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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."
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.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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