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Tesla Model S In Fatal Autopilot Crash Was Going 74 MPH In a 65 Zone, NTSB Says (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: The Tesla car involved in a fatal crash in Florida this spring was in Autopilot mode and going about 10 miles faster than the speed limit, according to safety regulators, who also released a picture of the mangled vehicle. Earlier reports had stated the Tesla Model S struck a big rig while traveling on a divided highway in central Florida, and speculated that the Tesla Autopilot system had failed to intervene in time to prevent the collision. The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report Tuesday that confirms some details of the May 7 collision, along with a photo that shows the car with its windshield flattened and most of its roof sheared off. The federal agency also included a photo of the big rig, circling an area on the right side of the tractor-trailer that showed the light damage the truck received from the collision. The 2015 Model S was moving at 74 mph, above the posted 65 mph speed limit, when it struck a 53-foot trailer being pulled by a Freightliner Cascadia truck. Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot driving feature was engaged, the report says.
Can't say this bothers me too much.
So... it was going 74 mph at the time of the crash... was this after any kind of braking? What was the speed before any braking was applied?
(I'm going to take a guess it was a LOT over 74mph)
or is it "nine you're mine"?
Does the autopilot not have control of the speed of the car? Not good for Tesla...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I typically drive 10 mph over the posted speed limit, both on freeways and on roads. IMHO, the posted speed limit is for either A) the driver with dementia who shouldn't be driving anyway, or B) some government that needs the speeding fines to balance their budget.
// please don't run over my cat
Go Los Angeles and there are some freeway offramps marked 25 MPH and, goddamit, they farking mean it oh holy shit will I make it. But as time goes on those honest speed limits get replaced with better intersections, but the speed limit stays the same.
Freeway speed limits should be 80. Non freeway speeds should be a good 10 MPH over what they are already.
/ my comment doesn't count for the road in front of my house
...why would you trust a self driving car to recognize and correctly respond to all the infinitely various other things it needs to identify and react to in order to keep you alive?
For that matter, if it's relying on a central database for speed limit info instead of signs, who pays the tickets when it's wrong? Sure as hell not Tesla/Google/Apple, because that's not how things work in America.
No one goes 65 on the highway. You'd be more likely to crash going 65 as angry drivers swerve past you.
The estate of the driver, or Eoin Musk
Wonder if this guy will win the Darwin award this year?
>"The Tesla car involved in a fatal crash in Florida this spring was in Autopilot mode and going about 10 miles faster than the speed limit," "Was Going 74 MPH In a 65 Zone,"
Um, so what? That is about normal. Is this supposed to be shocking or something?
I remember reading something from Tesla saying they found autopilot was not on, and had it been it would have stopped the car.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Both the model s and the semitrailer were traveling on the same road. Can someone explain how the tesla managed to hit the semitrailer on its right side (as shown in fig. 2) instead of the back?
T-boned a semi going over the limit. Don't care what systems the car had activated, the driver was obviously not paying attention.
Why does this one death cause everyone to panic?
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
So, did the truck turn in front of oncoming traffic? If so, why is this the Tesla's fault?
Do these "advanced features" adjust cruising speeds (up) automatically? Or does this just mean the guy turned on cruise control set to 74?
If the car accelerated past the speed limit on its own...big deal. If the guy set autopilot on speeding, then no one should be surprised it didn't work safely. It was never designed to in those conditions (significantly faster than the flow of traffic...and also illegally).
Because people around here tend to believe in personal accountability. If the car is driving then deaths become no one's fault?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The machines are already trying to kill us all - *runs away screaming*
Because it was the first in an "autonomous" car and it was in a situation that was trivial for a human to avoid.
I think people are missing a rather big point here.
The NTSB is investigating the accident, and will post a reasonably fair and accurate assessment of what happened.
Tesla will make some changes to ensure that this type of accident is avoided in the future, and push at the next update.
All teslas will become safer because of the analysis. In effect, the collective software will have "learned" from a mistake and corrected. This is not something that the driver of a fatal accident can do, nor other non-involved drivers.
With enough data, enough mistakes and near-mistakes corrected, the software will quickly evolve to be safer than any human driver.
