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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"?
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
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
Traditional cruise control allows you to pick a constant speed, so I would expect it at least can do that. I would also expect the car has no way to know the posted speed limit of the road, thus the driver controls the speed of the car (that said, we have most of the pieces needed to make that work, and in fact I bet self-driving cars in testing do this, but for "semi-autonomous" I expect it's not worth the trouble to implement since any way you do it you need a bunch of extra equipment on the car to figure out what the speed limit is, which makes the feature more expensive... or the user can just set the proper speed himself for free.)
In the end it's the driver who is responsible for the actions of his car, as far as he can control them. The only things I can see wrong with autopilot with everything I've heard so far is the name, which may tempt a driver to assume it does more than it actually does, and the fact that giving a driver less things to concentrate on while driving can be dangerous in some cases if they still need to be able to react.
The car instructions say the driver has to have hands on the steering wheel at all times and be prepared to take over driving. At all times.
Yes it does, read other comments as to why it failed.
Why does this one death cause everyone to panic?
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
No I get it - my point is how can you call this an "autopilot" if it doesn't even read road signs or figure out speed limits from GPS location or something. It's more of a "tries keep the car in your lane" device. I know it's just a detail, but lawyers have won lawsuits for less.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So, did the truck turn in front of oncoming traffic? If so, why is this the Tesla's fault?
No I get it - my point is how can you call this an "autopilot" if it doesn't even read road signs or figure out speed limits from GPS location or something. It's more of a "tries keep the car in your lane" device. I know it's just a detail, but lawyers have won lawsuits for less.
Autopilot is exactly what it is ...
Wikipedia: An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems.
The trailer was perpendicular across the road.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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).
and slows or stops if the vehicle in front of you decelerates.
But not, apparently, if a brick wall suddenly appears in front of you. Yes I agree that "autopilot" is a horrendous choice of name because "auto" and "automatic" imply autonomy, no matter how many clickthrough EULA's you shove in front of someone. I'm all in favor of Tesla but Musk should have realized that people can be really, really, REALLY stupid and this system needed to be idiot-tested a lot more before being released. I don't think an EULA or even a signed contract will save him when people have died.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
Tesla has agreements and explanations for each owner that explicitly states what function the 'Autopilot' actually has.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
The machines are already trying to kill us all - *runs away screaming*
The truck had been going the opposite direction and was making a left turn, so the car was travelling perpendicular to it.
Because it was the first in an "autonomous" car and it was in a situation that was trivial for a human to avoid.
Tesla has agreements and explanations for each owner that explicitly states what function the 'Autopilot' actually has.
Not going to fly with a judge when people start dying.
"Oh but your Honor he clicked on this agreement..."
uh huh.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'll tell you how people will answer.. an airplane autopilot doesn't read street signs so why would a car autopilot?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The definition of autopilot according to Wikipedia is:
An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems.
The key thing to note is that it doesn't replace the human operator. Arguably Tesla's autopilot does more than airplane autopilots in that it is aware of traffic around it. However, this crash was a corner case in that the system decided that the radar echo from the truck was from a sign, since the truck was white against a white sky, and since the road and lines ahead were still visible underneath the truck. Tesla is in the process of increasing the capability of its radar to create a sparse point cloud, not entirely unlike lidar. This would give more detailed information about the direction of individual radar echoes, as well their speed relative to the car. This would seem to make crashes like the one mentioned here less likely.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I expect it's not worth the trouble to implement since any way you do it you need a bunch of extra equipment on the car to figure out what the speed limit is, which makes the feature more expensive
The car already has cameras and GPS, and uses both machine vision and mapping to determine the local speed limit. As of the beginning of this year, speed limits are enforced for residential and undivided roads. US27 is a divided highway, and thus the software only warns that you're speeding.
Because the trailer turned left, across the road, in front of the car.
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.
It's a "semi" autonomous system. You're not supposed to set it then read a book or watch a movie. I can see how the car could fail to see the rig since it sits high off the ground and might appear to be clear, especially when the trailer color is gray. I don't see how the driver failed to notice it though.
