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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

• trhway 10y ago
  >"It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder," Shope told CNNMoney. The driver told Shope the car was in Autopilot mode, traveling between 55 and 60 mph ... in SUV (Model X)... are people trying to win Darwin award?
  • sriram_sun 10y ago
    Agree. I was shocked to read the actual speed it was going at. However, the insurance companies might be starting to worry.
• danhak 10y ago
  From the Article: > The driver in Montana was headed from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park when he crashed on a two-lane highway near Cardwell. ..."It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder" From the Tesla Owners Manual: > Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. ... > Autosteer is particularly unlikely to operate as intended in the following situations: • When driving on hills. • The road has sharp curves or is excessively rough.
  • cmotzakut6 10y ago
    Can autopilot not tell a straight road from a curvy road? If it can, why does it apply throttle when it detects that it is driving in a type of road it cannot handle?
    • snuxoll 10y ago
      A driver is still supposed to remain alert and have their hands on the wheel, this allows Tesla to collect telemetry on autopilot so it CAN work on improving the software to handle these conditions better. I think the flaw here is the hands-on requirement is much more lenient than it should be, if it allowed the driver to keep their hands off for two full minutes (it is supposed to slow down if a driver isn't keeping their hands on the wheel) then I'd say that's a very poor design choice.
    • studentrob 10y ago
      I don't think the car tells the user whether it can handle the road or not. It just sends alerts when it needs help. Humans are the guinea pig for Tesla. They want this data of their system driving outside its normal bounds. Otherwise yes Tesla would disable autopilot on unapproved roads.
  • taneq 10y ago
    From real life: * Real life people who aren't engineers don't read the manual and they don't read notification pop-ups.
  • raldi 10y ago
    The rule of the Dancing Pigs applies here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs
  • takk309 10y ago
    From the description of "winding road going through a canyon with no shoulder" and near Cardwell, I would say this is MT-2 [0]. I live in this region and have driven this road a few times, it is not a simple road that one can just set cruise control and drive through. There are a few curves that have advisory speeds of 45-mph. I am aware that it is possible to travel well above an advisory speed and be fine but the fact remains, this is a curvy road that requires modulation of speed in order to travel in a comfortable manner. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@45.8317611,-111.9106714,3a,75y,26.62h,80.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snmhJ6A_zvKFmo2QkBLsViQ!2e0!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@45.8317611,-111.9106714,3a,75y,...
• kilroy123 10y ago
  I hate to say it, but there are going to be some deaths on the road to full autonomous cars. (no pun intended) The problem I see is, Tesla is the only one actively testing autonomous driving. The fact that over 100 million miles driven, and we're finally starting to see accidents, is a good sign.
  • itg 10y ago
    Or you can test the cars the way Google does, without involving the public and having deaths on your hand from overhyping your product. https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/
    • yes_or_gnome 10y ago
      There are tens of thousands of people either walking or driving the streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale where Google is testing its self-driving cars. So, the members of the public are at risk. But, I understand that you mean behind the wheel. Which is fun because the Google cars do not have a wheel. As I'm sure you may know, instead of a traditional steering wheel they have horizontally mounted, valve wheel with a handle. It looks a little bizarre when you first see it, but I would imagine it could be a safer, smoother alternative to the current standards steering wheel. Unfortunately, I couldn't quickly provide an image; I've seen it multiple times on my walk to and from work.
      • studentrob 10y ago
        > There are tens of thousands of people either walking or driving the streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale where Google is testing its self-driving cars. So, the members of the public are at risk. There is a huge difference between Google operating a handful of cars in certain areas and Tesla selling 10-20 thousand vehicles per month that can be operated by untrained consumers anywhere in the US. Tesla is using its customers as data-generating guinea pigs. In return, Tesla may become a guinea pig itself by showing other companies how not to progress towards autonomous vehicles.
• basicplus2 10y ago
  If the auto pilot calls for the driver to be on alert and place their hands on the wheel and the driver doesn't, surely the auto pilot should stop the car
• taneq 10y ago
  > "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel," said Tesla. "He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway." If the autopilot's confidence was dropping that rapidly, why did it not slow the vehicle? If it hits zero confidence it should halt completely until the driver restarts the car in manual mode, and possibly disable itself until checked out.
  • themartorana 10y ago
    That could cause an accident just as easily.
    • taneq 10y ago
      I'm saying it should gradually slow down as it gets more uncertain (just like you do in heavy rain as your visibility decreases), not that it should slam on the brakes with no warning. If gentle deceleration "causes" an accident then the problem is with the attitude and behaviour of the following vehicle, not with the deceleration.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        That's the problem though: if its lost confidence, you might be gradually slowing down into a concrete median. You must ensure that the autopilot has enough confidence (while said confidence is diminishing quickly) to continue in the path it chooses safely between current speed and 0. Pretend we're in the car together. We're traveling at 70mph on a two lane road at night. I cover your eyes with my hands on a curvy road. Assure me we will stop in time without hitting something.
        • dragonwriter 10y ago
          > [...] you might be gradually slowing down into a concrete median. Which seems to be less of a problem than not gradually slowing down as you run into the concrete median. Just as a human driver would, a road vehicle self-driving system needs to act sensibly to mitigate risk if its confidence in its ability to safely operate in the conditions it finds itself is reduced, until and unless a human driver has resumed active control.
• snuxoll 10y ago
  I really think Tesla needs to make autopilot's "hands-on" requirement less lenient, the driver had their hands off the wheel for a full two minutes and the car didn't bark at him? I think (maybe I'm wrong and the other non-fatal one did) this is the first incident where autopilot was involved with an inattentive driver, and probably the one that is going to put the screws to Tesla, unfortunately.
