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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."
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 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.