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A Sleeping Driver's Tesla Led Police On A 7-Minute Chase (sfchronicle.com)
"When a pair of California Highway Patrol officers pulled alongside a car cruising down Highway 101 in Redwood City before dawn Friday, they reported a shocking sight: a man fast asleep behind the wheel," reports the San Francisco Chronicle:
The car was a Tesla, the man was a Los Altos planning commissioner, and the ensuing freeway stop turned into a complex, seven-minute operation in which the officers had to outsmart the vehicle's autopilot system because the driver was unresponsive, according to the CHP...
Officers observed Samek's gray Tesla Model S around 3:30 a.m. as it sped south at 70 mph on Highway 101 near Whipple Avenue, said Art Montiel, a CHP spokesman. When officers pulled up next to the car, they allegedly saw Samek asleep, but the car was moving straight, leading them to believe it was in autopilot mode. The officers slowed the car down after running a traffic break, with an officer behind Samek turning on emergency lights before driving across all lanes of the highway, in an S-shaped path, to slow traffic down behind the Tesla, Montiel said. He said another officer drove a patrol car directly in front of Samek before gradually slowing down, prompting the Tesla to slow down as well and eventually come to a stop in the middle of the highway, north of the Embarcadero exit in Palo Alto -- about 7 miles from where the stop was initiated.
Tesla declined to comment on the incident, but John Simpson, privacy/technology project director for Consumer Watchdog, calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving...
"They've really unconscionably led people to believe, I think, that the car is far more capable of self-driving than actually is the case. That's a huge problem."
Officers observed Samek's gray Tesla Model S around 3:30 a.m. as it sped south at 70 mph on Highway 101 near Whipple Avenue, said Art Montiel, a CHP spokesman. When officers pulled up next to the car, they allegedly saw Samek asleep, but the car was moving straight, leading them to believe it was in autopilot mode. The officers slowed the car down after running a traffic break, with an officer behind Samek turning on emergency lights before driving across all lanes of the highway, in an S-shaped path, to slow traffic down behind the Tesla, Montiel said. He said another officer drove a patrol car directly in front of Samek before gradually slowing down, prompting the Tesla to slow down as well and eventually come to a stop in the middle of the highway, north of the Embarcadero exit in Palo Alto -- about 7 miles from where the stop was initiated.
Tesla declined to comment on the incident, but John Simpson, privacy/technology project director for Consumer Watchdog, calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving...
"They've really unconscionably led people to believe, I think, that the car is far more capable of self-driving than actually is the case. That's a huge problem."
"No, they don't have autonomous cars yet !!!" and they went on and on for hours about it like a drunk.
"I just had a hell of a dream. What the?!..."
Table-ized A.I.
Thank you, Elon
"They've really unconscionably led people to believe, I think, that the car is far more capable of self-driving than actually is the case. That's a huge problem."
And yet...nobody was hurt, no cars were wrecked...so it did much better than any other car with a sleeping driver.
Driver fell asleep at the wheel, and instead of crashing into things as in a conventional car, semi-autonomous vehicle came to complete stop with no loss to life or property.
The California Highway Patrol on Friday pulled over a Tesla Model S that was traveling down the road—but whose driver appeared to be asleep at the wheel. The vehicle was traveling southbound on Highway 101 in Palo Alto.
Officers said that they were unable to get the man's attention.
"One of the officers basically ended up going in front of the vehicle and basically tried to slow it down," a California Highway Patrol spokesman told KCBS radio. The process took about seven minutes, and the car traveled for about seven miles before coming to a stop.
The driver was Alexander Samek, who serves on the Los Altos Planning Commission. He was arrested for driving under the influence.
So how was the vehicle able to travel for more than seven minutes with an apparently sleeping driver? The obvious theory is that the Model S had its Autopilot system turned on, but officials said on Friday that they hadn't confirmed that yet. It's quite possible that Autopilot saved Samek's life.