  • jdoliner 10y ago
    Didn't the car bark it him though. The article says that Tesla claims the car repeatedly alerted the driver to take control of the vehicle and he didn't. I think you are wrong that this the first incident where autopilot was involved with an inattentive driver. In the fatal crash responders found a portable DVD player inside the car and seemed confident it was in use at the time of the crash.
    • taneq 10y ago
      The driver's response is moot. The larger issue here is that if autopilot doesn't provide for a safe stop under its own control when it encounters a situation it can't handle, any vehicle on autopilot becomes a lethal missile if the driver has some kind of medical problem. A traditional car won't get more than a few hundred meters if the driver on the freeway has a stroke, say. A car on autopilot could travel hundreds of kilometers and end up in a schoolyard at freeway speeds.
      • vkou 10y ago
        I hate to play Devil's advocate here, but a traditional car on cruise control will absolutely become a lethal missile if its driver has a stroke. I don't think automation makes that particular use case more dangerous.
        • studentrob 10y ago
          > I hate to play Devil's advocate here, but a traditional car on cruise control will absolutely become a lethal missile if its driver has a stroke. You're talking worst case scenario. This is a case where the driver was alive and chose to ignore warnings. > I don't think automation makes that particular use case more dangerous. It's more dangerous when the autopilot driver can easily misuse the system. Add a few requirements like hands on the wheel every few seconds before shut-off and you'll see this happen less frequently. Someone may still circumvent that measure. Nothing's perfect. There will be fewer people who abuse it.
• the_common_man 10y ago
  Nobody reads manuals and follows instructions . I feel Tesla is going to learn this lesson that hard way. From the article: "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads," it said. Tesla states clearly in its owner's manual that drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel to avoid accidents when the Autopilot feature is engaged.
  • Bromskloss 10y ago
    > drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel What is then the point of having an autopilot?
    • woofyman 10y ago
      As a backup to you. Not the other way around.
      • lucb1e 10y ago
        If this is really Tesla's line of thinking, they may want to rebrand that feature. Autopilot definitely suggests something more than helping you steer. I mean, when do you fail to steer in the first place? It's not exactly rocket science; the only use case for this is when the driver falls asleep, in which case the "autopilot" can catch the mistake, slow the car, start some heavy metal music and call the police for a fine to deter the driver from further sleepy driving. Since that's not what it's doing at all, I think this is not how Tesla intends the feature to currently work.
      • dingaling 10y ago
        Flight International, August 1934: The relief which is afforded to the pilot by the use of the Automatic Pilot permits him to devote the greater part of his time to navigation, map reading, and the operation of his radio installation, whereas with manual control, his whole time is occupied with the actual flying of the aircraft. That was the original intent of Autopilot: offload the mechanics of flying so that the pilots could concentrate on finding their destination even at night or in bad weather: conditions in which the autopilot was also immensely superior to an infallible and easily-confused human, not the other way about as we see with systems such as Tesla's. They didn't have to keep their hands on the controls, they could trust that the machine could handle everything except the one-in-one-million scenario.
• readams 10y ago
  We'll just have to see how liability laws and juries treat these technologies. We may well see a situation where thousands of lives could be saved from automation, but any accident leads to millions in lawsuits and the technology is killed. Hopefully this isn't the outcome. Airbags occasionally kill or injure people also despite on balance saving lives. So there is precedent for this sort of math, but this is a very different kind of technology and not an ordinary engineering tradeoff.
  • HillaryBriss 10y ago
    Takata airbags have been in the news the last several years because at least two people have died and more than a hundred have been injured. I've heard commenters opine that this "could mean the end of Takata as a company." But I haven't heard anyone say this "could mean the end of airbags as a feature in cars." I guess what the Tesla autopilot needs is a lot of good publicity every time it avoids an accident which a human driver would otherwise have actually caused. But where would anyone get the counterfactual for those cases? Does anyone even have information about that?
    • Meekro 10y ago
      > I guess what the Tesla autopilot needs is a lot of good publicity every time it avoids an accident which a human driver would otherwise have actually caused. Sounds like a plan! Let's start right now. Here's an example of the autopilot dodging a reckless driver and avoiding a collision that many human drivers wouldn't have avoided: https://youtu.be/9I5rraWJq6E https://youtu.be/9I5rraWJq6E
      • studentrob 10y ago
        That's a video by the guy who died.. Some have argued he could've been more aware of the incoming truck due to its short amount of time to make its desired transition from left to right. Also the camera was positioned farther forward than the driver's eyes.
    • yladiz 10y ago
• cloakandswagger 10y ago
  > "No force was detected on the steering wheel for over two minutes after autosteer was engaged," said Tesla, which added that it can detect even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel." Why doesn't the "autopilot" turn off if no hands are detected on the wheel?
  • adt2bt 10y ago
    AFAIK it's a 'feature' of Tesla's autopilot vs other competitors which require hands on the wheel.
  • turbohedgehog 10y ago
    Maybe the driver is medically incapacitated?
    • kbart 10y ago
      You have to pass a medical examination to get a driving license. Driving while medically incapacitated is irresponsible and illegal the same as driving drunk or on drugs. Unless we have a real self driving car, which Tesla is clearly not.
      • tremon 10y ago
        Driving while medically incapacitated is irresponsible Sane people don't set out to drive while medically incapacitated. That doesn't mean it can't happen while on the road (heart attack, TIA, severe allergic reaction to e.g. a bug).
  • lucb1e 10y ago
    Well the whole autopilot feature is silly if you need to keep your hands on the wheel. Then you might as well steer yourself, or am I missing something? (I don't know details about this feature, I just know it steers automatically on highways.) Until full driver attention is no longer needed, enabling "autopilot" and saying in the manual "PS. you still need to stay as alert as you normally would and keep your hands on the wheel" (i.e. no benefits from having this feature) is just asking for accidents. Imagine, as you suggest, it does turn off when there's no hand on the wheel. People are just going to rest a hand on it and still not pay attention. What's the next step, tracking people's eyes? Or shall we just not enable autopilot in the first place, if it can't do its only job?
