Tesla Rejected More Advanced Driver Monitoring Features On Its Cars, Says Report (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Engineers inside Tesla wanted to add robust driver monitoring systems to the company's cars to help make sure drivers safely use Autopilot, and Tesla even worked with suppliers on possible solutions, according to The Wall Street Journal. But those executives -- Elon Musk included -- reportedly rejected the idea out of worry that the options might not work well enough, could be expensive, and because drivers might become annoyed by an overly nagging system.

Tesla considered a few different types of monitoring: one that would track a driver's eyes using a camera and infrared sensors, and another that involved adding more sensors to the steering wheel to make sure that the driver is holding on. Both ideas would help let the car's system know if the driver has stopped paying attention, which could reduce the chance of an accident in situations where Autopilot disengages or is incapable of keeping the car from crashing. Musk later confirmed on Twitter that the eye tracking option was "rejected for being ineffective, not for cost."

Comments

Not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing that the driver is holding the steering wheel is not enough. You need to ascertain that all the muscular groups between the fingers and the spine are actively engaged and under tension. That is - fingers, palm, wrist, forearm, elbow, arm, shoulder... only if the muscules in all there areas are actively engaged you will ensure that the driver can take over. Eye tracking and a neural brain interface too to know what the driver is thinking...

Re:Not enough

[rtb61]

How about because it is an accurate description based upon past use. Autopilot in planes and ships, they will take you on the course set, they will not avoid shit or take complex routes, you set them and away they go, don't pay attention and a plane or ship or any other obstacle gets in your path and the AUTOPILOT will stay on course, bad fucking luck, well not luck, stupidity. So it is called autopilot because that is all it is, exactly as used and described for decades. People are now just choosing to reinterpret autopilot in another way now because 'hmm', vested interests and oh yeah, dick brains.

So the design choices not around sound design but design around idiots, how to make a device idiot proof, reliable and low cost. Want to make a Tesla vehicle idiot proof, then don't install the batteries and let the idiots admire the car in their drive way and pose with it in front of passers by.

How to make cars idiot proof, don't fucking let idiots drive them. So zero driver monitoring and instruction in their use is required during driver training and then they should be tested for knowledge on autopilot systems to get their drivers licence. Autopilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... look it the fuck up. Do not confuse it with 'ROBOTIC' vehicles like the idiots that kill themselves with autopilot vehicles, I certainly hope you do not have one.

Re:Not enough

[Rei]

Tesla autopilot seems to require the driver's constant attention to avoid running into stationary objects that are routinely encountered on roads (gore points, fire trucks, etc...).

Welcome back to hyperbole land.

The average US car goes 80 million miles between fatal accidents.
The average Tesla goes 320 million miles between fatal accidents.
1/3rd to 1/2 of all Tesla miles are on Autopilot.

Now let's say that all fatal Tesla accidents were on Autopilot. Let's ignore the fact most of the "The driver may have been on Autopilot!" crash reporting stories thusfar have ultimately turned out not to involve AP at all. Let's also ignore the fact that since AP driving is much more likely to involve highways and thus higher speeds, it would be expected to involve a higher share of the accidents. Let's just look at the numbers. Even with these assumptions, you would still be 33 to 100% safer driving a Tesla on AP than driving any other car. Acting like you take your attention off the road for a split second and it drives you into a post is just absurd.

What I'm wondering is how long this media hype train can last. I mean, no freaking duh the more vehicles Tesla makes the more people are going to die while driving one. Are they seriously going to keep breathlessly reporting on every last Tesla crash - always with the no-evidence-whatsoever speculation that AP might have been in use, and no retraction whatsoever in the cases where it wasn't? 40 thousand people die on US roads every year. 1.3 million die in them worldwide. Seeing a Tesla on the roads is no longer a 1-in-a-million event; Tesla is quickly approaching 0,1% of all US vehicles on the road (nearing 200k). Believe it or not, like all vehicles, there will sometimes be Tesla crashes. And things like it being front page news that someone rear-ended a fire truck at 60 miles an hour as if there's something horribly wrong with Tesla, when the real story should be that someone hit a fire truck at 60 miles an hour and walked away with only a broken ankle, when such an accident should normally be fatal... I'm sorry, but Musk has a serious point about unfair, lopsided media coverage.

Why does it work for Cadillac?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am loathe to link to Ars because its quality has gone down hill, but Cadillac's Supercruise is geofenced and uses eyetracking with rave reviews.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/02/the-cadillac-ct6-review-super-cruise-is-a-game-changer/

Car makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Cadillac is made by people with experience making cars? And not some Silly Valley big talker?

Re:Not news

[quantaman]

So this information was thoughtfully reviewed, felt not to be in the driver's best interest / effective enough to integrate and wasn't. This doesn't seem like an interesting story. This isn't gross negligence, this is just decision making and business.

Elon Musk is saying it was ineffective, but he also keeps calling the system an Autopilot.

This is just more evidence that Tesla is trying to have it both ways.

Informally they say:
"Look! It's a self-driving car! You just relax and it does everything!!"

Officially they say:
"It's basically just fancy cruise control, you need to watch it like a hawk every second it's engaged!!"

In practice they want and expect people to treat it as a self-driving car, but they need to tell them it's cruise-control for legal reasons.

That's why they ditched the eye tracking and other fancy tech that would keep people engaged. The "pay attention" safeguards are in-effective by design.

Re:The Shorts

[110010001000]

Yeah right. The $35k is not available. Model 3s right now are $55K. The Nissal Leaf is $30k, actually availble. More Tesla lies.