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Tesla Driver Banned From Driving For 18 Months For Sitting in Passenger Seat (theguardian.com)
A 39-year-old motorist pointed his Tesla S60 down a highway at 40 mph -- while sitting in its passenger seat, leaning back with his hands behind his head. Another motorist spotted the empty driver's seat and filmed the car. Now (nearly a year later) the Tesla's owner "has been banned from driving for 18 months," the Guardian reports.
The driver, from Nottingham, pleaded guilty to one count of dangerous driving after admitting he switched seats when he turned on the car's autopilot mode, leaving the car's brakes and steering wheel unmanned. The driver admitted that the stunt in May last year had been silly, but insisted that he was simply "the unlucky one who got caught" trying out the "amazing" feature on the car.
As well as the 18-month driving ban he was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work. He was also put on a 10-day rehabilitation programme and will have to pay £1,800 in costs.
A police officer called the behavior "reckless," adding that autopilot controls like the ones on Teslas "are in no way a substitute for a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead."
As well as the 18-month driving ban he was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work. He was also put on a 10-day rehabilitation programme and will have to pay £1,800 in costs.
A police officer called the behavior "reckless," adding that autopilot controls like the ones on Teslas "are in no way a substitute for a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead."
This dude placed a lot of trust in autopilot when we have a few instances so far of autopilot fatally driving into fixed obstructions (highway exit divider, truck laying across the road, etc).
It's because idiots like him that we can't have nice things
They are quite often full of themselves in my experience.
This falls into the latter category. This particular idiot should be banned from driving for life.
Does the car get community service for allowing the driver to sit in the passenger seat?
Does that mean he can do what he did once again? If he was sitting in the passenger seat, he wasn't driving.
In this modern age of hold your hand safety features, why exactly doesn't this thing have a seat weight sensor? Or are they just in the passenger seats and the designers simply assumed their would be a driver? Even lawn mowers have them.
a 10 day rehabilitation programme
What is that? Hopefully it involves some pounding in the rear quarters
I kind of want to buy this guy a beer.
You mean the cars don't go into pull-over-and-park-safely mode if the driver is missing or seems to be asleep or incapacitated?
Tesla's will give a warning to put the hands back on the wheel and will slow down if that doesn't happen. However the warning can be worked around.
Most of the readers of this site understand how well, that is, not well, such a feature works in reality when it comes to dealing with the infinite complexities of driving. The average person though, after hearing "auto-pilot" and drinking the Kool-Aid of the media repeating how great autonomous vehicles are going to be (Slashdot is not an exception to this) will not think twice about putting human lives completely in such a feature's digital hands.
Maybe 'autopilot' should be called 'driver assistance' to avoid further confusion?
Requiem for the American Dream
How long before the autopilot will need to detect a driver, in the driving seat, before engaging?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The irony of parent's racist comment is that this sort of blatantly dangerous road use, and lack of understanding of it, are really quite British in their attitudes. As was the punishment.
".....a better choice than native Americans..."
There are Indians and there are Indians,
Do the needful.
Thank you, come again.
Even so, I wonder when autopilot, or any such software will ever be "good enough". If this guy has stated, that statistically speaking, the car is safer than him, a claim Tesla themselves state, then why should this be a problem? Every time someone gets hurt in a Tesla crash, we call for them to ban this tech, but thousands and thousands of people die every day from driving people. Some of the best drivers still have a one-and-only fatal accident. When will it be enough for us to say "let's transition now, since it's safer, to not requiring the person"?
Tesla royally fucked up by calling this autopilot. Its practically an invitation to the average schlub to do stupid things like this. They should have called it something less tempting, like "Safety Net" or "Save Your Ass" or "Augmented Driving" or even "When Your Kids are Fighting in the Backseat and You Are So Frazzled That You Turn Around and Yell at Them."
And to the pedants who want to argue that regular schlubs should know that "real" autopilot systems in airplanes don't actually do everything, spare us. Pedantry is just a form of masturbation so do it in private please.
Wait, wut, you don;t know what autopilot is, you only know how it appears in Hollywood? And you think Hollywood is accurate?!?!?!?!
"When will it be enough for us to say "let's transition now, since it's safer, to not requiring the person"?"
When we reach the singularity.
If this guy has stated, that statistically speaking, the car is safer than him, a claim Tesla themselves state, then why should this be a problem?
Because both are lying?
When you decide to drive you not only put yourself at risk but others too. If it was only a thing between Tesla and the driver we wouldn't care and they would be allowed to bullshit all they like and take whatever risks they want.
If they are going to try it on public roads we need a bit more than just their claims. It should at least pass an independent driving test.
Well, here's a thing. If the car is safer than him as a driver, and he's competent to drive, then both together is... wait for it .... SAFER THAN EITHER ALONE!
Engineers and most adults know this as "belt and braces". Both keep your pants up, but both together is more secure in the case one fails. But, hey, if you're ignorant, you're ignorant. The point is: have you learned better?