• helmett 10y ago
  TIL: car crashes happen. but because it's Tesla it gets 100x the attention
  • sien 10y ago
    Tesla has gone out of their way to get more and more attention. For a company that sells only tens of thousands of cars it's pretty amazing. Until these recent crashes the majority of that press has been very positive. The downside of this is that when you get bad publicity it's going to be much bigger as well. That's the price of celebrity.
    • olau 10y ago
      It was exactly the same with previous crashes. Electric vehicles are dangerous etc. etc. People would read one or two reports and jump to the conclusion that the cars were not safe.
  • ModernMech 10y ago
    That's not really why this is getting attention. The core issue here is that Tesla is shipping a product called "autopilot", which gives the expectation that it is in fact an autopilot. In the background, people are hearing that autonomous cars are "3 years away!!!" so the expectation is that the Tesla Autopilot feature is the real deal. Thus you have people watching movies, falling asleep, or driving on dangerous roads using a technology that nowhere near delivers what the name promises. The result is people are dying and getting hurt by an immature technology being pushed too hard by an irresponsible company.
    • cynix 10y ago
      > The core issue here is that Tesla is shipping a product called "autopilot", which gives the expectation that it is in fact an autopilot. An autopilot system is defined as a system that assists, but does not replace, the human operator of a vehicle. Therefore Tesla's system is, in fact, an autopilot.
      • 10y ago
• aresant 10y ago
  I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Autosteer is enabled. Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel."(2) The disconnect between the name and the actual function is needlessly confusing and probably irresponsible. They should change the name to "driver assist" or something more accurate given that mis-interpreting the system's function can lead to death of the driver or others. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot (2) https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot
  • ethanbond 10y ago
    I'd like to see a survey of how many Tesla drivers think Tesla advocates complete cession of control to Autopilot. My suspicion is zero.
    • yladiz 10y ago
      It doesn't matter what they advocate for, it matters the perception of the technology. Just because Tesla doesn't explicitly say that it's a perfect system and says that the driver has to be aware at all times doesn't mean that actually happens, and with a lenient time frame without hands on the wheel it's not surprising that drivers would essentially give control to the car.
      • ethanbond 10y ago
        What I'm saying is I don't think it has anything to do with calling it autopilot, and even less to do with it not meeting the technical definition of autopilot. People are using it in this way because they're able to, and they'll continue to do so until they're not able to. I think we agree here actually. The name isn't the problem really the issue.
• return0 10y ago
  Great, more data points.
  • yladiz 10y ago
    That's kind of tone deaf, don't you think? Just because the crash might provide some useful data, doesn't mean it's something to look positively upon.
    • kybernetikos 10y ago
      I agree completely. That you are gathering data that may help others in the future does not absolve you of deliberately setting up dangerous situations in order to get that data.
    • return0 10y ago
      Sorry, i was being sarcastic. I consider what Tesla is doing at this stage is outright criminal behavior.
  • ben_jones 10y ago
    People down vote this, but it does a great job of highlighting that human deaths and injuries are in fact being treated purely as data points.
• ModernMech 10y ago
  I can't even use my car's (Mazda) built in GPS without the car being in park. And yet Tesla allows autopilot without hands on the wheel? Insane.
  • studentrob 10y ago
    You have to call your product "disruptive" to get the free pass
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• yladiz 10y ago
  > "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads," it said. Tesla states clearly in its owner's manual that drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel to avoid accidents when the Autopilot feature is engaged. Most people don't read the manual unless what they're doing actively doesn't work. Especially with press surrounding Autopilot saying it's basically the best self driving car and is completely trustworthy (even if they don't explicitly state that, it's still implied), it's not unthinkable that someone would completely trust the car and not worry about sensors. The car should be much more proactive at getting the user's attention, either by actively slowing the car down to some safe speed with cautions on and/or significantly lowering the time limit of taking their hand off the wheel before any indicators appear. I'm not sure about the former, but the latter is done in every other car that has this kind of technology (e.g. cars with Lane Assist) and the time is very low, around 10 seconds.
• sergiotapia 10y ago
  Really irresponsible of Tesla to name it autopilot. My wife calls me crazy for not even using cruise control on our car.
  • ars 10y ago
    Cruise control is to keep the car at an even speed when going up/down hills. What does that have to do with safety?
    • wvenable 10y ago
      Feet aren't on the peddles. Which is slight more dangerous than feet on the peddles. Kinda like hands on the wheel is less dangerous than hands off the wheel (at least until automation becomes better at driving than humans).
      • ars 10y ago
        It's not like your foot is on the brake anyway - it's on the gas. So keep your foot "active" and ready for use, even with cruise control. Personally I lightly rest it on the gas. (Not hard enough to actually do anything, but in the right position to react to things.)
    • snowwrestler 10y ago
      To maintain speed up a hill, cruise control applies gas to accelerate the car against the increased component of gravity. This is to maintain a steady speed, but in a geared car (i.e. no CVT), what sometimes happens is that the car starts to lose speed as the revs in top gear drop out of the power band, and then it downshifts and hits the gas hard to accelerate and recover the lost speed. Meanwhile, many humans who are NOT using cruise control do the opposite: they don't push their foot enough to counteract gravity and force a downshift, and just accept that they lose speed going up a hill. If the traffic is dense enough, what can happen is that all of sudden your cruise control is downshifting and jumping forward just as you are overtaking a car that is itself losing speed. Potential for a rear-end collision at highway speeed. Of course this isn't an issue if cruise control is only used in very low densities of traffic. But unfortunately it seems to be used wherever people feel like their feet need a break.
