8 ms·
Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway
- rootusrootus 9y agoI wonder if it is imprudent to create too many vehicles that have partial self-driving capability before we have ones that can do 100% of it. Instead of to the point where you can take your attention away from the road, but not to the point where it can reliably avoid accidents on your behalf. Too many people aren't wise enough to use the partial autonomous technology without abusing it.
- aphextron 9y agoI have a feeling Tesla knew this and didn't care. The marketing value of "Autopilot" is too great.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sathackr 9y agoAirbags save lives. Airbags also kill babies if used incorrectly. There are warning placards in several places in your car saying such. Sometimes an airbag can cause more injury than the accident. A seatbelt may trap you in a sinking car. But overall, airbags and seatbelts have significantly reduced traffic injuries and fatalities. Autopilot saves lives. Autopilot used incorrectly can kill people. But overall, Autopilot has significantly reduced the number of accidents involving Teslas. So do we take airbags away because using them incorrectly might hurt a child? Are they a safety feature or marketing value?
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago>Autopilot saves lives. There is no evidence of this.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoNHTSA says it does (autopilot reduced crash rates by 40%). http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-statistics-report-nhtsa/amp/ http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoThis is a common misinterpretation. The data only shows that TACC + Autosteer reduced crashes by 40% vs TACC alone. There is no comparison to complete driver control.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 9y agoTesla’s data shows autopilot (TACC + Autosteer) to be 50% safer than human driver control. While I have yet to see an independent study verifying that, the evidence is compelling. Humans are terrible drivers. Time will tell as they ramp production.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoWhere does Tesla's data show TACC + Autosteer to be 50% safer than human driver control?
- toomuchtodo 9y agohttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/25/elon-musk-teslas-autopilot-makes-accidents-50pc-less-likely/amp/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/25/elon-musk-t... > "The probability of having an accident is 50 per cent lower if you have Autopilot on," said Musk, speaking at an energy conference in Oslo, Norway. "Even with our first version, it's almost twice as good as a person." > The results are from Tesla's first generation of Autopilot, which owners have already used to drive over 47 million miles since it launched in October 2015.
- steve_adams_86 9y ago> Autopilot used incorrectly can kill people. Sorry, I don't get it. How do you use something incorrectly when by definition you aren't really using it at all? It seems like an oxymoron.
- kelnos 9y agoUsing Autopilot while not being alert and engaged would be "using it incorrectly".
- c0nducktr 9y agoMaybe they could take some ideas from the rail industry, which have been dealing with this issue for quite some time now. Engineers are required to to make some kind of input to verify that they're still alert, or the train stops[1] if they haven't done anything in X seconds. Obviously you wouldn't want the car to just stop in the middle of the road, but there could be something like that designed. [1] https://www.quora.com/If-a-train-driver-falls-asleep-what-happens-to-the-train https://www.quora.com/If-a-train-driver-falls-asleep-what-ha...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kg5key 9y agoTesla does have a sensor in the wheel that "feels" for resistance on the wheel. In my experience, it's more than sensitive enough to be able to detect a hand being on the wheel, but is easily defeated by idiots. I'd imagine Tesla wasn't thinking about how the driver alertness feature could be countered unfortunately. Perhaps we'll see Tesla adapting the eye tracking tech that Cadillac Hypercruise is using. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/
- Zombieball 9y agoNever knew about the Cadillac. Very cool, thanks for calling it out. I wonder how to truly tell if a driver is attentive? The Cadillac indicates it uses head tracking technology. I wonder if that is sufficient? Seems you probably need even eye-tracking: an attentive driver keeps looking around or something.
- jcranmer 9y agoAll smart-assist cars are required to sense if the drivers are actually maintaining their hands of the wheel. I don't know if they are to disengage or merely to annoy the user, but Tesla is notorious for skirting these regulations.
- deleted 9y ago
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoPeople have been safely and intelligently using cruise control for... decades? It is a partial automation solution that reduces half of what you have to manage when controlling the car (how fast you're going). I suspect the primary problem is not the partial autonomous technology, but the marketing which is convincing people they can trust it. Nobody ever told you your cruise control means you don't have to pay attention, so very few[1] incidents happen due to misuse of it. First and foremost, Tesla should never have been allowed to release "Autopilot" being called that. From the very name it provides a false impression of what it can do. [1]I know you can find one. Humans are remarkably stupid.
