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Consumer Reports Calls For Tesla To Disable Autopilot (consumerreports.org)
Reader parallel_prankster writes: Consumer Reports is calling on Tesla to disable its "Autopilot" feature that enables hands-free operation. Citing the recent fatal accident involving a car with Autopilot engaged, Consumer Reports labels the feature as "Too Much Autonomy Too Soon." In an extensive article posted at the top of its website Thursday morning, Consumer Reports said Tesla should "disable hands-free operation until its system can be made safer." "By marketing their feature as 'Autopilot,' Tesla gives consumers a false sense of security," said Laura MacCleery, vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for Consumer Reports, in the article. "In the long run, advanced active safety technologies in vehicles could make our roads safer. But today, we're deeply concerned that consumers are being sold a pile of promises about unproven technology. 'Autopilot' can't actually drive the car, yet it allows consumers to have their hands off the steering wheel for minutes at a time. Tesla should disable automatic steering in its cars until it updates the program to verify that the driver's hands are on the wheel."
Tesla says it will continue development of Autopilot, insisting that drivers supported by Autopilot "remain safer than those operating without assistance."
Tesla says it will continue development of Autopilot, insisting that drivers supported by Autopilot "remain safer than those operating without assistance."
I suppose Consumer Reports would be just as happy based on their rationale if Tesla were to rename it to "Intelligent Cruise" or something like that.
Ignoring litigation exposure is a really bad idea. I doubt Tesla is adequately capitalized to handle the flood of lawsuits that every little incident involving "Autopilot" is going to result in. Consumer Reports is right in this case...they should disable it, settle the claims and be happy it isn't worse.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Airbags and seat belts kill, too - but they save way more lives than they take, so they are standard mandatory equipment. I certainly think we need more time to evaluate, but I'd be willing to bet that autopilot has avoided accidents that dumb asses would have otherwise caused.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The year of Linux in the automobile!
Everything I've read about the auto pilot feature states that you need to have your hands on the wheel at all times. There is even a fucking nag prompt for you to hold the steering wheel.
tesla never called it safe or secure it clearly says keep hands on wheel.
Consumer Reports needs a reality check. Look at the total number of autopilot enabled vehicles on the road vs the number of fatalities, then compare that to the number of fatalities from piloted cars. The autopilot system is clearly safer, one fatality and in come the oil supported articles...
If it's not guaranteed to be safe to have your hands off the wheel, this feature should be disabled entirely, for obvious reasons. It's the kind of feature that either works or doesn't with no room for middle ground.
....Autonomous pilot.
It's designed to reduce the number of inputs a driver/pilot have to make... it is not designed to be used in zero visibility and still requires the driver/pilot to be aware of what is going on and be ready to take control.
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
CS has always been activists, but over the past couple of years they've changed their magazine to a much less useful format, added bigger pictures and "web like" graphics and word clouds... much less content, much more flash, and much more emphasis on being activists instead of product reviews. Not saying it's not still useful, but they've annoyed me more than once with their activism.... one of the reasons I like their ratings is so that I don't need the government to intervene, it helps me make intelligent decisions.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
im going to lose the best feature of my model S because some asshole decided to watch a movie instead of the road while in his car.
Ah... it really pisses me off when they try to protect people from themselves.
I also have a accelerator pedal in my car. If I press too hard on it, I might go too fast and kill myself in a crash. Will you disable that too? If I kill myself because of my stupidity, tough shit for me. If instead I hurt others, then its obviously criminal and should have the proper consequences.
(That being said, I think changing the name could go a long way in managing the assumptions of those idiots.)
I'm entirely willing to believe that Teslas on autopilot get into accidents that their human drivers would have avoided. I'm also very confident that Teslas on autopilot avoid some accidents that their human drivers would have caused/been involved in.
Question is, which number is higher? If Teslas on autopilot are involved in fewer accidents per mile traveled (adjusted, as much as possible, for type of driving) than human drivers, then autopilot should remain. If the Tesla accident rate is higher, then it should be disabled.
If I recall correctly, Consumer Reports was the same organization that demerited cars for having electric power windows because they said something to the effect that you'd be trapped in the event your car sank in a body of water.
It is sad that someone died while using Tesla's "autopilot" feature. But 1) evidence suggests the driver contributed to his own demise by ignoring or circumventing the warnings and safety features of the product 2) the product is only improved by the knowledge gained from this incident making future trips safer for everyone. 3) it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)
Could you please stop with the safer claim? To those of us with an IQ that's positive we aren't fooled. You throw out the "1 fatality for every 120 million miles vs 1 for every 60 million miles in normal people" or whatever the hell it is. This is academic dishonesty at it's best. The grand cherry picked statistic. You see, you're comparing the safety of a system which only operates during the most basic and easiest of driving conditions to the safety of people who have to drive in all driving conditions, including the shit ones. It's a bogus comparison and anybody with even a remotely functioning brain knows this. I've never seen anybody get into an accident on an open road with nobody around. I know it happens occasionally, but that's the exception, not the rule. Lets see how this thing does in rush hour on icy roads and similar conditions where most fatalities occur.