• DanBC 10y ago
  I'd be interested to see how Google sees this. Paving the way for autonomous driving by making crashes something that people expect sometimes? Or putting people off autonomous driving by making people think crashes are not acceptable at all, ever?
  • studentrob 10y ago
    Google has a completely different strategy. They're aiming for 100% automation via a more gradual testing process before making any sort of automation available to consumers. I believe their thought is that the closer we get to complete automation, the less likely a driver is to remain aware. We're only at roughly 10% automation right now and drivers are already taking their eyes off the road. When we get to 90%, humans will have an even tougher time retaining attentiveness. Watch their talks to be sure. Google's self driving car group gives some awesome transparency reports every month, including details about every accident [1]. It's like they're ready to become their own company. Fortune had a good article critiquing Tesla's strategy vs. Google's and other car companies' [2]. The author says Tesla is being defensive and resistant to public critique. Other companies expect pushback from the public and incorporate that into their product offerings. [1] https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ [2] http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-c...
    • schiffern 10y ago
      >Google's self driving car group gives some awesome transparency reports every month, including details about every accident Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have always been required by law to send autonomous vehicle accident reports to the DMV, which are made available to the public on the DMV's website. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/testing https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/testi... So the transparency itself is mandatory. Google merely chose to control the message and get free PR by publishing an abbreviated summary on their website too. Judging by this comment, it's working! For example, here's the full report on Google's accident in February, the first one where the autonomous car was the vehicle at fault: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52-8f80-b33948df34b2/Google+Auto+LLC+02.14.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52...
• lucb1e 10y ago
  What I don't understand is why Tesla doesn't whitelist roads where this feature can be used, since the manual sets very specific conditions. Especially given that the feature is currently enabled, they must know which roads work with high confidence values. Or assume they wanted to do the right thing from the start, and they don't have this dataset. It's not as if we don't have OpenStreetMap (or as if they couldn't buy a commercial dataset) in which you can easily filter out straight highways. With this it could probably even work without being attentive as a driver, which would be a killer feature over the current state of affairs (currently it has no benefits whatsoever, if you follow the instructions, which is why probably almost nobody does).
  • studentrob 10y ago
    > What I don't understand is why Tesla doesn't whitelist roads where this feature can be used, since the manual sets very specific conditions I think they want the data of drivers attempting to drive with autopilot on these roads. Tesla does, I've read, restrict how fast autopilot can drive on unapproved roads, so it appears they already have them mapped out. They're using customers as guinea pigs for their tech.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • kylec 10y ago
      Why not have Autopilot running and monitoring the sensors to learn the road, but not have it actually take control of the vehicle? Even if the driver is manually in control the Autopilot system could still be learning.
      • studentrob 10y ago
        Tesla may have begun by doing that. Recall that last October autopilot was introduced "over the air", so, customers who already had vehicles could use it immediately. Presumably, Tesla was collecting data up until that point. I imagine Tesla is generating more sales with a usable autopilot. It generated quite a bit of media hype and they are having trouble keeping up with production demands. So, Tesla chose to introduce this feature to increase sales and get more data on how drivers interact with the system. It seems excessively risky to me. I'm not building a self-driving system myself, nor running a huge company, so I can't say much about what it takes to do that. I can say I would not like to drive on the road next to a vehicle that can unexpectedly make the wheel turn, forcing its driver to be corrective at a moment's notice.
• a3n 10y ago
  I don't understand why Tesla is allowed to release a safety critical system on to the roads when it requires buyers to acknowledge its not-finishedness. They're putting beta systems into an uncontrolled environment. No driver in the nearby lanes has been given that choice.
  • meddlepal 10y ago
    This a thousand times. Why is this allowed? And then going the extra mile and calling it autopilot which has all kinds of connotations about not needing to give a fuck about what the vehicle does. Bad bad bad. Recall and remove the feature until it's ready for actual use. Don't put everyone else on the road at risk so you can beta test.
    • mevile 10y ago
      It's already something other cars on the roads have. Tesla just did it on the cheap and Tesla gets more press because it's not a 100 year old car company and its founder is Elon Musk.
      • studentrob 10y ago
        Other cars require hands on the wheel at more frequent rates, as I understand it. There's no conspiracy. Everyone wants a good product out of Tesla. Sometimes that means additional pressure. 100 year old car companies have experienced plenty of pressure, and these days they anticipate the pushback. The difference between the companies is not how the press treats them, but how they handle and respond to adverse events. This article says it better [1] > At Ford Motor Company, executives told me about all the pushback they received when they introduced features we now view as standard. People resisted and feared seat belts, airbags, automatic transmission, automatic steering, antilock brakes, automatic brakes, and trailer backup assist. Ford does extensive focus groups on new features that push boundaries, holding off on introducing ones that too many people don’t understand. > Tesla doesn’t operate that way. When the company’s Autopilot software, which combines lane-keeping technology with traffic-aware cruise control, was ready last Fall, Tesla pushed it out to its customers overnight in a software update. Suddenly, Tesla cars could steer and drive themselves. The feature lives in a legal gray area. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-c...
