but it isn't worth adding e.g. an extra lesson to the curriculum to avoid one specific accident.

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    12. Re:There had to be a first case... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

      1 in a 100 million will still result in hundreds of deaths a year considering how often a car is used..

      How is that worse than the one in a million caused by human drivers?

      YouTube is full of videos of people driving along minding their own business when somebody else falls asleep at the wheel and drifts into their lane.

      Just because tech isn't perfect, doesn't mean it isn't better then the existing system.

      --
      No sig today...
    13. Re: There had to be a first case... by Dare+nMc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sounds like this was at the top of a hill. The problem Tesla identified is one that happens because radar doesn't identify the road. So the radar could (sounds like it did) tell them (for example) the object is 15 foot above the cars elevation, but they would have no way (with radar alone) to know if the sign is past the crest of the hill, IE the car was climbing a hill, so when a 100 feet away the radar hit was likely 20 foot above the tesla, but because the tesla was going up the hill, when it was 50 feet away, it could be 12 foot above, but at 20 foot from the car, it had to know that it only had 4 feet. Sounds like Tesla had categorized this return, and because it never moved, Tesla never re-evaluated it, or it would have at least hit the breaks in the last few feet.
      Lidar also maps the road, so the moment it got a scan of the road surface under the truck, it could calculate the height of the "sign" from the road, and know if it was going to impact. We ran both lidar and radar, the lidar has issues with rain/snow/fog, the radar with these issues, and a lack of precision (misses smaller dark objects) But in this case, the lidar would know the road height, so even if the truck had been all black, the radar hit would have been combined with the lidar, to know it's elevation wasn't far from the road surface.

  2. Not twice as safe I feel by mrspoonsi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," while a fatality happens once every 60 million miles worldwide. Autopilot is only allowed on highways, whereas I am sure they are comparing 60 million miles against normal driving which is inherently more dangerous than all cars heading in the same direction with barriers between the traffic flow. Apples and Oranges.

    1. Re:Not twice as safe I feel by godrik · · Score: 4, Informative

      well, comparing to the worldwide rate of accident might not be reasonable. Some countries have a very high rate of accident and fatalities. One should compare to the accident rate in the same locations.

      According to wikipedia [1], fatalities in driven accident in the us is about 15 per billion mile. Which also about 1 per 65 million miles.

      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Autopilot fatalities? by Razed+By+TV · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If my car is in autopilot, and I take control of the vehicle just before dying in an accident, is it considered an autopilot fatality?

    1. Re:Autopilot fatalities? by bobbied · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If my car is in autopilot, and I take control of the vehicle just before dying in an accident, is it considered an autopilot fatality?

      Depends on who's lawyer you ask. You can bet the counsel for the automobile manufacturer is going to blame the dead person....

      --
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  4. don't worry guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tesla's autopilot mode is still in beta, so it isn't a big deal. Because it's apparently OK to sell cars that have only been beta tested at most.

    Tesla noted that customers need to acknowledge that autopilot "is new technology and still in a public beta phase" before they can turn it on. Drivers also acknowledge that "you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle."

  5. Actually this is a good thing for the autopilot. by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Insightful

    According to the article this was not something the driver could see and avoid, and while the autopilot could not see it either, based on the data from this crash it *could* see it the next time. Drivers learn from their own experience and fatal crashes terminate their learning experience, while autopilots learn from ALL autopilots on the road, and there are no "fatalities".
    Of course it is always the fault of humans in the end, in this case the tractor trailer was not supposed to be there, so we'll only have perfect records when we get rid of all the drivers and have all the cars on autopilot.

    --
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  6. What if the tractor trailer was on autopilot? by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This would not have occurred I suspect.

  7. Re:Actually this is a good thing for the autopilot by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why didn't the radar see the truck?

    The radar saw the truck's trailer, but misidentified it as an overhead sign, because it was so high off the ground.

    Did the driver die?

    Yes.

    If so, how do we know he didn't notice the truck?

    If he had noticed the truck, he presumably would have applied the brake. (we'll have to assume the driver wasn't feeling suicidal)

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  8. Secret faster than Ludicrous speed mode by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Funny

    In addition to the Tesla having Ludicrous speed mode, it appears there's a secret Kevorkian speed mode.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  9. Why isn't it the trucks fault by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It sounds like the truck crossed the lane without enough time for the oncoming cars to make it but all we hear is how the autopilot is at fault. I can understand how the the sensors missed the trailer and that is going to be something all developers will have to add to their tests (when seeing a rig with a space after it then check for tires).

    We are going to see cases like this come up now and again with self driving cars but there won't be a need for a recall. What should happen is an alert go out to the owners of cars while the manufacturers check their systems. If their cars pass tests then they can send out messages to their customers. If not then they create an update, test it, verify it, and send it out. Until owners of the cars hear that the system has been verified then they need to be extra vigilant when such an event happens.

    1. Re:Why isn't it the trucks fault by hvdh · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wonder how the car got under the trailer. Is there no regulation for trailer impact protection?
      In Europe, trailers are required have strong bars on sides and back of the trailer to prevent cars getting under. The sides also must have flat covers, which improve visiblity.
      Here's an example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  10. Need more data by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Autopilot still has a far better safety record than human drivers.

    There is insufficient data to take that claim seriously at this point. Autopilot features are promising but need a LOT more miles in real world conditions before it is safe to make generalizations like that. I know a lot of people have high hopes for autopilot (myself included) but let's not let our expectations get in the way of scientific evidence.

    One thing I do feel comfortable stating is that more people are going to die before autopilot features become truly safe. There are lots of corner cases that we're going to have a hard time predicting and we'll only learn about after some accidents occur. This is the case with any new transportation technology. Airlines are very safe these days but early on they were significantly less so because there were problems we didn't know about yet. Airline windows are rounded because we learned the hard way about stress fractures from sharp cornered windows which wasn't obvious at the time. People had to die to learn that lesson. This won't be the last time someone dies making autopilot safe.

  11. Trailer design by Martin+S. · · Score: 4, Informative

    There seems to be big flaw in the design of the trailer that allowed this to happen.

    In the UK HGV trailers are required to have side and rear run-under prevention to stop this very thing from happening.

    http://www.transportsfriend.or...