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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."
In several articles about this accident, Musk goes on with stats about the safety of autonomous driving. I understand why Musk wants to make it clear the driver was negligent in his use of Auto-pilot, but he should not be making unsupported safety claims regarding autonomous driving, nor conflating them with Tesla Auto pilot safety. While it very well may be safer, the data doesn't exist to prove it. Tesla Auto-pilot is, per Tesla, used only on limited access highways when there is good visibility. It is not used in rain, snow, or fog. It is not to be used where traffic conditions are changing rapidly. So the comparable safety data should be limited to sedans traveling on limited access highways in nice weather with stable traffic conditions. Furthermore, the comparison should be based on number of fatal accidents and not number of deaths, which is higher where there are more people in a vehicle. A car that crashes with 4 people in it is not for times more dangerous to drive than a car that crashes with only one person.
In addition, the data should account for accidents not caused by the sedan, such as a tractor trailer suddenly coming across the median a taking out a car, or other 'unpreventable' incidents that neither an autonomous or human controlled car could avoid.
Comparison against total highway deaths is apples and oranges.
Musk is a smart man, smart enough to know how to use statistics properly. I believe he is quite aware his claims are not supported by existing data. It is disappointing and unnecessary. If I want to abuse statistics, I'd say the data clearly shows that on the particular day of this accident it was thousands of times safer to be in a human driven vehicle when passing the deficient barrier than in an auto-piloted Tesla.
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.
Having narrowly avoided two separate impending collisions while driving due to insects, one hornet loose in the cab & one bee in the eye through an open window, I have a macabre fascination with the last few seconds in a vehicle before the collision the takes the life of the human witness(es).
Sure, we live in an age of unrivaled electronic distractions, but there have always been ample incentive to pick the wrong five seconds to look away from the road. Outside of law enforcement, we'd never see the video, even if it did exist... but the new tech vehicles are getting makes the 'fly on the wall' view ever more likely.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
... he should not be making unsupported safety claims regarding autonomous driving, nor conflating them with Tesla Auto pilot safety.
He has to. Tesla is on the brink of going under and unless he gets more cash to keep the business going, it'll be bust by the end of the year.
To get that cash, he has to keep in the news and make a lot of hype.
He was an engineer, so he was educated.
Educated but apparently not particularly smart, given that he had complained to Tesla several times about issues with the guidance system and yet continued to blindly rely on it.
Then given that this appears to have been an intelligent driver who was also aware of potential problems with the automatic control, we have to ask why that didn't happen. If we assume the driver didn't deliberately allow an accident to happen with tragic results, then evidently either something wasn't clear enough about the situation and what needed to be done, or something interfered with the driver's ability to act accordingly.
No, that is not evident. Old Bill of Ockham tells me to look for a less complicated explanation, like that the driver had rolled 16 INT but 3 WIS.
The core question is: why did the car not brake and stop in fromt of the obstacle?
The core answer is: Because the driver did not apply the brakes.
The original question is a good one and should not be just tossed off like this.
If you did a GIS on the accident you would quickly see that the car impacted a fixed obstacle with a clear view of it. The obstacle was marked with black-and-yellow safety stripes exactly the sort to alert a human driver it was there.
So why did the autopilot not see that obstacle and take action? (Either divert or stop?) What sensor system failed to see it? Does it have something to do with the material on the surface that holds the black-and-yellow paint?
If they get to the root cause of that they have a good chance of never having an accident like this again.
A counterpoint.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."