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An Update on Last Week’s Accident

• nafizh 9y ago
  "The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision." Shouldn't you have more audible warnings than visual if you are aware that not complying will lead to an accident?
  • andrewprock 9y ago
    This feels particularly evasive. If you want to claim that your technology is 10x safer, you should be able to back that up with self-insurance, and not try to put the blame on the driver. If the autopilot does not think it is capable of driving safely, it should pull over to the shoulder of the road, not beep and flash.
    • 1123581321 9y ago
      It doesn't seem like pulling to the right would be safe in this situation. I think that automatically slowing down would be, though. Even slowing at a rate similar to a human letting their foot off the gas (to avoid unexpected behavior) would reduce the chance of fatality in a crash.
      • andrewprock 9y ago
        People pull over to the shoulder safely everyday. If an autopilot car cannot do this, it should not be on the road.
        • 1123581321 9y ago
          People do not pull over to the shoulder when they are between lanes in (presumably) busy traffic, which is where you have to be to hit a median. I am not sure if Tesla's current system, which is still just cruise control with steering, should ever be changing lanes unprompted. I don't have a Tesla but I would not want my car's cruise control to do that right now. I do think that pulling over in safe conditions is something that a self-driving system needs to be able to do at some point on the path to full autonomy.
        • jonhendry18 9y ago
          In this situation I think the lane to the right is not the shoulder. So in a situation where there are only seconds to respond to an obstacle, there might be cars blocking the Tesla on the right.
    • greglindahl 9y ago
      No one shipping a Level 2 system provides insurance for it. The definition of Level 2 is that the driver has responsibility.
      • eanzenberg 9y ago
        That's very troubling. If you saw the Uber crash cam on the driver it's obvious that the "responsible drivers" are completely non-responsive, on their phones, half asleep. A system that lulls the driver into a false sense of security does NOT pass responsibility to said driver.
        • URSpider94 9y ago
          Uber is testing a Level 4-5 system, those systems will need to be insured since they will not have a driver in the car.
    • jonhendry18 9y ago
      Speaking of insurance, but not self-insurance: I'm guessing that if I buy a Tesla with autopilot, I'm not going to find any insurers who will charge me discounted rates that reflect autopilot being 10x safer.
  • jijojv 9y ago
    This is a blatant excuse - you can gently hold the wheels ready to take over without applying pressure and their system will not detect it you don't firmly hold the wheels, which defeats the comfort of having bought "Autopilot" in the first place.
  • bladers 9y ago
    Actually the warning had nothing to do with the crash. if i drove on AP for 15 minutes and i was alerted to put my hands on the wheel 2 minutes in. It would fit tesla's specially crafted statement. making it look like user was warned and didn't respond by putting their hands on the wheel but like i previously said, its completely false.
    • ec109685 9y ago
      Letting auto pilot get to a point where it does the audible warning means the driver wasn’t paying attention.
• empath75 9y ago
  > Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents – such a standard would be impossible – but it makes them much less likely to occur. It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists. These kinds of unequivocal statements are just begging for a lawsuit, imo. They simply don't know that this is true.
  • mathgeek 9y ago
    Which part(s) are you referring to? There seem to be a few claims in there that could be provably false.
  • IncRnd 9y ago
    Exactly. They are taking both sides of the an argument to get credit but not take blame. They want credit for allegedly reducing crashes, but they don't want to be held responsible for driving into a wall.
    • duxup 9y ago
      Even if it was us... it probabbly wasn't!
      • IncRnd 9y ago
        Yes! That's what I said, when I forgot to say that.
  • 1123581321 9y ago
    Are you saying that the two paragraphs before this quote are inaccurate?
    • danso 9y ago
      Consider this graf: > In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. Let's put aside the consideration of how the average Tesla driver differs compared to the average American driver, or how the average mile driven by Autopilot differs compared to the average mile driven by all human drivers; I'm a little bit bothered by the language here: > If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware... > every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware... Why is the language "equipped with Autopilot hardware" used? Tesla isn't able to give an estimation of when Autopilot was equipped and engaged?
• cctt23 9y ago
  In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged... The rest may be true, may be germane, or may not be. The only part that matters to me until the results of the NTSB investigation is made public, is that the autopilot did this.