Want to bet? Judges don't deal in emotions like a jury does. A jury now, they'll freak.
It's more of a "tries keep the car in your lane" device.
And since "lane hold" and "lane keep" and other similar names are taken, why not call it something different? Like "autopilot" a system that'll fly you on course, even if that smashes you into another plane.
Learn to love Alaska
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
Tesla is in the process of increasing the capability of its radar to create a sparse point cloud, not entirely unlike lidar. This would give more detailed information about the direction of individual radar echoes, as well their speed relative to the car. This would seem to make crashes like the one mentioned here less likely.
I read that the truck was correctly identified in size and shape, but the case of a low-hanging sign (perhaps by damage) wasn't considered or was considered and rejected as too unlikely. But that the system incorrectly didn't recognize the hazard, while the sensors gathered enough information to identify the hazard. The height angle was correctly recorded, as was the distance. The numbers both were in the acceptable range for a sign, but also calculate a crash hazard. There will be a software update, not too far off, that will correct for this.
Learn to love Alaska
It does read road signs and it generally does know what the speed limit is.
It limits the driver to 5 mph over the speed limit but that only applies to residential areas. On divided roads the driver is allowed to select how much above or below the speed limit to operate the car at.
I can see how the car could fail to see the rig since it sits high off the ground and might appear to be clear, especially when the trailer color is gray.
No higher off the ground from the side than it is from the back. I still think their algos needed serious amounts of work before being released. It's 2016 not 1916, there are consumer safety laws now, you can't get away with "it's your own damned fault, you were doing it wrong" anymore. Not as much, anyway. Yeah I know the driver has a big role in the blame game, but if you were allowed to get away with that then nothing would have safety features. Got caught in the industrial machinery? His fault for being a dumbass and putting his hand there... doesn't fly anymore.
And hiding under a technicality "oh he clicked an agreement and agreed to become a tester for our experimental software". OK. How many hours of training did he receive? What do you mean, none? The state rests.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I notice there are no references in that definition of autopilot. I wonder who wrote it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This doesn't make sense as Waze and Trapster both are aware of the speedlimit on every road I've ever driven while using them. They both make warning noises (unless configured to be silent) and the speed indicator on the screen highlights when you are over the posted speed limit.
However, it does make sense that the driver can set the speed of cruise control to speeds over the legal limit. Many drivers do set cruise control between 4 and 9 miles over the speed limit. While driving on highways between cities, I rarely observe cars driving the posted limit. Almost all traffic is driving 4 to 9 miles over the limit (with most at 9 miles over the limit).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The only problem with the terminology is that there is a disconnect between what the common person on the street thinks the capabilities of an autopilot is versus its actual capabilities. An actual autopilot is not much more than an airplane cruise control that maintains a preset altitude, heading, and airspeed, while the common perception is that it is essentially an autonomous robot pilot that can do everything up to and including dogfighting while the human pilot takes a nap.
It all depends on whether he understood that it was not autopilot. If they can show where he was informed that he was required to be aware and involved then I'd say it's not going to hurt Tesla. If it was buried in the fine print then you are correct, they'll have to pay out the ass.
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.
It's 2016 not 1916, there are consumer safety laws now, you can't get away with "it's your own damned fault, you were doing it wrong" anymore.
See, that's the problem with people. We honestly need to expect a certain level of competency from people. There is something to be said for safety features, but you need to set an expectation on the user as well. You cannot expect the company to cover for every possible idiot.
FYI, there are now many maps showing what happened as well.
There's a good one here:
http://electrek.co/2016/07/01/...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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?
We honestly need to expect a certain level of competency from people.
No. We honestly need to expect a certain level of competency from ENGINEERS. People are allowed to be stupid. Way back in the days of the first air-brakes, they used air pressure to apply the brakes. What happened when the system failed and air pressure was lost? The brakes failed. Nowadays you design a system where you need air pressure to REMOVE the brake. Now if your system fails, the brakes are applied - orders of magnitude safer than no brakes. Electrical devices are grounded. Commercial jets can fly with only a single engine. Etc.