From a machine-learning perspective, this has enormous benefits.
The software should allow the person to speed. But if they do, it is the person's fault, not the software or the manufacturer. Any other way of doing this would likely lead to loss of privacy and freedoms.
These are US highways. Despite the speed limit, 74 would likely be below the flow of traffic.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
74 whole miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone!!??!??!?! I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that anyone would go less than ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit. Shocked, I say!!!!1!!!one!!!1
When I was 16, I hit a parked construction vehicle on an otherwise completely empty road of a just started subdivision development by my house. I was fucking around with some CDs in a CD case and going about legitimately about 20. Seriously. I admitted everything. The officer estimated that I was going at least 35 from something or other. I wouldn't trust any cops estimate of the speed a crashed vehicle was traveling.
Model S owner here.. It reads the speed limit from the signs by the side of the road, and does a remarkably good job of it. I don't recall if Autopilot automatically tracks "5 over" or "10 over" , but it probably does. You can set when you want the car to warn you with a "how many mi/hr under/over the limit" setting.
Because soon there will be tens of millions of these cars on the road.
If there is a flaw in the system or the software, you now have tens of millions of malfunctioning missiles on the road.
citizen, we need to dissect you for the benefit of others; please report to the vivarium immediately.
You're referring to forced sacrifice, I was referring to accidental death.
There's no difference, in your view?
Why does this one death cause everyone to panic?
For the autopilot to be worthwhile, it needs to cause less deaths than the human it is replacing, and, ideally, less accidents overall. I suspect we are not far from that, and may even have it in cases. It doesn't seem that the Tesla one is quite to that point, but who knows.
More to the point, people see "that terrible thing" on tv/internet/etc and react disproportionately to the actual threat, or occasionally, after enough incidents, such as shootings, we tend to tune it out, which is a different problem.
If say 50 people are hurt in an incident, well, for in the US that is roughly 1 in 6 million. The odds of dying at some point by a car accident or by firearms is roughly 1 in 77 according to a cars.com link. According to google the odds of dying in terrorism is around 1 in 20 million.
I suppose our tendency to just believe logic and reason is sorely put to the test when we regularly see things happen that defy all reason be they work/politics/family/people/etc. Even there we likely see the exceptions and tend to believe they are the rule.
It is the tendency of some, and certainly mine, to want to plan for the worst, but how can you do that when the worst is, well, exceptionally bad? The solution is of course to plan for the worst case in say 1 or, ideally, 2 standard deviations from the mean.
Unfortunately, we don't seem to be able to easily do that, though we need to. We really do. For instance it makes no sense to obsess about terrorism. The odds of being struck by lighting are far higher. Hell the odds of being struck by lightning twice are higher than the odds of winning in powerball. That doesn't mean it can be ignored, but a rational, careful, strategic approach is reasonable.
Logic and reason seem our only hope for wading through the chaos. Outcomes can be assigned numerical values. Relationships can be established. If we can model what happens in a nuclear explosion, we can model the economy and figure out how best to dedicate scarce resources for the best outcomes, and if that model has problems we can improve it, and adjust.
Getting back to the autopilot. Well, it is that 1 in 77. It would make sense for the government to invest money into a better autopilot, except in this case there is likely no need. Companies already have the profit motive to do it. The odds of heart disease killing you is roughly 1 in 4. That might be reduced by reducing sugar content in packaged foods.
I suppose in the end we react most appropriately to situations we truly understand. Now if only everyone truly had the love of learning required to always continue on that journey.
Seriously, who cares if it was going over by 9 mph? How does that significantly impact anything (other than the car and the trailer)? This is red herring that is being chummed right now. This is not a significant data point, or shouldn't be. They should just shut the fuck up until the report is complete.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
72-75 is the real speed limit (not the posted one) on the IL tollway also next to on one does the work zone 45 even more so when no one is working / there that wall between you and the workers.
Why does this one death cause everyone to panic?
