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'Operational Limitations' In Tesla Model S Played a 'Major Role' In Autopilot Crash, Says NTSB (reuters.com)
Mr D from 63 writes from a report via Reuters: The chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday "operational limitations" in the Tesla Model S played a "major role" in a May 2016 crash that killed a driver using the vehicle's semi-autonomous "Autopilot" system. Reuters reported on Monday that the NTSB is expected to find that the system was a contributing factor because it allows drivers to avoid steering or watching the road for lengthy periods of time. The NTSB is also expected to find that Tesla Inc could have taken additional steps to prevent the system's misuse and will fault the driver for not paying attention. "Today's automation systems augment, rather than replace human drivers. Drivers must always be prepared to take the wheel or apply the brakes," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumalt said. The system could not reliably detect cross traffic and "did little to constrain the use of autopilot to roadways for which it was designed," the board said. Monitoring driver attention by measuring the driver's touching of the steering wheel "was a poor surrogate for monitored driving engagement." At a public hearing Tuesday on the crash involving Brown, NTSB said the truck driver and the Tesla driver "had at least 10 seconds to observe and respond to each other."
Cadillac uses eye tracking to monitor the driver's attentiveness.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The issue is the duration in which the Tesla system gives warnings - the industry standard recommended timespan between inattentive-driver prompts is 15 seconds, while in this case, there were no inattentive-driver prompts from Autopilot for the two minutes leading up to the accident.
This is the issue when you call something "Autopilot" and give it to a consumer base that is used to being spoonfed fictitious understandings of such systems from superficial TV shows - they are led to believe it does something that it most certainly does not.
Yes, Tesla put all sorts of warnings in their manuals about this, but theres absolutely no requirement to read those manuals before jumping into the car, hitting the highway and engaging the system. Thats where the disconnect from reality and theory occurs - in theory, everyone reads the manual and understands the intimate details of the vehicle before setting off, while in practice people jump into new cars all the time and try things out.
Who here has been the person sat in their rental car for 30 minutes reading the manual before driving off for the first time? I bet the number of people who response affirmatively to that question is .... low.
Thats the issue Tesla need to solve.
cruise control doesn't remove the requirement for you to be paying 100% attention on the road at all times, it only removes the requirement to constantly glance down to verify you are going the correct speed.