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."

Comments

Re:Driving is can be extremely dangerous! Be safe!

[fluffernutter]

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.

Then putting Autopilot in a vehicle is illogical. You don't put something in a vehicle to steer for drivers while totally failing at relieving any kind of duty of driving. Eventually they will get sidetracked, it's just human.

Re: Another interestnig tidbit

[Rei]

But, in the case of Tesla, I don't really get why anybody is giving them money to reserve a car that hasn't yet been built and may not be built for quite some time

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.