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Tesla Says Autopilot Was Engaged During Fatal Model X Crash (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tesla says Autopilot was engaged at the time of a deadly Model X crash that occurred March 23rd in Mountain View, California. The company posted a statement online late Friday, after local news reported that the victim had made several complaints to Tesla about the vehicle's Autopilot technology prior to the crash in which he died. After recovering the logs from the crash site, Tesla acknowledged that Autopilot was on, with the adaptive cruise control follow distance set to a minimum. The company also said that the driver, identified as Apple engineer Wei "Walter" Huang, had his hands off the steering wheel and was not responding to warnings to re-take control. Tesla said in a statement: "The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken."
According to Mercury News, the driver of the car was headed southbound on California's Route 101 when his Model X crashed headfirst into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. "The front end of his SUV was ripped apart, the vehicle caught fire, and two other cars crashed into the rear end. [The driver] was removed from the vehicle by rescuers and brought to Stanford Hospital, where he died from injuries sustained in the crash."
According to Mercury News, the driver of the car was headed southbound on California's Route 101 when his Model X crashed headfirst into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. "The front end of his SUV was ripped apart, the vehicle caught fire, and two other cars crashed into the rear end. [The driver] was removed from the vehicle by rescuers and brought to Stanford Hospital, where he died from injuries sustained in the crash."
He apparently had plenty of money; he was driving a Tesla. He was an engineer, so he was educated.
It amazes me that often people don't recognize that driving a car is a potentially extremely dangerous activity. 100% attention is required at all times, particularly since other drivers often do things they shouldn't do.
Huang reportedly complained that the car’s Autopilot option kept veering the car toward the same barrier on Highway 101, near Mountain View, into which he crashed the car last Friday.
If you've noticed unsafe behaviour and have made complaints about it, why the fuck would you keep using it?
Not surprising that an Apple engineer has no common sense.
And the only common sense thing for Tesla to do is to disable the damn thing. People are too stupid to be trusted with anything.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
On average there are 700 deaths on US roads EVERY week and two more should not be national news. With safer cars this number has been dropping in the last decade but this is news is actually about computer AI making a choice, or by not making a choice, killing two people. It may not be full AI, but it is still a computer program in control. Two people died because of a computer program. With both accidents the "self-driving" AI program should have saved these people. Both times the person behind the wheel should have been able to avoid or lessen the collision if they were actually driving. We don't hear much about AI driving success in avoiding crashes just like we don't hear about planes that land safely. We only hear about failures. These features will get better with time and debugging (meaning more failures to come). Just as early commercial planes had their problems so does AI self-driving. For now flying is safer than driving no matter who is in control of the car (0 commercial aviation deaths for 2017 in US) and improved technology can only help our chances of making it home safely even if it makes the wrong choice occasionally (well, on average).
Better yet, another story is saying that the man has noticed autopilot having a problem at this particular stretch of road In the past - if you've seen it trying to send you into a k-rail at that bit a few times, what the fuck are you doing letting it drive on that bit, and not paying attention when it tells you to? Did he fall asleep or something?
I sure as shit wouldn't be using it there if I've gone so far as to take it to the service center to have them look at it for trying to drive into exactly that barrier in the past...
Man: Hey Doc, when I shove my head up my ass, I have problems breathing!
Doctor: then pull your head out of your ass, and stop shoving it up there!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Reading and re-reading the quote from Tesla, I see I was mislead:
The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken."
This does not mean that the warning fired during the 6-seconds prior to the collision. It wasn't telling him a collision was imminent. It says that "earlier in the drive" it warned him. So the warning could have been 45 minutes prior. Also, it sounds like the autopilot warning happens any time the user takes their hands off the wheel, not just when it needs help. It might be that autopilot drivers have a tendency to ignore the warning, like a dialog box that comes up so often people just click "OK" to it.
I begin to think that a semi-autopilot is a bad idea. If it is not reliable enough that a person can take their hands off the wheel, and they still must pay full attention to the road in case it makes a mistake, then they might as well drive? It is very hard to pay attention to something you aren't actively involved in. Airline pilots and lifeguards and factory quality inspectors know this. Those industries have specific policies and practices designed to keep people engaged and aware.
"...the victim had made several complaints to Tesla about the vehicle's Autopilot technology prior to the crash...
So the guy who has complained not once, but repeatedly, that his car's autopilot is inadequate engages it and completely ignores what it's doing.
This takes a special kind of stupid.