Who has panicked? Unless by "panic" you meant "engage in intense debate about the potential risks and rewards of a new and relatively unproven technology", but that's not a very common definition of that word.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Giving control to autonomous cars means giving up control ourselves. This is very scary as it means the car won't go where we want it to go, it'll go wherever it feels like going. Add to this there are lots and lots of people who just LOVE being in control (control freaks, i.e. Hillary Rotten Clinton) and driving a car is one of the ways they enjoy this feeling.
Moreover about five minutes after autonomous cars are finished development, there are going to be tons of restrictions on where they are allowed to go and when they are allowed to do so. Sorry, can't get to your doctor's appointment across town, today is a pollution day and cars are restricted to essential personnel like government bureaucrats. Sorry, can't take you to the shooting range because that's a strong indicator your political thoughts are unacceptable to the media. Sorry, can't go to the lake for the weekend as the EPA has determined that pleasure trips are wasteful. Sorry, can't go to the ballgame as society has determined your high job productivity is essential and risking you in an unnecessary car trip is harmful to all the non-working people that you're supporting. It's all about who's going to be in control - you, or some assholes who don't care about you.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I typically drive 10 mph over the posted speed limit, both on freeways and on roads. IMHO, the posted speed limit is for either A) the driver with dementia who shouldn't be driving anyway, or B) some government that needs the speeding fines to balance their budget.
Go Los Angeles and there are some freeway offramps marked 25 MPH and, goddamit, they farking mean it oh holy shit will I make it. But as time goes on those honest speed limits get replaced with better intersections, but the speed limit stays the same.
Freeway speed limits should be 80. Non freeway speeds should be a good 10 MPH over what they are already.
Lucky you're not in Australia.. I have been booked (via hidden camera) for doing 64km/h in a 60km/h zone (39.8mph in a 37.2 zone).
Police generally will pull you over if you're doing 10km/h over the limit (6.2 mph) as the fine doubles at that point.
15km/h over (9.3mph) triples the fine.
And I'm not just talking about police on traffic duty - any police car will pull you over if you're speeding.
If you get caught doing 25km/h over (15.5mph) that's an immediate loss of license.
Our highway / freeway limits (apart from some isolated stretches on interstate highways) are all 100km/h (62mph).
80mph = 128.747km/h. That's so bad for fuel efficiency, there should be no other reason as to make it illegal!
I agree what you say that everyone drives 10 km/h over the speed limit and that immediately jumped out at me as the most flimsy part of the obviously premature faulting of the driver.
However, as that holds true, many roads in the country are 100km/h, or 110, so if everyone drives 10km/h over that then we get to your number of 128 anyways. The point is people will just drive 140 in an elevated speed limit, because hey, 10km over.
(this also serves the police of course, they can pull over whomever they want if everyone is breaking the law)
If what people are saying, that the autopilot didnt "see" the car, is true, then they very well should disable that shit until they fix it!
That's a real issue, a bit of speeding is not.
-
Autos cause...
Surely you mean "autos are involved in 1.2 million deaths worldwide". Cars are not (yet) autonomous killbots. Firearms are involved in as many deaths in the USA as automobiles, but don't you DARE say guns cause death.
captcha was fatals
Because all those other autos aren't touting some magical fairy fart autopilot that's supposed to make you safer but probably doesn't because it lulls you into a false sense of security
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Because we want self-driving cars, and this could be an impediment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In Europe this death would probably have been prevented by the fact that all articulated trucks (I guess that's called a big rig in American) have side impact bars between the front and rear sets of wheels, specifically to prevent cars going underneath in a collision. Here's a picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It works on cars been driven by humans too.
theres rumors the car was muslim
Cars crash every day - thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands of them.
Look at the way the trailer took the top of the car off while barely slowing it down. This shows how trailer under-run bars would have prevented this death. In Europe they are required, and we basically don't have this sort of side collision decapitation horror accident.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
That speeding is unsafe.
Sadly most of the "I have a right to speed" morons will chime in and claim they are far better at driving and safer at higher speeds.
I support no speed limits on limited access highways. but only the dumbest of the most stupid speed on streets with lots of cross traffic and in residential areas.
