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I mean I understand Tesla has to make a statement here and I understand they want to ensure everyone that it's not really their fault but to title a post "A Tra
by BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I mean I understand Tesla has to make a statement here and I understand they want to ensure everyone that it's not really their fault but to title a post "A Tragic Loss" and then spend the majority of the post discussing all of your car's safety features and how it wasn't your fault just seems tone deaf and distasteful to me.
Maybe they had to do it for legal reasons I don't know (I'm certainly not a lawyer) and I'd love to own a Tesla but couldn't they have worded this a little more sympathetic and a little less lawyer?
- Analemma_ 10y agoI agree. I'm starting to get really weirded out by Tesla's immediate "not our fault!" blog posts every time a Tesla is involved in any kind of accident. I could see the necessity the first few times back when it was new technology to a lot of people (and Top Gear had it in for them), but with it happening over and over it seems whiny and a bit callous. How long to they plan to keep doing this?
- toomuchtodo 10y agoAs long as emotions drive short term investors, which influences the stock price, which is extremely important for their success and expansion plans. Already down $6/share in after hours trading.
- dangrossman 10y ago> How long to they plan to keep doing this? So long as every Tesla accident makes the homepage of CNBC, unlike the millions that occur in other makers' vehicles. Tesla puts out an immediate PR, and the breaking news that went up on all the financial sites included quotes from it nearly as fast. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-tesla-over-use-of-automated-system-linked-to-fatal-crash.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-t...
- prodmerc 10y agoYeah no kidding, thousands of people die every year in Fords and no one gives a shit, 1 guy dies in a Tesla and "these cars are unsafe, run for your lives, hide yo kids and yo wife, sell your stock, return your car!". I fucking hate modern media.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- refulgentis 10y agoDid anyone actually say any of those things? Or anything coming close to those things? Or did you just invent a strawman to beat up on the media?
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoFord sells 6-7 million cars each year, so there's going to be close to 100 million Fords driving around globally. There's a little over 100 000 Teslas. So since there is 1000x as many Fords, and assuming every Ford is just as safe as a Tesla, you quite literally get thousands of fatalities a year.
- stcredzero 10y agoassuming every Ford is just as safe as a Tesla, you quite literally get thousands of fatalities a year. Which is about right.
- Twirrim 10y agoAccording to wikipedia there were 32,675 fatalities in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i..., around 10 fatalities per 100,000 population.
- protomyth 10y agoThe CDC data with comparison to other ways people die in the US is at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm Table 28 of http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#019 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#019 is relevant to this discussion
- fucking_tragedy 10y agoLook at a comparable example with software related car malfunctions. Toyota's unintended acceleration problem made headlines and made it before a judge. It seems fair to me.
- jblow 10y agoIt is because, if Tesla allows it to happen, the media will attack them incessantly over these things because they smell a story (and because a lot of vested interests are willing to pay for PR). If you don't defend yourself in that kind of situation, you die.
- prodmerc 10y ago"This guy died in a Tesla - you won't believe what happens next!"
- talmand 10y agoAs long as media continues to blame their new cars for clickbait articles and until they are treated the same as any other car manufacturer that's not blamed for every incident involving their vehicles.
- kordless 10y agoHow long are people like you going to keep speaking dissonance for others every time a Black Swan happens?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- IBM 10y agoYeah the thing that rubbed me the wrong way was how they responded to the NYT review about cold weather performance. I've been highly skeptical about Elon and Tesla ever since.
- lkbm 10y agoDidn't they respond by pointing out that the claims made in the review were false? Was there more follow-up to that story that I missed?
- gohrt 10y agoThey could have titled it "Tesla Safety" -- which is what the article is about, and opened with an acknowledgement of the tragedy, instead of the tacky bait-and-switch headline.
- loceng 10y agoI feel 'A Tragic Loss' sets the tone for the remaining highly technical overview, instead of the technical breakdown seeming tone-deaf, it added tone until getting to the concluding paragraph. Unfortunately, fortunately, Tesla is having to educate people and being very clear to not allow room for panic and unwarranted fear mongering. I would say it is as to the point as it can be, and that it is heartfelt.
- mevile 10y agoIn addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.
- dmix 10y agoAnd regardless this was primarily an after-the-fact technical analysis with relevant information to other Tesla owners, the primary purpose was not a formal announcement of a death. The news typically handles that role.
- morsch 10y agoThen again, GM sells more vehicles in a week than Tesla has sold in its entire history.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoThis. Notice how quick they are to bring up "this is the first fatality in 130 million miles", but AFAICT, traffic fatalities in the US occur at a frequency of around 10 per billion miles [1], which is the same. So even though this is just one data point, it's spot on the current average for fatality frequency in normal cars. Furthermore, to gather enough statistics to be able to say with confidence "semi-autonomous Teslas are/aren't safer than normal cars", Tesla either needs to increase their sales volume by several orders of magnitude, or we'll have to wait for ten years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
- catbird 10y agoYes this is in really poor taste. I'm sure it's very comforting to the deceased's family to know that safety features could have saved their life, had the angle of impact been different.