Somehow I found the strength to ignore the low-hanging fruit: that this potential Darwin Award winner was an Apple engineer.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
How many people are going to die before we are there? 3.22 trillion miles driven and humans have 16,000 accidents a month. They drive over 550K miles without getting in an accident in all weather and road conditions. Let's give Waymo the benefit of the doubt and say they achieve 7000 miles per interaction, that's still only 1.8% the safety of a human *in ideal conditions*; how many injuries and deaths have there been already to get to this point?
People understand the risk of driving and they drive. What people don't understand is how long it will take to make these cars workable.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A dazed driver cannot assume responsibility of a ton of steel travelling fast down the highway within five seconds!
In fact, studies has shown that a driver is not "up to speed" in driving capability for a long time after a requested activation, up to 40 seconds.
Having a five second limit is simply irresponsible, and 40 seconds is almost same AD challenge as a level 4 system.
Abolish level 3!
That story was incorrect. He had taken his car in because of problems with the navigation system, unrelated to autopilot. How that morphed into “autopilot problems at that particular stretch” is a classic example of the telephone game.
Because there is no competition to the Model 3. Plain and simple. The "competition" charges vastly slower, from less reliable networks, is slower, doesn't have as good handling, don't look as nice, don't have anywhere near as interesting options (long-range pack, dual motor AWD, air suspension, etc), and on and on and on.
Look at, say, the 2018 Leaf. Yeah, you save $5k. You also get an econobox that looks like a catfish that only goes 2/3rds as far (which becomes even worse when you consider the need to leave yourself a safety buffer), charges at a max rate 1/3rd that of the Tesla before #RapidGate sets in, 1/5th the speed after #RapidGate sets in, with much worse performance.
With the Bolt you can pay more to go the same distance, perform worse, still charge at 1/3rd the max rate, and again have your car be a dorky-looking econobox.
People are waiting because they want what they're waiting for, and not what else is available. Yes, there also are some people waiting specifically because it's Tesla - they don't want to support companies that have continually tried to minimize how many EVs they need to build so that they can just get back to making ICEs. Others want specifically Teslas because all of the competition has terrible depreciation rates but Teslas don't, due to excellent pack management, over the air updates, etc.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Indeed. It's often been described as win-win for shareholders, in that it doesn't cost them anything if Elon fails, but they're rich if he succeeds. But in reality, a lot of people who voted it saw it as win-win-win - the "extra" win being that not only do they earn a lot of money, but so does Elon. Namely because they like the sort of things that Elon spends his money on. ;) He's not the sort of person who makes a ton of money and just retires and buys a private island and a superyacht and whatnot. There's no telling for sure what he'll spend his money on next, but you can rest assured that it'll be like something out of sci-fi ;)
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Not true. The Zoe does make up 22,7% of European EV sales (vs. the Model S's 11,5%), but the i3 is only 10,8% of European EV sales. Furthermore, the fact that the Zoe has less than twice as many sales, yet is selling to a price bracket that represents a market 1 1/2 orders of magnitude larger, isn't exactly a bragging point, and doesn't bode well for it when the Model 3 arrives next year.
I'll take that as "no contest". The fact that you do most of your charging at home is completely irrelevant when you need to go on a road trip.
Wow, you've not seen Teslas plugged into superchargers at places that aren't supercharger stations? Imagine that.
Next, try actually going to a supercharger station if you want to see Teslas connected to superchargers.
Plugshare status reports say otherwise. The consistent stream of reports of down stations on our local EV group says otherwise. Yesterday literally a third of our CCS chargers in the country were down.
If you mean "looks like an econobox", yes.
Apparently you forgot that we're talking about the Model 3, not the Model S. The Model 3 is the same size as a BMW 3-series.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I dont like luxuray car producers like tesla I also think the whole idea of electric car is a bad direction. Yet there are other companies that produce epic fails: there were broken ignition keys, self accelerating cars and least we forget a company that tried to fulfill silly regulation by nasty nasty and failing in covering its tracks. There were many more. If Tesla sinks it is not because it failed to inspect the bolts.
Regarding electric cars: We've owned a Chevy Volt for the last 4 years and it's the best and most reliable car we've ever owned. There's no question in my mind that electric is the future for the vast majority of vehicles. I also own an F150 for hauling things, so I'm not opposed to gas vehicles where appropriate.
For most people electric cars are simply going to end up being better. Higher torque, lower maintenance requirements, and I think in the long run, likely better range and cheaper fueling costs. There will still be a place for gas engines but their advantages are becoming more limited every year.
Self driving cars are a totally different can of worms.