• Animats 10y ago
  With three accidents on "autopilot" in a short period, the defects in Tesla's design are becoming clear. 1. Tesla's "hands on wheel" enforcement is much weaker than their competitors. BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes have similar systems, but after a few seconds of hands-off-wheel, the vehicle will start to slow. Tesla allows minutes of hands-off time; one customer reports driving 50 miles without touching the wheel. Tesla is operating in what I've called the "deadly valley" - enough automation that the driver can zone out, but not enough to stay out of trouble. The fundamental assumption that the driver can take over in an emergency may be bogus. Google's head of automatic driving recently announced that they tested with 140 drivers and rejected semi-automatic driving as unsafe. It takes seconds, not milliseconds, for the driver to recover situational awareness and take over. 2. Tesla's sensor suite is inadequate. They have one radar, at bumper height, one camera at windshield-top height, and some sonar sensors useful only during parking. Google's latest self-driving car has five 3D LIDAR scanners, plus radars and cameras. Volvo has multiple radars, one at windshield height, plus vision. A high-mounted radar would have prevented the collision with the semitrailer, and also would have prevented the parking accident where a Tesla in auto park hit beams projecting beyond the back of a truck. Tesla is getting depth from motion vision, which is cheap but flaky. It cannot range a uniform surface. 3. Tesla's autopilot behavior after a crash is terrible. It doesn't stop. In the semitrailer crash, the vehicle continued under power for several hundred feet after sheering off the top of the Tesla driving under the semitrailer. Only when it hit a telephone pole did the car stop. The Pennsylvania Turnpike crash is disturbing, because it's the case the "autopilot" is supposed to handle - divided limited-access highway under good conditions. The vehicle hit a guard rail on the side of the road. That may have been an system failure. Too soon to tell. The NTSB, the air crash investigation people, have a team investigating Tesla. They're not an enforcement agency; they do intensive technical analysis. Tesla's design decisions are about to go under the microscope used on air crashes. Tesla's spin control is backfiring. They tried to blame the driver. They're being sued by the family of the dead driver, and being investigated by the NHTSA (the recall people), and the NTSB. In comparison, when a Google self-driving car bumped a bus at 2mph, Google admitted fault, took the blame, and Urmson gave a talk at SXSW showing the data from the sensors and discussing how the self-driving car misjudged the likely behavior of the bus.
  • 10y ago
• meddlepal 10y ago
  Tesla needs (or is going to be forced) to issue a recall soon. Putting "beta" technology in a car isn't OK when it puts drivers and others on the road in danger. This is especially problematic because people have a preconceived notion of what "auto pilot" means and just because Tesla says it's not ready for prime time so therefore you should "keep your hands on the wheel" doesn't make it OK to put into production.
  • michaelmcmillan 10y ago
    I thought the entire autopilot could be replaced with an over-the-air software update?
    • NEDM64 10y ago
      Yeah, Tesla make sure that OTA is applied in every car.
    • _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
      See the comments above, if the sensor suite is insufficient, over-the-air software updates won't help.
      • azernik 10y ago
        But OTA updates can disable the feature, which is the essential safety response right now. Even if they wanted to recall and add sensors, I don't think that would make this system safe enough - the bigger issue is the human factor involved in a not-quite-good-enough autonomous vehicle.
        • _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
          With the PS/Linux decision, not sure they can just 'disable' the feature.
          • azernik 10y ago
• dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20, no pun intended. Why was this shipped at all? I mean the self-driving features. This has now done way too much long-term damage and impacted all self-driving initiatives across the board. Just like they opened up their patents to benefit everyone everywhere by ushering the age of low/zero-emission vehicles they should have done the same for the self-driving features. This should have baked in the lab for another 3-5 years.
• dimino 10y ago
  What the hell is happening in this comment thread? Do we not all realize that, per-mile-driven, Tesla's auto pilot is much safer than human driving? I thought we were prepared to deal with the inevitable crashes, but based on the chicken littles here, maybe I was wrong.
  • rhino369 10y ago
    But is it safer than the BMW system that does the exact same thing? I also seriously doubt it's much safer than driving a normal car in the same situation. Musk threw out a bullshit comparison with general vehicle fatality stats. But Autopilot is used in a situation that's safer than average travel--highway driving in good weather. Most deaths happen at intersections--not highway.
  • studentrob 10y ago
    > Do we not all realize that, per-mile-driven, Tesla's auto pilot is much safer than human driving? Good question. It's not safer. Tesla's quoted statistic of one death per 94 million miles driven in the US is not as useful as it could be. That includes motorcycle deaths and roads and conditions in which the Tesla AP is not likely to be engaged. When you limit it to divided roads, the rate is more like 1 death per 150 million miles driven [1], which makes the Tesla less safe than your average American vehicle, and that still includes motorcycles. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_tesla_appears_surprised_over_criticism_of/d59eazl https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_te...
    • phaemon 10y ago
      > Good question. It's not safer. I think it is. Given the number of Autopilot miles driven, you'd only expect one death so far, so that we have one doesn't really tell us anything. However, injuries from car crashes are (fortunately!) much more common - roughly 60 times as likely. So you'd expect to have about 60 Autopilot incidents resulting in injury by now. I don't really keep up with Tesla news but, based on the reaction to this story (where the guy wasn't even injured), I'm going to assume the actual number of injuries is tiny. What do you think?
• dllthomas 10y ago
  http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/2012/07/29 http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/2012/07/29
• tmptmp 10y ago
  It's sad. I am a big fan of Tesla and had/still have very high hopes from them, but it's decreasing. It seems Tesla is hell-bent on committing suicide. This way, they don't need the fossil-fuel car lobby to destroy them. The BMW, Volkswgen and the likes of dirty-gas-guzzlers-producers would be chuckling now. Why the hell are they so bullish on auto-pilot? I cannot see any sense in it. They must just concentrate more on the battery, charging-stations and efficiency/performance part of the equation. Instead, I am seeing more efforts are being thrown in not-so-relevant areas and that too aggressively. Semi-automatic auto-pilot is the idea rejected even by Google. Tesla should learn fast and get back to its core business: battery powered electric cars, period and not the battery powered automatic electric cars. I'd be happy if they prove this wrong. edit: many typos and grammatical mistakes, sorry.