Even more stupid is a moron that sets his autodrive car to speed on such a road, this just adds to my data set that you do not have to be smart to be rich.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First off the liability alone of allowing speeding with an auto pilot like ability is very dumb. If your going to do this the first thing is to prevent the obvious risks.
I cannot believe the stupidity of Tesla in these crashes. It's very easy to adapt a GPS system to recognize speed limit areas or at least create a reasonable top legal speed limit. It was very dumb to call it auto pilot by itself, but Tesla keeps putting itself in very bad positions on auto safety. It seems to have left all the decisions up to the dumb driver.
Because the car was driving itself and was supposed to *not* kill the occupant.
In America, we can carry firearms, allowing us to shoot the tractor trailer driver before he pulls across our lane. Had the man in the Tesla been a good guy with a gun, he could have taken out the (probably muslim) driver in the other vehicle and his live would have been saved. It's the drivers fault for not carrying a loaded firearm at all times.
"Intelligent systems like in the Tesla shouldn't allow anyone to go faster than the posted speed limit! Won't anyone think of the precious snowflakes!!!!!"
Maybe "real" autopilot software needs more context information to be accurate. Humans have a very complex capacity to "guess" extra situations that could be dangerous and this help us to avoid several accidents, and to expect that a car computer will do exactly the same is not a realistic situation.
There are options for this. For example, to have long range sensors measuring everything is happening around the cars each several kilometers, or a small drone flying with the car to produce a 3D perspective of the road. Even, some cars could "cooperate" with their neighbor cars, following the Waze example, or to mark some areas as "extra careful" areas where the speed needs to be reduced no matter what is happening around.
Is this a piece of cake? Not, but it is not impossible to do, and deserve to be taken into consideration as much as the places to recharge the cars.
Actually me and five guys broke into a BMW dealership and set the place on fire. DOWN WITH THE MACHINES!
That trucks like that can look like overhead road signs/bridges to the computer vision/radar/whatever system they use.
On the bright side, maybe the heirs of these idiot Tesla "drivers" will be smarter than the "drivers".
Because those deaths are according to plan.
Yes, this is an extremely common use case. Tesla will likely fix it. But it does suggest that they have not put the appropriate thought into the thousands of less common use cases that will creep up when this product gets into the hands of more people.
I've said it before but I'll say it again. This is a case of "Regulations are written in blood" in the sense that there will be a human cost involved in figuring out what works and what doesn't and fixing it so it doesn't happen again. Automated driving technologies are going to cost some number of lives and injuries to develop. I don't know how many, I just know the number will be greater than zero. There will be innumerable corner cases to work out before the technology meets its full potential and we will only learn about some of these by someone getting injured.
People bitch about regulations but they tend to forget the human cost that led to the regulation in the first place. New technologies rarely come without a human cost involved. Even something as seemingly innocuous as text messaging has resulted in fatalities because we didn't fully anticipate the degree of distraction it caused to drivers.
Judges don't deal in emotions like a jury does.
HA! If you really believe that you need to educate yourself about judges. They're just as human and subject to emotion as anyone else. The entire reason we have juries in the first place is precisely because judges are prone to emotion and irrationality and error and bias.
Personally, I think it's a much greater problem that some people are more concerned with assigning fault than reducing the overall number of deaths.
Why do people want to use autopilot in the first place?
Numerous reasons.
1) Physical comfort to start. I use cruise control in my car to relieve my leg from having to be fixed in a position for an extended period of time. It can get quite uncomfortable. Discomfort can lead to distraction and distraction can lead to accidents. (insert yoda joke here)
2) Autopilot also can be useful as a safety measure precisely because people's attention routinely waivers. Computers don't get distracted as easily as we do. I challenge you to find a driver who has never accidentally veered out of their lane while distracted or had to perform an emergency stop because of some condition they failed to notice ahead. Autopilot can help ensure these situation occur less often.
3) We lack the technology to fully automate driving but we have technology to prevent some types of accidents. We put ABS and traction control and air bags, and seat belts and other technology on cars to improve safety. Technology that keeps you marginally safer is a good thing. If autopilot can prevent more accidents than would happen without it then it is a good thing to have. We're looking for a net benefit.
