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Tesla Owner In China Blames Autopilot For Crash (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The owner of a Tesla Motors Model S sedan in China reportedly said his vehicle crashed into a car on the side of the road while the vehicle's Autopilot system was engaged, but the automaker said the driver was using the system improperly. Luo Zhen, 33, of Beijing told Reuters that his vehicle collided with a parked car on the left side of a highway, damaging both vehicles but injuring no one. He criticized Tesla sales people for allegedly describing the vehicle as "self-driving." "The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn't assisted driving," he told Reuters. In the new case in China, Tesla said the Model S was "following closely behind the car in front of it when the lead car moved to the right to avoid hitting the parked car." "The driver of the Tesla, whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel, did not steer to avoid the parked car and instead scraped against its side," Tesla said Wednesday in a statement. "As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream. Autopilot, as it stands, is a smarter form of cruise control (it basically helps you maintain the speed without your foot on the pedal but it's a bit fancier than a fixed speed)
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That really needs LIDAR.
We get it, Musk will blame the driver for not avoiding the collision, yeh yeh EULAs etc. But that doesn't fix the problem. That visual system does not work faultlessly, it is just diffing the two scenes to try to determine a 3D world view, and it clearly does not 'see' the world, it sees the deltas as the car moves. So they need to add LIDAR so it can see objects distances without trying to determine them with time deltas.
From my understanding of driving conditions in China, it would take a pretty miraculous AI to prevent accidents there. It seems as though these driving assists and self-driving cars are going to have to be region-specific.
the system even says to keep hand on wheel when you turn it on. its driver error when you dont. theirs a reason it can be overridden at anytime.
http://www.thecountrycaller.co...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The have a sensor tha detects if hands are on the wheel.
They say auto pilot should always be used with hands on wheel.
Why don't they just disable it if you take you hands from the wheel?
This seems like exactly the sort of situation lane assist should handle. And if "auto pilot" was engaged, shouldn't it have prevented the driver from following too closely, as Musk is implying was the case?
#DeleteChrome
No matter how many times you warn them, teach them, educate them - drivers will ALWAYS assume these system are more capable than they are. Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves. I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.
Damn, I can't believe there are that many idiots out there that want to blame a computer for their lack of control over their vehicle.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Car driver gets in accident. Blames anything and everything for the accident besides himself. And in other news, water is wet.
It seems we'll need to introduce licences for autopilot features. Until a driver can demonstrate they're not stupid, they are not licensed to sue it.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Just because someone can demonstrate ability to test, doesn't necessarily mean they are intelligent.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Meanwhile, over a thousand people per day are dying in traffic accidents worldwide. SDCs likely could prevent most of those. You want that progress held up because, what, 3 people have died in a year? Get some sense of perspective.
You're driving it wrong.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Well, they dont need to be intelligent. As long as they can demonstrate the ability to use autopilot correctly (even in simulated crashes), they can be allowed to use autopilot in tesla.
Training is not going to help. it's just not in human nature to pay attention when there's nothing to do most of the time, and it must be assumed that the driver will require at least a couple of seconds warning, and probably more, before being able to take control. It is highly irresponsible of auto manufacturers to field systems that cannot reliably give that warning, even though it is technically the driver's responsibility to pay attention. Tesla's habit of calling it beta software is a cynical attempt to avoid responsibility, which may come back to haunt them, as it shows they know the system is not ready.
"a device that steers a ship, aircraft, or spacecraft in place of a person" -- Merriam-Webster
Gee, how could anyone be confused about that?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I think the point is that merely possessing the ability, and demonstrating it on isolated demand, does not mean they will necessarily USE IT consistently.
Self-driving cars would be a great improvement, but, as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
Keeping your hands on the wheel doesn't mean much. The manufacturers that require this may want us to think it is a proxy for paying attention, but it is not.
Meanwhile, over a thousand people per day are dying in traffic accidents worldwide. SDCs likely could prevent most of those. You want that progress held up because, what, 3 people have died in a year? Get some sense of perspective.
Self-driving cars might have prevented it, but so would riding unicorns to work and back. We don't have either.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Self-driving cars would be a great improvement, but, as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
They are a step in that direction, and full SDCs will be only a software upgrade. All the necessary hardware is already in current Teslas. The risk of rushing the technology is far, far smaller than the risk of impeding it. America needs to stop being the "can't do" country.
For those that say it needs to not exist until it's perfect, it's like any Beta software. Mostly good but still some kinks. Tesla wouldn't be able to reasonably find all the kinks without help, and you have to Opt-In (with $5000) to try the Beta. You might have a case blaming Autopilot if your Tesla crashed, driving itself, without you in it, but Tesla specifically permits that only on private property for liability. Otherwise it's an imperfect driving aid, though as Tesla points out, has had fewer fatal accidents per 100000 miles than the American average. Don't blame Autopilot because you valued watching DVDs over safe driving practices, like, not hitting semis.