Fail safes are necessary because the universe and people don't always co-operate. So when the shit hits the fan, you try to kill as few people as possible. Just hacking something together and throwing it out to the public isn't good enough - that's irresponsible design. If a guy kills himself with your product you need to be able to show that he went to extreme lengths to do so.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In the same sense that a plane autopilot is an autopilot? Ie it keeps you on the course and speed you set it at but doesn't do much else. It's perhaps odd that people interpret "autopilot" as meaning "self driving", it's probably called autopilot precisely because it isn't self driving.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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.
I notice there are no references in that definition of autopilot. I wonder who wrote it.
If you're intimating that someone from Tesla put the definition into Wikipedia, I think that's a stretch. Much of it was drafted in this revision by a user who primarily edits aviation-related articles. He added a citation, which has since been removed (making way for yet another "Citation needed" Cessna/Wikipedia joke).
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This wasn't anyone's estimate, the vehicle has a data recorder (a "black box") so they know the exact speed.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
No, I'm intimating that the Wikipedia definition is not the one used if you were to ask the general public.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Stupid people are why my daughter's scooter has a single warning label on it: THIS PRODUCT MOVES WHEN USED.
People are in an automobile that doesn't drive itself, but for some reason think an autopilot will let them sleep during the trip. It's a sad part of reality that people with enough money to buy a Tesla can be so stupid as to not listen to any instruction or learn about the unique features of their purchase. Darwin Award indeed.
Fail-safe is great, but this is not a case where fail-safe would have helped. After all, the autopilot didn't think it was failing. And what does an aircraft's autopilot do when it detects conditions it can't handle? It hands control over to the pilot. If the Tesla had done that, the result would likely have been identical, because a few seconds before the crash is not enough time for someone not paying any attention to grasp the situation and make a decision.
I hope you are wrong. We let people buy chainsaws and circular saws, and people get hurt and/or killed by them. We don't hold manufacturers responsible because we expect people to know how they work and how to handle them. If Tesla explains the feature at the time of purchase, it is the owner's responsibility to know how to operate the vehicle. Period.
Tesla Autopilot has sensor limitations that make it blind to stationary objects, unless that object is a car that was moving at the time it was first perceived by the system. Yes, that is documented somewhere in the manual and yes, there are click-throughs. The problems is, if you actually consider all available information, this is a beta product that actually requires the driver to pay more attention to the road than if they were driving themselves (it's like driving with a visually impaired student driver), however it is marketed as a feature that offloads the driver - presumably it would be that if it was out of beta, which may never happen on current generation cars. The fact that it does so well most of the time is actually it's biggest downfall as it lures users into false sense of security which can have fatal results.
No, I'm intimating that the Wikipedia definition is not the one used if you were to ask the general public.
No. It's the definition you would probably find in the manual for an airplane. It's called reality. Go ask a pilot if they sleep while autopilot is on. They could lose their license. And if that isn't enough, when you activate autopilot on a Tesla, you are warned that it requires an alert human driver. And if even that isn't enough, perhaps you might get the hint when the car keeps reminding you to keep your hand on the wheel if you haven't touched it in two minutes.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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.
"if a brick wall suddenly appears in front of you."
It wasn't sudden. Look at the scene photos and the impact points on the vehicles. There were clear sight lines and the truck had to pull out over half it's length, which was quite a distance and trucks aren't exactly fast accelerators.
The crash avoidance system simply either didn't see the siltation developing from far enough away, or didn't recognise the situation as dangerous for many reasons that have to do with the limitations of the sensors used. Volvo had previously said that those sensors weren't good enough in all situations, and being the manufacturer with the most R&D into safety, and a history of sharing safety technologies and design guidelines with competing manufacturers, I'm inclined to believe them.
If the Tesla had a LIDAR system installed, it is entirely possible that this accident could have been avoided. Likewise if the driver had been paying attention the accident may have been avoided. However there is lots of research that shows that if people are merely passive monitors of technology, their attention wanders and their reaction times slow, so this situation was entirely predictable, and probably inevitable with the current Auto Pilot system as it stands today.
