Tesla Crash Won't Stop Driverless Car Progress: Renault-Nissan CEO (cnbc.com)

Problems Issues with Tesla's self-driving software that were linked to the death of a driver this year would not block the development of autonomous vehicles, Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Renault-Nissan, said on Tuesday. From a report on CNBC: In September, Tesla revealed the death of a man in one of its cars in a crash in the Netherlands and said that the "autopilot" software's role in the accident was being investigated. "In the moments leading up to the collision, there is no evidence to suggest that Autopilot was not operating as designed and as described to users: specifically, as a driver assistance system that maintains a vehicle's position in lane and adjusts the vehicle's speed to match surrounding traffic," Tesla said in a blog post at the time. This incident shone a spotlight on autonomous driving features currently in cars as automakers are in a race to bring fully driverless cars on the road. During an interview at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Ghosn said that the teething problems with Tesla's autonomous software would not derail the industry's push.

Comments

Unfortunately

[kackle]

Self-driving cars will come for one dumb reason or another ("Ooo, shiny tech!" "Ooo, a tiny bit safer!"). And they will be a blight on our roads. They probably won't kill many people, but they will slow traffic everywhere except on wide-open highways: They will never be able to instantly read road signs written in $YOUR_LANG (partially obstructed by snow), they will forever be baffled (call slowCarDown( )) by non-standard roadway situations and conditions (which occur frequently), and millions will accept this as "progress", hoping the next software update will make things better, when really, even cars will now start to get "bricked" once in a while.

Re:Unfortunately

[eheldreth]

This is a bit short sighted. The number of problems caused by autonomous cars will be inversely proportional to the number on the road. There will be a critical mass beyond which insurance companies will begin charging extravagant fees for a manually operated vehicle. Autonomous vehicles will communicate with each other. They will know miles in advance when there is an accident, construction, or other hazard and be capable of responding accordingly (including re-routing if possible). Imagine a Network of cars alerting other vehicles behind them about road conditions, say an icy spot. Your car would then essentially have a map of areas to apply more caution in. They will be capable of monitoring for wild life with heat and infrared sensors. Grid lock on roads will be virtually eliminated because cars will be able to tell each other what they are about to do before they do it. Issues with reading signs are a non starter. Once adoption begins to pick up you will quickly see digital information systems added to existing road signs. All of this tech exist right now and most of it is mature. It just hasn't been put together yet. In about 20 years people will be complaining about how manual drivers are always causing accidents and issues with traffic flow.

Re:Too bad

[DarkOx]

Come on you know that isn't the least bit true. Tesla publishes the number of miles auto pilot has safely driven. Its impressive but those are largely the 'easy' miles.

People unlike auto pilot don't get hand off the responsible for controlling the vehicle to someone/something else when the conditions get hard. I wonder in what situations do human drivers experience more accidents, conditions where you can use auto pilot today or in situations where you can't?