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DVD Player Found In Tesla Autopilot Crash, Says Florida Officials (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A digital video disc player was found in the Tesla car that was on autopilot when its driver was killed in a collision with a truck in May, Florida Highway Patrol officials said on Friday. "There was a portable DVD player in the vehicle," said Sergeant Kim Montes of the FHP in a telephone interview. She said there was no camera found, mounted on the dash or of any kind, in the wreckage. A lawyer for a truck driver involved in the accident with the Tesla told Reuters his investigators had spoken to a witness who said the DVD player was playing a "Harry Potter" video after the accident, but the lawyer was unable to verify that beyond the witness account. Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Tesla said in a statement Friday, "Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
What exactly is the point of it? To lull you into a false sense of comfort and security? I look forward to autonomous vehicles, but if it still requires me to keep my attention on the road and ready to respond, I'd rather just be in control of the vehicle to begin with.
Elon Musk's Terminators have claimed their first victim.
It's auto pilot not auto do everything for me. Even an airplane with auto pilot on will run right into another airplane if it gets in the way.
Tesla says their car had trouble differentiating the white truck trailer from the bright sky. So it sounds like they're just using a fairly low-tech contrast-based method of detecting vehicles in the car's proximity. Given what you're paying for a Tesla, I'd expect better sensors in their vehicles.
I assume Google's doing something more advanced...
Tesla's comments about the crash also seem predictably dick-ish.
#DeleteChrome
How dare you speak like this about Martian Citizen Zero? He is going to lead the entire human species to Mars! Sure, a few airlocks may open on the way, food dispensers may not work, but think how jealous the people left on Earth will be!
for 'screen time' while driving. you can't do it. period. texting and shit might be legal in some areas (that is changing, as it should), but watching a fucking tv? nope. don't know of anywhere in the u.s. you can do that. and the cherry on top: a 40 fucking year old was watching harry potter, for fucks sake.. *while driving* it is safe to say darwin had his eyes on this target for awhile. did he think his car was magic or something?
The problem is that if it slightly resembles a full-on AI based driverless system, that's how people are going to treat it no matter how many layweresque warnings you thrust in front of them and no matter how many forms they have to sign telling them it is just fancy lane assist.
It's just human nature: if people aren't actively involved in the driving process, their attention is going to wander. It's how we as humans are wired up. For a long trip, I'm not sure I could stay focused at all times, even though I'd know perfectly well I was risking my life if my attention wandered. If I'm driving, that's one thing, but if the car is doing 99.9% of it, the other 0.1% is going to pose a real serious problem.
If you build "almost an autopilot", that is a recipe for people treating it like what it resembles but isn't.
The car was basically equipped with a stay-in-lane and slow-down-if-you-approach-the-car-in-front-of-you kind of system, which is not an autonomous vehicle, nor can you take your eyes off the road. At best it reacts a bit faster if someone in front of you hits the brakes. Google did a talk on this and said in their tests, as soon as a car seems to be working by itself, drivers stopped paying attention to the road, so half-way-autonomous is a bad idea. People don't want to pay attention and they won't if the car seems to be doing a good enough job.
Only a fully autonomous car will be good enough.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Yes, I know, jealousy of Musk is a big motivation for you people to hate on him, however if we ignore that for a second..
The point here is someone knowingly placed their life in the hands of automation, and paid the price for that. Real world
conditions mean that automation is NEVER perfect, and this is new automation at the cutting edge (sigh) of such things.
The larger issue to me is why the DRIVER did not notice a truck across the road in front of them. Are we to believe that
the software should have spotted it, and yet it was so hard to spot that a driver who was paying attention could not? That
would certainly stretch the bounds of credibility quite far.
It seems quite clear here that the driver was not watching the road ahead - in fact was ignoring it enough to not notice a
whole, large truck trailer unit turn in front of them in clear view. In other words they were, unfortunately for them, doing
something stupid.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation, because otherwise it would be a dead person at fault.. And that is
just not nice, right? However, this is NOT a case where a driver jumped on the brakes and they did not work, or tried
to turn the car and it went straight ahead (at least none of that is being claimed). It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Porn. Absolutely porn. No 40 year old man is driving down the road in his bad ass Tesla watching Harry Potter. No way, not happening. Porn.
Beware of the Leopard.
That is what this is. Until software companies are held accountable for their crimes, they'll never improve. Just look at Microsoft.
Although in this particular case it is unclear whether the driver was actually watching a DVD at the moment of the crash, it is pretty obvious that an assisted driving technology that can handle 95% of the driving situations will make users confident enough to be distracted when operating the vehicle, no matter how many warnings and disclaimers are shown telling users they need to pay attention all the time in case they have to gain control to handle the remaining 5% of the traffic situations. This is clearly explained in this TED talk by the head of Google driverless car program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (this particular issue is discussed around 4:10, although the whole video is worth watching). This is why Google approach to self driving cars is to release their product when the system is able to handle 100% of the driving situations and never require the user to take control in contrast to the Tesla approach of releasing a system than can handle most situations and make incremental improvements over time.
It was a bright and sunny day. The car saw the gap under the tractor trailer and got confused, it though that the white trailer was an overhead sign, then kept driving thinking the road was clear.
Exactly, take work off the human brain. The mind can wander, while the eyes are looking forward.
It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Not necessarily. Maybe the rest of the automation had been so good that the driver saw the struck, but believed the car also saw the truck. If you are a passenger in a car, you don't pull the handbrake to avoid an accident when you expect the driver is going to press the foot brake.
That said, he was probably just watching Harry Potter.
Real lawyers write in C++
As far as I can see the truck driver was at fault, so why is such a big deal being made about this? Of course automation is going to make drivers lose concentration. Thats been understood for decades.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It fucking repeats itself. Fuck's sake man, if you guys don't read it why do you expect your readers to?
Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways."
Apparently a lawyer for the family has mental defect that causes them to repeat statements. Either that or the /. editors are once again showing their true dedication and attention to detail. Either way things that were getting better following the most recent change of hands have begun to erode already.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Havent we beat this fucking dead horse enough
Or maybe a guide on building homeless shelters. ;)
I am jealous you insensitive clod !
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
"Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
Then maybe they should start by stopping to use the misleading name of "autopilot" for this functionality.
That bit only makes sense if the car had no idea how far away the truck way. As the car approached the truck the clearance should have increased and the car should have realized something was wrong if it didn't.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The problem is not the Autopilot feature but the way it has been misleadingly and dangerously marketed.
Musk bragged to the press that Autopilot was "almost twice as good as a person," certainly sending the wrong message. His ex-wife posted a YouTube video of her driving while covering her eyes and dancing around while on Autopilot on a crowded highway. All this has encouraged a bunch of other YouTube videos of people behaving foolishly while on Autopilot.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-mixes-warnings-bravado-hands-free-driving-002343250--finance.html
Even the marketing name "Autopilot" is probably misleading to some people, who might interpret as "the car drives itself without human assistance". It should have been more conservatively called "driver assist" or some such.
In the end their marketing stupidity is probably going to bite them financially. A dashboard warning doesn't excuse it. I say this regretfully as a Tesla stockholder.
but that does not change the fact that they released a fundamentally flawed and extremely dangerous product.
At this stage, that is your opinion and not a fact. Don't purport it as such.
FYI, it's envy, not jealousy. Jealousy would mean you were afraid of losing Elon. Envy means you wish you had all his cool stuff, fun life, and hot ex-wife. I only make this correction because I found out I was saying it wrong for 30 years...
You (and the other 'blame the driver' posters) have missed the point of the post.
