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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."
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. :)
[($)]
is that the driver was too exhausted to be driving in the first place. And, that had he not be driving a car equipped with as an intelligent a safety system, there would have been a substantially higher probability of injury, loss of life or property.
" calls this proof that Tesla has wrongly convinced drivers their cars' "autopilot" function really could perform fully autonomous driving... "
Those of us who know better call this FUD.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Did he pass the FST ? The title of the article read he was a drunk driver but no where in the article does it state he was. Did he just decide to take a nap ? Why should Tesla be held to truth in advertising while other car manufacturers can show their cars doing rail slides on bridges and many other behaviors that a car can not accomplish ? Missing far too many basic facts to really render any sort of judgement. The Chronicle should fire whomever wrote this trash and hire a qualified writer/reporter, say your average 5th grader.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Someone with a "Good Head" on his shoulders, and he still does. :)
[($)]
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?
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
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.
Yea I kinda have to side with you on this one. It's true they need to stop encouraging people to trust this autopilot feature so much, but how would not having it have improved this normally fatal situation of an exhausted driver falling asleep behind the wheel? It's one thing if he did it on purpose because he thought it would be safe, but nobody is asking whether he intended to fall asleep in the first place. If he didn't, this car, with patient and generous help from the police officers, saved his life.
We get it, the left fucking HATE Tesla / all things Elon.
Not just left-wingers. Right-wing Breitbart only says negative, sarcastic things about Musk and his companies.
I don't know why. Maybe Breitbart thinks his companies currently get government subsidies.
But besides subsidies, I think there's some emotional reason that they don't like Musk.
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.
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.
Because the right-wing hate California with an irrational degree of passion.
I'll leave it to others to explain why a right-wing rag might hate a state that is highly successful yet has mostly liberal policies.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Normally falling asleep at the wheel at highway speeds is fatal
I'm not convinced that is true at all, especially in an $80K vehicle.
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
Why do you think this situation is 'normally fatal'? Any $80K car is going to have air bags and a proper crumple zone to protect the driver. Heck, his foot may have slipped off the gas and slowed to a stop in the ditch.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Full autonomy would require following all of the laws... including those that require drivers to give way to emergency vehicles and pull over for police cars flashing their lights. They aren't going to wait for every emergency vehicle in the nation to be equipped with some communications system, so they will train their networks to respond in the same way humans are supposed to.
I doubt this has been a priority for Tesla with the current requirement that a fully aware licensed driver be at the wheel. When it becomes a priority, they'll use the same cameras they use for everything else.
I believe the self-driving Waymos will all be monitored remotely in the early stages. So, if pulled, the remote operator would handle the situation.
A more interesting current-news-inspired question might be how they will handle and react to things like the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage. What would a Tesla or Waymo do if the road they were on collapsed and a wall of dirt suddenly appeared in front of it? Would it brake or ignore the input as impossible and strike the "wall"?
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.
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)
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.
A more interesting current-news-inspired question might be how they will handle and react to things like the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage. What would a Tesla or Waymo do if the road they were on collapsed and a wall of dirt suddenly appeared in front of it? Would it brake or ignore the input as impossible and strike the "wall"?
What would a human driver do? Would he or she brake or ignore the input as impossible and strike the "wall"?
The difference is destructive vs non-destructive safety features.
Seatbelts, airbags can reduce the injury in an accident, but the car is still damaged. Which means that usually people do not want their car to get damaged. As such, probably very few people think "it's OK if I hit a tree at 100km/h, the airbags, seatbelts and crumple zones will save me" and then drive bouncing from tree to tree.
This is like the safety feature of some table saws, where if you touch the blade, the saw gets destroyed, but you finger is safe. Nobody would put a finger in that saw on purpose, because even if the safety feature works OK, you just destroyed your saw, which, I assume is not cheap.
On the other hand, non-destructive safety features can be abused. ABS will let me stop better on ice, so let's drive faster and tailgate. After all, there is no cost associated with activating the ABS.
And Autopilot, in my opinion is the opposite of a safety feature. ABS at least does make it safer to stop on ice, though I think the cars should not advertise that they have ABS, so the people drive as if there is no ABS. Autopilot encourages people to not pay attention completely. After all, the car drives itself and has been doing so perfectly for the last 3 hours today and for the last 200 times before, why should you just sit and stare at the road with nothing to do (which is incredibly boring), better watch a movie or read a book. After all, you don't really need to pay attention, the various messages telling you to do so are probably there for some bullshit legal reasons.
Because the right-wing hate California with an irrational degree of passion.
All hatred is irrational, being angry at someone else only hurts you. (Making informed decisions, however, is always a good idea.) Jealousy ain't new, though, and that's one big reason the right wing hates California. The other is just being proven wrong. See, they're always talking about how policies like California's will bring ruin, while simultaneously having to get money from Californians' pockets in order to pay their bills.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Um, no driving deaths during earthquake. So, the answer is "they would brake".
I think the cars should not advertise that they have ABS, so the people drive as if there is no ABS.
This is not a good idea, for multiple reasons.
For one thing, regular drivers will find it very difficult to brake optimally and steer at the same time, so without ABS the advice is to brake until you need to evade, then let go of the brake pedal and steer around. With ABS the optimal solution is to slam the brakes and keep them slammed while you do the manoeuvre.
Another problem is that ABS makes the brake pedal shake which can spook people into letting go of the brake if they do not expect that to happen.
A smaller problem is that ABS on gravel or in certain types of snow can increase braking distance. Without ABS you can build up a bit of a pile of gravel or snow in front of the wheels and use that to slow you down.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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.
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
...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.
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.
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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 ]
Not just left-wingers. Right-wing Breitbart only says negative, sarcastic things about Musk and his companies.
If you're "in bed"** with the fossil fuel industry, you'll have a vested interest in dissing electric cars, especially if it's a company that produces only electric cars as opposed to the car being part of a more diverse line-up. They don't like environmentalism in general, so they'll always throw darts at this.
** In bed meaning not necessarily financially, but philosophically.