Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Avoids Recall After Autopilot Crash Death (bbc.com)
Tesla will not be ordered to recall its semi-autonomous cars in the US, following a fatal crash in May 2016. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed its investigation after it found no evidence of a defect in the vehicle. From a report: Joshua Brown was killed when his car collided with a lorry while operating in Autopilot mode. Tesla has stated Autopilot is only designed to assist drivers, who must keep their hands on the wheel. The feature is intended to be used on the motorway, where is lets cars automatically change lanes and react to traffic. The NHTSA report said data from the car showed that "the driver took no braking, steering or other actions to avoid the collision". Bryan Thomas from the NHSTA said the driver should have been able to see the lorry for seven seconds, which "should have been enough time to take some action".
The same investigation found that Tesla’s crash rate was reduced by 40% after introduction of Autopilot:
https://electrek.co/2017/01/19...
Autopilots in planes are also assistpilots. People misunderstand what an autopilot does. The pilots in planes can't go to sleep or to the bathroom. They must sit there and monitor the system as it flies. They normally have more than 7 seconds to respond before impact things, so they don't have their hands constantly on the controls. Look at what happened to Air France flight 447 for what happens when the pilots aren't ready to take back control.
...Is it really an autopilot crash? Or some guy who, unfortunately, wasn't paying as much attention as he should whilst driving a 2 tonne hunk of metal around other human beings?
Well, you you read the statement in the summary:
The NHSTA is saying that while Tesla's autopilot features are made to help avoid collisions and improve safety, they are not legally responsible for keeping a driver safe. The driver still is responsible for operating the vehicle, including in emergency situations. The owner here did not make any attempt to avoid the collision but should have been aware of the situation. Either he was being an inattentive driver, or he deliberately failed to take action, expecting the Tesla system to instead. In either case the Tesla system is not the one to blame for the accident not being avoided.
That's what you get when you post an article from the BBC about a car crash in the US.
People are lazy and stupid. If they have a toy that drives for them they are going to activate autopilot and not think they have to pay attention.
It's got to be all or nothing. This half-control is bullshit and is going to lead people into a false sense of security.
How can you be expected to both pay attention and not pay attention at the same time? If the car is driving then I promise you most people are going to be checking Facebook or watching movies. That's just how people are wired.
All or nothing. It's the only way to go.
The problem is that, human nature being what it is, a lot of drivers will come to rely too much on autopilot and will stop paying attention just like this guy apparently did. That will cause a lot of crashes just by itself. This isn't DIRECTLY the fault of autopilot, but is rather an INDIRECT consequence of having it (combined with human nature).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Autopilot is an automated pilot, not an Autonomous pilot. It automates part of the flying of the aircraft. It is not a replacement pilot. It can't make decisions.
Yea, I was skeptical when it was put that way too.
After the accident the truck driver went over to the car and the movie was still playing. So he didn't know at the instant of the accident- he found out after the accident.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So you are saying that Autopilot is mis-named even for aviation?
Then Autopilot should just be deflated and no longer used.
I'm going to guess by your screen name that you must have used the manual inflation nozzle on the automatic pilot.
A British Truck. I am not sure why it was driving in the US
Nobody who ever died in a car crash would have died in a car crash if we didn't have cars. So cars are a loss?
"Old man yells at systemd"
I find it hilarious that the people who brought us the word "y'all" will tell the people of England that they are speaking English wrong.
"Y'all" has an immediately evident meaning and does a great job at making the second-person plural explicit, so while I may not use it and certainly wouldn't espouse its use in formal writing, it's hardly an egregious sin against the English language.
Moreover, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. British English has plenty of its own quirks to cite, whether we're talking about genericized brands (e.g. Brevilles and Hoovers), weird dialects (e.g. Cockney), or odd pronunciations (e.g. pronouncing the "h" in "herb" and dropping the "h" from "hotel", even though the French words they each came from did the exact opposite). Of course, we could cite similar quirks in American English (e.g. Kleenexes and Band-Aids, Cajun dialect, and all of the Americanized spellings we can attribute to Noah Webster of Merriam-Webster fame), but that's exactly the point: they're both screwed up, so let's give the one-upping each other a rest.