Oh, and for the incurable morons who complain that the term "autopilot" is wrong, we already have a meaning for this word and the car's driving system meets that standard, so, no, we're not changing the meaning of words just because you're a fucking moron. Cheers, the world.
Shouldn't they also prosecute the other 'motorist' who snitched on him, for filming with his phone while driving?
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
So the Sheriff of Nottingham caught him?
Ask 100 people and 98 will give the 'wrong' definition. There are a lot of fucking morons about and many of them have driving licences. Add yourself to the list of fucking morons for not understanding this.
You're only jealous because his Tesla is faster than your bicycle.
A police officer called the behavior "reckless," adding that autopilot controls like the ones on Teslas "are in no way a substitute for a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead."
Is he suggesting this guy was a competent motorist?, his actions alone prove he shouldn't be allowed to drive ever as he obviously has no understanding of what is required to be competent, maybe in this case the Tesla Autopilot "was" the safer option and at least it revealed what a fucking moron he is and that he shouldn't have a license.
The only thing sadder than the effort idiots go to is the companies which enable them: https://thetikit.com/
What do you have against natural selection in action? Trying to prevent improvement in the human gene pool? (Same issue with seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws.)
He showed his contempt for the court and other road users, by saying that he was the unlucky one who got caught.
Thank goodness that he was the lucky one who didn't cause a horrific accident.
Tesla states that his driving while the software assists by averting some potential driver errors is safer than him driving without assistance. They have never claimed to have an autonomous driving system that's safer than a human driver. They don't even claim to have an autonomous driving system AT ALL. What this guy did may be somewhat less dangerous than jamming a brick over the accelerator pedal of an '83 Escort wagon and shifting over to the passenger seat, but it's still in the same general league of dangerous.
You're making a case that it's time to stop requiring a driver in autonomous vehicles, but whether or not that's a good idea really doesn't have any effect on the fact that you most definitely need a driver in a non-autonomous vehicle such as this one.
And when you buy a car from Tesla they tell you that this autopilot is the real drfinition, not the wrong one.
Well, here's a thing. If the car is safer than him as a driver, and he's competent to drive, then both together is... wait for it .... SAFER THAN EITHER ALONE!
.
People who assume that complex things merely "add together" to produce inherently safer things, particularly when one of the "things" is a human and the others are technologic, are the reason for the study of "human factors" in accidents involving things like autopilots.
In this modern age of hold your hand safety features, why exactly doesn't this thing have a seat weight sensor?
Because putting a sensor in for every idiotic thing idiots can do isn't exactly financially viable, and an idiot sensor doesn't exist.
Plus, all you'll do is breed a better idiot as a result.
No. We already have these sensors in passenger seats of every vehicle so that they can warn the passenger to buckle their seat belt. It's a commodity.
It is predictable that people would try to use their Tesla this way, and it could obviously cost lives, so they should be built to at least warn you against doing this until they are ready to be fully autonomous. He put the lives of everyone on the road at risk.
If there isn't a sensor, there should be one. If there is one and it's only designed to trigger on the seat belt and he had the seat belt plugged in, then he bypassed the security check.
Real lawyers write in C++
when your drunk... Its probably safer but still stupid to do.
[($)]
Stupid liberal cunts in the UK took away the death sentence.
Now we have brexit let's take back control and fry fuckers like this.
Yo, Brexit native, have you taken up that plumbing job that Farage got for you yet?
A Tesla owner.
The poster isn't being racist, they literally are the worst drivers on the road.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
While I don't think autonomous vehicles are a good thing, and I wouldn't trust one enough to get in one (nor do I relish being anywhere near them as they share the road with me), I think it's also silly to accuse the "owner" (I'll explain the quotes below) of doing what such cars purport to deliver (which you describe as "drinking the Kool-Aid of the media") instead of challenging automakers and proponents to supply compelling reasons why anyone should bother with autonomous vehicles. If what we're told is true, it seems reasonable to do what this fellow did. The reaction against the lounging passenger seems to me indistinguishable from sycophantically siding with power. I recall there was a discussion about a proposed car that had no controls for the person in the driver seat. If this car is made and someone uses one and is found lounging or even drinking alcohol in the seat formerly known as the driver's seat, who's side will the power sycophants take then?
By the same token, amazon.com offers a way to deliver packages inside one's home or car. I'm sure there are people who think that this ostensible convenience completely outweighs letting unaccountable strangers into one's home or car. Again, here too I don't think such delivery is worth having and I think anyone who takes them up on it is being foolish. But by what right would I hold it against the customer when their house is robbed or their car gets altered, damaged, or stolen because they believed what was promised to them? At what point do we start defending what's in our interest: stop lying to us about the features and start offering services that respect our privacy, our property, and focus on improving the nature of the service by delivering goods on time and without mishandling the package.
Why the quotes around "owner" in this context? Self-driving cars are spybots riddled with proprietary software. For all we know, the car's controls can be taken over remotely by a number of different people in multiple organizations any time they want to; I imagine police love the promise of these vehicles because they could be made to ignore the driver's instructions and pull over whenever the police are nearby (should we think the police are fools to "drink the Kool-Aid" of this promise?). Therefore calling the person who pays for this tracker-on-wheels an "owner" of their vehicle seems to me an incredible claim.
