Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Owner in Autopilot Crash Won't Sue, But Car Insurer May (bloomberg.com)
Dana Hull, reporting for Bloomberg: A Texas man said the Autopilot mode on his Tesla Model S sent him off the road and into a guardrail, bloodying his nose and shaking his confidence in the technology. He doesn't plan to sue the electric-car maker, but his insurance company might. Mark Molthan, the driver, readily admits that he was not paying full attention. Trusting that Autopilot could handle the route as it had done before, he reached into the glove box to get a cloth and was cleaning the dashboard seconds before the collision, he said. The car failed to navigate a bend on Highway 175 in rural Kaufman, Texas, and struck a cable guardrail multiple times, according to the police report of the Aug. 7 crash. "I used Autopilot all the time on that stretch of the highway," Molthan, 44, said in a phone interview. "But now I feel like this is extremely dangerous. It gives you a false sense of security. I'm not ready to be a test pilot. It missed the curve and drove straight into the guardrail. The car didn't stop -- it actually continued to accelerate after the first impact into the guardrail." Cozen O'Connor, the law firm that represents Molthan's auto-insurance carrier, a unit of Chubb Ltd., said it sent Tesla Motors Inc. a notice letter requesting joint inspection of the vehicle, which has been deemed a total loss.
"But now I feel like this is extremely dangerous.
No fucking shit, it always was.
It gives you a false sense of security.
Sounds like wealth redistribution - Darwin style.
I'm not ready to be a test pilot.
Well, obviously you should have been since wanting to be an early adopter of a nascent technology that hasn't been thoroughly vetted at all to DRIVE YOUR FUCKING CAR sure sounds like test pilot to me.
Probably get modded down. Don't give a fuck. I think this shit will/has been pushed out the door too early because money. Wait til it kills someone else.
There are lawyers with erections they're not even sure how they got right now.
So, how does the Tesla autopilot differ from a regular car that does not have such feature? In both you need to pay attention to the road, presumably the same. So why use autopilot at all?
I asked a guy I know who drives a P90 the same question - he said he uses it for several reasons. One, he feels that it gives him a level of safety above his own capabilities, if he sneezes or is otherwise distracted, he likes knowing that the car *may* be able to take over (which is quite a bit better than a standard car which cannot take over at all), also he said that as he ages, he feels that his reflexes are getting slower, so he likes that the car is watching over his driving. Second, his uncle died after a stroke while driving with his wife, the stroke didn't kill him, but running off the road killed both him and his wife, if he'd been in a self driving car, it's likely that the car would have just continued driving until it sensed that he was no longer in control and pulled off the road. And last, he likes that his use of auto-pilot gives Tesla real-world feedback on the system so they can improve it, so that by the time he's ready to give up driving, his car will be fully auto-drive capable. He said that due to this last point, he enables auto-pilot as much as possible.
And he added that anyone that thinks it can drive the car unattended is an idiot.