You either need to give the driver more to do, or need to be able to handle more situations automatically, which is the problem with Auto Pilot. It's in a kind of uncanny valley of driver assistance. It provides enough assistance, most of the time, that the driver starts to rely on it, but doesn't handle enough edge cases to be worthy of this trust when the driver needs it most.
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.
-
No. We honestly need to expect a certain level of competency from ENGINEERS. People are allowed to be stupid.
People can be as stupid or drunk or tired or half-blind as they like, LICENSED DRIVERS who operate two tons of metal travelling at 70+ mph need to take some damn responsibility for that. Thankfully he only won a Darwin award but if he'd killed somebody I'd call that a clear case of vehicular manslaughter which can land you in prison for a very long time. Drivers that can't do their part should hand in their license and wait for the real self-driving cars.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
I hope you are wrong. We let people buy chainsaws and circular saws, and people get hurt and/or killed by them. We don't hold manufacturers responsible because we expect people to know how they work and how to handle them. If Tesla explains the feature at the time of purchase, it is the owner's responsibility to know how to operate the vehicle. Period.
I can't get over thinking the only reason for autopilot in real world practical terms is to assist drivers to not drive.
It is easy to play word games and argue otherwise claim autopilot is there to "assist" drivers to drive or confuse autopilot with other safety features such as AEB yet to me the overriding question that must be answered is what's the point of autopilot to the actual people driving? Why do people want to use autopilot in the first place?
Based on my experience and understanding of people it is not likely to be seeking assistance driving it is more they don't want to drive or pay 100% attention and autopilot helps fulfill that wish.
If you assume for the sake of argument the primary reason why people want autopilot is so that they don't have to drive then I'm quite happy with outcome of clickwrap CYA warnings not holding up in court.
The only problem with the terminology is that there is a disconnect between what the common person on the street thinks the capabilities of an autopilot is versus its actual capabilities.
That's a big effing problem!! It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Because we want self-driving cars, and this could be an impediment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
aka, "rich people problems". or rather, "stupid people who are rich, problems."
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
No, I'm intimating that the Wikipedia definition is not the one used if you were to ask the general public.
No. It's the definition you would probably find in the manual for an airplane. It's called reality.
In your reality Tesla drivers receive the same sort of training and certification as airline pilots?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
According to what I have read of the Tesla Autopilot capabilities, first it will try to look for speed signs, and if not it will defer to the GPS database for a speed limit. It makes me wonder why the car was reporting a faster speed than it should have been travelling at, and whether the driver was contributing to the accident by overriding the accelerator. Obviously I have not driven one of these things, but I'm sure someone here could enlighten us.
The only problem with the terminology is that there is a disconnect between what the common person on the street thinks the capabilities of an autopilot is versus its actual capabilities. An actual autopilot is not much more than an airplane cruise control that maintains a preset altitude, heading, and airspeed, while the common perception is that it is essentially an autonomous robot pilot that can do everything up to and including dogfighting while the human pilot takes a nap.
I'm not sure how that is Tesla's problem? They spell out what the autopilot is capable of, what the driver's responsibilities are etc.
Also, I assume the big rig driver is being taken to task in all this? He was essentially at fault for the whole incident, lets not forget.
"Also, I assume the big rig driver is being taken to task in all this? He was essentially at fault for the whole incident, lets not forget."
Jesus Christ!
No!
When you drive a vehicle you do not have some fundamental "right of way" down the road. There could be *any* obstruction caused at any time, and as such, you simply must drive appropriately. What if the car in front suddenly breaks down, or suddenly breaks? With or without reason. What I will support is that any vehicle has a fundamental right to stop itself at any time. If driving on an open road, if you can't see around the corner with an appropriate response time to stop your vehicle then you are going too fast.
Was this not taught during your drivers education program? Is it not even common sense to you?
Once you adopt this attitude everything becomes much safer.
Yes I agree that "autopilot" is a horrendous choice of name because "auto" and "automatic" imply autonomy, no matter how many clickthrough EULA's you shove in front of someone.
I agree. I got in my car the other day and while driving, I remembered it is actually an automobile so I let go of the steering.
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"
Yet we still allow unfettered car access but WHINE about guns.