Thousands of people die because of stupid, careless driving.
Encouraging you to rely on a system not capable of detecting and avoiding a car that the human in front of you managed to avoid? That's encouraging stupid and careless driving.
The stats don't add up at the moment because not many people have these things, not everyone that does has this shit turned on, and not everyone who turns this shit on is an idiot. But those are all factors that change radically as it becomes mainstream.
Notice that it's always Tesla, and none of the other manufacturers of cars are getting as bad a press even though my car bought this year had options for lane assist, auto-braking cruise control, and so on. Because they DO NOT encourage you to just let the car drive. Tesla does. Even if they say they don't, calling it what they call it implies it can do things that it can't.
Why do you think the other manufacturers are avoiding that exact thing, when they could easily claim to have the same or superior technology in their cars right now? Why do you think they steer clear of any terminology like that? Why do you think they are all testing it, all using it, but none of them are making any kind of claim about it, or getting anywhere near as much bad press?
It's not the technology. We're a tech site here, we love technology. It's the inappropriate use of technology and encouraging reliance on something that's not perfect.
And, still, legally and ultimately this driver is at fault - Tesla can't take responsibility because their system just isn't good enough to do so. They have to blame the customer. But their customer is saying that the exact feature that's supposed to avoid accidents that they don't notice isn't working. How, with all the fancy tech that Tesla claim to have, was it possible to come into contact with another car at all? Ignoring whose fault it was, who should have had their hand on the wheel, etc. Tesla are saying that their system DIDN'T manage to do what they advertise it can do (even if they can discourage reliance on it, legally speaking).
There was an obstacle, a large obstacle, a visible and detectable obstacle, and nobody is saying this guy was going too fast, or the other guy was going the wrong way down a motorway or anything out of the ordinary. He drove past a car, and the system didn't detect it, and he hit it. Given Tesla's love of this new feature they are selling, how is that possible?
It's possible because the Tesla self-drive / auto-drive / drive-assist feature DIDN'T SPOT THE OBSTACLE, DIDN'T APPLY THE BRAKES IN TIME and therefore DIDN'T DO WHAT IT CLAIMS. This is just one isolated incident, maybe, and maybe the guy was too close (as others have pointed out, why didn't the drive assist increase the gap?), too fast or too stupid in his actions. But the thing didn't do what it needed to.
Extrapolate that to millions of idiotic drivers like there are on the road, millions of such events every day, millions of unexpected cars and obstacles, and it's a potential disaster. And Tesla want to be able to just say "Oh, well, you shouldn't have relied on us", effectively. It's not a good sales technique!
If this tech is to become mainstream, it has to get better a lot quicker, because still the issues of liability are there. If the car is capable of NOT taking action, it's also capable of taking INCORRECT action, and that's just going to open up all kinds of avenues where people will say their car did something that they never intended.
And as these cars age, the system isn't going to improve in capability. As these cars get more prevalent, the number of problems is going to increase. And as people see more of them and get more reliant on them (I've never seen a Tesla on the road in my country, and some models appear to cost FIVE TIMES what my brand-new 2016-model large family car cost, so I don't imagine there are many about and people are being "careful" with them at the moment).
It's not a question of holding back tech. I'm a techie, I love it. It's a question of how that tech is sold ("Hey, this car drives itself!" even if they say they never say that) and how it's handled when things go wrong ("Driver error for relying on us, not our problem").
What's the deal? This stopped being "news" after the first two.
All the stories are alike:
1. Driver engages "autopilot"
2. Driver takes hands off wheel / stops paying attention to the road.
3. Driver crashes; blames "autopilot" instead of own stupidity.
Autopilot can only be used under what are normally very safe driving conditions - highways and low speed start/stop traffic. The more difficult driving situations when most of the accidents happen aren't covered by it, so a simple comparison with humans isn't really fair.
We need more data on how many accidents there have been, including non-fatal ones, and I doubt there is any source of that. It's also interesting to see how insurance is going to play out on this one. The best indication we will probably ever get is if cars with autopilot get an insurance discount or surcharge compared to those without.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You're talking about some theoretical benefit that may occur *IF* automation is perfected and *IF* one day everyone are able to afford one. If we really care that much about the thousands of deaths on the roads then let's simply cut all the existing speed limits in half. It's a lot more practical than hoping every bad driver will one day be in a self driving car that works better than they do. If it doesn't sound practical to you at all, then you don't really care about those deaths as much as you say you do.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
People are either too stupid or deliberately abuse the feature to extort money from the company.
Humanity isn't ready for "assisted driving" because whenever something goes wrong, it's the system's fault.