The situation is a bit of a puzzle because Autopilot is supposed to detect if a driver's hands are on the wheel and disengage if they're not. Tesla has steadily tightened up these rules, with recent revisions of the software warning drivers in as little as 30 seconds. So if the driver did fall asleep at the wheel the car should have started slowing down on its own within a few minutes.
In a similar case back in January, police encountered a man asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla car on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. When police woke him up, he insisted that everything was fine because his vehicle was "on autopilot." Unfortunately for him, there's no autopilot exception to drunk-driving laws.
Top comment: onkeljonas
"It's entirely plausible that he was asleep with his hands on the wheel."
All they had to do was make a phone call to Tesla.
I'm not going to lambaste Tesla over this.
The guy was drunk. Has he driven drunk before, in the Tesla or in another car (whether he's gotten caught or not)? Did he intend to have the Telsa drive him home, or did he start driving himself and just fell asleep?
It does seem obvious that the driver made some very bad decisions, regardless.
#DeleteChrome
Just keep think that, that works. :)
[($)]
is that the driver was too exhausted to be driving in the first place. And, that had he not be driving a car equipped with as an intelligent a safety system, there would have been a substantially higher probability of injury, loss of life or property.
" calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving... "
Those of us who know better call this FUD.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Did he pass the FST ? The title of the article read he was a drunk driver but no where in the article does it state he was. Did he just decide to take a nap ? Why should Tesla be held to truth in advertising while other car manufacturers can show their cars doing rail slides on bridges and many other behaviors that a car can not accomplish ? Missing far too many basic facts to really render any sort of judgement. The Chronicle should fire whomever wrote this trash and hire a qualified writer/reporter, say your average 5th grader.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Someone with a "Good Head" on his shoulders, and he still does. :)
[($)]
Make some noise.
Tesla declined to comment on the incident, but John Simpson, privacy/technology project director for Consumer Watchdog, calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving...
"They've really unconscionably led people to believe, I think, that the car is far more capable of self-driving than actually is the case. That's a huge problem."
So let me see if I have this straight. 10,000 people a year die in DUI crashes, yet all these drunk drivers are not the fault of Ford, Toyota, Chevy, Nissan, etc. The liability is totally on the driver that decided to operate a vehicle while intoxicated.
However when someone drives a Tesla drunk, it is Tesla's fault. Yes, that makes perfect sense, Mr. Simpleton. I mean Simpson.
Better known as 318230.
They have given us no reason to believe that the driver actually thought the car was fully capable of autonomous driving. People unintentionally fall asleep behind the wheel even in cars with no autonomous capability at all. Naturally they tend to crash.
So maybe he thought the car was more capable or maybe he meant to stay awake but failed. If the latter, the car likely saved his and perhaps other's lives.
Right... So the CIA can pilot your Tesla into a wall at high speed, but they can't stop the car of a sleeping driver?
Thanks yo sir information all about it I am read full article I understand how to Right the article.
Yes, they wrongly convinced owners that this car could do exactly what it did.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We get it, the left fucking HATE Tesla / all things Elon.. but this has nothing to do with him nor the company. The driver was asleep / distracted. Period. They are no more at fault then any other car company would be for cruse control.
Regarding the Police being "unable to stop it", bullshit. You treat the car like any other chase, ram the thing off the road or back off until safe to do so. The articles only state he was speeding, not that he was driving dangeriously. Yes, once they got next to him and saw he was asleep that is dangerious but they had no indication of this before. Point is there was no immediate threat, the car likely would have driven him home or at least off the highway at which point they could have stopped him/it.
But none of that makes the news.
Capatcha: accords ... nice try slashdot.
I could see a future where events like this are used to push for requiring all cars to have self-driving systems. If this had been a "normal' car, a sleep driver at highway speeds would probably result in death or serious injury, for himself, and possibly for people in other cars.
