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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.
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.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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.
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.
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.
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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