Cars kill far more people every day than guns do.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
aka, "rich people problems". or rather, "stupid people who are rich, problems."
Tesla plans on rolling out this technology to the masses. If they're being this haphazard with the rich, I wonder what they'll do with everyone else.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
The accident was not likely to be survivable at 65mph. I expect that speed will be shown not to be a factor in this accident.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
No way. My car will light up and warn me with sounds when the road is curving too much for my speed. If my 3 year old $30k American car can falsely alert me of a truck carrying magnetic gravel as a wall in front of me and slam on my brakes, why the hell can't a $100k Tesla not do the same? Because the developers didn't know how to handle the scenario and decided to code it out.
Also, my dealer ingrained in my head that the auto stop is not magic and requires my constant attention even though I can take my hands and feet completely away from the car. Read that again, my dealer sat down and told me to always pay attention, keep my feet near the pedals and hands on the wheels. My Tesla owning friend was not given the same story.
So if Tesla had done what my primative car doess and mutes the stereo and flashing lights and loud sounds everywhere, I would have raised my head said "oh shit" slammed on the brakes and tried to avoid the trailer. Except my car would have been stopping already. Would I have hit? probably. Would I have a better chance of walking away? probably.
Drivers that can't do their part should hand in their license and wait for the real self-driving cars.
We have found the 13 year old that has never driven any American roads
Oxford dictionary:
Automatic pilot
NOUN
A device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot.
Wikipedia:
An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required.
The name is misleading.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
People are suffering from warning fatigue. Your unsaved work will be lost. By opening the package you agree to the 20,000 word EULA. Do not consume concrete mix. People just ignore them.
I'm not saying people should ignore them, I'm just saying that's how it is because everything has to have a legal disclaimer on it now.
Maybe two minutes with your hands off the wheel is too long. Why not two seconds? If the driver is required to be alert and ready to take over in a fraction of a second at any moment, taking their hands off the wheel at all sounds like a bad idea.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Looks correct to me as neither of thoise definition say anythign about automatic avoidance of other craft/vehicles.
Looks like stupid people are just stupid.
+----------------- | What is the question!
Except Tesla's system is designed such that it assumes your hands are on the wheel at all times, and you really can't take your eyes off the road for doing things like checking the weather. In a plane you most likely have plenty of time to do something if the auto pilot fails. Probably upwards of 1 minute unless you are landing or taking off. In a car, you're lucky if you have 3 seconds to notice a problem before correcting it because the other vehicles and obstacles are so close.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
No I get it - my point is how can you call this an "autopilot" if it doesn't even read road signs or figure out speed limits from GPS location or something.
This may come as a shock to you: Autopilot on an airplane does not determine what speed it should be flying at, what altitude, or what direction. All three of those are manually specified by pilots via dials, and in some advanced cases they are pre-programmed in a course. What they are never and never have been is "automatic"
And yet those same people will definitely say no even though planes have autopilots they still need actual pilots in the cockpit. All it takes is applying a tiny bit of thought.
Hmmm both those definitions agree and almost perfectly describe how autopilot works both in a Tesla and and aircraft. I fail to see the issue.
It would have been an extra second or two to react. Since the guy was a moron and not looking, would have made no difference, but a person using it properly would have hit the brake.
Also I've never seen an area with 65MPH speed limits and cross streets, seems like a dumb idea to begin with. US-15 and NY-17 drop the speed limit to 55 whenever you're outside the limited access parts...
"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!!!!!"
Go ask a pilot if they keep their hands on the controls at all times when autopilot is on.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Tesla plans on rolling out this technology to the masses.
The masses cannot afford Teslas.
Unless Musk has a trick up his sleeve to bring the cost down to Toyota Corolla prices, and can successfully lobby for charging stations becoming a utility that must be provided by landlords and employers, it's not going to be for the masses.
I would also expect the car has no way to know the posted speed limit of the road,
That would be a false expectation. Teslas use machine vision and OCR to read signs. Also, some companies have databases of this kind of info, e.g. Garmin. My GPS doesn't have any cameras in it, but it knows the speed limit most places.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only problem with the terminology is that there is a disconnect between what the common person on the street thinks the capabilities of an autopilot is versus its actual capabilities.