In this case, the car was able to main enough control on its own to prevent a tragic outcome. If enough events like this happen, I predict we'll start to see laws pushing for this safety tech in all new cars, just like happened with seatbelts and then airbags.
BETA features shouldn't be in real world cars!
Tesla needs to be held accountable.
he was "driving outside the box."
This one mistake has killed thousands of people per year for decades. Meet the first man to survive falling asleep behind the wheel.
A story involving the police without police shooting someone? Or shooting someone's dog? Or choking someone? Or otherwise injuring them for no reason? Are you sure this happened in America? The description doesn’t sound like American police.
If the story is true, I would like to thank the police for not opening fire on the car. Or the driver after the car was stopped. Or random others. Or dogs that might have been in the area.
Good job police. Keep it up.
If it's in autopilot mode and there are red and blue flashing lights behind it... It should follow the law. If there's a conscious person at the wheel and they don't want to pull over they can disengage the autopilot.
Encouraging. Some enhancements could improve safety significantly. Safe pull over modes that detect police and a protocol to engage by police. Next auto record dash cams to show WTF the driver was doing. He could have had a heart attack or something. I am impressed by the Tesla auto pilot. There needs to be more smart cars recording driver alertness. Hope Insurance companies help push these safety measures.
okay, I'm sold.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the car had realized that no one was responding and then executed a safe pull-over I would buy that autopilot could help *in this case*. However, this is too close to call. In a normal car, the driver may have been killed instantly or his foot may have left the gas pedal and slowed to a stop, or he may not have fallen asleep at all. In this case, a car kept driving for 7 minutes in which case a person could have been hit. The police had to intervene so they may have been injured as well. It's really just trading one crappy situation for another.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
In this case a car intended to require a driver HAD NO DRIVER for 7 minutes at highway speed. I think that is at least equally as dangerous.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Clearly John Delorean had the better idea with a car you snort started and would then follow a white line anywhere. Now that is an autopilot.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
"if the driver did fall asleep at the wheel the car should have started slowing down on its own within a few minutes."
Wow. If the driver is asleep the car damn well better stop asap.
How will the police be able to "talk" to self driving cars that are empty, e.g., a Waymo that is on its way to its next customer? If, for example, for whatever reason the police has a need for the car to pull over and stop, how would they communicate that to the car? Once a Tesla has been stopped, it's not going to drive off again, but a Waymo could. "Customer is waiting. Have to go now. Bye!"
A weakness of autonomous vehicles in general is sensor failure. I know a guy who's become reliant on parking sensors since getting a new car a few months ago. Twice the sensor has flaked out - not warned of a nearby object - and he's bumped into it. This has led to thousands of dollars in damage. And it fails silently, and intermittently.
So - it'll be quite important to stick to the old way of driving - i.e. you doing it visually - and not relying on a sensor and software solely, for, it seems to me, the foreseeable future. These assistive devices can be used as failsafes I suppose. Like automatic parachute deployers for skydivers, which fire at certain altitudes. But they don't always work correctly either and shouldn't be the primary source of parachute deployment. The question becomes then, how to make people aware of the nature of these assistive systems.
The opening episode of Knight Rider had David hasselhoff's character asleep behind the wheel while the highway patrol was in pursuit. After K.I.T.T. woke him up and explained the situation, he got out of the car to pretend that he had a crooked neck.
You're missing the point. Drivers fall asleep in "normal" cars all the time, and many of them die in the resulting accident.
The difference here was a safety technology that managed to save the driver. The man was asleep at the wheel. He's alive because his car saved his life.
very complex operation indeed. They had to drive in front of it and slow down.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Have a camera pointing at the driver as well. Shut down autopilot if eyes are closed or aren't looking at the road for longer than some predetermined amount of time. This is literally an undergrad-level deep learning project. If cost is a concern, this can be done without deep learning as well.