Anyone who has actually flown with a real autopilot knows that it does not relieve the pilot of responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle. An autopilot takes over a set of routine operations, but the pilot must still be ready to take over if needed. "Autopilot" != "Autonomous". Tesla makes this very clear.
Except there was no autonomous car involved in this collision at all... And the human didn't avoid the situation.
Because people love to hate Tesla?
Luckily for you then, this one's easy. The car wasn't driving as it's not an autonomous car, so it's the driver's fault. Done!
Except that Tesla doesn't sell a car capable of driving itself, so it's the occupant's job not to kill themselves.
That's fine until you're in the family with a death caused that shouldn't have happened. Some people care about that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So no one should have a problem with Consumer Report's suggestion to disable the Autopilot function then... since it isn't really doing anything for anyone anyway.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
One has to ask why didn't Tesla just call it Cruise Control and there'd be way less confusion. Calling it AutoPilot makes it sound super glamorous, futuristic and autonomous. There are other videos of people driving without their hands holding the wheels. They appear to trust this technology, ignoring the guidance. If I understand correctly, Tesla's autopilot can't detect that the steering wheel is being held but can scan the road for foxes. Amazing.
Autonomous cars make a car more complex, and then introduce the increased complexity into an already complex transportation system. Half joking best solution: at the very least make each autonomous car take a driving test straight out of the factory. These are being positioned as equal or better to the existing system, so why have different rules for humans rather than autonomous cars.
They appear to be only better when the transportation system is less complex ie all autonomous, in a road-train (volvo). on a motorway with no intersections etc.
Yes I know Tesla's are dumb and not autonomous so none of this applies, but most people cannot see the difference. Tesla = Electric, futuristic and sophisticated.
Then teach the assholes who pass and slow down to ten miles slower than you were ALREADY going to stop doing that.
Every fucking time I drive anywhere I am in the right lane going speed limit +-5 MPH which is perfectly fucking legal and reasonable.
And there is ALWAYS some asshole who passes me, then slows down to speed limit-10 miles or more. If you are going to pass someone at the speed limit, have the fucking balls to speed and keep speeding. Otherwise you are just playing some stupid game of "I'm in front of you and now you need to slow down" BULLSHIT.
What was he trying to do?
Park the bloody thing?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As long as you don't have a problem with disabling the cruise control, air conditioning, stereo, power windows, etc on your car... since they aren't really doing anything for anyone anyway.
"not doing anything" is completely different from "not autonomously driving the vehicle"
One correction - truck under-runs are common for drivers, and highly fatal. While you'd think a truck would be easy to see, it turns out that in reality a light truck pulled square across a road, against a light sky, is surprisingly hard to see. In particular, keep in mind that you can see the road ahead under the truck's elevated body. So, in reality, not trivial to avoid.
There are countries that require trucks to have side walls and bumpers, which would make the truck more visible, and make collisions with them less fatal.
As a data point, so far AutoPilot has 1 fatality for 130m miles driven (a month ago, more now), which is about 0.7 fatalities per 100m miles driven. The US average is about 1.2 fatalities per 100m miles driven. The numbers are small so they don't prove anything (wait for 1B miles driven to start drawing real conclusions) but it certainly suggests that AutoPilot is relatively safe.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
My car doesn't even try to stop for obstacles, under any circumstances.
So.. The dipshits naysaying autopilot should be even more outraged about my shitty car.
I didn't say those weren't doing anything. They certainly are. You're the one making the case that the driver is driving even when they aren't. If the cruise control had the possibility of accelerating rapidly unless control was taken by the driver immediately I would certainly advocate disabling it. Just as a feature that runs into trucks without giving a warning should be disabled.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Your cruise control will also run in to trucks without giving a warning. DISABLE IT!!!!!!!
News flash, all systems used for things they weren't designed to do, have a risk of not doing them.
Your air conditioner or stereo wouldn't have stopped the crash either, and they're just as much expected to drive your car for you as auto-pilot is.