As far as I know the documentation and the system in operation both clearly indicate to the user that they must be alert and in control of the vehicle at all times. If the users fails to do that the fault is entirely their own.
Then they would be sued for every fatality where it was not available. Also, isn't this like suing GM if your cruise control ran you into a semi, or did that happen when cruise be came available?
This just in idiots doing idiotic things with technology. I say no to disabling it. Stop protecting stupid people from themselves.
How about "Cruise Control"? I have that now. Set it for 65 and it will run me into a trunk fairly quickly
Tesla is calling on car manufacturers to disable its "Self-pilot" feature that enables self-driving operation. Citing the recent 32,675 fatal accidents involving a car with Self-pilot engaged, Tesla labels the feature as "Too Much Self Reliance Too Soon." Tesla said car manufacturers should "disable self-driving operation until the system can be made safer." "By marketing their vehicles as 'Self-pilot,' car manufacturers gives consumers a false sense of self-determination."
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Have gnu, will travel.
Tesla's "autopilot" system has far fewer accidents, and even fewer fatalities, on average, than human drivers. Just because some morons ignore warnings and think they can nap, watch movies, and/or jerk off while driving doesn't mean Tesla has anything wrong.
Or even palanquins. No-one went though the windscreen (windshield) when they were in use.
This is beta-testing software on the frickin' open road! How the hell did the DOT even allow them to do that in the first place? They don't allow sideview mirrors you can pop off just because cars have rear cams now, and AFAIK, no car company is just up and doing that, either
one death in a tesla and consumer reports freaks...how many deaths are there daily from car accidents and consumer reports are not saying a thing. Makes me wonder who is paying them off!
I really don't see a problem with the way that Tesla has implemented this or the name they choose to call it by. Clearly you are going to have some people who push it to the extreme and those people will suffer (or possibly die) because of it. I don't really see how this is all that different from cruise control in general. Cruise control was originally designed to alleviate the physical stress of maintaining a constant speed over long distances (for similar reasons that it exists on planes). Adding the ability for the car to maintain itself in a lane is a further iteration of that, as is the car's limited ability to respond to obstacles in its way. Guess what, if you set cruise control on your car and don't pay attention to changes in traffic ahead of you, you may slam into a car going slower than you, yet none of our cars warn us when we engage cruise control that we should keep checking for cars in front of us (I'm sure it's in the manual in the glove box though). Should Tesla change the name of the feature? I suppose they could, I doubt it would modify anyone's behavior. It doesn't take you that long to realize what the car appears to be able to do before you'll let it steer, accelerate, and brake, regardless of what's it called or what warning messages are read to you.
For the flight management system to land the aircraft, both the airplane and the particular runway have to support it.
The runway has to fitted with antenna to transmit accurate enough navigation data and the airplane has have the equipment and software to use the data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_categories
The "autopilots" most commercial airliners have will blindly fly into obstacles such as other aircraft and rock filled clouds.
GPWS and T-CAS are the things airliners use to not collide when flying. I don't know if they are coupled with the autopilot or not, but I'm thinking not.
Off on a tangent.. a sample of the annoying warnings the aircraft gives the pilots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Z-d1Zx02o
Tesla doesn't have enough to gain to keep experimental autopilot active.
Tesla is trying to rush development and making anyone in or near a running Autopilot their involuntary test subject. It could turn bad real fast and harm their BRAND and all associated brands.
Risk is not worth the reward, especially when Autopilot is not required to keep these cars selling, but it could really harm the brand if it causes a severe accident with children and the press has nothing else to distract it.
Tesla proved it's badass and first to market. They don't have to keep proving that really. They just need to ramp it up and get costs down and selection up. I want to see the real mass market Tesla. How cheap can Elon make a street legal electric car in the US that isn't unreasonably unsafe?
Personally I'm way more interested in robotics than cars. People may not be committing to work as much and cars sit around and do nothing most of the day. I want robotics cleaning my house and cooking my food more than driving me around.
It's ridiculous to completely disable something which helps improve safety because people make stupid decisions and choose to misuse it. People maize things all the time, often resulting in injuries or death (look at drinking and driving for an example of this).
Tesla needs to change the name of this feature as it is being taken too literally by people (even though they are told how it is intended to function and what is expected of them). Leave the feature in tact but perhaps also push a brief video which plays on that big screen of theirs which explains the feature and the risks involved in not being attentive. Lately, Telsa may wish to do something to check the driver's attentiveness at varying intervals. (kind of like how long string highways introduce curves now and then so that drivers maintain vigilance and don't get sleepy etc.