... the opposite of John Simpson's statement. Tesla cars can actually drive better than their owners and furthermore, conventional car manufacturers are shitting their pants after this 'incident' that also proves that Tesla cars aren't easy to carjack on a freeway. The highway police had a such a hard job at stopping the car I think you can assume that it could easily defend itself.
Who is John Simpson really serving?:
Tesla declined to comment on the incident, but John Simpson, privacy/technology project director for Consumer Watchdog, calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving...
This is just fakenews:
"They've really unconscionably led people to believe, I think, that the car is far more capable of self-driving than actually is the case. That's a huge problem."
Bach says it all.
An owner of an RV was just as convinced that "cruise control" would drive his vehicle round the winding roads while he popped back to make a snack.
It has fuck all to do with somebody convincing someone else, it's all about someone convincing themselves.
Plus doesn't this prove that the autopilot CAN drive completely unattended for a good long while?
However we have plenty of cases here a has happened.
And we've had a similar case to c, if you want ANY data for it, where someone in their RV too ****CRUISE CONTROL**** to mean they could make a snack in the back while the RV controlled the cruising vehicle on the road.
(it didn't)
YOU TURN IT OFF.
Heck, why don't you get it? Do not want to?
You complain that the safety feature of this autopilot makes it more likely people will drive in an unsafe manner, thereby making it a thing to remove for safety's sake. Yet airbags make people drive faster and more dangerously (put a spike in the middle of a drivers' wheel, take away their safety belt and you'll see a lot more careful driving!) and suddenly "But that's different for $RANDOM_REASON_NOT_REASON!".
You should be equally calling for ABS, seatbelts for drivers and airbags to be removed. They cause accidents because when the driver feels safer, they take more risks.
It doesn't matter where the safety comes from.
1. Can they detect emergency vehicles, light and sirens?
How does it deal with emergency vehicles generally, for example Ambulances trying to pass?
2. Can/Should they be required to detect and deal with an incapacitated driver, if at all? They certain seem to better for 3rd parties than the crashes caused by drivers suffering medical incidents.
This is an example of how autonomous vehicles can save people's lives.
Once again the press mis-identifies an excess alcohol story.
That is ALL this is.
The Ray Rice "scandal", where he punched his girlfriend (who later became his wife) in the elevator was classified as a domestic violence story. Problem is they weren't at home. They were in a hotel, at 2am, and they had been drinking since dinner. They were hammered drunk and got in a fight. Ever happen before? Only a million times a night in America.
If only I could make the connection in this case to the booze companies who would stop their advertising if the press ever talked about the ugliness and destructiveness of their product.
You hear so many sirens and so much honking that they're just routine and you tune them out. These are common road sounds. Couple that with car soundproofing and the sound of the air vents and that can mask a lot of it too or make it fade into background noise.
This is precisely why thus is not ready for prime time. I guarantee you this douche was a lot more dangeruous than another person. I almost wonder if it was contrived for publicity (not on the part of the police, but Tesla). Then again, modern tech folks are freaking three year-olds in every sense of the word, this is certainly not outside their pervue. No, nobody thinks you are edgy, woke, or cool, douche. You sure as hell aren't brilliant.
There was no 'unconscionably leading people' involved. They knew exactly what they were promoting.
Watchdog's comment is BS, the driver propably just fell asleep behind the wheel (while using autopilot), and thanx to the system nothing awful has happened. You can educate people what you want on what a system is (not) capable of, but people keep being stupid... The fault is not with Tesla, but with the people misusing the system.
It'll only stop if that car is moving slower that you. If the car isn't moving at all, your car will drive full speed into it.
They keep saying this and it really doesn't make sense. Tesla clearly have the best self drive technology on the consumer market, once you're the best you can stop selling it further, thats something everyone else wants to do. I think it far more likely that tesla keeps telling people its not a complete solution, they try it and say they dissagree.
Surely tesla just need to improve the AI to detect when its being flagged to pull over by police and comply.