When we have a car in which you can sleep until you arrive at your destination, we can call it "autopilot". Until then, just enable "adaptive cruise control" and be done with it.
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Hello everyone please help me
Perhaps they should change the name to I-can't-believe-it's-not-an-autopilot
I am wondering that when they went with the word 'autopilot' they thought "Hey, everybody will know and understand that this means they still need to drive themselves and everybody will understand that is just Assisted Driving" as everybody knows what a pilot does and what his restrictions are. ...".
Or do you think they said "Let's call it Auto Pilot, because people will think it will drive itself with all the news about self-driving cars and we will put 'this is not a self-driving car' somewhere so we are secured from any legal action, just like we say "objects in this mirror are
I believe it is the second option. And as such they are liable. If it is the first one, they should fire their whole marketing department as well as any advertising company, because both are paid to understand what the impact of words is on people and how people react to them and they clearly did not able to do their job.
Because let us be real, those departments and companies can tell us what the impact is on the different color green used, on fonts and when to use what words and they had NO idea what Auto Pilot was to the people they were trying to sell cars to? Either incompetent or dishonest. They can take their pick.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Looks like this "feature" and these idiot drivers will be the downfall of Tesla, maybe even future self-driving cars.
It's possible because the Tesla self-drive / auto-drive / drive-assist feature DIDN'T SPOT THE OBSTACLE, DIDN'T APPLY THE BRAKES IN TIME and therefore DIDN'T DO WHAT IT CLAIMS.
It did do what it claims. What happened in the accident was exactly the same as a description of a limitation in the manual: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
No, that's not Elon Musks response. Elon Musks response would be something like this:
"Let's wait for the blackbox data of that car to come in and then tear this guys story to pieces in a very calm and professional manner like we do with most of these incidents".
There you go, FTFY.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
Except the name of the feature is litterally a synonym for "automatic steering system" according to http://www.thesaurus.com/
They need to pick a better name.
Sterling Archer: I thought you put it on autopilot!
Rip Riley: It just maintains course and altitude! It doesn't know how to find THE ONLY AIRSTRIP WITHIN A THOUSAND MILES SO IT CAN LAND ITSELF WHEN IT NEEDS GAS!
Sterling Archer: Then I, uh... misunderstood the concept.
Seriously, though, the problem for Tesla isn't just that people will misuse the system. The problem is, even when the system isn't at fault, and the driver knows it wasn't at fault, there will still be a subset of people who will try to lie and blame the system in order to weasel out of fines/criminal charges/general responsibility, because it's new enough, controversial enough, and makes for a sufficiently good sound bite that some media outlet will start screaming bloody murder about it being Tesla's fault, and other media outlets will pick it up and run with it without any form of fact checking.
C'mon, it's a guy behind the wheel. His wife obviously wasn't in the car, so who else is there to blame? Himself??? Get real.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
If it is just a software upgrade away, then there is no harm in waiting a bit and doing it properly, is there?
Except the 'upgrade' is not developed yet, and so certainly not tested yet. By this 'argument', superhuman generalized AI is 'just' an upgrade away.
Besides that, there are a number of good arguments that the current state of software needs additional hardware support in order to do the job properly.
The auto industry should look to the aerospace industry, which has learned the hard way how to do safety, and that industry was not killed off by it (quite the contrary, in fact.) One thing learned was that wishful thinking and vague hand-waving arguments don't count for much.
You cannot justify the irresponsible use of *current* technology by pretending it is now what it will become.
What the hell is "Assisted Steering" and why name the feature "Autosteer" when it does NOT in fact, automatically steer the car out of danger?
Granted the driver bears the bulk of the responsibility for being a dumb ass, but the car companies are getting out of hand with this stuff too...
The name is not the problem - if it was, it could easily be fixed. The problem is human nature - even well–intentioned people find it difficult to pay attention when, most of the time, they do not have to. This is not driven by the name, it is driven by experience.
Tesla Says: ... ..."
... anything ... that involves glancing somewhere not on the road in front of them, and involves moving one or both hands from the wheel?
"
"As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
Now, I hesitate to say this out loud, as this is a Nerd website, but this instruction is beyond silly. There is zero chance any human with a working brain is going to adhere to this instruction, and although I understand how it comes to be, it's a testament to a lack of even basic comprehension of a User Interface that is so unfortunately common amongst the nerdy citizens of the world.
Let's imagine this instruction in use. I'm driving my so-equipped vehicle:
Situation: Nothing unusual happening. Both hands on the wheel, Mind and Body attentive to the road. Alert and ready at any moment to take over from the auto driver. Car driving itself.
Repeat every second of a 20 minute commute for a thousand days. Or three days.