So you're saying Autopilot wasn't designed to detect vehicles in front of it?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm saying that collision avoidance is the responsibility of the driver, not the car. Which is exactly what's been communicated in all the marketing material, the manual, the presentation that drivers have to go through at delivery, the dialog they accept when they enable the feature in the settings, the warning that pops up every single time you activate the feature, and every few minutes while driving if it detects you've removed your hands from the wheel.
Autopilot on any other vehicle will happily crash in to anything in it's path, why do you think Tesla should be held to a different standard?
Yes, the car does try not to kill you, but it's your job to make sure it succeeds.
But airplanes have been flying with Autopilot for decades, and the legal situation is quite clear - the pilot is responsible for flying the plane, and the Autopilot is just an assist that automates some of the boring stuff.
And that is exactly how it should be in automobiles as well. The driver is the responsible party. When we get to fully automated vehicles things might get a little more complicated but for now it's pretty simple who is liable. The only real question is if Tesla has some sort of contributory negligence style liability as well.
Exactly the same as Tesla's Autopilot - probably why they named it Autopilot was to remind people of that.
Problem there is that to fly a plane you need to demonstrate a high level of competency and substantial amounts of training with tests to fly even the simplest of aircraft which lack autopilot. They don't let you use autopilot until they are damn sure you know what you are doing. The only tests we give to drive are some ridiculously easy tests that most teenagers can pass and we never evaluate their driving competency ever again even though many are seriously lacking in driving competence. Trusting that drivers will understand the connection to the use of the term in aviation is wishful thinking.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Having an 'autopilot' that sometimes drives except when it doesn't is too much of a gray area. Studies have long proven that humans must be involved in the drive (ie must be steering the car) or they lose concentration of it. When you're talking about a 4500 lb machine there can't be grey areas. Other far less dangerous activities such as using a cellphone have been banned while driving, and this should be as well. In my opinion it's not the consumer's job to do anything. It's Tesla's job to make sure it succeeds and they have killed people now. Quite frankly I'm not even sure how Musk can sleep at night, he overestimated the capabilities of human psychology.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Saying you are aware and actually being aware are two different things.
I believe his actions more than his statements, as one should do with all people. The "accident" proved that he was not aware of his surroundings.
Human: Fail
Autopilot: Fail
Engineers: Fail
Tesla: Fail
Absolutely, but renaming "autopilot" to "driving aid that works quite well in most cases but can kill you if something unexpected happens and you don't brake in time" wouldn't have helped in this case as the driver was well aware of the limitations of the autopilot. Which is really an exception as you would not expect most drivers to be as aware of the technology in their car as much as Josh Brown was. Which really means that the name doesn't matter. What matters is that after using the system for a while you realise that it works reliably. You then start dozing off, and even then it still is reliable mostly. But at some point an accident will happen.
Because some people seem to pop a boner whenever the whiff of sticking it to Tesla drifts by.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Having a 'cruise control' that sometimes drives except when it doesn't is too much of a gray area.
This is no different.
Autopilot NEVER drives, EVER. it's a driver assist feature, no different from cruise control. It adds incredible amounts of safety when used properly (which the vast majority of Tesla drivers do, as proved by the fact that only one has managed to kill himself so far)
People like you would have lobbied for the automobile to be banned when it first came out. Luckily cooler heads prevailed.
As for deaths, Autopilot has statistically saved more lives than have died, and so far, the only person to die fully deserved it because he was an idiot and watched a DVD while driving. he would have died even faster in any other car ever made (and yes, people in other cars try the same stupid stunts, so that's not unique to the Tesla either)
I wonder how many people have died in a Mercedes while their system was operating? or Volvo? or BMW? I bet they aren't accident free either, but Tesla is the only one people focus on, even though it's the best and safest system of any out there.
It was clearly, unquestionably the drivers fault. He wasn't paying attention. I don't care what the feature is called. And before anyone says anything, if a plane on autopilot crashed into another plane it would be the pilots fault too.
