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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."
The same thing cruise Control does, to some extent: allow you to pay attention to IMPORTANT things by removing the need for you to pay attention to SOME things. Cruise Control means I don't have to monitor a speedometer to make sure I'm not speeding. I can focus on things more relevant to driving safely because my attention isn't diverted by THAT. Except I drive a manual civic and don't have cruise control.
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..
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.
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...
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.