Now, what human, in possession of the faculties required to actually have a paying job and a drivers' license, is not going to become bored with this scenario, and at some point do something
And, after testing the waters, so to speak, and not dying in a fiery crash, won't do it again, only for a bit longer and perhaps with hands much further from said wheel and eyes much removed from the road ahead?
There cannot be a "half-way" system, such as that installed in the Tesla S, that drives, but does not drive, the car. It simply won't work in the manner the instructions say it should work.
Cruise control is so far from true autopilot that it's perfectly clear you're still driving the car. But add lane keeping and some people, some of the time, will treat the car as if it were self-driving. Telling them that they still have to drive the car won't make much difference.
Clearly we have the technological capability to create self-driving cars that are safer than the vast majority of drivers on the road. But for whatever reasons -- retail cost or risk management -- manufacturers aren't quite ready to jump in all the way. Introducing self-driving functions piecemeal is bound to create a transition period in which users misuse those functions. Because that's what users do: they use things the way they can, not the way you tell them to.
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So your suggesting the laws should force everyone into a $40K vehicle. Let them eat cake.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Totally agree with you. We can either develop this tech by:
A) Releasing it to the public now and hope people won't die, or
B) release it once tested and know people won't die.
To me the choice seems obvious.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Dear Tesla Owner engaged in the operation of a motor vehicle without hands on the steering wheel:
The accident is 100% your fault.
Please surrender your driver's license as you are not worthy of exercising its privileges.
Next time you want to blame the car because you took your hands off the controls think back to how tough driver's education courses were the first time... and reach into your Tesla-affording-pockets to pay the other guy's damage bill.
In the future try to keep your hands on the controls (or surrender your driver's license and sit in the passenger seat) and keep the blame to yourself when you're the driver.
Ehud
The choice is A: We can rake in lots of $$$ before the lawsuits start.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It might well be unrealistic, but I just wanted to highlight that the autopilot worked as described in the manual (or actually did not work, as described).
We already require licenses for cars, and your argument would apply there as well.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Ask your car manufacturer which the driver is supposed to do:
1. Wait to see if the autopilot will react to a situation, and if it doesn't, then (belatedly) react yourself. (Which is probably too late.)
2. Keep alert and react as fast as you can, yourself, not presuming to trust the autopilot. (In which case, why enable the annoying thing? It's more of a hindrance.)
BTW, regarding this particular situation, if the car in front of you is blocking your view of a stopped vehicle, and suddenly swerves to avoid it at the last moment, then I figure autopilots and humans will be equally ineffective.
Totally agree with you. We can either develop this tech by:
A) Releasing it to the public now and hope people won't die, or
B) release it once tested and know people won't die.
To me the choice seems obvious.
Agreed. The obvious choice is A, since the number of deaths from this tech has been miniscule, and the net number may even be negative. If you choose B, then a thousand people die for every additional day of delay that SDCs are not available.
Fine, but the blood of the deaths that Tesla causes today is still on their hands. In any case where an accident happens that would not have happened if the driver would have been attentive in the first place. I can't imagine what Elon Musk would have said to these families. To make an omlette you gotta break a few eggs? I have news for you, there are many automakers working on automation right now and Tesla seems to be the only one with blood on their hands. All the other companies chose to test before releasing to the public.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Sort of like for trains, in the autopilot systems I worked on with UPS, there are systems in place to ensure pilot inventiveness. If you don't touch some control for around, I think it was like 10 minutes IIRC, the master caution sounds an alert. If the pilot falls asleep or whatnot, the system will wake them up. Basically, in Tesla vehicles, if you don't touch the steering wheel for 4 minutes, it sounds an alarm and then warns that it will cease autopilot control unless the driver takes specific action. Sounds like they are taking precautions to me.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I'm not even sure how you would know how safe it is. Since Autopilot only works in situations that were already the safest, then it should not be getting in any accidents at all. You cannot compare it to a person who must deal with every situation that comes up from origin to destination.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
His safety claims are made up from wishful and magical thinking, trying to justify the current technology by pretending it is what it is hoped to become.
Musk's somewhat more sophisticated attempt at the same thing has been exposed as bogus, e.g:
https://www.technologyreview.c...
As a driver you have the responsibility to read the manual, especially when it comes to functions like these. I certainly read the description of the self-parking feature of my car very carefully, and I would review even more carefully than that with any function that automates driving at speed. Just because a lot of people don't read the manual in a normal car without assistance systems doesn't make it right not to do read the description for the various autopilot functions. I'm not saying that Tesla is handling everything right (I think they should be more aggressive ascertaining that the driver is attentive and focused on the road) but would still put most blame on the individuals that trust this technology to drive automatically (and allow them to speak on the phone while driving) despite all the warnings displayed on the dashboard and explained in more detail in the manual.