I know this autopilot isn't *actually* a self-driving system and shouldn't be treated as such, but in most jurisdictions blue flashing lights behind you is a legal requirement to pull over.
Do Google's self-driving cars respond correctly in this situation?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Car avoids crashing while driver sleeps. Ten years ago I may have been amazed by that. Now it's a yawn.
What amazes me about this story is "sleeping man pulled over by American law enforcement does not die in a hailstorm of bullets"!!!!
Another non-white ruining your country. Or hasn't it got bad enough for you yet.
...proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving...
Nobody has been "wrongly" convinced of anything. The "autopilot" function did indeed perform fully autonomous driving with a sleeping driver for over seven miles before stopping gracefully when a vehicle slowed down in front of it. What's the deal? Maybe it cannot perform the most complex driving manoeuvres expected from driving in a complex city environment, but it did manage the highway just fine.
This exhausted (or intoxicated) sleeping driver could have caused an accident that would have surely led to nasty injuries or death for himself or others on the highway that day. So instead of having a stupid luddite headline pointing this in such a negative light, we should be grateful for having the fucking autopilot in the first place. One or more lives were probably saved in this incident by it.
No I think you're missing the point. Someone could have easily died in *this* accident. It is a miracle no one did.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If it wasnâ(TM)t for the police, it would have just kept on going.
Autosteer (Beta)
Autosteer feature is currently in Beta:
Autosteer is for use on highways that have a center divider and
clear lane markings, or where there is a car directly ahead to
follow. It should not be used on other kinds of roads or where the
highway has very sharp turns or lane markings that are absent,
faded, or ambiguous. Similar to the autopilot function in airplanes,
you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle
while enjoying the convenience of Autosteer.
Do you want to enable Autosteer while it is in Beta?
[NO] [YES]
If he was truly sound asleep his hands wouldn't be on the steering wheel and that would stop the car according to Tesla's manual. Your muscles relax as well as your whole body - that is a fact of human physiology.
There is some shitty reporting going on here (or worse) in this story....
That is what the headline should have been. In any other vehicle the driver would be dead or seriously injured, it is only because he was driving a Tesla that he is alive today. There is a serious problem with drivers disabling the safety checks of Autopilot though, we need State and Federal laws passed ASAP to toss these idiots into jail.
The articles I read said that the car traveled for 7 miles from the time the officer noticed the driver was passed out until the police stopped the car. We actually have no idea how long the driver had been unconscious before the cops intervened. I'm sure that some technician will pull the logs from the computer and eventually find out exactly how far the car had gone after the driver passed out. Given that drunk driver pass out in their vehicles and kill themselves and others on a daily basis in the US, the software in this may have saved several lives.
On a limited-access highway, "coming to a stop" is usually WORSE than "staying in the lane & maintaining a normal cruising speed".
TL;DR: In places where you're supposed to keep safety distance (e.g.: Germany, Switzerland, etc.) nothing wrong would happen.
---
Depends on the place.
Some jurisdictions (including northern/central european) require drivers to always keep enough distance to be able to stop without rear-ending.
(And most Adaptive Cruise Controls (ACC) are programmed to do so).
Even on the highway, the car in front of yours might be slowing down and stop to avoid an upcoming traffic jam that you missed, avoid a road accident, avoid a wild animal stranded on the road, etc.
So an autonomous car slowing progressively down is most likely to simply cause the car behind it to also slow down (be it by the driver, or autonomously by the ACC), bonus point if the autonomous car blinks its warning lights (strongly recommended in some places, whenever you have to stop on the highway - e.g.: due to traffic jam - to be sure to attract attention of drivers behind an avoid rear-ending).
Most European highways I'm driving on do monitor their traffic very closely. If the CCTV shows a vehicle blinking light and slowing down, the watch will notice it, fire up alerts on the large digital announcement pannels and on radio/satnavs (over FM/RDS TA), and dispatch a patrol car.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]