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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."
I like Elon, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles. But I hope they get hit hard for calling their adaptive cruise control feature "autopilot".
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
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.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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
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.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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.
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.
Conspiracies are the homeopathy of the paranoid delusional; the less evidence there is, the more true it must be!
=Smidge=
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.
They also said Autopilot "is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times."
Here's the problem with that. The folks at Tesla HAVE to know that at least some of the people who use the technology are going to take their hands off the wheel. If they don't then they are weapons grade stupid and that seems unlikely. IANAL but it may not matter that Tesla warned people to keep their hands on the wheel given that it is reasonably foreseeable that some portion of the drivers would ignore those instructions. After all, they called it Autopilot for crying out loud... If strict liability is applied there is no need to prove fault, negligence, or intention. See Escola v Coca-Cola Bottling. Now maybe strict liability doesn't apply here but the point remains that manufacturers tend to be responsible for reasonably foreseeable consequences of the features of their products. I have a feeling that the autopilot features may have been released prematurely regardless of the claims of Tesla to the contrary. I love that Tesla is pushing boundaries but they need to tread carefully when it comes to safety.
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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