Musk is claiming Autopilot is "the most advanced driver assist system on the road". His exact words, according to the quote.
Yet the thing completely failed to detect a huge piece of machinery driving directly across its path. If Tesla's system is "the most advanced" then you would think it would actually realise there's an enormous hunk of metal right in front of it. How advanced is a system that can't detect another vehicle directly in front, when that's one of the main purposes of its existence?
That's typical Tesla marketing bullshit and he deserves to be called on it.
driver who was paying attention
Probably because sitting there doing nothing is boring as fuck, and the natural result is the attention of the "driver" will wander. You'd probably be busy bent over giving a blowjob to the blow-up Musk you have in your passenger seat. This dude chose to watch Harry Potter. No real difference.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation
Yes, because the bullshit of, "LOL ITZ AUTOMATED AND RULEZ! But uh you had better stare blankly out the windshield for all six hours of your drive..." is just that - bullshit. It's horrifically dangerous, because even if the natural reaction was not to fuck off and let Musk's Magic Moolamobile do its thing... Identifying the random point where the autopilot is going to fail and then trying to seamlessly take over is not going to work.
Really. Someday they might connect it to TCAS
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
the car should have realized
Well, maybe it just having a bad day.
Aren't we getting a bit too anthropomorphic here?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My phone has a "lightning" charger. Should I hold it out in the rain and hope for a surge to fill up the battery?
Exactly. I don't follow Google, but this is well known in the field and has been for a very long time. I don't know how a company could get away with this. I suppose it is expected in America corporations to play with people's lives like this and hire really good lawyers.
The larger issue to me is why the DRIVER did not notice a truck across the road in front of them.
How can we be sure that the driver did *not* notice the truck?! The fact that he didn't step on the brakes, you say? Maybe he noticed it, but thought "whatever, my Tesla is smart enough to stop if it needs to". And by the time he realized that it's not stopping he just didn't have enough reaction time to lift the foot off the floor and apply the brakes? Every time I see a demo of the smart cruise control, where the car can stop if there's an obstacle, drivers are told to resist stepping on the brakes and trust the car to slow down and stop in time. Or are we supposed to hover our foot over the brake pedal and second-guess the car all the time? What's the point of having an auto-pilot if you can't relax and let the car take care of the brakes?
As much as I like Tesla (my next car was going to be one until this happened), I think they should suffer enough for this, so that every other automaker out there makes damn sure their auto-pilot can handle situations like this. And I'm waiting another 5 years before getting a car with auto-pilot.
Some day all pilots may upgrade their systems to send and receive ADS-B.
likely that a black box video recorder will be mandatory after this.
The system has a blind spot when it comes to clearance. This isn't the first time a Tesla has driven into an overhang. tl;dr photo from linked TFA.
I thought that high-end consumer vehicles employed Lidar to detect physical objects in front of them?
And isn't it a requirement of Tesla to have the cameras installed before you install the autopilot software?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Is already been shown the tesla isn't very good at figuring out if it can make it under something. A few months back someone engaged auto park and it smashed it's windscreen on the back of a truck
So Tesla says the auto-pilot actually detected the trailer, but thought it was an "overhead sign" that was hanging high enough. What?! So it appears the sensors on Tesla are not precise enough to tell if the car can safely pass under something if it hangs over the road? I mean, come on, I'd be fine if the auto-pilot couldn't tell if the clearance is 10 feet or 12 feet. But a trailer? As far as I can find the standard floor height of a tractor trailer is 48". That means the clearance under is even less. It didn't occur to Tesla to test if the car can detect solid object hanging 4 feet off the ground?? I don't care if the driver was asleep, Tesla should have handled this.
Also, didn't we already have a Tesla hit a trailer in "auto-park" mode a few weeks ago?
What I know for damn sure is that next time I'm test driving a Tesla, or any other car with auto-pilot mode, I'm bringing a two by six with me.
The other main difference is that Tesla has logged data from 50 million miles of autopilot data from all over the world, while Google has logged data from 1.5 million miles mainly in the Bay area.
I think this gap will widen exponentially, and good enough AI for driving will come only through masses of data, so Tesla have a huge advantage.
My phone has a "lightning" charger. Should I hold it out in the rain and hope for a surge to fill up the battery?
Sure, if that's what you think it means, be my guest. However, the issue is not what you or I think it means but whether a jury can be convinced. In your case, good luck.
The fact is that Tesla states that: ""Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
According to the GP, while taking human psychology into account, this is what makes this a fundamentally flawed and extremely dangerous product. People will watch Harry Potter movies in this car, they will have horrible response times because they don't need to pay attention, they will get into accidents when the 'driver assistent' fails, and Tesla will try to abdicate responsibility each and every time based on contractual terms.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation
Mechanisms and machines are frequently the target of blame due to the reckless and/or illegal behavior of people. Any gun owner is intimately familiar with this situation.
"Autopilot" on an airplane means it flies itself, aside from takeoff and landing. To call their car system "autopilot" is indeed very misleading. The word conjures thoughts of hands-free operation. With a name like that, who can be surprised that people won't pay attention when they are driving? I expect this will go to court - then we'll see what the law thinks "autopilot" means.
When you see videos such as this one, you can't help but think that the system seems to have other defects.
Oh? I've not seen that claim as yet.
What they SHOULD say is "of course our autopilot system is supposed to be able to detect that a truck has turned in front of you, we don't know why the system failed but we will put every effort into improving it so that nothing like this ever happens again.
Instead of trying to find ways to blame the driver and pretend that autopilot means no one will never take their eyes off the road they should say "mea culpa - our system failed, we take responsibility and we will fix it - and we will pay damages"
What is more important to deal with autopilot the way it will be used in the real world and protect public trust or to protect themselves from ONE count them ONE little lawsuit
They're idiots. They will not sell more cars. They don't deserve to.
Then that is Darwin award territory.
I do not understand. Why would you think they do in the first place? Perfect SF movie artificial intelligence has not been invented and installed in a car. Are you being serious?
A person died for the novelty of a car that seemed to drive itself.
Who will be next.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
"Autopilot" on an airplane means it flies itself, aside from takeoff and landing.
And in many cases it also means it'll happily fly itself into an oncoming aircraft or into the side of a mountain. Some autopilots incorporate stuff like terrain avoidance and looking out for conflicting traffic, but in most smaller planes that is not the case.
I am a bit surprised about the belief that AIs (or machine learning) will solve all problems given enough data.
What do you think a neural net would have learned to do if trained to use VW's "AdBlue" as efficiently as possible but still to pass the NHTSA conformance test?
Who would you blame then? After all the constraints look reasonable. Would you want to be the engineer sued because he did not predict the neural net might learn something illegal?
Plus, there is obviously a problem with the way Tesla gathers its training data. If Elon Musk promotes a dashcam video taken by the killed driver earlier where the driver admits insufficient attention to the road (the cutting-in vehicle was in front of the driver and clearly visible), people might well take this as encouragement to not pay attention.
They only released a beta product. They clearly specify it isn't production ready. If the driver doesn't agree to that then they don't get autopilot.
What was he watching - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Darwin Awards?
Or are we supposed to hover our foot over the brake pedal and second-guess the car all the time? What's the point of having an auto-pilot if you can't relax and let the car take care of the brakes?
If I saw something that might be a hazard and the car isn't already slowing down on its own, damn right I'd apply the brakes myself.