Ironically, you are experiencing the same kind of disconnect.
An actual autopilot is not much more than an airplane cruise control that maintains a preset altitude, heading, and airspeed, while the common perception is that it is essentially an autonomous robot pilot that can do everything up to and including dogfighting while the human pilot takes a nap.
Sigh, no. Yes, there are autopilots like that. There are also autopilot systems that can handle the takeoff and landing, and the most fancy-pants military autopilot systems can take off, fly waypoints, launch ordnance, and land without human intervention. They can't dogfight, but they can fly. This isn't even difficult any more! A radio controlled plane powered by a 16MHz AVR chip has no problem doing the same stuff.
You're wrong on literally every count, because Tesla won't even activate the feature for you until they've given you a lecture on the limitations of the system, so it doesn't matter what people think of the word "autopilot" in any case; Tesla is quite explicit about what it does and doesn't do, where you are or are not supposed to use it, and what the driver's responsibilities are. This driver clearly shirked his, and paid the price, just like any other driver.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Unless Musk has a trick up his sleeve to bring the cost down to Toyota Corolla prices, and can successfully lobby for charging stations becoming a utility that must be provided by landlords and employers, it's not going to be for the masses.
The Toyota Corolla will come up to Model 3 prices instead, pushed there by ever-tightening environmental regulations which matter not at all to an EV. Probably it will even turn into a hybrid eventually (as in, not available any other way) which will certainly drive up the cost.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, I'm intimating that the Wikipedia definition is not the one used if you were to ask the general public.
How are you defining "general public"? As "doesn't edit Wikipedia"? Because I can go around in circles all day without accomplishing anything, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Go ask a pilot if they keep their hands on the controls at all times when autopilot is on.
You can remove your hands from the controls in the Tesla for short periods, but you are still responsible for maintaining attention, just as you are in an aircraft:
Careless manner says it all. And the operator of this Tesla did it in a careless manner.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
No I get it - my point is how can you call this an "autopilot" if it doesn't even read road signs or figure out speed limits from GPS location or something. It's more of a "tries keep the car in your lane" device. I know it's just a detail, but lawyers have won lawsuits for less.
And consumers either wouldn't buy an autonomous car you couldn't tell to always drive x mph above speed limit, or they would hack it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It's a "semi" autonomous system. You're not supposed to set it then read a book or watch a movie. .
Considering a few people do that in plain normal cars without any assistance ...
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
That's a big effing problem!! It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
The terminology did not lead to the death. The killed driver was very aware of the limitations of the autopilot and that you need to be aware of your surroundings. He said this in his YouTube videos and the comments.
Go ask a pilot if they sleep while autopilot is on.
K. I'll answer that as a pilot. Yes I sleep while on autopilot but not while manning a seat- only while on break in the bunk (aka the crypt as its cold and dark). We have more that 2 pilots on "long" flights.
In all seriousness, many have advocated, and I believe the FAA has studied the efficacy of "cat naps" taken one at a time while at the controls during cruise to combat fatigue during approach and landing phases. While not legal or encouraged, it does happen. There is anecdotal evidence that on more than one occasion, both pilots have fallen asleep while at the controls allowing the aircraft to deviate from its intended flight path, or become unresponsive to controllers. Most commercial aircraft, but not all, are equipped with an alerting system that will sound a series of alarms of increasing urgency if there has been no pilot interaction after a set amount of time.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
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".
Still the speed raises another interesting question.. People don't get speeding tickets at 10 above because there are too many atmospheric variables with the tech that the police use to read the speed of your car. But here the logs of the vehicle give the speed of the car without any question... so it's still speeding and should warrant a ticket. In fact, I can see police agencies seizing log data and ticketing accordingly in the future.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
And when that happens there will be no end of slashdot posts crying over how "Tesla wants to dictate the speed" that they can drive
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.
No, the Tesla knows the speed limit. Its speed was as intended by the driver. On youtube, Tesla drivers show how they raise the automatic speed limit by 10 miles, and then lower it by 1 mile so as not to get a speeding ticket.