- snuxoll 10y agoPress Releases like this are for investors and media outlets, not for general consumers. Of course they are going to focus on damage control, because if they didn't focus on the safety features of autopilot and the hands-on requirement some media outlet would contort the situation and say "What safety features does this car to prevent an accident like this in the future? Is this technology actually ready to be used on our roads?". I think they did a fine job of handling this, and with the high visibility of this incident due to the use of autopilot they really had no other option.
- emp_zealoth 10y agoI would not call a sentence in a manual a "requirement" A requirement would be when the autopilot didn't work unless one has at least one hand on the steering wheel. (Just like other manufactures do that) Tesla knows people are not going to use autopilot hands-on (especially after the novelty wears off)
- icodestuff 10y agoThat's exactly the requirement the Model S has. It starts beeping at you and gradually brings the vehicle to a stop if you take your hands off the wheel.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoDid they really have to paint us a picture of what happened? They could have left out some details and still made their point. Edit: Given the down votes, I guess people really want the mental picture. Sad.
- gavinpc 10y agoI was even left with the sense that the tragedy actually felt by the writer was not so much the death of "a friend," as the fact of a blemish on the near-perfect safety record that Tesla has made part of their brand's cachet.
- angusb 10y agoIt's not just about Tesla though. They have to defend autopilot not only to protect the brand but to protect the public's perception of autonomous vehicles in general. Self driving tech is poised to save many many lives. So from a utilitarian perspective, it's probably justified to take extraordinary measures to make sure reactionary media and public whim doesn't kill it off, however uncomfortable that might seem in the short term. Whilst this case is incredibly sad (and I don't want to downplay that in any way), if you're trying to minimise the overall amount of fatal crashes, exonerating the tech is the priority (if it is truly not at fault).
- vkou 10y agoThey could defend the public's perception of autonomous vehicles in general by not rushing to market a beta that is less technically capable then other autonomous systems being worked on by their competitors.
- angusb 10y agoAre you saying that just based on the fact that they've been developing it for less time than Google, or is there a more in depth case for that somewhere? I would be very interested to read about that if there is.
- vkou 10y ago1. Tesla makes it clear that Autopilot is a beta. 2. From the rest of this thread, it sounds like their long-range cameras/radar has very limited FOV.
- bdamm 10y agoThe "white truck against the bright sky" seems to imply that the exposure depth and dynamic range of the camera may also have played a role.
- CaptSpify 10y agoI can already hear a lot of people that I know: "See! I told you them automagic cars were the devil!" I personally can't wait for fully self-driving cars, but it's going to be a big PR battle in the US
- Vik1ng 10y agoReminds me of their complaint blog post why the German government initiative is capped at 60k where it seems like half the point was to advertise a new lease deal. https://www.teslamotors.com/de_DE/blog/teslas-antwort-auf-das-forderprogramm-fur-elektromobilitst-der-bundesregierung https://www.teslamotors.com/de_DE/blog/teslas-antwort-auf-da...
- wpietri 10y agoYeah, I had the same issue with the writing. I think it would have gone much better if the meat of the concluding paragraph came first, possibly with a matching paragraph at the bottom. Personally, I would have used a more neutral title, led with sympathies for the family, and then gone into the technical detail.
- npizzolato 10y agoI half expected the final paragraph offering condolences to end with "but remember, this really wasn't Tesla's fault!" The third paragraph reads like Tesla is trying to wash their hands as much as possible. "Remember, he clicked all these buttons. He knew what he was getting into!"
- Animats 10y agoYes. Last time, their excuse was "but the driver should have known that in firmware revision 6.2 and later, tapping the brake disables automatic braking". This time, there's an interesting question. Did Tesla remotely access the crash data after the crash? Did they alter any data? Is that verifiable? The NTSB will probably explore that issue. The crash data record in an airbag controller becomes read-only when the airbag fires.
- alxndr 10y agoGives a new meaning to semver's term "breaking changes".
- jsprogrammer 10y agoIt really makes you consider why you would even want such an autopilot. From the description in this eulogy, it sounds like you must work even harder with autopilot on than if you were driving manually. Not only do you need to have the same alertness as manual driving, you also have to be ready to take over at any moment and try to detect if the autopilot has made any mistakes that might guillotine you, or worse.
- maxxxxx 10y agoThey definitely sound very defensive to me.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- prawn 10y agoIMO, they should've had their explanatory intro, then the paragraph they closed with, then a gap, and then the technical explanation. As it was, it read like hand-washing to me. Especially when you openly call it AutoPilot but require hands on the wheel at all time. If their detectors don't see a white car against a bright background, that's obviously a serious problem.
- padmanabhan01 10y ago>couldn't they have worded this a little more sympathetic and a little less lawyer? Sure, if all the lawyers will promise not to take some statement out of context and sue them over that.. As long as such lawyers exist and that's the way the legal system works this is what can be expected out of statements from companies..