As for "lorry", I have no problem with the BBC using "lorry" in place "tractor trailer", given that the BBC serves a primarily British audience. But Slashdot serves an international audience of decently educated people who are familiar with both British and American English, so it makes sense to use the original terminology wherever possible. In this particular case, the coverage is for a report authored by the US government, so using the term "tractor trailer" would make far more sense.
I’m not going to feel too bad for the family of that guy when the families of the (number of accidents * 40%) who didn’t die are still happily running around. There are fewer accidents on the whole with Autopilot than without it. That’s a clear win.
Also, if this is the case I think it is, the driver was a douche and completely at fault. He made a habit of posting videos of himself using Autopilot improperly. IE completely not paying attention to the road like he should have been. Stupidity caught up with him. Send a Darwin Award to the family of “Florida Man” (yup, him again. . .) and move on.
And yeah, my level of human compassion for stupid people is borderline sociopath most days.
Typical logic-fail, overly-conservative, sheep-herd, think-of-the-children thinking.
In the absence of cars, no one would die in a car crash. However cars provide a massive overall benefit so we accept the risks.
In the absence of autopilot, (theoretically, pending more stats) many people would die in accidents that the 'autopilot' is quick enough to avoid and/or limit the severity of. 'Autopilot' (potentially) provides overall benefit even if it introduces some less severe risks that would not otherwise be present. Additionally, expecting this to be perfect is ridiculous anyway. Human drivers are extremely fallible. It doesn't take much to improve in the crash-and-death sense, not to mention traffic flow situations (compare humans merging 5 lanes to 1 for an accident/construction vs. AI)
Furthermore, the risk here is drivers mis-using a technology to begin with. You can mis-use almost anything. You do so at your own peril despite the eleven-teen billion warnings everywhere.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
TV and movies also tell me that I can fall 10 stories onto an awning and live, that cars explode when they flip over, that if you call the police they can trace your location within seconds, and that you can "enhance" grainy security camera images enough to see pimples. You can also be close enough to an explosion to get thrown through the air and walk away with only superficial injuries because shrapnel and gravity only happens to bad guys.
I doubt that the Average Tesla driver knows any more about piloting than the Average Joe. S/he's just richer.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Per Airbus training, throttle forward and stick back are the responses to most emergencies, powering out of the situation.
The inexperienced third pilot (right seat) was trying to do that, while the second pilot (left seat) was pushing forward on the stick trying to get the nose down. Airbus's control scheme averages the control inputs instead of having a preferred input and without feedback, the pilots did not know they were opposing each other into the aircraft doing nothing. They realized it seconds before impact, but it was too late to get the nose down and trade altitude for airspeed.
The problem was their attitude indicators were unreliable as some pitots were frozen. A simple piece of string hanging from the overhead console would have told them they were in an extreme nose-up attitude.
You have to be a licensed driver and carry insurance to drive. Perhaps people with these new "features" should have to take a class and test and get an upgrade on their license (like I did for my Motorcycle). And they (like some states like Michigan do) should require additional insurance so when the driver of the autopilot gets sued, they have enough cash to pay out to the driver that was injured do to their inattention.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
That is who you should feel compassion for, you jackass.
If smart people fuck up, they probably should have known better.
Maybe they don't want to type TSA?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If you are a safe driver, it makes you safer, if you're an idiot who isn't paying attention to the road, it makes you safer, but not as safe as an already safe driver.
Under no circumstances does this technology make you less safe. Only you can do that by being stupid and not paying attention to the road.
Autopilot doesn't "lull you into a sense of false security" YOU "lull you into a sense of false security" but only if you were already an unsafe driver.
Personal responsibility is so last century, we don't do that any more. It's always SOMEONE's fault, and it's never our own!
If you are already a safe driver this doesn't make you any more safe. Not until 90% of the other drivers out there have it. It's human nature that people get distracted from events they have no mental investment in. You can't hold people responsible for human nature. Tesla should be doing more work to fix their technology which is clearly not working well with humans.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Pretty sure it means autobiographical pilot.
You know damn well he's not going to bother looking up what a hair shirt is.