- WiseWeasel 9y agoIt seems like an apt name to me; it pilots your car automatically. The only detail omitted is how often it pilots you into plainly visible large objects at full speed. It's true that people may be in particular need of a refresher, since such features could be perceived as more than advanced cruise control. It should be strongly emphasized to all drivers that we need to take full control whenever we see any exceptional conditions, from hazards, obstructions, pedestrians or wildlife in or entering the road, to poor visibility, and even when passing or being passed by small vehicles.
- aardvark291 9y ago> "People have been safely and intelligently using cruise control for... decades?" More than half a century in mass-market automobiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control#History
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- greglindahl 9y agoSo, you're saying that Tesla is wrong, without even bothering to collect any data about whether or not Tesla owners are confused about the capabilities of the system?
- typicalbender 9y agoAs long as there is a human variable I severely doubt we will every get to a system that is 100%. The raw truth of it is to make a system that can do it close to 100% you need data. Tesla has chosen to put a semi-autonomous system into the hands of consumers in order to generate the massive amounts of data necessary to achieve full automation. Other companies have chosen to log a crazy amount of hours using technicians to generate the same set of data, both have and will continue to experienced crashes as they work toward making the system better. Tesla I think has done a fantastic job at striking a balance between getting something into the market the generate real-world data and mitigating the risks that come with it. If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe. I think I would be hard pressed to find any technological or mechanical innovation that did not initially involve risk or have an accident associated with it. I've seen more examples where a Autopilot has done the right thing and avoided an accident than I have read stories of it making a mistake and causing an accident.
- CPLX 9y ago> If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe. I believe your definition of keeping everyone safe differs from the common usage.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI believe parent is referring to the survivability of a 65 MPH head on crash into a heavy object.
- typicalbender 9y agoCorrect, "safe" was a poor choice of word. Alive and relatively unscathed according to the article is what I was going for. Thanks for the clarification.
- CPLX 9y agoIt's also the survivability of the things that are being hit by two ton "autonomous" objects at 65mph that are at issue here.
- wpietri 9y agoYeah, the quote about the NTSB on a similar accident is telling: "the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that Autopilot contributed to the crash by allowing lengthy disengagement from the driving process." In my view, driving is already boring enough that it's insufficiently attention-grabbing for safety's sake. That's why, e.g., the "naked streets" model is removing lane marking. Decreasing (false) certainty forces more cognitive engagement, making things safer: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/removal-road-markings-safer-fewer-accidents-drivers https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova... If anything, for the decades [1] while we're waiting for full automation, I'd like to see the equivalent of Threat Image Projection. It's the technology for luggage scanning where they put images of fake guns, bombs, etc in the images of real luggage. If the operator doesn't press the "threat" button they are alerted that they slipped up. It brings the frequency of important events up into the range where humans can pay attention. It'd be great to have the same thing for cars, so that AR images of deer, cyclists, children, and fire trucks appear; if you don't attempt to take evasive action, you lose points. [2] [1] E.g., iRobot founder Rodney Brooks says not before mid 2030s: http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/ http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/ [2] I am, of course, kidding.
- sp332 9y agoDidn't Tesla respond to the NTSB report by requiring much more frequent interaction?
- greglindahl 9y agoYes. This type of accident in Level 2 systems is never going to be zero.
- samstave 9y agoWould it not be better engineering to have the roads driving the cars, as opposed to having the cars drive the roads? If the roads had sensors in the "bots dotts" and would track and steer all the volume of traffic - isnt that better than all the infantile-AI-cars doing it?
- uniformlyrandom 9y agoDo you really think there will ever be a 100% driverless car? I find it highly unlikely. And the paradox is, the better self-driving cars get, the more trouble driver is in when they are forced to take over. Drivers will be lacking basic driving skill, and essentially will get stuck on snowy/gravel/flooded roads.
- cypherpunks01 9y agoSeems fairly impressive that nobody was killed. Will this turn out to be another "brightly lit sky" autopilot bug, like the 2016 semi truck incident? https://www.tesla.com/blog/tragic-loss https://www.tesla.com/blog/tragic-loss "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied"
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoWait, so is non (human-) visible wavelengths not part of the autopilot system?
- kuschku 9y agoTesla, to save money, is trying to build autopilot from regular video cameras in visible spectrum. EDIT: Some models still contain other sensors, but Musk has been trying to go with purely optical for a long time.
- jeffasinger 9y agoI really think they're going to have to consider using forward facing radar as well.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThey do. After the Florida crash, they lean even more heavily on the forward facing radar. https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...
- michael_storm 9y agoWhy is this person downvoted? That is a true, relevant, and dispassionate statement.
- Clanan 9y agoHow obvious is the data recording on a Tesla? There's always a chance an inattentive driver will blame the smart car.