It is driver assist, not driver replacement. Autopilots on small aircraft will happily fly into an other aircraft as long as they're keeping the set altitude and heading..- as that's all they're meant to do. They free up the pilot from the mechanics of flying in a straight line, hopefully letting him/her allocate more mental power to scan for other traffic and general situational awareness.
Yet somehow humans manage to crash into other vehicles, pedestrians and buildings day in day out...
130 million miles have been logged by drivers using AP. This is the first fatality and there have been zero injuries up to this point. In addition, a number of accidents have been avoided.
So, how does this compare to the average?
In America, somebody dies every 96 million miles. In addition, there are a large number of injuries, though to be fair, injuries should probably not be looked at as much as accident rate (tesla is the safest car on the road, bar none; they make volvo look dangerous). So, at this point, we can say that there is 50% FEWER fatalities. Considering that NHTSA is investigating, I am sure that they will compare the accident rates on this and will likely find that it is much less using tesla AP, compared to the average driver.
So, yeah, I expect NHTSA will likely come up with suggestions of changes, but will allow AP to continue since the system has already proven that it is safer than the average driver.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The witness says a Harry Potter movie was playing. If he was making this up, then there's a less than one in a thousand chance that the DVD player actually contains a disc with a Harry Potter movie. (The last disc of the series was released on DVD in 2011. A Tesla owner would be much more likely to be watching a more recent release.)
Investigators know which disc was in the player, so they know if the witness is telling the truth.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Any system designed to detect and respond to vehicles or objects in your path MUST BE ABLE TO DETECT ALL SOLID OBJECTS DIRECTLY IN THE PATH OF ANY PART OF THE CAR, period! To do otherwise is irresponsible, dangerous, and just plain stupid! There have been multiple "accidents" like this already, luckily none had been fatal until this one, but there will be more to come unless Tesla (or, more likely the NTSB, since Tesla is all about denying and covering up flaws and blaming the victims at this point) puts an end to it.
If you're too fricking cheap to put another sensor on the roof, or too focused on "design" to allow it because you think it won't be pretty enough, you are WRONG!
This system should never have existed and I'll be happy when (not if) it gets permanently disabled until the car has the necessary sensors to actually do what it pretends to be able to do. I hope it happens sooner rather than later.
You know, a country with money's a little like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if it knows how to use it .
Heh-heh, mule.
The name's Musk, Elon Musk. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest—Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a China idea.
Now, wait just a minute. We're twice as smart as the people of China. Just tell us your idea and we'll give you subsidies for it.
All right. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll show you my idea. I give you the Tesla Autopilotl!
I've sold autopilots to Plymouth, Oldsmobile, and Studebaker, and by gum, it put them on the map!
Well, sir, there's nothin' on earth like a genuine bona-fide electrified one-car autopilot! What'd I say?
Autopilot!
What's it called?
Autopilot.
That's right! Autopilot!
Autopilot, autopilot, autopilot, autopilot, autopilot...
I hear those things are awfully new.
It's user tested, but not by you.
Is there a chance the car could crash?
It's not your life, so splash the cash.
First adopters must be brave...
They'll be given early graves.
Will this venture fund new green jobs?
No, good sir, I'm the new Steve Jobs.
We've killed off our whole space program.
Fund my SpaceX, my good man.
I swear, it's the country's only choice! Log in to PayPal and raise your voice!
Autopilot
What's it called?
Autopilot
AUTOPILOT!
But the economy's still all fucked and broken.
Subsidies, this man has stolen!
Autopilot
Autopilot
Autopilot!
Autopilot!!!
Auto...*CRASH*
its a drive assist.
autopilot just sounds cooler.
I am a bit surprised about the belief that AIs (or machine learning) will solve all problems given enough data.
I'm surprised at your surprise. As a consultant I see a ton of demand for "big data" specialists. Companies eager to tap into every database and put sensors everywhere, to optimize or automate or whatever. Many of these projects fail in the end. Because big data is not about gathering, storing or querying the data, that problem has been more or less solved. It is about making sense of the data. Many still believe that simply having the data available in a handy dandy graphing tool will somehow magically provide them with useful insights.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It doesn't actually. I used to think autopilots are either fully on or fully off, but then this happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Being a "victim" implies a tort or a criminal act. I fail to see how his death was either when he was the one not driving his car and instead watching a damn movie.
Why is a 40 year old watching Harry Potter anyway?
Or what? You have something against freedom of speech? That is his belief and it's also my belief.
Google is right, semi-autonomous is outright dangerous.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Tesla have zero miles of true auto-pilot data. It is illegal to use such vehicles on the road with the exception of a few small areas for testing. Tesla have data of driver assisted AI. That's a massive difference. Tesla are a PR company, and will spin their product to perfection regardless of reality. Suckers lap it up. Today we're talking about one dullard that believed the bullshit PR, and now he's dead. Darwin's Law candidate 27 for 2016.
The guy goes and buys one of the most technologically advanced cars on the market today and he watches movies on a portable DVD player? I thought those players were extinct.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation, because otherwise it would be a dead person at fault.. And that is
just not nice, right? However, this is NOT a case where a driver jumped on the brakes and they did not work, or tried
to turn the car and it went straight ahead (at least none of that is being claimed). It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Sure the person was at fault for paying attention while driving.
But people not paying attention while driving is the obvious outcome of giving a car an "autopilot" that operates on highways.
I stole this Sig
Yes, I know, jealousy of Musk is a big motivation for you people to hate on him.
BZZZZZZZZ! Wrong! Jealousy is not what motivates people to hate Musk. For some of us, it's his history, his behavior, his upbringing, and his dickishness. Not to mention he's from South Africa. If you've never had a close association with people from South Africa (actually working with or living among them), you can be forgiven for not understanding what kind of assholes they are.
WTF has that got to do with Musk claiming Autopilot is "the most advanced driver assistance system on the road" ?
Absolutely nothing, that's what. What people do, or don't do, is entirely irrelevant to the fact that Autopilot is clearly not that advanced because it failed to recognise a huge chunk of metal, and recognising huge chunks of metal is its entire purpose. When something fails its purpose that severely it cannot in any logical sense be called 'advanced' at all, let alone the most advanced.
TCAS is only a warning system and that's unilkely to change any time soon.
Airplanes on autopilot will happily fly into other airplanes, mountains, buildings, etc... TCAS and GPWS will give aural and visual warnings, but that's it. If the pilots ignore those warnings, the autopilot will just continue on its path.
By the way, TCAS relies on transponders in other aircraft that broadcast their position and altitude. Cars don't have those.
Even in larger planes, all they do is warn ("traffic... traffic" or "terrain.. terrain... pull up!"). It's up to the pilot to take over.
They said the truck had the same color as the sky due to lighting conditions. Perhaps the truck was reflecting sunlight at a perfect angle to dazzle the cameras.
Clicked on the bait, just to see what movie was being watched. Stopped reading article once known. Person deserves to die for poor movie selection. Goodbye.
Jealousy? You're amazing, lad. Next you'll tell us that people hated the Spanish Influenza because they could never compete with its kill count during the First World War themselves. It's a discussion of a car that just misbehaved and shaved somebody's upper body off, not a my daddy is cooler contest.
"does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility"
Perhaps you shouldn't have called it Autopilot then... but I suppose "fancy cruise control" doesn't sell cars.
It's not only about pushing a non-existing brake.
You also have an inborn reflex to brace for impact. A kid see the big thing in front, and a kid know automatically to hold on thing.
Which, while growing up, have also adapted to brace for the incoming quick braking.A growing kid/teen see the big thing in front and know to hold on things, because the braking will send thing flying around.
