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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."
But I hope they get hit hard for calling their adaptive cruise control feature "autopilot".
Why? That is what it is...
Do you think airplane pilots who are using the autopilot are allowed to just ignore what is going on and watch a movie?
How about private pilots in little 4 seat planes that have autopilots? Can they just have a nap while the plane flies?
From this report (chart on page 7), a passenger car rollover (ie - not a light truck) begets a 16% chance of fatality.
This is not the first Tesla rollover crash I've read about, the other one would lead me to believe that Teslas are in fact safer than average. (Click the link and see for yourself, the crash was reportedly spectacular.)
Of the crash in question, Tesla had this to say:
“We received an automated alert from this vehicle on July 1 indicating airbag deployment, but logs containing detailed information on the state of the vehicle controls at the time of the collision were never received. This is consistent with damage of the severity reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail. As we do with all crash events, we immediately reached out to the customer to confirm they were ok and offer support but were unable to reach him. We have since attempted to contact the customer three times by phone without success. Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident.”
The owner *claims* that the car was in autopilot, but we don't really know yet.
Also of note, the following (from same link):
[...] As reported yesterday, the police investigator on the case, Dale Vukovich, said that he is likely to charge Scaglione after his investigation without specifying the charges.
I'm going to wait a couple of days before making any judgements on this specific incident.
At the worst, it *may be* that autopilot mode isn't appropriate for human drivers simply due to the chance of it being misused. If too many people are relying on it when they shouldn't, then it likely should be taken off the market.
But that's an entirely different situation from Tesla being negligent, or unsafe, or unpromising.
Tesla's coverage of these incidents is a smear campaign.
GM, Ford and Chrysler experienced hundreds of vehicle accidents in the same time span.
In 2014, there were 32,675 deaths by vehicle incident. Not one of those is getting the same attention as these Tesla reports. Why?
Because the media is in the pockets of Big Auto. Every day in 2014, there were almost 90 deaths in all the other car manufacturers vehicles. I'm counting only two accidents in Tesla vehicles. That's actually quite good!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Tesla is hardly the only one to make jumped up cruise control for their cars, just the only one who have software updates which seems to get them to add more and more features. I mean normal car companies like BMW and well just about anything from Europe offer cruise control that has added features like distance following of the car in front (or at least auto breaking if you get to close during normal cruise) and things like the ability to park themselves. None of these is as high profile and it's pretty well always understood still that the driver is responsible for whatever happens. It also helps that these features are exclusive to the high end, typically luxury, offerings from the companies. I'm sure some of these have failed as well, but good luck finding stories and federal investigations about those.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Insightful, MY ASS. This is an ignorant observation. An autopilot is EXACTLY what the fuck it is. In an airplane, an autopilot controls the speed, altitude, and attitude including course. It doesn't do SHIT about collision avoidance. That is the subject of OTHER systems, and of manual vigilance.
The Tesla's autopilot controls the speed and direction. There is no "altitude" control in a car, and the analog to "course" control is simply holding the lane. The Tesla does exactly this, PLUS it does collision avoidance, which an airplane autopilot does not.
Now, how good is the Tesla's autopilot, is a separate issue. But claiming the name "autopilot" is misleading is just STUPID.
This is just sloppy reporting. A Tesla crashed, must be another autopilot case, don't bother to actually check the facts. Even make up nonexisting statements from police reports, why not.
The actual police report does not mention autopilot, contrary to what some news reports are claiming. Tesla has not been able to review the logs yet because the antenna got damaged in the accident. They have been trying to contact the owner in order to get access to the logs but so far have not been able to reach them.
At this point, it looks like this accident has nothing to do with autopilot.
Can't recall seeing where AutoPilot drops out if both hands come off the wheel, Elon.
Pride goeth before the crash.
Here's what I think your argument is: It was negligent for Tesla to provide a feature that a reasonable person would foresee substantial misuse leading to death.
This kind of product liability in cars has had lots of cases to work through the elements in the past... see Jablonski v. Ford Motor Company as a recent case.
When the use and misuse of a product results in death, the burden of diligence is on both the manufacturer and the operator. If you try to make all products perfectly safe that's an impossible condition. If you let manufacturers off the hook completely that's a wild ride too.
If you're the product engineer that is looking at the data that says when Autopilot is used correctly it's expected to save lives, and only adds to the accident rate if the feature is misused. That phenomenon pretty much describes every safety feature ever added to cars. ABS... great until you try to do the old fashioned pump the brakes. Air bags... awesome unless you put a child seat in the front seat.
So as that product engineer, if you don't roll it out, you'll save a few people who would misuse it, and kill others that would be saved by using it correctly. Beyond case law, basic ethics kick in.
Autonomous cars are going to produce some crazy case law!!
Autopilot, to people who are engineers, or familiar with planes, etc.. yes.
The term autopilot does not convey the same meaning to an average person. When you market a product to people, often you should not use the correct terms. Sometimes you use terms that are technically not correct, but practically convey the meaning you need to get across to them.
I deal with this often. Oftentimes a department will want to use legalese on a web site we are creating for them. We have to remind them that while yes, the terms they want to use are correct, very few of their readers will understand them.
That said, none of that excuses someone driving a heavy killing machine without reading the manual first and following the guidelines in that manual...