Second Tesla Autopilot Crash Under Review By US Regulators (time.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal and many other publications are reporting that U.S. auto-safety regulators are currently reviewing a second crash that occurred while Tesla's Autopilot mode was activated. The Detroit Free Press reports that a Michigan art gallery owner told police that he survived a rollover crash that happened when his Tesla Model X was in self-driving mode last Friday. The newspaper didn't disclose any additional details regarding what led up to the accident and whether or not the driver was to blame. Last week, it was reported that U.S. regulators were investigating Tesla after a fatal crash occurred involving a vehicle using the Autopilot mode. Tesla said in a statement after that incident, "This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated." They also said Autopilot "is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times."

Comments

Hoping

[TimMD909]

Here's hoping that a few fools silly enough to trust their lives, and by extension others' lives, with something in beta doesn't mess up everything for autonomous vehicle research.

Re:Hoping

[speedplane]

Here's hoping that a few fools silly enough to trust their lives, and by extension others' lives, with something in beta doesn't mess up everything for autonomous vehicle research.

Here's hoping that companies have the ethics to not deceptively name their products as being more autonomous than they are. The term "autopilot" strongly suggests an automatic pilot, i.e., with little or no human intervention. Tesla created a media firestorm with their "Autopilot" feature, which very likely increased the number of deposits placed on the Model 3, bumping their bottom line. But the truth is that "Autopilot" is nothing at all like an autopilot. Tesla's branding, marketing and product information is misleading, deceptive, and already appears to have taken a life. I love technology, but I despise misleading claims, especially deadly ones.

Autopilot

[penguinoid]

I like Elon, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles. But I hope they get hit hard for calling their adaptive cruise control feature "autopilot".

Re:Autopilot

[TroII]

Do you think airplane pilots who are using the autopilot are allowed to just ignore what is going on and watch a movie?

Joe Average buying a car probably does think that, yes. Look at the comments anytime there's a news article about a crashed airliner and you'll see the ridiculous misconceptions the general public has about aviation. After Germanwings 9525, it became clear that a substantial number of people fully believe that the autopilot does everything from rotate to landing on every commercial flight, and that human pilots are an outmoded concept. (I'm aware that CATIII autoland exists, but it's rarely used.) I lost track of how many times I heard or saw someone say "the planes fly themselves these days anyway, if there wasn't a pilot, nobody would be in there to fly the plane into a mountain, we should get rid of pilots" etc.

Re:Autopilot

[sexconker]

Auto means self. Pilot means pilot.
If you call something an autopilot it must pilot itself.

Re:Autopilot

[speedplane]

Do you think airplane pilots who are using the autopilot are allowed to just ignore what is going on and watch a movie?

Pilots operating under autopilot do not need to "keep [their] hands on the steering wheel at all times." Tesla's "Autopilot" is not an autopilot. They created a media sensation with the deceptive "autopilot" marketing, and now they are rightly bearing the brunt of it.

On the contrary

[gweilo8888]

Here's hoping it *does* mess everything up for semi-autonomous systems like Tesla's. These belong in public transport, where you have a relatively controlled environment running down predetermined routes where outside factors can be mitigated, and where the drivers are employees who can be regularly trained and tested on their knowledge of the system's capabilities. An autopilot function makes sense in, say, a bus.

Where it most definitely does not make sense is in passenger cars, where the moronic part of our population (that is, most of it) will assume it to be far more capable than it really is, and who will choose simply to ignore the system once it is operating. In passenger cars, nothing less than a 100% reliable, full-time autopilot function is acceptable, and we're not even slightly close to that being a reality.

With a little luck, Tesla's idiotic hype will ensure that the failures of these systems get enough publicity to regulate them out of being until such time as we are able to create a system that can run reliably in all conditions and on all road types. Leave the tech whizbang crap where it belongs in public transport, and get it out of passenger cars, please!

Re:On the contrary

[gweilo8888]

I've yet to see any car manufacturer other than Tesla irresponsibly brand them as "autopilot", a name which implies to the almighty unwashed that the car is capable of driving itself. This is a nightmare entirely of Tesla's own making.

Re:On the contrary

[thegarbz]

Could not disagree more. Driving is the most dangerous activity we do on any given day and a large number of fatalities and injuries are caused by lapses of judgement which a computer is not capable of.