Unless you can explain the reason why cruise control works with human psychology and autopilot doesn't I suggest we wait for the study from Tesla, because that is what they should be doing; understanding their customer base ESPECIALLY when their solution is killing people. Anything less is just very bad business. When the automobile was invented, society had much different priorities and also it solved a lot more immediate problems then Autopilot may ever. If you think we need Autopilot to 'save lives eventually' then I'm going to stop you on that one too because I don't believe automated vehicles will ever be available to enough people to make a difference. Not under capitalism anyway. Too much profit potential. Self driving cars are just a first world fancy that people shouldn't be dying for. Tesla has ever opportunity to test it and then release it once it is perfected.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Of course they do. But prospectively, we have the opportunity to be objective. I get to sit here today and look at my family and think "Which future do I prefer? One where they have a lower chance of dying, but if they do it might be at the hands of a faceless algorithm, or one where they have a higher chance of dying, but I'll have someone to blame."
No contest. I suppose there might be someone out there who would rather a greater chance as long as they can blame someone, but I'm going to claim that's a really irrational position to hold.
So far ALL the evidence shows that autopilot DOES work with human psychology just as well as autopilot. More people have been killed using cruise control than on autopilot.
Their solution right now is SAVING LIVES. it should be mandatory in all vehicles if you use soley that argument.
Tesla has not released a self driving car, have not advertised one, and will not release one until it is 10 times as safe as human drivers (per their statements)
Unfortunately 10 times, or 100 times aren't good enough for you. You'd rather keep killing thousands and thousands of people because that's better than killing one person if you personally can't understand why autopilot and autonomous are completely different words with completely different meanings.
With the difference in speed the car would have incidentally either detected the rear wheels of the trailer and braked, or indeed missed the trailer entirely to it's rear. It's this thing about speed, you know, the faster an object is going, the less distance the object would cover in a given time frame...
But the future where they have a lower chance of dying won't happen. I always use the example of automated headlights, because they have been in vehicles for over 10 years but you know who has them even to this day? Mercedes, Lexus, Rolls-Royce.. If you think your kids or your kids kids are going to be on roads with mostly automated cars under capitalism, that's quite a pipe dream.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you can tell me how Tesla plans to put 98% of all drivers out there into an automated car that works better than a human then you may have a point. What I know of the capitalist system and the history of vehicles is that things like this do not go into economy cars, these are just for wealthy people. Therefore, there will not be mass adoption and your point about these saving lives is moot.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So your argument, yet again, is that because it will never be 100%, we shouldn't try at all?
If we save 1 life over not having it, it's good to have. Not saving another life doesn't mean that the system is a disaster, it just means there's still room to make it even better.
As for not being available to the masses, sure it will be. When? How about next year? It'll be available on the $35,000 Model 3 to be released next year, and undoubtedly over time it will migrate down to even cheaper cars (though the average sale price of a new car is $32,000, so there's a good argument that the $35,000 car is "mass adoption")
This is no different than every other technology ever invented. They start off being expensive, and over time become cheaper.
Ok, first of all, Tesla doesn't have the capacity to even manufacture all the pre-order Model 3s next year. Secondly, you think a $35,000 car is something everyone can afford? That's pretty funny, considering there was recently an article on this very fact; most families can't afford more than $10K on a vehicle. It won't be very smart to buy these vehicles used either. Used luxury vehicles are every bit as unreliable as used economy vehicles. The issue is usually the electronics failing after a certain age.. something that automated cars will have much more of. So right now the choice is more like... do we sacrifice 10 good drivers at the chance of saving 10 bad drivers? I say there is not much benefit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I don't think you're good at risk calculations... you don't sacrifice anyone, you only save some. Maybe you don't save everyone because not everyone gets one, but that doesn't put anyone else at any higher risk than they're at right now.
There's literally no downside at all. There's only some people that don't get the upside, they're no worse off than they are now, and arguably even they're better off because the other car is less likely to collide with them even if they do nothing different.
As for "mass market" I quoted the average price of a new car, you want better, I don't know how you expect to achieve that, but the one thing we DO know is that new technologies always start at the top end, and work their way downmarket.
If you can't afford more than $10K, you're looking at a used car anyway, so that $35,000 car will be the $10,000 car in a few years, should we not improve that car now just because we aren't also retrofitting ones from 10 years ago? Or should we cheer for the improvements that are hitting the high end now, knowing that both the lower end, and the used cars, will benefit from it over time.