  • _pmf_ 10y ago
    > It seems Tesla is hell-bent on committing suicide. It's unfathomable why they don't just concentrate on their core competency (EV technology) and keep their AI experiments in R&D (where they belong).
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  • gutnor 10y ago
    It really fits well with their image of an agile tech company producing car from the future. Also they need those software upgrade as it buys them some time to focus on new car model rather than replacing existing one. Tesla is still a tiny player in the car business and at some point a big brand will enter its market in force. They need to be bullish to maintain their image. That said, their PR has always been overreactive. Remember all the dirt they thrown at people reviewing their car. Or how they came hard on people with their burning Tesla. Those were unnecessary "dickish". If Tesla has some actual blame to take, the tone set by their PR people is going to seriously backfire.
  • kuschku 10y ago
    > The BMW, Volkswgen and the likes of dirty-gas-guzzlers-producers would be chuckling now. Funnily, all of those are investing heavily in automated electric cars already, or even have products for semi-automated electric cars on the market. Just less hype around those. If Tesla just continues, they'll be dead in a year, and Volkswagen, which also got further encouraged by the EPA to develop electric cars, will just take over their market share.
• hop 10y ago
  I think lawsuits and government intervention will kill self driving cars for the next decade or two. Even if autonoumous are 10x better, thats still hundreds of deaths per year that will be attributed to a half dozen autonomous car maker's software.
  • studentrob 10y ago
    Tesla's not the only one at this. Google still has a good program that nobody seems upset about.
• _ph_ 10y ago
  Tesla should contact the design team which creates the manuals for Ikea to create a purely graphical "owners manual" clearly describing what the autopilot can and cannot do. Admittedly, a lot of the Tesla marketing seems to indicate otherwise, but the autopilot is just a very sophisticated lane and distance/speed assistant. It seems to handle the typical freeway very well, but does not promise to handle most other driving situation. For example, it does not handle any crossing traffic, nor stationary obstacles as well as debris on the road. Off the freeway it is entirely the responsibility of the driver to keep the car safe, the autopilot cannot (by design) handle most of the situations. The discussion of having the hands on the wheel is a bit a red herring. Having the hands on the wheel limits the amount of distracting things you can do while driving, but the key point is paying attention to what is going on. Hands off on an empty highway, why not? But when a truck appears on the horizon with some potential to cross - better be prepared to take action. The same applies to small country roads, and especially when the autopilot starts to warn the driver.
• raverbashing 10y ago
  "It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder," Shope told CNNMoney. The driver told Shope the car was in Autopilot mode, traveling between 55 and 60 mph" Wow, really? This is not the Autosteer's fault, it's pure negligence
  • awestroke 10y ago
    Also, the car told the driver to take back control of the vehicle, which the driver ignored. People with no respect for the danger of driving are going to get hurt, with or without driver assist technology.
    • BillinghamJ 10y ago
      Then it should gradually and slowly come to a stop.
      • Angostura 10y ago
        With hazard flashers going etc.
      • lsaferite 10y ago
        Stopping in 'a winding canyon with no shoulder' seems like a colossally bad idea. Mind you, trusting the badly named autopilot in this situation seems like an even worse idea. Especially if you consider the recent death that EVER Tesla drive must know about at this point. To then overconfidently trust the AP in an already dangerous environment for a human drive seems crazy.
        • FireBeyond 10y ago
          Right, as you say, the only worse thing than coming to a stop is saying "Screw it, might as well give it a try and keep going!".
  • npizzolato 10y ago
    If the autopilot couldn't safely handle going 55-60mph, it should have slowed down to speeds that it could handle. If it couldn't safely handle those conditions, it should have safely slowed to a stop. Failing ungracefully is completely autopilot's (and Tesla's) fault.
• NamTaf 10y ago
  This is going to keep happening until Tesla change their approach from a move-fast-and-break-things startup philosophy to sound engineering one that puts safety in design front-and-centre. Traditional real-world enigneers have been drilled in this for longer than living memory. When the software guys decide to bring their software appraoches to the real world, this is what happens. From 12 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12013713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12013713
  • dayaz36 10y ago
    You do know Tesla has the highest safety rating of any car ever rated in history right? https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-safety-rating-any-car-ever-tested https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best...
    • kalleboo 10y ago
      In 2013. These days there are higher rated cars in Euro NCAP. These ratings also don't test the assist features in-depth.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • mattlondon 10y ago
      Er - that is wrong. 2014 Model S got 5-star/82%[0] (where 100% is best) adult occupant protection on EuroNCAP. For comparison, the smaller, lighter, cheaper 2015 Honda Jazz got 5-star/93%[1] Other cars are significantly better than this [2]. E.g. 2016 Alfa Romeo Giulia 5-star/98%, 2016 Toyota Prius 5-star/92%, 2015 Volvo XC90 5-star/97%, 2014 Porsche Macan 5-star/88%. I could go on, but the Model S is not the safest car ever tested - it has approximately the same level of crashworthiess as the 2014 Smart Fortwo (4-star/82%) [3] according to EuroNCAP when looking at adult occupant safety. Cars have come a long way in the past decade or two though - its amazing to see "small" cars like the Jazz where they dont even get a cracked windscreen when basically driving into a wall at 40mph. For comparison check out the 2000 Citroen Saxo fold up like a tin can... http://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ratings/en/results/citro%C3%ABn/saxo/15511 http://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-rat... [0] - http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 [1] - http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/honda/jazz/21484 http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/honda/jazz/21484 [2] - http://www.euroncap.com/ http://www.euroncap.com/ [3] - http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/smart/fortwo/7894 http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/smart/fortwo/7894
• agumonkey 10y ago
  Musk is losing its mind. Blaming the user won't work long with life critical systems. Unless he expects backing from the NRA, putting complex and dangerous devices that can't escape dangers themselves in the hands of the average joe will create incidents. And even if he's legally not to blame I don't think he's gonna sale cars long with such images in the public mind. I hope he's not putting too much hubrys in the AutoPilot thing and try to enforce it at any cost. Soon there'll be so many corner cases, AP will only "best used while parked with nobody inside nor outside the car, preferably with engine stopped too". The reason I liked Tesla/Musk before is that he pushed quality and safety Unconditionally. I'm starting to think it was mostly nerd honeymoon phase. Either revamp the logic (sensors-recall and software) or disable it.