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.
People are making the predictable error of thinking this very new technology should be perfect. That's not a reasonable expectation. Newsflash: the first truly autonomous vehicles (which this IS NOT) are going to screw up sometimes. They're going to get people killed. They should, as a minimum standard to be allowed for use at all, get fewer people killed, but it's not going to be zero, and it's going to be a different set of people.
A lot of people aren't comfortable with giving up control over their car. While I'm not one of them (the day I never have to drive again, I'll be thrilled!), allowing the driver to make the decisions when they want to may be a requirement of a commercially viable product.
Exactly like the Tesla, it sounds a series of alarms of increasing urgency if there has been no driver interaction after a set amount of time.
Autopilot is the best name for the system, and the vast majority of people understand exactly what that means.
A couple of complete morons don't, and they either get themselves killed, or post comments about how Tesla shouldn't call it autopilot, but those same people probably would have objected when the car was originally called the automobile, and would have sued the inventor of the wheel for making something too dangerous.
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.
Another Model S owner here...
It does a positively atrociously horrible job of reading speed limit signs, it knows the speed limit of the road I'm on maybe 10% of the time. I have not installed the 7.1 software update because I won't risk having my cruise control limited to significantly below the speed limit on many roads.
That said, it does an amazingly good job of providing an autopilot feature, which I enjoy on pretty much every single drive.
Of course the bigger question is, why would you talk about self driving cars when no self driving car was involved in any way with this story?
No, the autopilot feature has never been marketed that way at all by Tesla, not even once.
The feature is marketed as taking away the strain of constant minor adjustments so you can focus on the more general tasks such as watching for trucks turning across your lane.
If a moron ignores everything in the marketing, the demo provided by Tesla at delivery, the warning when enabling the feature, the user manual, the warning that pops up every single time you activate the feature while driving, and the constant reminders every few minutes to put your hands on the wheel... Well I don't have any sympathy for him at all.
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.
What does the engineering difference between those two styles of air brakes have to do with the judgement call of when or whether to apply brakes in the first place? Is the fact that a guy in Nice, France chose to run down 84 people with an air-brake-equipped truck just an engineering failure, as far as you're concerned?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.
That speeding is unsafe.
You do know where those statistics come from right? Police investigate collisions, and if the car was doing even 1 km/hr over the posted limit, they check off "speeding" as one of the causes of the collision. As a result of the fact that the vast majority of cars are travelling over the posted speed limit at all times on public roads, the vast majority of collisions "have speed as a factor". This doesn't actually mean that reducing speed limits, or stricter enforcement of them, will make it any safer, but it's great for PR, which gives a social license to the police to operate more speed traps and for cities to lower speed limits further, all in an effort to bring in more income from fines.
Of course actual studies that look in to the effect of lowering speed limits, or increased enforcement, have never found a conclusive link to increased safety (for every study that shows there is, another study shows there isn't) But the fine revenue is just too lucrative...
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!
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.
Airplanes have had Autopilots for decades, and the pilots are responsible for flying the airplane. And every time you turn on Tesla's Autopilot you have to manually confirm that you know that the driver has to remain alert and hands-on-wheel.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Might as well ask if they'd like to lose their pilot's license. They're required by law (and ethics) to always be prepared to take control away from the Autopilot, in a fraction of a second.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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.
If there were a wall across the road, Autopilot would have seen that. Though avoiding a wall that suddenly appears across a highway might be problematic.
In this case, though, it wasn't a brick wall, it was a truck with a raised body. Which means that Autopilot saw clear road ahead (under the body of the truck), with a large flat object above it, like a sign over a highway. Incorrect in this case, but since people make the same mistake routinely (truck under-runs are common) it's not a trivial case. Should Autopilot be better than human drivers? Sure. But that takes lots of experience on the road, tuning the software. So, "silver lining", this accident will make future Autopilot versions safer.