Digital Citizen
If this guy has stated, that statistically speaking, the car is safer than him
And when you say this remember this is the brain that came up with the idea of leaving the drivers seat of a moving vehicle.
Is the car safer than everyone? Unlikely.
Is the car safer than this specific person? Almost certainly.
It doesn't really matter how good Autopilot is, what matters is how long it takes the law to catch up and allow its use hands-free.
I feel for people who already bought full self diving capability for their Teslas. Musk is saying 2020, let's be extremely optimistic and say he is right, then how many years after that before the law catches up? Keep in mind that the current rules in the UK for testing self driving cars is that you have to pretend to be driving so as not to "alarm" other road users.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
But humans are easily distracted, particularly when they think the car is doing all the work so it is vital that the car monitors the human's engagement and forces compliance. Preferably the car could even detect signs of impairment or fatigue and disengage & pull over if the driver does not appear to be doing their part.
Are these people so obsessed with this auto pilot feature they want everyone to know it? Does scream out âoelook at meâ! Make these type of people ride the bus and make us all safer.
I've been to India and Nottingham (forget all that stuff about Robin Hood, it's now part of Gujurat)
Yeah, well I actually live in Nottingham and overall it's pretty white, there are quite a lot of huge estates which are a) shit places to live and b) 95%+ white (some run by nasty crimanl gang families).
Maybe you were confusing Nottingham with nearby Leicester, which *is* actually pretty Asian?
I hope they also take his Tesla away from him; He clearly isn't responsible enough to own something as sophisticated as that.
He should be forced to re-take his test and drive an Aygo or an Up for 18 months.
I drive a tesla so i have direct experience. 1) That hack is silly. If you are sitting in the driver seat, you can just rest your left knee against the steering wheel for a moment and that will be sufficient 2) Although you can in principle drive for hours handsfree (subject to that occasional wheel touching to prove youâ(TM)re still there), randomly (I have never noticed a pattern), the Tesla will still suddenly start to cross over the line and you HAVE to grab the wheel to stop it. There is no way you can drive it without being attentive 100%
I wonder show safe self driving cars will be as they age and parts start to fail. As these cars get older I would expect more crashes
Autopilot is safer for a bad driver, Autopilot is less safe for a good driver.
as soon as people understand the difference.
the crash in mountain view was caused by the autopilot (drive being dumb aside), not knowing which line to follow when a lane splits, resulting in the crash.
if 10,000 tesla vehicles drove on that road, 100% of them would crash until tesla fixed the software.
whereas if 10,000 cars with human drivers saw a crash, 9,999 of them would slow down (rubber neck) and avoid it.
scale matters, that's what proponents of these self-driving cars miss. 1 incident that the software is unable to respond to, means ALL those cars cannot respond to that same incident (with the same software version).
Not really, but seems we're headed to a future where it's OK to help people suicide for profit. Thanks for illuminating that road ahead.
...a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead.
Really? That's a requirement? Have you been out on the roads recently? Do you have an estimate for the percentage of cars on the road today that have this "feature"? I don't think it's as common as you might suspect, and hasn't been for... well, since the invention of the automobile.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
The driver is named as Bhavesh Patel. I've been to India and Nottingham (forget all that stuff about Robin Hood, it's now part of Gujurat) and I can guarantee you that the very worst AI driving software is infinitely safer than any person with even a trace of Indian DNA.
Here in England there are driving offences such as "Driving without due care and attention", "Dangerous driving", "Driving or attempting to drive while above the legal limit or unfit through drink" and so on. None of them is as heinous as "Driving like an Indian".
So give Bhavesh Patel a break, he was actually making our roads safer than if he had engaged his own laughably unsuitable brain matter and other genetic material for the task in hand. The man is a saint.
Based on your post history you seem to be a middle-aged Telegraph reader of the sort we're going to be exterminating en mass after the next election. The plans have already been made.
The innate decency and sense of natural justice of Marxists is a wonder to behold. A demented anonymous threat makes for a rather neat emblem for Corbyn and his dimwits.
Toodle pip!
Tesla has never said that AutoPilot safe enough that it wont require a person, in fact AutoPilot will never replace drivers. What Tesla said is AutoPilot drivers attention and take over when needed. Things may be different when they bring Fully autonomous aka "FSD" but until then drivers need to be careful when using AutoPilot and not abuse the system.
Keep in mind though that FSD is not just a technical challenge there are many legal issues around it which needs to be resolved.
Tesla AutoPilot is considered safer because it is a machine which can maintain its attention span for as long as it drives and unlike human beings won't get tired with long drives. It may also be safe for judging certain aspects like distance, speed better than human driver. However, it is not better in making all kind of decisions which is done by its AI component. So I think it probably has a good hardware but the software needs much more improvement to replace a human driver.