Tesla is a 16 year old boy who just got his first license. He's just gotten on the road for the first time. He's leaning. He'll make mistakes. When he's done however we should see a mature technology that is far better at driving than any fleshy meatbag currently powering 1.5ton death machines down the road.

Bring on more crashes, bring on continuous improvement, bring on the days where we no longer have accidents.

Re: On the contrary

[just another AC]

But that "begs the question" (I know it doesn't using it to demonstrate my point)... who is everyone?

Language means whatever people THINK it means. What is "correct" is irrelevant, as "correct" is just a historical record of what the majority have previously decided. This can then be periodically updated and "correct" changes.

What does "stakeholder" mean
- someone with a vested interest (now)
- someone with no vested interest, a person who held the stakes while others duelled (original)

So it is not their fault at all, if someone uses a term which currently has multiple acceptable meanings (the current correct as defined by "everyone" vs the historical correct).

TLDR version - you are wrong. language has and always will mean whatever people think it means.

Re: On the contrary

[WarJolt]

In an airplane if you keep a consistent speed and heading chances are you're not going to run into anything. Sure we have visual flight rules, but most pilots depend on ATC to keep them away from other aircraft. On the ground you can't see things coming. The things you typically have to worry about in the air are usually miles away which gives you plenty of time to react. It's just a much more predictable environment despite being more complicated. That's why airplanes have been landing themselves for decades.

4 lanes of traffic, no one else on the road and I still never see it coming when some idiot nearly merges into me. Then again I've seen someone cut in the landing pattern one time. ATC was pissed.

Re:On the contrary

[umafuckit]

In passenger cars, nothing less than a 100% reliable, full-time autopilot function is acceptable, and we're not even slightly close to that being a reality.

Why does it have to be 100%? Nothing in this domain is 100%. It just has to be more reliable than people on average. The failure modes may be different from those committed by people, but that's not relevant. Only the final accident statistics are relevant. With enough semi-autonomous vehicles on the highway, I think we'd see a reduction in traffic jam severity because there would be fewer people driving like jerks and trying to get ahead.

Re:Why not?

[gweilo8888]

Because they're operating solely on hype. Bells and whistles and form-before-function design are what generate hype. If anything, expect any negative publicity from these incidents to cause Tesla to double-down on the hype, and therefore, on the bells and whistles. (In fact, based on Musk's utterly disingenuous and insupportable claims about the number of people who would be saved if Tesla's autopilot function were standard in every car, they're already doubling down on it.)

Marketing

[speedplane]

Why do they call it "Autopilot" if it is only "an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times"? Tesla deserves all of the bad press they're getting.

Re:Meanwhile

[speedplane]

Tesla's coverage of these incidents is a smear campaign.

Tesla brought this upon themselves with a massive marketing campaign claiming autonomous driving features that are safer than humans, when the truth is, they are nothing of the sort. I love Tesla's technology, but no company should get a pass when they make lies that have, allegedly, led to death.

Despite the name it is not autopilot

[Archfeld]

It is not auto-pilot or an autonomous car, it is just an advanced cruise control with a lane warning and brake assist system. Any driver that fails to stay focused while behind the wheel of a vehicle under any circumstances gets what they deserve and should be further prosecuted for negligent operation of a car.
Just because a route is predetermined does not mean that outside factors can be mitigated in any meaningful way. Jackasses cut off busses and cross over in front of light rail trains all the time.
Any system that can assist and warn a driver should be heralded not bashed when the failing component is almost certainly going to be the air-gap in the driver seat.

Re:Despite the name it is not autopilot

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and that the manufacturers should have known better than to put such half-baked systems in their vehicles in the first place..."

Mmmhmm. You should wait for the NTSB's report before declaring this half-baked. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if you were shorting Telsa stock.

People are stupid

[future assassin]

Seriously I don't care how good a system is, you give up control of the car to any auto system where the operator now will do everything but pay attention, you're gonna get crashes. Even the few extra second lost to trying to recover to manual driving is enough to potentially get into an accident and win an award..

The problem is the feature's *name*

[Anonymous Coward]

"autopilot" suggests hands-free, driverless.
This is exactly what it has meant in aviation for decades.

The feature would be better called "driver assist" or something--clearly indicating in the name itself that it absolutely does not *replace* the driver.
I don't care how many warning labels you attach to it and instruction manuals telling you not to let go of the wheel--if you call it *autopilot* people are going to think the feature is more than it is--and they *will* test it--as obviously has already happened.