MAIN POINT: You'll see the behaviour even in non-driving individuals
("non drivers" might sound bizarre to the average USian, but assure you that on the other side of the atlantic pond, we have plenty of them in continental europe where the public transportation is good enough).
Then once you start learning to drive, you built the instinct to throw your right foot on the braking pedal to save your life
(if the anti-collision system of the car isn't already doing that for you).
So the sore braking foot is a combination of all of the above:
- you wanting to break inconsciously.
- but also your instinct trying to save you from imminent impact/avoid flying around on braking.
it just that, by now, due to the previous mechanism you tend to preferably throw forward your braking foot.
(instead of say, holding both feet while grasping the hand grab)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Was it... cerulean blue?
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
https://www.teslamotors.com/en...
'What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. '
I got a ride with a coworker of mine once. He just got a junior IT position, recently graduated high school, was 18, and had a live in girl-friend in their new apartment (but she couldn't drive and didn't work?). He was really cocky, and was easily set off in anger if anyone pointed out any mistakes he made on any of his projects (I found this out later).
Anyways, we all went out to lunch one day, and he offered to drive.
Sure I thought. (BIG mistake!)
We weren't going far, but the whole time he was actually watching a family guy episode, instead of actually driving.
He had his car radio replaced with a car radio\pop out DVD player combo. So he'd play a dvd and watch it from the dash board.
I mentioned that I'd feel most comfortable if kept his eyes on the road, which he ignored, and said he watches dvd's while driving all the time...
A month later he got his license revoked (for a DUI).
It is the most advanced but like all tech it has limits and those limits are astounding once humans realize them.
Most likely the truck had a high center of gravity and an open under carriage. The auto sensing system thought it was seeing noise and ignored it.
You know in movies where a convertible sports car goes under the rig of a tractor trailer in dramatic fashion? That entire space doesn't exist to most computer vision systems. So the tesla figure it had an additional fifty feet of clearance.
Computers don't see things like people do, computers don't think. They only calculate with the sensors we give them and those sensors are really limited.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
He was confused as to where platform 9 3/4 was.
Absolutely, and part of that problem is terminology.
They never have "the data", they have a set of samples collected through methods which are often disparate. Temperature recorded by the points we have sensors at, for example, is not the same as "average temperature for the state we've put the sensor in" although people treat it that way.
In the words of most Slashdot commenters - Fuck beta! You can't suggest it's OK to say this is a non-production test product only released to the owner after they consent, when it has virtually no chance of being used anywhere else except on the 'production' road system surrounded by non-consenting road users.
How can a web server crash if serving web pages is one of the main purposes of its existence?
It was a high tractor trailer with lots of open space underneath. The radar beam went right underneath (and so did most of the car). Also, the trailer was a light color against a light sky, so the camera missed it as well. And, crucially, even the driver failed to notice it because he did not brake at all, not even in the last fraction of a second before he hit that enormous impossible-not-to-notice hunk of metal.
The fact that the system is not perfect and still makes occasional mistakes, does not negate the fact that it's still the most advanced such system available in production cars today. Other constructors have similar systems in the pipeline but are a little more hesitant releasing them to the public just yet. Elon just barges ahead to get as much real life data as possible to accelerate further development. You can debate whether or not that's a wise choice, but that's another matter.
But uh you had better stare blankly out the windshield for all six hours of your drive...
Six hours? In a Tesla?
While we're at it, let's change "abdicate" to "abrogate"
I come here for the love
Hmmm. I think that systems like the Subaru Eyesight system would have had no problem preventing ta crash like this.
http://drive.subaru.com/win14-...
At the end of the day the system (and humans for that matter) can only avoid an accident that is avoidable, if (for example) a car runs a red light at 100mph a fatal accident is inevitable. It will be interesting to see what telemetry they get out of the Tesla.
Unfortunately the Tesla system did not even provide any warnings, you really can't have a similar warning system as planes because you will typically have a lot of cars in the vicinity. So comparing car to plane autopilot is very applish-orangish. Plane autopilot is actually a lot simpler to accomplish.
Allowing the user to have hands off for 30 seconds is problematic for Telsa. A lot can happen in 30 seconds, its an arbitrary duration. Why not 5 seconds?
imho, it should not be called auto-pilot or autonomous driving because its not truly that yet. Assisted control is more appropriate.
mated with a BMW's V8. Autopilot not needed.
Yes, I know, jealousy of Musk is a big motivation for you people to hate on him, however if we ignore that for a second..
Then there are those with an undying love for everything Musk, which is hard to ignore. The auto-pilot's performance was clearly a contributing factor, as was the drivers. To push blame to just one or the other seems biased. Clearly the driver was not paying attention. Clearly the auto-pilot did not detect what we would have expected it to.
Anyhow, its an easy solution for Musk. Just add to the fine print "may not detect large vehicles directly in the path of travel". Then he's legally off the hook and we can blame the drivers whenever this happens.
I have to remember that old joke. From Soviet times, when else
GDR-FRG border. GDR subordinate storms into the office of his superior.
Sub: Comrade! The Russians, they're on the moon!
Sup: All of them?
Sub: No... they just sent a capsule up.
Sup: Then why the fuck do you wake me? Just report when they're all gone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What they SHOULD say is "of course our autopilot system is supposed to be able to detect that a truck has turned in front of you, we don't know why the system failed but we will put every effort into improving it so that nothing like this ever happens again.
So you think they should admit that their system failed, and is not suitable for the design purpose? That would be staggeringly stupid.
Instead of trying to find ways to blame the driver and pretend that autopilot means no one will never take their eyes off the road they should say "mea culpa - our system failed, we take responsibility and we will fix it - and we will pay damages"
Well, it's clear why you're not running anything. Tesla would be out of business in a hot second if you were at the helm.
What is more important to deal with autopilot the way it will be used in the real world and protect public trust or to protect themselves from ONE count them ONE little lawsuit
That's not how the law works. If they admit fault here, then every other lawsuit will proceed on that basis.
They're idiots. They will not sell more cars. They don't deserve to.
You're an idiot. No one will read your slashdot comments. You don't deserve it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People said exactly the same thing about cruise control when it first came out too. But then it was shown that by taking away the routine throttle adjustments, and the discomfort of holding your leg in exactly the same position for hours on end, driving actually became safer.
Same thing here, I drive on autopilot daily, and by not having to to worry about the routine, I can focus my attention more fully on my environment to better anticipate potential problems ahead.
Unfortunately the world is full of absolute idiots and lawyers who will ruin it for those of us who use the system add it was intended, as it was advertised, and add the warning that you acknowledge every single time you enable the system tells you.
I consider this a tesla / Musk fail. The concept of pushing the edges of spacex, to land, and reuse a rocket is amazing and commendable. Musk is pushing the edges, and it looks like he's going to succeed. I think that is so amazing and cool. Blowing up a few rockets - on an unmanned barge - is exactly right.
However.
His other company , tesla, cannot afford to 'beta' these features. Replace that truck with a (white) school bus and run the scenario again. Now we stop nyucking about porn vs harry potter, or auto pilot vs driver idiocy, and start thinking that it's really, really wrong to beta when lives are in play. Maybe there's a way (retinal scans ?) to ensure that the driver keeps paying attention ? But the minute you put untried tech out there and give the driver the sense that they can become a passenger, we'll start seeing a lot more of these examples. In this case, I don't believe that tesla should be held liable for driver stupidity. But they are responsible for being enablers of owner stupidity.
