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A Tesla on Autopilot Crashed Into a Parked Police Car (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
A Tesla vehicle in Autopilot mode collided with a parked police cruiser in California, authorities said. The Tesla sedan was driving outbound when it struck a parked Laguna Beach police car, the Laguna Beach police department said Tuesday. According to police, the driver in the Tesla sustained minor injuries. The police cruiser was empty of officers at the time of the crash. Laguna Polic1e Sgt. Jim Cota told the Los Angeles Times the police car "is totaled."
The police sergeant also told the Times that it was the same area where a Tesla crashed into a semi-truck last year, adding "Why do these vehicles keep doing that? We're just lucky that people aren't getting injured."
"Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn't make the car impervious to all accidents," Tesla responded in a statement, "and before a driver can use Autopilot, they must accept a dialogue box which states that 'Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings.'"
Record producer Zedd also responded to the news by sharing on Twitter what he calls "the other side": I once fell asleep driving home late at night on the highway (w/ autopilot on) and got woken up by it beeping + turning off music to wake me up. Would have prob been dead without it... I didn't touch the steering wheel for a couple minutes and then it turned off the music and started beeping. Elon Musk responded to the tweet, "Glad you're ok!"
The police sergeant also told the Times that it was the same area where a Tesla crashed into a semi-truck last year, adding "Why do these vehicles keep doing that? We're just lucky that people aren't getting injured."
"Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn't make the car impervious to all accidents," Tesla responded in a statement, "and before a driver can use Autopilot, they must accept a dialogue box which states that 'Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings.'"
Record producer Zedd also responded to the news by sharing on Twitter what he calls "the other side": I once fell asleep driving home late at night on the highway (w/ autopilot on) and got woken up by it beeping + turning off music to wake me up. Would have prob been dead without it... I didn't touch the steering wheel for a couple minutes and then it turned off the music and started beeping. Elon Musk responded to the tweet, "Glad you're ok!"
Drop the autopilot name and call it drive assist. The first implies it drives by itself, the second clearly means you still need to be at least holding the steering wheel.
if auotpilots aren't advanced enough to sense road boundaries, center lane line, parking spot markers (which this road had), then they aren't advanced enough to drive a car
What percentage of humans did these things versus percentage of autopilots?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Fords have killed tens of people today and do every day. On any typical day, more than 100 people die in the U.S. from auto accidents while riding in brands other than Tesla. In contrast, a handful of people have died in Teslas.
There are presumably a lot more Fords on the road than Teslas.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's going to kill a cop or first responder in some completely moronic way soon ... don't own Tesla stock.
How many humans crashed into parked cars on Tuesday?
How many human drivers safety passed that cop car without ramming into it?
"Autopilot" is a poor name for Tesla's driver-assist technology because most people associate the word autopilot with "totally autonomous" and aren't bothered by the nuances of the technology as applied to aircraft. To most folks, autopilot means exactly what it sounds like, and it's pretty clear that there are a number of Tesla drivers treating it as such.
The comparison to an aircraft's autopilot, while technically correct, is irrelevant to the discussion. A remarkably minuscule percentage of the human population will ever see a cockpit, let alone operate the controls. Autopilot means George Jetson era autopilot and that's that.
Beware of the Leopard.
You know, ones that worked on the safety systems in aerospace industry for the last several decades, using technologies that aren't cool in 21st century. Guess what you get with toddler engineers.
I bet if they would use the ol' guys just as consultants the number of catastrophic failures would be near 0. Just like it is in the aerospace when you ignore the human factor.
You can let a plane or a boat follow a heading and most of the time everything is fine. Autopilot simply keeps you from drifting off course due to winds or currents.
What Tesla is selling clearly isn't autopilot in anything like that sense. They're using 'autopilot' as a 'high tech' marketing term and letting people believe the car can do things it really can't. To make matters worst, Tesla is also letting 'drivers' not pay attention to what's going on for long periods of time, reinforcing the idea that the car do more than it really can. So as far as this specific crash is concerned, it likely wouldn't have happened if not for Tesla's negligence.
"Autopilot" is a poor name for Tesla's driver-assist technology because most people associate the word autopilot with "totally autonomous" and aren't bothered by the nuances of the technology as applied to aircraft. To most folks, autopilot means exactly what it sounds like, and it's pretty clear that there are a number of Tesla drivers treating it as such.
The comparison to an aircraft's autopilot, while technically correct, is irrelevant to the discussion. A remarkably minuscule percentage of the human population will ever see a cockpit, let alone operate the controls. Autopilot means George Jetson era autopilot and that's that.
Actually Autopilot is the perfect name for the technology, at least from a marketing perspective. It implies hands-off driving to those that haven't been trained to fly airplanes, i.e., just about everyone, and therefore drives sales. At the same time plausible deniability exists because there is some logical explanation that makes sense to some set of individuals.
And airplane autopilot has been a contributing factor in a number of airline crashes. However those are usually blamed on the human who failed to use them properly.