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."

Comments

You can't do autonomous half-way like this.

[RobinH]

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.

Google vs Tesla approaches to self driving cars

[Guillermito]

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.

Re:Maybe

[thesupraman]

I hear what you are saying, but I suspect you are missing one basic part of human psychology.

I have spent quite some time around motor racing, including being a passenger with some very good track drivers (much better than I will
ever be) is some very fast 2 seaters. There is one thing that will ALWAYs happen in such a situation, after a few laps the passenger will
have a very sore braking leg. The reason is that it is pretty much impossible NOT to push your foot, even on a non-existent brake, as you
hurtle beyond what you believe is the safe point towards a collision - unless you are unaware of the collision. You will literally try and push
your foot through the floor trying to help the driver stop ;)

Of course I think the truck driver is being rather 'creative' here also, however in this case the telemetry will tell pretty much all, and even if we
never know, the powers that be will know the speed, control inputs, etc that the car had before, during, and after the crash.

None of this makes it any better for the driver, his family, the truck driver, or anyone else involved.
But come on people, pointing the finger at Tesla really is a step too far. It is like blaming the national mint for a bank robbery.