My sense is that airbus, with all the regulations, and all the inspections and knowledge, could teach us something about what happens when auto pilot breaks (air france, air asia). The person sitting behind the wheel has to move really quickly from someone who's sitting back and watching the plane fly itself, to being an actual pilot. In both of those cases, the pilots became all too accustomed to a plane that flew itself and those pilots killed 100's when they were asked to actually fly, and couldn't.
I think the technology is not perfect. But the driver is to blame for relying to heavily on it for navigation and control. So much so, it appears he was watching a video and not paying attention. In the end, will this technology create zombie drivers who think they car can just handle everything? Is this safer, or just a false sense of safety? How many people will over estimate the abilities of this technology and needlessly get hurt or killed? We have auto pilots on aircraft too, but still require a pilot and most likely a co- pilot. Unfortunately this driver sealed his fate by relying too much on a new technology that maybe gave the impression it was good enough to not need human input. Maybe that was Tesla's fault for possible implying this technology is that good. I guess it's not.
"Autopilot" is an unfortunate marketing name that has been adopted by the Tesla and its owner community to designate the combination of Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC, based on radar) and Autosteer (lane following based on a camera), two of the features included in the Autopilot Convenience Features purchase option. Tesla tries to convey that this is far from autonomous operation -- with great success based on owner comments in dedicated forums, but much less success among the curious public.
The term "Autopilot" appears in the Owner's Manual only to designate the purchase option package and the associated hardware. In discussion of usage and cautions, the individual feature names (e.g., TACC, Autosteer) are used.
Why would you expect the autopilot to detect this? Tesla has never advertised it as doing so, they've never advertised it as self driving, they've always said it's just driver assistance, and in fact they warn you of such every single time you enable the system.
Tesla does many things wrong, and I'm frequently pointing them out, but this wasn't one of them.
Did the driver have a medical emergency such that his hands remained on the wheel but he was incapable of reacting to events? The driver could have been incapacitated minutes before the crash. He may have already been clinically dead from a heart attack when the crash happened. If the car did not have the computer assisted driving capability, it may well have stopped miles before the crash, maybe in a ditch, probably at a much lower speed as the driver's foot would probably come off the accelerator.
No matter how good the collision avoidance system, these self-driving cars need a better deadman switch than simply whether a hand is on the steering wheel. Some trains have deadman switches where the train's driver has to deliberately hold a spring loaded lever forward or the train begins braking.
But of course implementing anything that would actually be effective would cause potential buyers to recognize more of the dangers inherent in self-driving cars, and that would have a negative impact on sales.
30+ years ago in college: South African exchange student talking with a female black leftist wearing a 'SWAPO' t shirt:
'I was in the bush 8 weeks ago. I killed dozens, just like you...'
I laughed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, they'll deny responsibility based on the fact they clearly, explicitly state that you shouldn't be using the feature in that way. It's just like people drunk driving, texting while driving and so on: they do stupid shit and pay the price. It's merely one more way for them to win a Darwin Award.
Candidate for Darwin award for those who swallow AI hype hook, line, and sinker. Note: sinker no longer contains lead.
That's typical Tesla marketing bullshit and he deserves to be held criminally liable on it.
Fixed that for you.
Yes 15 minutes of driving then 5 hours and 45 minutes waiting for that piece of shit to recharge.
Only morons by electric pieces of shit.
What I haven't seen is any report from the SHP that indicates whether the truck was making a LEGAL left-hand turn across traffic? Or was he like many a big rig driver forcing his way traffic because. well, he is BIGGER and everybody else should yield to them.
How dare you speak like this about Martian Citizen Zero?
Why not use his official title, the Elon of Mars?
Ezekiel 23:20
"Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
I see Musk is getting a clue that slapping some proximity sensors on a car without a proper 3D radar and any chance of things like road surface detection, adding extra hype to the mix, and selling as coolest whee-zee "autopilot" in the world isn't that cool as it seemed. That is after somebody died even it was told it will happen by many people. Now the question is how many deaths it will take for this genius to realize that other automakers and OEM developers FORCE driver to stay engaged with hands on wheel with their own driver-assistance system, and do not allow any "autonomous driving" Russian roulette without proper hardware and AI for it.
And this comparison to average 11 years clunker on the US with worse crumple zones and no auto-brake features is so lame. You would expect better from new $100k car.
First off, it seems to me that driving on an experimental 'autpilot' in a roadway that has intersections (as is shown in the police report figure in: ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07... ) is tremendously more dangerous than using it on an interstate. That, and the reported presence of a dvd player causes one to question the drivers decision making.
But a greater concern, at least for me, is that the truck appears to have turned right in front of the Tesla. One possibility there is that the intersection had traffic lights, whose detection was missed by both driver and computer, which if true, is a bigger concern than missing the side of a white truck on a bright background. The other is that the truck did not yield to the oncoming car when making its turn, that is the truck cut off the tesla in the intersection. Apart from the liability issues raised, that circumstance is much more difficult to react to, either in person or by computer.
Any one have any further info?
We've all used portable DVD players. How many of them would keep playing a DVD after being hit? I expect the disc would fly out of the ones I've used. It is far more likely that the truck driver has lied.
Musk may have a problem here. I wonder in all this analysis if anybody considered the possibility that the driver saw the truck and assumed the car's autopilot would deal with it, and went back to watching his DVD? Even if the Tesla's autopilot recognized that the situation was beyond its scope, would giving control back to the driver have averted the fatality? The answer is quite probably no.
In any wrongful death suit that the driver's family brings against Tesla Motors, what is going to be on trial is not the autopilot technology, but whether or not its capabilities were accurately represented to the public. The fact that a DVD player with content actively queued up was found in the wreckage would support the idea that the driver -- at a minimum -- believed that the autopilot could handle whatever came along. Even if they successfully argue that Tesla Motors created no such expectation with their marketing materials, Musk's lawyers are still going to have to show that the autopilot could successfully transition control back to the driver in time to prevent the fatality. That is where I think Elon is in big trouble, because that particular problem, called the handoff problem, has not been solved, and probably can't be solved, according to anybody involved with autonomous vehicles (just google "driverless car handoff problem.")
If I were on Musk's defense team, I'd be pushing for an out-of-court settlement at this point. The handoff problem is exactly why Google will not go into the business of autonomous vehicles until federal regulations are rewritten so that Google can deploy vehicles on public roads with no human in the loop, period.
I fail to see what the point of this is if you can't take your eyes off the road. Why even bother implementing it?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The other main difference is that Tesla has logged data from 50 million miles of autopilot data from all over the world, while Google has logged data from 1.5 million miles mainly in the Bay area.
I think this gap will widen exponentially, and good enough AI for driving will come only through masses of data, so Tesla have a huge advantage.
This is dumb fanboy argument that we hear again and again. Tesla didn't recorded anything. They don't have any hardware that would provided the data, i.e. laser radar system. They don't have enough connection bandwidth to transfer the data in real time. For autonomous driving, their system is dead (sometimes literaly) end from yesterday that will be replaced soon with better systems that will provide more advanced data anyway. You can't teach a pig to fly no matter how many million miles you will run with it.
You're right, but if it is true Musk and his wife broadcast themselves not looking while using Autopilot then that is way more damning in my book. How mature are these people? How could they not think people would do the same thing.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you are putting the tech in a machine that can kill people, then its limits should not ever contribute to killing people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I suggest you call up this guy's wife and give her your reasoning. I'm sure she'll understand. Maybe throw in a comment like "if you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs". She'll like that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's just like people drunk driving, texting while driving and so on: they do stupid shit and pay the price. It's merely one more way for them to win a Darwin Award.