Also, let me add one more thing. Not once did I say that Tesla shouldn't market Autopilot vehicles... So in no sense am I really saying they can't save lives. All I'm saying is that they aren't ready for market yet in their current form. They should be tested with trained professionals until they are proven safer than a human and not contributing to problems and then release them. I suspect Tesla sees it as less expensive to use the public as guinea pigs and sadly the almighty dollar often takes precedence over lives.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm saying a manual used car at $10K will be more reliable than an automated car at $10K. Probably so much more so that it won't be affordable to buy a used automated car. And these improvements don't trickle down. The only improvements that ever trickled down were antilock brakes, front air bags, and seatbelts. Those only made the cut because the cost of them was low enough that governments could successfully force auto makers to put them in vehicles. You think governments of ten years from now will be able to force automakers to make all their vehicles fully automated? And not in some watered down/cost controlled matter either, but some manner that still performs better than humans? That's not going to happen. Does the Chevy Malibu today have automation that has existed for more then 10 years such as side air bags, automatic wind-shield wipers or road tracking headlights?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Except that your base assumption has been proven incorrect.
They ARE proven safer than a human and not contributing to problems.
Good thing the high end cars never added seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. Those would never have benefited the "average" person.
Every technology starts at the high end, and improves and moves downmarket over time.
You'd be lobbying to ban the wheel if it were invented today.
I haven't seen those statistics. Only comparisons for general highway driving. Many of the conditions that people commonly get into accidents in don't work with Autopilot. The one I saw was that 'Autopilot has driven 130 million miles with only 1 accident'. Well, Autopilot only works in the safest of conditions so comparing to highway driving in ALL conditions is apples to oranges.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Already answered this one in other comments.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The supporters have provided their statistics. If you want to question them, why don't you provide statistics that prove otherwise? Instead all you're providing is FUD.
Not to mention that 1 death is hardly statistically significant out of the thousands upon thousands of driving fatalities.
So far we know that Autopilot is a safety suite of driver assistance features. We also know that this driver used it inappropriately. Unless your assertion is that nobody else has ever done inappropriate things behind the wheel, there's certainly no reason to think this proves Tesla to be doing anything wrong.
Yes, you've said that you're against any and all progress, and that we should not save any lives unless we save all the lives. You've also stated that one idiot doing something stupid behind the wheel proves that the manufacturer did something wrong, while ignoring the fact that many many idiots do something stupid behind the wheel in other vehicles on a daily basis and yet all the other manufacturers aren't dragged through the mud daily about it.
So far I see you as spreading large amounts of FUD with no basis in facts.
I just don't see you making the case that the benefits in the end will be worth the damage.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The benefit is fewer lives lost to traffic collisions. What's the "damage" to saving lives? there's literally NO downside to anyone to the autopilot technology, and it saves lives. There's no "is it worth the damage" because there's no damage!
Yet one person died, and who knows how many more.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Then like I said, if they aren't safer, we shouldn't allow them on the roads. End of story.
I disagree. Companies with the money and intellectual ability to do this are working on it right now, and at least some people want it. Judging by the number of idiots I see futzing with their cell phones while they drive, a LOT of people want to be able to do other things while they're going from A to B.
If Autopilot is going to create accidents for people, then those people's families deserve to be compensated. I don't care what the net effect is.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
it was in a situation that was trivial for a human to avoid.
And yet the human in the truck not only did not avoid it, he caused it by pulling out in front of oncoming traffic.
We know exactly how many more. ZERO.
We also know that without autopilot the number would be higher, and that this incident was a moron who killed himself. had he been in any other car made he would have died sooner pulling these stunts, and people DO pull these stunts in other vehicles.
Autopilot in it's current form is 100% completely incapable of "creating an accident", it does not in any way prevent the driver from controlling the vehicle, and it in fact insists that the driver does so.
If you watch a DVD while driving your car, do you think the manufacturer should compensate your family when you crash and kill yourself? And don't pretend that nobody watches DVDs without "autopilot" there have been many people caught doing so, and there have been fatalities.