Tesla Issues Strongest Statement Yet Blaming Driver For Deadly Autopilot Crash (abc7news.com)

Tesla has released its strongest statement yet blaming the driver of a Tesla Model X that crashed on Autopilot almost three weeks ago. The driver, Walter Huang, died March 23rd in Mountain View when his Model X on Autopilot crashed headfirst into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. Huang was an Apple engineer and former EA Games employee. ABC7News reports: Tesla confirmed its data shows Walter Huang was using Autopilot at the time of the crash, but that his hands were off the wheel for six seconds right before impact. Tesla sent Dan Noyes a statement Tuesday night that reads in part, "Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel... the crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road." The family's lawyer believes Tesla is blaming Huang to distract from the family's concern about the car's Autopilot.
Here is the full statement from Tesla: "We are very sorry for the family's loss. According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so. The fundamental premise of both moral and legal liability is a broken promise, and there was none here. Tesla is extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel. This reminder is made every single time Autopilot is engaged. If the system detects that hands are not on, it provides visual and auditory alerts. This happened several times on Mr. Huang's drive that day. We empathize with Mr. Huang's family, who are understandably facing loss and grief, but the false impression that Autopilot is unsafe will cause harm to others on the road. NHTSA found that even the early version of Tesla Autopilot resulted in 40% fewer crashes and it has improved substantially since then. The reason that other families are not on TV is because their loved ones are still alive."

Comments

Why it can't check driver alertness?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We know if 100 years since the days of steam locomotives. Drivers, if they don't have to steer. They miss signals, fall asleep. They invented a variety of deadman switches to check for driver alertness. They do it even now in diesel and electric locomotives.

Tesla should be issuing challenges and driver should respond correctly, if not it should pull the car over and stop.

If alert driver is a necessary requirement for safety, the system should check for alertness and stop the car safely if the driver is not alert. It is weaseling out if it allows the car to stay on auto pilot even after its request for manual take over is not honoured. But it knows the appeal of auto pilot will be greatly reduced if it enforces alertness rules

This is why I did not order autopilot when my Model 3 offer came through last Sunday. I am a great supporter of Tesla but the auto pilot is misnamed, and promotion of its use is not correct.

Re:Why it can't check driver alertness?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should never be dangerous to slowly come to a complete stop unless you stop on train tracks. If someone hits you, it'd be their fault for driving dangerously.

Tesla knows the driver isn't paying attention and knows autopilot isn't good enough to control the car by itself. Shutting off autopilot while it's known the driver is distracted is the worse possible option. They should be slowing and stopping sooner rather than later. When the driver isn't paying attention a critical component of autopilot isn't functioning so Tesla should take approach action. They don't, so for that they should be held at partial fault for all such crashes.

For a feature which is supposed to keep you in the lane and not hit the car in front of you, you'd expect it to not leave the lane and run straight into a solid object. That's the complete opposite of what it's supposed to do. The guy was an idiot for not paying attention while driving, but so it Tesla.

Re:Is it just me or is this just not an autopilot?

[slack_justyb]

Yeah the name autopilot is one of the things that kills me about what they are truly selling. Tesla's cars are at best a level two self driving car, that is hands off only. You have to have eyes on and you have to give continual input to the system. It is adaptive cruse control, lane keeping, and auto parking. It has some guidance from GPS and on-board software, but the production car that you buy is nowhere near this crap. That video is clearly showing a level three car and the car is handling cleared intersections easily, something the current level twos would be suicide if you tried.

The autopilot is anything but. I'm totally pro-self driving cars, but folks need to know what they are buying and not have a hyped up product sold to them and they think it will do something it won't. Tesla cars are a hands off only car, period, the end. You have to keep eyes up, no matter what. Additionally, you need to know the absolute limits of camera/radar combos, that's right Teslas do not have LiDAR. Radar requires a calculation between differences in order to work. If traffic is stopping up ahead and the car in front of you that your Tesla is tracking suddenly pulls out of the lane to expose a car up ahead at a complete stop, your Tesla is going to ram full speed into that stopped car if you don't do something. That's because radar was tracking something and now it's not there. So the machine needs to recalculate everything, which if you're going highway speeds, you're going to end up dead before the car figures it out.