I can understand that perspective if people were only endangering themselves. But when a driver gets behind the wheel and is drunk or texting or distracted while some inadequate "autopilot" is operating, they are also nominally in charge of a couple-ton machine that could easily become an out-of-control projectile moving at 100 feet per second.
So, they aren't just liable to take themselves out of the gene pool -- they could easily kill or seriously injure others in the process.
That, to me, is the real concern here. If a Tesla driver makes a poor choice and gets him/herself killed, fine. But when Tesla is releasing a system that they know is likely to be abused by people in such a way as to endanger others, that's a problem.
And before someone objects that "why shouldn't we ban alcohol or cell phones too," I'm NOT saying anything should be banned. But a responsible company will think about the morality of its actions. And the difference with alcohol and cell phones is that they have plenty of legitimate uses outside of driving a car, whereas Tesla's system is specifically related to driving the car and will likely create significant driver distraction (which endangers others). That's a problem.
"...the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown" , should have taken the train.
There are just too many variables involved in safe driving to allow a machine to take over. These don't know what they don't know.
Imagine home burglar alarm that just would electrocute any intruder. Nothing can go wrong here?
The same holds true for many automated systems, like nuclear power plants that do not have a tsunami/earthquake escape routine.
Can a drivers licensed be legally issued to a driver-less car?
Where is Harry Potters magic wand when you really need it? Average age of the Tesla engineering staff?
I suspect this is the reason why Autopilot has so much 'success' in the first place. Because people are really scared as hell of it and intervene way before it has to do anything advanced. I suspect this is also part of Musk's calculations in marketing this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why would you expect the autopilot to detect this?
Because Tesla themselves called it autonomous driving, they specifically call it auto pilot, and they even allow you to take your hands off the wheel for 30 seconds. Its not about doing the technology wrong, its about deploying it, hyping it as 'auto pilot' instead of drivers assist, and not fully considering the human behavior element. Those were contributing factors. There is no doubt that the technology was a contributing factor, but that doesn't mean anyone was 'wrong' or 'right'. Why the need to assign those descriptors?
Don't compare cruise control to autopilot. Cruise control only claims to do 10% of the job of driving. Autopilot claims to do all of it. Totally different.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Selling cars that kill people isn't enough of a reason to hate him?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Morons write by instead of buy...
Do you really think at a certain point data will have every single possible scenario? There will always be edge cases that may make AI too dangerous to use ever.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Agreed. According to the article, Tesla claims that the forward looking camera may have had difficulty distinguishing the white truck from the sky. What is concerning is that it appears Tesla is using cameras for forward collision detection. Why not something less prone to noise from sunlight, like Ultrasound or laser rangefinding? Relying solely on cameras is worrying in my opinion.
I believe it is the most advanced. I haven't seen better yet from competitors. A thing can suck and still be the "most advanced". A plan can be a bad plan and the best plan we have.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
According to NPR yesterday, they have radar as well for proximity warning. Tesla hasn't commented on why that failed.
I'd guess that ultrasound of a high enough intensity to be reliable in the presence of interference could cause hearing (or other) damage. You don't have to be able to perceive sound for it to harm you.
Laser rangefinding. What could possibly go wrong? An exercise for the student.
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People said exactly the same thing about cruise control when it first came out too. But then it was shown that by taking away the routine throttle adjustments, and the discomfort of holding your leg in exactly the same position for hours on end, driving actually became safer.
Same thing here, I drive on autopilot daily, and by not having to to worry about the routine, I can focus my attention more fully on my environment to better anticipate potential problems ahead.
Unfortunately the world is full of absolute idiots and lawyers who will ruin it for those of us who use the system add it was intended, as it was advertised, and add the warning that you acknowledge every single time you enable the system tells you.
Possibly, but they were wrong. You still have to steer with cruise control so you don't have the option of disengaging from driving. With autopilot disengaging is the default behaviour, you need to actively engage in paying attention even though there's no apparent need to do so. For the vast majority of people growing complacent and tuning out is inevitable.
I stole this Sig
Stop talking.
The radar is problematic for stationary objects. It can't really distinguish between a stationary car and stationary traffic signs, stationary asphalt, etc... It's easier to detect a car that's going 3 km/h than it is to detect a stationary car. This explains why the autopilot usually stops just fine when the cars in front come to a stop (it can continue to track them all the way to zero), but will sometimes keep going if the car in front of you leaves your lane while the cars further ahead are standing still. You really do need the camera there (and they really ought to be using a stereo camera).
On top of that, the radar signal probably went right underneath the trailer. The beam has to be relatively narrow because otherwise it would be even worse at discriminating between cars and background. But that means it will occasionally miss things.
Tesla didn't recorded anything. They don't have any hardware that would provided the data, i.e. laser radar system. They don't have enough connection bandwidth to transfer the data in real time. For autonomous driving, their system is dead (sometimes literaly) end from yesterday that will be replaced soon with better systems that will provide more advanced data anyway. You can't teach a pig to fly no matter how many million miles you will run with it.
It seems like for every incident they do somehow get detailed logs of what their sensors recorded. Sure it's not realtime, and sure it's not cases where the system performed fine. It feels like a variation of what ESR said -- "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow". In this case Tesla is getting a load of real-world "bug reports" about their software.
You seem to be arguing that historical sensor reading data for a system with "X" sensors (and software developed for it) will be irrelevant for a system with "X+Y" sensors. That's a plausible assertion, although I'd bet against it.
Do you really think at a certain point data will have every single possible scenario? There will always be edge cases that may make AI too dangerous to use ever.
Oh no! I just think they'll gather edge scenarios at 50x the rate at which Google gathers them.
What can happen in 30 seconds that can't happen in 5 seconds?
That is where the GP's leap of logic fails. People losing attention makes the system less safe than it would be if people could somehow be forced to focus. It does not necessarily make the system less safe than a car that has no autopilot feature at all.
If Google acts as you claim then it is a financial decision and not an ethical decision. If you do not release a product that will save lives just because it isn't as safe as it possibly could be, then you might in fact be considered evil.
Oh my gosh. Let me get this straight. There was a car accident and someone was killed? That is unacceptable. We need to ban cars now! Come on people. Unfortunately, people die in car accidents every day. Over 30,000 of them a year. And yes, this even includes people who manually drive under tractor trailers. With a current sample size of one, it appears the Tesla fatality rate is pretty close to the average. I suspect after a few more data points are logged, it'll be less than the average. Teslas are going to have accidents, just like any other car. And some people are going to die in them. No other car is held to a standard of zero fatalities. I suspect overall, the Tesla is going to help to drive down the average and be one of the safest cars on the road.
Why does it matter if some abuse the autopilot system if it safer overall? If there were evidence that autopilot caused more damage than it prevented it would be quite reasonable to delay the technology (by legal order if necessary), and I am reasonably sure that if Elon sincerely believed that it was killing people he would.
I just looked at the Tesla Marketing efforts in regards to "Auto Pilot" and they make it sound as though it's a full fledged Autonomous System. This is going to bite them in the ass and balls because Marketing Screwed up and made Telsa potentially liable for this accident.
QUEERY: Does anyone know of a true Autonomous Vehicle on the roads?
What this accident has done is pushed self-driving cars back at least 20 years and with the DOT/NHTSA being involved in the investigation, we'll see far stricter regulations appear in regards to these features.
You mean he purchased an automobile?
The airbag blew up in his face?
No. It is a common tactic in most industries to imply human error was the cause immediately after an accident. This quickly placates the general public. When the results of the investigation prove the claim was unfounded, that information doesn't get remotely as much publicity, and nearly everyone has the incident committed to memory as 100% human error.