- smt88 9y agoIt's pretty granular, almost like a flight recorder. They've defended themselves against similar claims before by publishing details from the car's logs.
- FireBeyond 9y agoYeah, though some of their defenses have been a little ... on the nose. "Autopilot was not active at the time of collision, according to logs"... because it was deactivated by hard manual braking a moment before, because Autopilot was about to cause a hard collision...
- michaelmior 9y ago> The California Highway Patrol and Culver City Fire Department confirmed the southbound Tesla had struck the fire truck, but could not immediately confirm whether the vehicle had been on Autopilot. It sounds like it's not 100% confirmed that Autopilot was at fault. The first sentence of the article also reads "reportedly on 'Autopilot'"
- justin66 9y agoWe'll know soon enough based on stored vehicle telemetry. Experience suggests that the right to privacy is the first thing to go in the event of a newsworthy crash in a Tesla.
- mortehu 9y ago> Experience suggests that the right to privacy is the first thing to go in the event of a newsworthy crash in a Tesla Isn't that usually because the owner lied about using Autopilot?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoThe more I think about it, the more I think that there should be an outward signal, such as a special light, that a car is in self-driving mode. We already require signals when changing lanes, reversing, and for electric cars to be audible at low speeds (starting in 2019). Those nearby shouldn’t have to guess if a car is under computer control.
- SheinhardtWigCo 9y agoWhat do you think human drivers should do differently when driving near a car that is under computer control?
- 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoYou know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the government to step in and force Tesla to market their product more honestly.
- jsight 9y agoTo be honest, I've only really heard this misunderstanding from non-owners. The really scary ones are the ones that own it, know about the limitations, and intentionally bypass the safeguards.
- hexane360 9y agoI don't disagree, but I honestly have not really heard much from owners. Definitely not nearly enough to call it a representative sample.
- greglindahl 9y agoInstead of your personal experience, how about data? https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-understand-that-autopilot-requires-driver-attention/ https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-unde...
- hexane360 9y agoOkay, again I'm not disagreeing with you, but those questions are about as leading as you can get. Ask a portion of the population "Did you know that meiosis is the process through which cells divide?" and you'll get a lot of yes's.
- jsight 9y agoI do not own one, but I am on the Tesla Reddit pretty regularly. It gets a regular stream of posts from people about how often it tries to deviate them into turn lanes or other unexpected behavior. To be clear, these are from people who really like the feature and find it useful, but they are really aware that it has to be watched just like if they were 100% manipulating the controls.
- imron 9y agoI guess it's not all bad news - a collision with a stationary object at 65mph and the driver was able to walk away > Because of the force of the impact, firefighters advised the Tesla driver that he should be taken for a medical evaluation, but he showed no significant injuries and refused treatment,
- justasitsounds 9y agoBets the driver was voluntarily impaired?
- taneq 9y agoAre you implying they may not have been sober? (Which is a fair guess if they can afford a Tesla but want to avoid a medical examination, I guess.)
- justasitsounds 9y agoThat is what I was implying - but people do act irrationally in the aftermath of a traumatic event like that
- vortico 9y agoThe driver was uninjured, and although his car (which most people on this forum love) appears to be totalled, why is this an interesting news story?
- inamberclad 9y agoLevel 2 autonomy is killer - literally. It's like no one there has see Children of the Magenta.
- NDizzle 9y agoYou know how stoplights are in tune with emergency vehicle flashing lights? I think the auto pilot systems need to get more in tune with those systems as well. An alert needs to fire when it detects an emergency. I've heard of people not turning off their cruise control when going through an accident area. Boneheads. This is no different - just involving the thing after cruise control.
- drtz 9y agoA Tesla slammed into the back of a stopped firetruck at 65mph and the driver walked away un-injured. Why am I not already driving a Tesla?
- FireBeyond 9y agoBecause most modern vehicles are made to the same crash safety standards and would likely have a similar outcome? The Tesla isn't magical, made of adamantium, or such. Not to sound overly snarky, but as someone who has been a firefighter / paramedic for the best part of a decade, I've certainly seen my fair share of MVAs up close.
- Doxin 9y agoIt however does have an impressive crash rating. Let's not pretend all modern cars are equal in crash safety.
- sp332 9y agoAs good as a Tesla is - and I'm not saying it's bad - there are other cars that are better this kind of thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/7s36dk/got_tboned_by_a_drunk_driver_in_an_suv_walked/dt1yxed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/7s36dk/got_tbo...