• jacquesm 10y ago
  Tesla is trying to solve too many problems at once. That's a risky strategy.
• seesomesense 10y ago
  What I find just as disturbing is the highly conflicted M&A scam he is running using SolarCity. The SolarCity scam exposes him as a dishonest scamster.
  • studentrob 10y ago
    That one is crazy. No way that goes through. His job as CEO of SolarCity is to shop around for the best price from other acquirers. Michael Dell did this when he combined two of his companies and still got fined for it. Maybe I'm drinking the Fortune coolaid. Their article seemed logical to me [1] [1] http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/
• ben_jones 10y ago
  Ironically Tesla, a company willing to invest long-term in its products, chose short term revenue in the form of their Marketing team boasting of "autopilot" in their vehicles, in exchange for violating long-term public trust and responsibility.
• c0g 10y ago
  If your design fails one user, blame the user. If it keeps failing, blame the design.
• electic 10y ago
  The most glaring flaw here is the name - Autopilot. It gives the driver the impression this is a true self-driving system. I have seen videos of people sleeping in their Tesla while Autopilot is engaged. A more appropriate name might be "co-pilot"
  • kirkbauer 10y ago
    I can see how the name could be misleading to some people. However, I think the term is quite accurate. In an aircraft, Autopilot takes care of the basics of flying the plane while the pilot is fully responsible for what is happening, watching out for traffic, and ready to take over if necessary. This is exactly what it means for Tesla as well. In any case, as somebody who has used it off and on for 6 months in all kinds of situations it is clear that it has limitations but it is also easy to know when to be worried. Its best use is in stop-and-go freeway traffic. Its worse use is on smaller curvy surface streets. It is also really nice for distance driving on freeways.
• pluma 10y ago
  > "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel," said Tesla. "He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway." This is the real danger of autopilot: not that it is unreliable but that humans are lazy and don't think rare events (like dangerous situations that result in a crash without intervention) don't happen to them. I'm not sure autopilot is a good middle ground between assistance and full automation exactly because of what these accidents show. It basically makes the typical ride so uneventful and mind-numbingly boring drivers stop paying attention and become unable to react appropriately when a dangerous situation does occur. Cruise control had similar problems: it reduces speeding-related accidents (because drivers are less likely to micro-optimize their speed) but it increases the risk of rear-ending because drivers don't have to stay as alert for the majority of the driving (and then miss those situations in which they need to react quickly). Humans are not good at staying attentive for extended periods of timing, especially when nothing ever happens. Self-driving cars can fix this by removing the need for human intervention, but autopilot seems like one of those technologies that should be safer in theory but ultimately fails to consider the human factor.
• freyir 10y ago
  Autonomous vehicles will require engineering that's more like NASA and less like weekend hackathon. Given Musk's association with SpaceX, I was hopeful we'd get the former, but it's starting to look like an autopilot solution was released half-baked. The current SV engineering climate -- youth beats experience, move fast and break things, release early and often -- works great for photo sharing apps but not great when lives are at stake.
  • tdaltonc 10y ago
    Actually I think SpaceX and NASA do think quite differently about things. NASA has to engineer toward maintaining their national mandate. Every launch is a PR game targeting the American public and congress. SpaceX instead has to worry about keeping customers happy. I think SpaceX has a simpler job there. Sourcing, manufacturing, deployment, insurance, etc. all seem simpler for a private company. They're shown that they're not shy about breaking their toys once the customers payload is off if they think they have a good chance of learning something. SpaceX hasn't had people in their vehicles yet. Maybe they're be more careful when they do. Or maybe not. I can't find the quote right now but I think it was Sagan who said that part of what makes exploration so captivating is that it is dangerous, maybe we shouldn't make safety the number one priority because it might slacken our awe.
• dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  Can someone who has a Tesla answer this for me: Does the autopilot routinely alert for short duration events where it's confused but the situation passes quickly and it's not a problem or is there a very low false positive rate and an alert is pretty much a guarantee that you'll need to take over? Basically, does the system train you to ignore most alerts because of a high false positive ratio?
• obj-g 10y ago
  I just really don't understand the whole self-driving car craze. What is so attractive about it? Why do people want it so badly? Personally, I like driving, rarely even use cruise control. I would never fully trust these auto-pilots. Ever. So what's the point? If I can't crawl into the backseat and take a nap and wake up at my destination, then what's the use?
  • madshiva 10y ago
    Because there's driving and driving. I like driving too but when you are on the highway there's nothing rewarding, it's not driving if you only drive straight. The future is to lean back and do nothing like the google car. Or Little train in road.
  • gajjanag 10y ago
    I agree with these sentiments, but for slightly different reasons. One of the main selling points is that commuters can save time (the focus on self driving cars, not trucks/rail). However, long commutes are mostly a constraint imposed by suburban sprawl and associated planning failures. The same applies to automated delivery mechanisms from shops, again of limited use in sufficiently dense communities. In such a scenario, this feels a lot like optimizing 1% of execution time in a program. For large scale transport of goods or people, the same situation applies for the economics - the labor of the driver should be a small fraction of the operating costs. There could be some safety benefits, but this remains uncertain. I found https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-28/cars-will-drive-themselves-before-freight-trains-do https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-28/cars-will... quite interesting in this respect. Seeing what happened with the invention of the automobile, I won't be surprised if self driving cars become the norm somehow. In the most extreme case there might be an outright ban on non autonomous cars at some point in the future. This is something I certainly don't look forward to.