People driving completely non-autonomous cars have accidents all the time, including ones just like this. The quote from Musk in the first story was that the car's sensors couldn't distinguish a white trailer on a bright day. Obviously that can be difficult for human eyes as well, particularly around sunset.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
> Allowing the user to have hands off for 30 seconds is problematic for Telsa. A lot can happen in 30 seconds, its an arbitrary duration. Why not 5 seconds?
Completely agree with this. I think it should warn at 1 second and take steps to slow the car by 2-4 seconds. Both hands should never be off the wheel.
Nice photo. To be legal, a load extending that far over the end of the truck bed needs a red warning flag.
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I'll leave this here - https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/04/28/1524230/volvo-engineer-calls-out-tesla-for-dangerous-wannabe-autopilot-system/
These are not some abstract sensors but very specific ones made by known OEM with specific set of data that they can and can't provide. In particular they can't provide 3D map with coordinates of all objects and road surfaces that are not level. :/
Some experience from gathering primitive data like speed/latitude/longitude may be useful long term, but it is usefulness is the same as taking crash PHP programming courses at local technical college expecting to become 3D modeling and AI expert
Yep. And those warnings do not even come from an autopilot.
As of 2016 you can buy a car from pretty much any manufacturer without cruise control.
Oh, or even air conditioning, if you so wish.
6 seconds
Please show me any car in the world that is expected to have zero fatalities on the road. The car wasn't ultimately responsible for the safety of the passengers. The DRIVER was. So the flawed technology in the car failed to see the truck. Why did the DRIVER fail to see the truck? Apparently because he wasn't driving. You can tell his wife it is his own fault he's dead. How is it possible for people to so completely miss the point?
Perhaps he was more confident of the car's collision avoidance system than he should have been. He was *too loyal* a customer.
It's worth noting that Tesla's main feature is being an e-car. The self-driving features are something separate.
(||) Nehmo (||)
He wasn't driving because he had autopilot. There are plenty YouTube videos of Musk and his wife doing the exact same thing (being in the car with their eyes closed, etc), so if Musk thinks that is what Autopilot is for then why not the customers?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The last airplane I flew that had an autopilot referred to it as a "wing leveler." That was a pretty good description. It meant that once you set the heading and trimmed it for level flight, it would more or less stay on course without your hands on the controls. That's about all you got. That was maybe 30 years ago, so maybe they do more now.
Someone was going to be the first, and there are bound to be many more. But the good thing about automated driving tech, is that every time it happens engineers can go back to the lab and figure out how to prevent that situation from happening in the future. And thus little by little (but in rather short order by comparison to the age of the automobile) automated cars will take over the roads.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I am guessing that the radar system in the Tesla Model S is tuned to monitor a certain plane a few feet above the ground. There have been some videos of Tesla's running into suspended obstacles. I suspect that the radar system saw clear under the trailer.
-rd
Yep....the God of Abraham is a jealous god...it would make little sense for him to be an envious god... LOL
The U.S. needs to catch up to other parts of the world in regards to tractor trailer safety. http://www.treehugger.com/cars... Hopefully mandatory side rails is one of the NHTSAâ(TM)s recommendations. We need to do as much as possible to prevent accidents but also as much as possible to mitigate the severity of accidents.
Please buy a Tesla and just use autopilot.
Yes they do. This has been on /. several things as well as other IT news sites and the Main Stream Media.
Please try to keep up.
Where a man-child of 40 years old uses autopilot so he can watch Harry Potter!
That's what happens when you give autistic children too much money I suppose.
I agree that "autopilot" is a misnomer, that the title should be chaned to something lik Safety Assist... that makes it clear that what this Tesla model has onliy assists the driver in not making dumb, irreversible mistakes. When I think of the real Autopilot, in airplans, I think of jumbo jets that can fly and land themselves, supposedly. That being said, fo many years now, I have hard of Airbus planes whose autopilot functions at imes gave the actual pilots little or no control of these humongousplanes at really critical times, and that such design flaws have caused many creh fatalities as a result. Let us recall here that even military grade drone airplanes have pilots. The pilots are elsewhere, on the ground, but they are in control of those otherwise pilotless planes. I seriously foubt that we will see a trul driverless car anytime in the foreseeable future. Given what just happened with this Tesla car, I think the whole driverless car concept needs to be rethought and clear guidelines developed so that manufacturers anf car owners know what it is they have and what constitute safe operating procedures. bCorrect labeling within the vehicles is obviously important as are clear descriptions in owner and repair/maintenance manuals. I would think that the insurance industry would be very inteseyed in this situation as well and on an ongoing basis for the entire automtive sector, inclring for Google, Apple, or any other entity contmating entering the automotive industry from this time forward.
harumph. Your mock outrage is importune at best when applied to M. Citizen I. I am rootong for him that all his ventures succeed beyond our wildest imaginations. Tearing him or any of our other visionaries down with cunicisms of any sort is out of order and constitutes malpractice on the part of anyone who might want to characterize themselves as technologically adept.
huh??? So is it that You are jealous because of his hot ex-wife?
The crash victim was known to record everything whilst driving.
What happened to his camera?
and, for that matter, how would a trucker in an 18 wheeler _hear_ a video playing in a car, over his own engine noise?
I live fairly close to Vancouver BC and there is a ferry you can take to Vancouver Island. From the USA/Canada it's a quick drive to there.
One day there was a gentleman who had driven all the way from California but was not allowed to board the ferry and he ended up talking to the police.
He was driving a motor home, towing a car AND then towing a ski boat behind the car.
What was incredible is that he had driven for 25 or so hours and no one had stopped him or the fact that he ever thought it was safe to do in the first place! It was miraculous that there had been no accident!
If you want to watch a movie, take the bus or train! And, don't forget your headphones!
Sorry, Mr Brown, it is all your fault. Period.
Is it possible to drive an automatic like a manual gearbox?
What do you mean?
Is to possible to manually decide when the vehicle changes speed, like on a manual gearbox?
Yes. As long as the vehicle has actual gears (i.e.: a car with an internal combustion engine) the car will have, in addition to the fully automatic mode ("D" on the gear shift) also have a "sequential gearbox"-mode ("+" and "-" on the gear shift).
Depending on the model, you either tap the stick side ways, or you move the stick to a different position (sometimes called "M") and tap up and down.
This way, your manually control when the gearbox moves to a higher or lower speed.
Depending on your driving style, that might come handy when driving in the mountain.
But the car usually prevents you from destroying it. You can't accelerate to 100km/h while still in 1st gear, the system will shift gear to prevent you from staying too long in over-rev.
On the other hand, this option doesn't exist on vehicle that don't have actual gears (obviously):
(i.e.: there isn't a list of fixed of gear ratio that you select from with a stick, the ratio is a continuously changing real number depending on the speed)
(there's only one fixed ratio ever. But the electric motor itself is always working best no matter its RPMs)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
another tragedy, the result of Godless Harry Potter pandering to Satanic Witchcraft.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Show me where Tesla has ever claimed that Autopilot does all the driving? They've never claimed that.
It's not the "default" behaviour, it's the idiotic and suicidal behaviour. So far, the "vast majority" of people have used it the way it's supposed to be used. But a couple of idiots have been stupid and tried to Darwin themselves.
Actively being engaged is still the default behaviour, and there's a very apparent need to do so if you've ever tried using it.
Tesla has NEVER claimed autonomous driving. Not a single time.