I agree that people can be stupid, and that the software should be improved. Legally, though, since pilots have been flying airplanes with Autopilot that does the same thing Tesla's Autopilot does, and Tesla informs drivers repeatedly that they need to stay alert and ready to take over, just like airplane pilots, I suspect that Tesla's legal situation is pretty clean. The legal/regulatory situation will get more complex once cars are autonomous, rather than semi-autonomous. Until then, drivers are responsible for driving their cars safely, and it's more a matter of education that people learn to use the various safety mechanisms appropriately. If someone intentionally drove into a wall, they can't sue because the anti-collision braking didn't prevent them from doing so.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Exactly - the car knows speed limits from the maps. The reason that they don't enforce speed limits (outside of residential areas) is that buyers of high-end sports cars don't want speed limits enforced.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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 wish we could do this => "Take off all the warning labels, in a few generations the problem will take care of itself" -unknown
...ffs
we dont need this dude's genes in the gene pool..reproducing other idiots...bonking into semi trailers and eating shampoo. Seriously there is a warning label on shampoo "Do no take internally" or "for external use only"
#include bier;
I agree that that's bad, but I don't see that nearly as often as I see from the people who speed up to keep people from passing them. Basically, you seem to be justifying this behavior on the basis that some passers will do what you describe.
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.
Actually, collision data is quite clear - reducing speed of collision saves lives because the fatality rate of the accidents drop. The reason is pretty simple - F=MA. Mass of a car, person, etc., are constant. So the faster a car is going, the more acceleration is required to stop the car (i.e. during the collision), and thus the more force acting on the driver and passengers. And enough force kills people.
There's also quite clear aggregate data that highway driving fatality rates dropped when speed limits were reduced, both nationally and at the state level. Of course, at various times seatbelt, airbags, etc., also helped...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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.
Except that reducing the speed of a collision is not the same as reducing the speed limit, and that a collision at 70mph vs 65mph, is pretty much equally survivable as they're both an awful lot of force. At a certain point adding more force isn't really a factor anymore as you can't be "more dead"
Fatality rates have ALSO dropped when speed limits have increased, or stayed the same. The thing is, fatality rates are dropping pretty much universally, claiming decreasing speed limits saved lives while ignoring the lives saved in the next county over that increased their speed limits is ignoring all the other things going on.
your footnote of "seatbelt, airbags, etc., also helped..." is exactly the point. there have been tons and tons of safety improvements in vehicles, there have also been huge improvements in trauma medicine, all of which have reduced fatalities so much that a few mph here and there is basically irrelevant, even if people did follow those rules.
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.
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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.
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.
Looks correct to me as neither of thoise definition say anythign about automatic avoidance of other craft/vehicles.
Looks like stupid people are just stupid.
Darwin, where are you when we need you?
Oh.. Wait.. Heh.
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.
They have made autopilots that can land on their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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.
People who buy cars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
So what is the purpose of autopilot then? Specifically, what is the purpose of autopilot when it doesn't prevent you from running broadside into a truck?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Tesla Models S and X read speed limit signs with with a camera mounted near the rear-view mirror.
In the car's settings, the driver can specify a default offset to the speed limit that will be applied when the engagement stalk is pulled rearward. If the stalk is moved vertically, the current speed is applied.
For completeness: Teslas Models S and X with the Autopilot Convenience Features option...
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.
In order for an impact to have occurred, the driver of the tractor-trailer had insufficient time to clear his vehicle off the carriage, Clearly, this points some responsibility to the driver of the "big rig".
In Europe, all tractor-trailers (articulated lorries) must have side impact protection. I cannot understand the logic applied in the USA of having vehicles on the road that allows cars to not to use the car's frontal crumple zones in side impact accidents with "big rigs".
It would be highly illegal to drive a USA "big rig" in Europe without side impact protection.
I suspect these type of accidents occur daily with ICE cars in the USA but no-one decides to do anything about it. If you fix the design of the semi-trailer then at least the front crumple zone of the car would be used in a side impact. At least that should increase the chances of surviving the accident by not ripping off the car's roof.
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!
Your Tesla owning friend keeps getting told by the CEO of his car's manufacturer that his automagic car is safer if he lets the car drive itself.
That's the real crime here.
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.
People who buy cars.
People keep buying Toyotas, so why would you expect them to know anything?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.