• antaviana 10y ago
  Looking at the recent crash reports (driver watching Harry Potter, driver refusing to take over in winding road), it seems that it is just a matter of time for a news headline about a Tesla crash report with nobody on the front seats and a couple making out on the back seats.
• iask 10y ago
  IMHO, autopilot means "vehicle drives by itself without my involvement"...it's not autopilot if my hands have to be on the wheel. It seems that this technology is Cruise Control v2. Having the hands on the wheel only gives the car manufacturers leverage in denying there is any problem on their end.
• eorge_g 10y ago
  Tesla is getting hundreds of millions of miles logged for R&D on their autopilot feature. It makes a lot sense business wise to launch this tech when they did. It's clear from their PR response with the semi-truck accident that they see fatalities as an acceptable consequence as long as they can say they have fewer accidents per mile than 'un-assisted' drivers. The question is: do we share their belief that this is ethical?
• kelvin0 10y ago
  Being carless with Autopilot on Tesla qualifies one for a Darwin award, right?
• ilamont 10y ago
  "It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder," Shope told CNNMoney. The driver told Shope the car was in Autopilot mode, traveling between 55 and 60 mph when it veered to the right and hit a series of wooden stakes on the side of the road. Thank goodness no one was hurt. But I have to ask, what was the driver thinking? Autopilot late at night on a winding mountain road with no shoulder? A question for Tesla: Why isn't Autopilot disabled when it detects dangerous conditions? TFA said it alerted the driver to put hands on wheel. If there is no response, what is the protocol? At what point will the vehicle attempt to pull over and stop (for instance, in the event of a medical emergency or conditions are simply too dangerous)?
• chadlavi 10y ago
  "It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder" Doesn't sound like the recommended use case for autopilot? I thought you were only supposed to use it on a limited-access throughway? Anyway, good to hear no one died this time, but both of these accidents do sound like there's a lot of user culpability involved. It seems like it would be reasonable on Tesla's end, since all Teslas know where they are, to limit autopilot to only roadways where it is reasonable to use it.
• rayiner 10y ago
  For folks apologizing for Tesla: people ignore instructions and prompts from their computers or gadgets. That's not driver fault: it's a part of the design problem that engineers have to deal with. As an engineer, you take the world as you find it. I had a professor in college who specialized in airplane cockpit design. Her philosophy was that everything is a design failure. If the pilot pushes the wrong button, the design must be fixed to keep that from happening. It would seem to me that principle applies with even more force when we're talking about consumer products operated by random people rather than trained pilots.
• jaimex2 10y ago
  I think the next software update needs to place limitations on where auto pilot can be deployed. Heck, mine the data from streetview and disable activation on roads where it can't work 100%
• 3pt14159 10y ago
  The real issue is whether or not "Autopilot" is safer than a human or not. If the number of deaths for similar road conditions per distance travelled are less then Tesla should be allowed to continue the way that they are doing things. It's obvious to me the way other systems do this (by slowing down if the user doesn't put his or her hands on the wheel frequently) leads to people not using the feature because it is less useful which may, paradoxically, leads people to have a worse driver at the wheel. Just the stats, ma'am. Are they safer or not? If so, then it's fine by me. What we gain from self-driving cars in terms of real world usage data is extremely valuable.
  • wepple 10y ago
    instead of aiming for "the same number or slightly less" accidents than a human, why not have humans give oversight to prevent autopilot errors, and autopilot assist where humans might make a mistake? actually try to let both computers and people excel where they do best, and massively decrease road accidents?
    • tdaltonc 10y ago
      That sounds good to. I think 3pt14159's implicit question was, "should Tesla be allowed to continue doing this the way they want?" not "Is tesla take the best of all possible approaches to car automation?"
• hanklazard 10y ago
  The autopilot feature seems like one that should be taken through rigorous testing approved by the appropriate regulatory structure before being allowed out on the roads. The fact that Tesla has been able to simply update firmware to include this experimental new feature on their vehicles as they please feels very "wild west" and as much as I don't tend to prefer regulation, this feels like the proper place for it. By the way, this has been my feeling on the matter before any autopilot crashes were reported.
  • eatporktoo 10y ago
    The real problem is, how do you actually design a test that will catch these issues. If you have 3 crashes in millions of miles, you are pretty unlikely to find those errors during testing. I wish Tesla was more open about the way the actually test their Autopilot software.
    • danso 10y ago
      While automated driving is a relatively new field, the science and data of traffic conditions and accidents is quite deep. You don't have to blindly wait until your beta users get into accidents. In the case of the first fatality, how is it possible that Tesla engineers were unaware of a situation in which a lightly-colored vehicle might show up on days in which the sky is bright? Of course they were aware of that situation. They chose to deprioritize that to reduce the incidence of false positives that came from overhead highway signs. Nothing wrong with attempting to squash false positives, which can lead to deadly situations themselves. But there was nothing preventing Tesla from doing adequate testing to determine what unintended consequences their software modifications would entail. They don't have to wait for someone to get decapitated to realize that there's a trade off in reducing false positives from overhead signs.
• andrewclunn 10y ago
  What the hell is there to hit in Montana?
• noonespecial 10y ago
  This feels like the beginning of air travel again. Each new rule and system update has a tombstone behind it.
• Fej 10y ago
  When is Tesla going to stop blaming the drivers? Whether it's their fault or not, it looks bad. To be honest I don't feel comfortable with that kind of data collection anyway. I'll never even think about getting a Tesla until they give us an option to turn their tracking systems off. It's creepy and unnecessary.