Taking away a safety feature like this would be like removing seat belts from cars because in some rare instances, a person can get injured or die as a result of wearing the seatbelt during some type of accident or because a person wore the belt incorrectly. I know people who opted to not wear seatbelt because of this very reasoning. Airbags have caused deaths due to improper use (rear facing child car seats in the front passenger side, people being too close to the steering wheel during an airbag deployment, etc. but they are still in cars and people still have the option to go against instructions and warnings by placing that child car seat in the front passenger seat.. People similarly, can still opt to take their hands off the wheel so they can read, watch movies or anything else while the car is in the "autopilot" mode but if they do, they risk the same results.. death injury or damage to property.
Let's not remove safety features because of poor choices from a couple of people..
The fix and future of this is simple and it has already been suggested by another car maker (was it BMW?), the car manufactures themselves are going to provide insurance and buyers will have to sign a waiver acknowledging the risks of automated driving, thus letting the car company off the hook (unless actual negligence can be proved) In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this later part is already the case.
Tesla can't stop offering Autopilot, as unfortunate as it is, accidents that occur while in use are vital to improving it. Thus making it increasingly safer over time.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I have a '14 Highlander with adaptive cruise control and a lane departure warning. I love adaptive cruise. However the Highlander does not automatically keep me in my lane, it just beeps if I leave it. I must have my hands on the wheel. I can't wait for autonomous driving, but the "problem" with Autopilot seems to boil down to lane assist. That the next step (which my car does not have) would seriously tempt me to stop paying attention to the road. Ultimately I support the tech being on the road, but I agree with other posters that Tesla marketing needs to stop suggesting to drivers that they can nap while using it. We meatbags are not ready for that (with the current tech).
CR have always been agenda driven morons.
I stopped paying any attention when they reviewed the Corvette as 'unacceptable' because it wasn't a good econo box. Granting that 'vette didn't make more than 200 hp, hence it was so fucking weak it might as well have been an econobox. If CR had said that, I'd still respect them. Instead they bitched about MPG and cargo space.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are very few accidents happening on clear highway where Autopilot actually operates. If there is an accident it is usually due to someone passing in the oncoming lane at the wrong time which, obviously no one is using Autopilot for.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Just hire a human to drive your Tesla; if anyone has enough money to buy a Tesla then buying a human pilot is a no brain-er.
I've noticed that human drivers quite often cause accidents. Can we get the steering wheel and gas pedal removed while we're at it?
They called it autopilot. People think that they can read their magazines and play on their phones while the car takes them to their destination. Now they say that autopilot isn't actually autopilot. Elon Musk and his cronies should be in jail for the shit their saying. Why call it autopilot if it's not autopilot. In planes autopilot can safely land your plane. Not kill you. Every accident that happens while on autopilot should mean a fine to Tesla. Bankrupt those fuckers with their lies. See how you're going to Mars you cunt when you can't even drive on a street. Fuck you Musk! You and your family!
It should continue operating if the hands are off the wheel, however it should immediately begin decelerating at a rate of no more than 1 mph/s (unless it detects something in front of it requiring immediate braking, obv.)
The reason for this? Because if someone has a medical emergency at the wheel of their car, which causes their hands to leave the steering wheel, it would be safer for autopilot to remain engaged, while also slowing the vehicle to a stop at a rate that will ideally not cause an accident, even on a highway. The above mentioned speed should allow attentive drivers to change lanes or come to a stop behind said vehicle, which will also allow the driver of the autopilot'd car to obtain medical assistance faster than if they crashed, possibly far off the road.
As fun as it is reading all of these comments discussing the minutia of why or how the autopilot failed or whose fault is is or even how many lives it saved, once Consumer Reports says shut it down, it's time to shut it down.
It's a beta autonomous feature in a production car. The sheer amount of hubris is staggering. I've driven something like 400,000 miles in my life time - everything from beaters to high end sports cars. I've raced, rallied and more. I wouldn't trust the system as currently implemented and having driven very long (1000 mile plus) routes, I know if I had Tesla autopilot, my mind would wander. I rarely use cruise for the same reason on long trips.
The Tesla system is dangerous from a human factors if not technological standpoint. It should be recalled until they have a chance to at least fix what went wrong in the fatal crash. To not do so is placing Tesla as a company ahead of human life.
It doesn't matter if it's safer to have than to not have. It's a question of accountability. The fact that many drivers are terrible, and hence are unsafe, and this makes them better is uninteresting. When a car crashes into me, the only question is why. The answer of "bad driver" is acceptable. The answer of "bad weather" is occasionally acceptable. The answer of "suddenly broken car" is usually acceptable. The answer of "the car did it by itself" is totally and completely unacceptable.