- spraak 9y agoJust the other day I was using the Tesloop [1] service from near LAX and the driver was praising the autopilot feature. I thought it was really neat at the time, but I would be much more hesitant about it now :/ [1] https://tesloop.com/ https://tesloop.com/
- jread 9y agoAs a current Tesla owner and frequent autopilot user I can attest to this being a scenario where autopilot has not worked for me - traveling at high speed and approaching a stopped vehicle from a distance. I now always take it off autopilot when this occurs because it will not brake in time.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoI'm actually surprised by this. Isn't this something which the numerous brake-assist systems are supposed to handle easily? The radar should see far enough and Doppler should tell the relative speed.
- nikkwong 9y agoFrom a technical perspective—why would Tesla not have taken more care to address this scenario? It seems like low hanging fruit in comparison to other challenges that autopilot has to be able to handle.
- jread 9y agoI’ve wondered this myself - it’s a great system and I’ve really enjoyed using it once I learned what it’s good for and the limitations, but this does seem like a glaring issue. My best guess based on the AP display, is that it doesn’t see the stopped vehicle out far enough to initiate braking.
- toast0 9y agoThey've previously said they detect stationary objects and purposefully ignore them. I think with the intention of not stopping for foliage or something.
- sf_rob 9y agoI get the impression that these incidents (if this is the case again) are due to Tesla being confident in their camera-based approach (with mid-range radar). Other manufacturers seem to be emphasizing hardware to a greater extend, with Audi even having lidar in the new A8.
- 9y ago
- js2 9y agoThis is the drivers's fault. But how the heck did both the driver and the autopilot not see a bright red truck in broad daylight?
- euske 9y agoI was thinking, is it possible to attach a weird control gizmo to your car and call it autopilot, and blame the device when it crashed? It is not allowed in Japan (where I live) because of the draconian vehicle inspection program, but I guess in some US states it is more liberal.
- CodeWriter23 9y agoOr as an excuse for driving drunk https://mobile.twitter.com/CHPSanFrancisco/status/954418933225762816 https://mobile.twitter.com/CHPSanFrancisco/status/9544189332...
- sosuke 9y ago"The California Highway Patrol and Culver City Fire Department confirmed the southbound Tesla had struck the fire truck, but could not immediately confirm whether the vehicle had been on Autopilot." So was it on autopilot or not.
- taneq 9y agoAs I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the automatic emergency braking (AEB) system is separate from the autosteer system on a Tesla. It seems to me that this kind of incident is a result of AEB failure, not of autosteer failure. I wonder how Tesla's AEB stacks up against similar systems on other vehicles? There are a lot of vehicles on the road now with automatic braking, but we don't see every single frontal collision on such cars reported as some kind of systemic failure.
- greglindahl 9y agoAEB doesn't prevent all accidents, a car can only brake so much.
- benfar 9y agoTesla's AEB likely triggers earlier than many others. See this example http://youtu.be/FadR7ETT_1k http://youtu.be/FadR7ETT_1k . The vehicles ahead were moving, but after http://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar http://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-r... was implemented in software 8.0, I believe the same was possible for already-stopped vehicles, too. We'll find out in the accident report, and perhaps directly from Tesla after they retrieve the vehicle's data.
- dreamcompiler 9y agoFirefighter here. This kind of collision happens all the time -- although it's usually a manually-driven car. This is why we park the BRT* behind the accident and we try to stay in front of the truck. A moving 4000-lb car is no match for a stationary 30,000-lb fire truck. *Big Red Truck
- greglindahl 9y agoYeah, it's pretty amazing how tough that truck is compared to the car.
- throwaway42312 9y agoThis is worrying. The Florida case was understandable. I fail to understand how a big red vehicle with flashing lights could've been missed by the Vision system of Tesla.
- manicdee 9y agoI take issue with people who insist on abrogating responsibility. The Tesla tells you to keeps your hands on the wheel. Pilot training covers techniques for avoiding automation dependency (aka letting autopilot kill you and all tour passengers). Perhaps we need the same for car drivers: if the car was as good a driver as you, it wouldn’t give you the option to drive. https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10 https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10
- ojosilva 9y agoTo me Tesla autopilot accidents are like airliner crashes: they lead to a safer system, one that in the future will avoid the same mistake again. Compare that to human-operated vehicles: we keep getting into the same accidents over and over. The fact that autopilot data gets sent back to the factory, is analyzed and results are fed back into the the production line is a game changer that will help Tesla keep ahead of the competition a while to come. Right now the rate and importance of autopilot system interations are an order of magnitude higher than other auto-safety evolution from the past.