The cars need to see lines on the road. If the lines are iffy, you're going to end up dead. Traffic needs to follow a pace, it doesn't matter if it is start and stop, or if cars gracefully merge in and out of your lane. It just needs to follow a smooth flow to things and you slowly build up a feel for what's gradual enough and what isn't. If you don't pay attention to that, you're going to end up dead. If you are coming up on a change in the road's shape, like where two highways split off and you're in the lane closest to the split, you need to turn off autopilot and handle it yourself. Most of these kinds of things have really crappy indicators on the road that a split is happening and if you don't, you are going to end up like that dude. Dead.

Now if you think that level two automation is a half baked idea, that's cool. It sort of is, which is why everyone is aiming for that holy grail of level five. So perhaps maybe sit the sidelines till we get there? If what you are comparing to is level five, you're right, this shit is beta-level crap on crap. If you're talking about actual level two automation, the Tesla and all the other cars that offer level two are pretty solid. But people need to understand what they are getting themselves into and if that's not what you were expecting, then yeah, you shouldn't buy one. However, I also fault Tesla, since they post up videos like that one I linked and people buy their cars thinking, that's what they are getting which it isn't.

Re:Sounds like a CYA distraction statement

[lhunath]

I think it's important to be mindful with your terminology. Tesla's Autopilot is not a self-driving system. It is cruise control. Conflating terminology causes nothing but confusion and undue misconceptions about emerging technologies.

If people stop thinking about Autopilot as self-driving and start thinking about it as cruise control, it becomes immediately obvious that this is not a conversation about why the car did not dodge the obstacle, but rather a conversation about why the human looked away from the road while hurtling forward at great speed in a metal basket, long enough to travel at least 200 meters in distance.

Re:Sounds like a CYA distraction statement

[aaarrrgggh]

More fundamentally to me is the issue that said car should not drive straight into a wall at full speed without trying to slow down.

There is plenty of blame to go around-- victim, Tesla, Caltrans for starters. Each of them screwed up on at least two levels. Tesla likely needs some kind of way for drivers to flag a spot where the autopilot screwed up, so they can gather data and investigate, because the victim was aware of issues at this location and tried to address it with Tesla in (apparently) multiple occasions to no avail.

What blows my frigging mind though is that the car will drive into a stationary object with high contrast safety striping without attempting to brake. Are they trying to determine approach speed based on visual sensors only that were blinded? Their "neural net" doesn't seem to be learning some important lessons quickly enough.

Re: Sounds like a CYA distraction statement

[stabiesoft]

The difference is cruise does exactly what is advertised. It maintains speed. Autopilot is advertised to stay in the lane and maintain speed like adaptive cruise does. In this case, it did not do what was advertised and someone died. Tesla is trying to shape public opinion on this because unlike AZ, it was not some homeless person whose family probably settled for peanuts. This is likely to become a 7 or 8 figure payout due to the earnings potential of an apple engineer if it goes to trial.

Re: Sounds like a CYA distraction statement

[blindseer]

Cruise control maintains your speed extremely well and doesn't ever fail catastrophically.

Actually it can and does. Cruise control in slippery conditions can put a car into a dangerous condition.

Here's one citation, I'm sure anyone can find more:
https://www.theglobeandmail.co...

Early cruise control systems were sometimes quite dangerous, not always to the passengers but could cause damage to the engine or transmission. I remember cars having a hardwired switch on the dash to disable them, in addition to the software button on the steering wheel, because people learned not to trust them. They got "smarter" and today most will detect wheel slippage and not gun the engine if it hits a slippery spot in the road.

Cruise control is especially dangerous with rear wheel drive and powerful engines, like on a sports car or light truck. One wheel on a slick patch will cause the cruise control to open up the throttle and get the wheels spinning, when they finally find traction the vehicle might no longer be pointed in the desired direction of travel and the front wheels could still be on a slick surface which can send the vehicle flying uncontrolled.

Cruise control is very safe, especially newer ones that integrate with a traction control, but a claim that they never fail catastrophically is provably false.