Every fucking tesla is a lemon. The morons that buy them deserve the death they get from these piece of shit cars.
Tesla has finally released the results of what happened in Pennsylvania.. It seems that the autopilot warned the driver because his hands were not on the steering wheel. The car warned him repeatedly and it was the driver who grabbed the wheel and caused the crash.
In another accident, the driver was driving the car on an undivided mountain road which is not recommended. The driver's hands were not on the steering wheel. The car alerted the driver repeatedly to put his hands on the wheel. The driver claims it's because the alerts were given in English whereas he spoke Mandarin. Autopilot is supposed to be used on divided roads with clear visibility and the driver is supposed to keep their hands on the wheel.
Maybe they should require drivers to take an autopilot test to show that they understand it before enabling it. Like autopilot on a plane it still requires that the driver pay attention and have their hands on the wheel and be ready to take over.
My car is an early model S before the hardware for Autopilot was available.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
3 incidents have been reported on through the media, 1 was a fatal accident which was even because the driver was watching a movie instead of even looking at the road. 1 incident has been confirmed the autopilot wasn't even on, and the other is still not confirmed if it was on/off, although that one was a situation Tesla warns it is not correct...
It's not like there haven't been a lot of accidents with older cruisecontrols or laneassist before, so why not just disable ALL those extra functions...
People are warned Auto Pilot needs you to keep your hands on the wheel and eye's on the road (just like with regular cruise control/lane assist), so if people just blatently ignore those warnings, it's the drivers fault, not the system..
I think this article summarizes how I feel best:
http://www.roadandtrack.com/ca...
The main problem with autonomous systems in cars is the mistakes they do make are often blatently obvious to humans, even if overall they are much better at avoiding them in general. Take a look at Watson on jeopardy for example, it kicked ass until it messed up the context or some other aspect and gave an answer a typical 6 year old would realize was horribly wrong.
This will be a huge hurdle to overcome, if it can be at all, because no one will want to die in an obviously avoidable situation even if the autonomous system is much safer overall.
...because the goal is to be the first to produce an AI capable of replacing a human driver. Autonomous ground vehicles are a potentially lucrative space. The demand is already there; first to get a product into the space is going to clean up. Elon Musk knows this, and Eric Schmidt at Alphabet (Google's parent company) knows it as well.
The handoff problem is the number one challenge facing autonomous vehicle developers. Schmidt and Musk are trying to solve it, and it is only the approach to solving it that differentiates them.
Schmidt is lobbying hard to get the laws in the US changed to allow him to take the driver out of the loop, because the engineer running Schmidt's autonomous vehicle R&D, Chis Urmson, believes the handoff problem is unsolvable.
Musk, otoh, doesn't see any problem as unsolvable. He is willing to continue pushing for a solution, and that means continuing to use data from the real world use of the Tesla AI. Musk knows that this is a risky strategy.
Consumer Reports seems to agree with Schmidt's engineer. The last several paragraphs are a discussion of exactly why the handoff problem is, well, a problem. CR is advocating a very conservative approach to developing and marketing autonomous vehicles, because the handoff problem is too much for an AI to handle, and keeping humans safe is a big part of what CR is about.
Musk knows he's going to face litigation every time a Tesla is involved in a crash. He's prepared for that, because the payoff is enormous.
We coddle and babysit people too much. If you're warned about doing something stupid and do it anyway and die because of it, then that is on you. How about taking a little personal responsibility instead of expecting others to think for you all the time?
Maybe we should stop protecting every idiot from themselves and let natural selection back in the mix. I'd your dumb enough to blindly follow a Google map without monitoring your surroundings and get hit by a car, maybe you deserve it and the world is a better place afterwords. If "Autopilot", Pokemon Go, etc. allows you to do something stupid and end up dead, then the bottom line is that it's your fault. This isn't a Pinto with a faulty gas tank that will blow you up. This is a lack of common sense. Now get out there and get yourself killed!ðY
Why this insanity in demanding a 100% safety record? no automated system can ever truly achieve that. The Tesla system is already achieving a safety record comparable to humans (or better), that is the basic requirement needed for these systems..
By their own stupid logic they should really be demanding that human drivers be banned - after all human drivers are already statistically more dangerous than the tesla.
As should be obvious to everyone these machine systems will only continue to get better as time goes on - but that can only really happen with the machines on the road. For systems like autonomous driving once a basic minimum is passed learning by error soon becomes by far the best and in some cases the only real learning method we have.. Its a big part of how most humans learn to drive after all - do we ban all young people from driving just because most of them are not yet very good at it? no..
These people need to stop reacting reflexively like idiot protestors and start using some basic native intelligence..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Safer as a statistic is impossible due to single fatal crash on autopilot.
Safer then humans is easy to achieve and was already done. Safer then that fatal crash? Probably already fixed the issue with a software update.