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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.
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.
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"
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.
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.