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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 falls into the latter category. This particular idiot should be banned from driving for life.
Does that mean he can do what he did once again? If he was sitting in the passenger seat, he wasn't driving.
It's because of idiots like him that we need to get to self-driving cars ASAP. Based on the judgement we've seen him exercise so far, I'm not convinced I'd want to share the road with him at the controls of a regular car.
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.
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
Aye. Considering Tesla's autopilot is little more than a slightly amped up version of lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise control, I'd say he was making a pretty good application for the Darwin awards.
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"?
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 /
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.
"a few instances" in this many miles is not bad at all. The issue is that it was only a few instances with both a human and autopilot acting in conjunction.
Pairing human and machine - if you can keep the human alert - is good for safety. But the machines are not yet to the point where they should be allowed to drive on their own.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
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.
[($)]
It's because of idiots like him that we need to get to self-driving cars ASAP.
Which would be... "The nice things". Well played!
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
It isn't pedantry though. The word Autopilot is used to imply a reduction in human interaction and not a removal of it, even when using it as an idiom. So, why are we defending people for thinking it's different in this particular case?
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.
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 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%
Now I know these exist, I've just bought one.
Saves me trying to fasten the passenger seat belt when I put a bag on the seat.
No.
Leaving aside the multiple legitimate reasons the death penalty is a stupid sentence, it would also be unnecessarily harsh for this sort of crime.
I wouldn't even recommend it for you, and you're a walking talking Darwin candidate.
...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 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.
Pairing human and machine - if you can keep the human alert - is good for safety.
I do not think it is possible to keep the human alert if he does not have anything to do with driving for more than probably 30 minutes.
I mean, normally, you have to constantly do minor adjustments to make the car follow the road (which may not be straight or level), keep distance from other cars etc. This keeps you alert. And it keeps you actually alert, compared to various artificial measures to make you alert (I could push a button every once in a while or slightly wiggle the steering wheel or whatever the computer requires to "prove" I am alert while reading a book).
OTOH, as I understand about Tesla Autopilot, you get to watch the road while doing absolutely nothing, maybe for hours. However, you are expected to notice when the car wants to drive into a lamp post and then react very quickly and stop the car.
Not only it is extremely difficult to do normally, but you also have to second-guess yourself or the car "hmm... it looks like the car is aiming for that lamp post, but the computer will probably fix it as it did 100 times before. No, the lamp post is very close now, I have to stop the car NOW".
I think the only way to keep the human actually alert would be to randomly turn off Autopilot once every 15 minutes or so, then not allowing it to be turned on for at least 5 minutes. But even that may be a problem "OK, 5 minutes are up, Autopilot is on, back to the book".