They specifically call it AutoPilot in reference to the aircraft systems which require pilots to maintain full control at all times, and which make zero attempt at all to avoid any form of collision.
Tesla has always been perfectly clear that this is a driver assist feature, akin to autopilot in planes, they've never claimed any form of autonomy here.
There's one person, and only one person, that was 100% responsible for this incident, and that's the idiot who drove in to the side of a truck while watching a DVD.
As I said before, I'm no Tesla fanboy, they do LOTS wrong, but this simply isn't one of those cases.
Elon Musk, chief executive, once bragged that a car could almost drive itself from San Francisco to Seattle “without touching the controls at all”.
Saying stuff like this, and calling it 'auto pilot', contributes to the problems of misuse. Not responding to the many irresponsible owner videos of misuse with offsetting public messages of driver responsibility also contributes in an indirect way. Its not about 'doing something wrong', its about what contributed to the situation that resulted in a death and making changes. Legally they did nothing wrong, but maybe they didn't do it right either.
Tesla Hater Alarm!!!! Your entire argument is a complete lie! How about you go back and requote what he said accurately? Those choice details you replaced with brackets answered your rhetorical "which is it" question- especially that little "[was]" bit. That should have said "driver AND CAR". Go away ya old lying bastard! Don't you have a carburetor and points to go tweak on?
The alternative being that the system detected the huge piece of machinery directly in front of it and decided to plow into it at full speed anyway?
That's actually a parked trailer, and the car is under the front of the trailer where the truck would normally hook up to it. Since it was parked, I'm not sure what the legal requirements (if any) would be.
I fail to see what the point of cruise control is if you can't take your eyes off the road.
I would need to see context. Elon often talks about the future of transportation, I'm not sure that that quote was in relation to any current product.
As for "calling it auto-pilot"... I'm not sure how that's in any way confusing. Autopilot is generally an aeronautic term, however has also been used in nautical situations in the past. It refers to a system in many ways less advanced than that which Tesla has implemented. Neither the marine, nor aircraft versions of autopilot do ANY collision avoidance. So why would you expect the automotive one to drive by itself when the airplane and boat ones don't????
It doesn't matter what i would expect, it matters what the perception is by Joe Public owners and things that influence human behavior.
Considering the vast majority are using autopilot as it was intended and advertised, it seems that "Joe Public" has the correct perception.
But in every group there will be the occasional idiot, and it appears we've found one here.
1) Many people have said that 'autopilot' to them means driving
2) YouTube videos of Elon Musk's wife closing eyes while driving.
3) Tesla markets this like it is the most amazing thing ever, thus leading people to believe it does something amazing (driving on it's own) which it does not.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Considering the vast majority are using autopilot as it was intended and advertised,.
Actually, we don't know how often drivers are using the system improperly. We don't have that information. All we know is this is the first death reported.
Well, normally I change speed using the accelerator (errr, "gas pedal") and brake - I suspect you mean changing gear selection, rather than changing speed.
Ooops, sorry. My bad. English isn't my first language, and some of the laguage I speak tend to use the same word for both concept.
'D' for drive ; 'P' for park ; '1' for ultra-low speed (pedestrian-designated areas), '2' for low speed (traffic jams), and 'R' for reversing, as I recall. I don't recall ever seeing a "+" or "-" on the mode selector.
Whoa! I haven't seen "1" and "2" in ages... (And I change frequently cars as I mostly drive them from car-sharing)
1 & 2 are an older simpler and coarser concept:
- instead of the transmission being fully automatic (like in "D") and choosing any possible gear ratio from the list
- 1 and 2 are restricted: they're still automatic but limit the transmission to only a smaller subset of the list of gear ratios.
Nearly any modern non-electric car that I've driven recently has the sequential type of control that I've described before:
- either + or - sign that you tap on the sides of the "D" mode
- or a separate "M" mode that has + and - above and below it
With that, you manually ask the automatic transmission to force gear up and down.
Oh, hang on, I'm not sure if that was an IC engine or an electric - I didn't have any reason to ask.
Usually electric cars won't have old-style 1 and 2 or new-style + and -. Because they only have one single gear ratio and just spin the motor faster or slower without problems.
(In fact even "D" and "R" are purely software. No gears are shifted, only a different pattern is sent to the electro-magnets so the rotor spins in the other direction)
The closest thing I've seen to a mode is an "eco" button sitting nearby the selector that will limit the power consumption of the motor (It will never eat more than xx kW, unless you floor the accelerator pedal) which make it accelerate slower and might limit the top speed, but vastly increase the range.
You've got to press a button on the side of the mode selector before you can change modes - "tapping" it anywhere is prevented by an interlock in the selector. I remember having to figure that out first time I found myself with the keys to an automatic.
So more recent cars have a special mode (either D or M) where tapping is not prevented, but actually signals your wish that the automatic transmission changes gear. (When in the corresponding mode, the selector isn't firmly locked in place, but some wiggling is allowed to convey such commands)
Most more modern cars I've seen tend to have the button not on the side, but so placed (under the forward facing part) that you'll automatically press it when you grasp firmly the selector.
(Also, the mode selector is where a normal gear selector is - not on the steering column, as I see in the movies.
I've never seen a steering-column selector. (Except for specially adapted cars for disabled people, or some weird construction machines)
Which movie do you refer to ?
Or do you refer to the letters display on the dashboard itself ?
The machines don't seem to know when to drop down a gear in order to increase engine revs and power. Totally gutless response in consequence.
More modern car might react if you press the accelerator pedal more firmly and automatically drop gear and rev up to give you more power.
The auto cruise
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Have you driven it? I have. If the vast majority were using it inappropriately we'd be seeing hundreds of these stories.
1) never in the history of transportation, in any mode, has autopilot even vaguely resembled autonomous. Autopilot has existed on boasts and airplanes for decades and does not attempt to avoid a collision in any way shape or form. Tesla's autopilot system is way ahead of anything else that bears the name autopilot. But only a complete and utter moron would believe that it can drive itself.
2) I have not seen such videos, but they wouldn't prove anything unless tesla claimed that this was A) a production vehicle and B) a recommended practice.
3) autopilot is something amazing. It's a better cruse control system than exists on any other production car in the world. That doesn't imply in any way that it does more than that. "Amazing" is a qualifier not a quantifier. It says how well something does a task not how much of a task it does. Tesla have never claimed it drives itself. Not a single time.
Just fucking drive the car and stop being a lazy pile of too busy to drive SHIT.
If the vast majority were using it inappropriately we'd be seeing hundreds of these stories.
How so? And who said "vast majority"? We have seen videos of drivers abusing the system. I would not be surprised if many took their hands off the wheel briefly on occasion, particularly after becoming more comfortable with it after using it for a while. We simply don't know how often that happens, nor what accident rate to expect fron that subset of drivers. You seem a little too confident that abuses are extremely rare. Humans don't always behave so rationally.
It doesn't matter. People are idiots and should be treated as such. Tesla is doing the equivalent of giving a baby a can of soda. You may say it's not illegal to give your baby soda, it won't stop people from cringing in disgust every time they see a parent doing it because it's just a dumb thing to do.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What it means is that Autopilot has had much less number of accidents than humans driving, therefore it is safer even with the occasional idiot watching Harry Potter when they just agreed not to do that to turn on the autopilot feature.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If we had always taken that advice, the wheel would never have been invented. Progress requires that the idiots and the lawyers get out of the way some times.
The vast majority of owners use the system properly. The solution to idiots like this is not to cripple the system and stop looking for improvements, it's to point out that they are idiots and that you don't condone their actions.