  • mathgeek 9y ago
    It's more about what the autopilot didn't do than what it did do. It did drive straight ahead into a concrete barrier. It didn't see the barrier. If it had seen the barrier (as is reasonable to expect), it wouldn't have driven into it. Thus what it didn't do caused what it did do.
  • dingaling 9y ago
    The fact that Tesla even made a press release of this nature disturbs & annoys me. When the NTSB is investigating an aircraft or train accident we don't see the vehicle manufacturer rushing out a "well we told him to take control" statement and a dump of telemetry. At most they state "we are of course working with the authorities to establish the cause and any corrective actions" until the investigation is completed. Tesla needs to mature from a blame-the-user software-industry mentality to something more befitting their responsibilities.
• andrewstuart2 9y ago
  Really not much additional info here aside from the number of warnings the driver had. Also, the standard "Tesla is 10x safer" metrics that get pulled out each time a crash gets sensationalized. What I think they fail to address, especially in this case, is that the autopilot did something a human driver who was paying attention would never do. Autopilot does a great job of saving people from things even a wary driver would miss, much less a negligent one, but the fatal accidents that occur in statistics are not from people who are fully watching the road missing the fact that there's a concrete barrier with yellow safety markings directly in their path, and hitting it head on for no good reason (e.g. evasive action because of another driver, etc, oh a stupid last-minute "oh crap that's my exit"). I want autopilot to succeed, and I want Tesla (and Musk) to succeed, and for the sake of their public image they have to realize that this isn't an average accident statistic, a lapse in attention or evasive maneuvering. It's a car that seemingly plowed right into a concrete barrier while still under complete control. That's not a mistake a healthy human will make.
  • hedora 9y ago
    > the autopilot did something a human driver who was paying attention would never do. Then how did the crushed barrier get crushed before the Tesla hit it? Clearly, the stretch of road is unsafe enough to trick humans drivers (and, clearly, Tesla should improve).
    • andrewstuart2 9y ago
      I'm obviously not privy to the details of the prior crash, but I'm pretty sure any healthy human would not deliberately drive into the barrier. The most likely scenarios I can think of would be not paying attention and drifting into the barrier, attempting to avoid a car merging into the lane (and not paying enough attention), or being struck by another car and being forced into the barrier.
      • greglindahl 9y ago
        At that particular point, what I see the most is people deciding that they either need to exit or not and abruptly crossing from one HOV lane to the other. Lots of crazy shit. So I'm not sure your scenarios have much relevance -- how many times have you driven through this intersection? I've been through it maybe a thousand times since it was built.
• hcnews 9y ago
  > In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. Would've loved to know the exact moments we are talking about here. Is it 5 seconds or 5 minutes? > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. What does this mean? Did Tesla want to give over control to driver? Or just normal no hands? > The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken. Again its hard to know if Tesla wanted to give up control or not. I hope they aren't just saying that because the driver's hands were off the steering wheel, the crash occurred and is his fault for not obeying the agreement.
  • jijojv 9y ago
    > I hope they aren't just saying that because the driver's hands were off the steering wheel, the crash occurred and is his fault for not obeying the agreement. That's exactly Tesla's official stance - if you crash you're SOL and at fault, Autopilot or Auto Emergency Braking be damned. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak-doesnt-believe-anything-elon-musk-or-tesla-say.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak-doesnt-... "Man you have got to be ready — it makes mistakes, it loses track of the lane lines. You have to be on your toes all the time," says Wozniak. "All Tesla did is say, 'It is beta so we are not responsible. It doesn't necessarily work, so you have to be in control.' "Well you that is kinda a cheap way out of it."
  • sp332 9y ago
    If you ignore it long enough, the autopilot will disengage entirely. The car will drive in a straight line and coast to a stop.
    • Cshelton 9y ago
      As a Tesla owner, this is not accurate wording. The car will very quickly decelerate until about 5 mph if you have the crawl feature on. I need to make a post, as a long time Tesla owner/very frequent autopilot user, because I think I know exactly what happened. Unfortunately I need to go to bed, already up later that I should be for tomorrow. A lot of information and comments I’ve seen about how it works and how autopilot is dangerous etc, are quite wrong. I think it’d be important for people to understand how it works from people who use it and get their opinions first before making statements about AP in general. For the record, I love using AP and will continue to do so. But it is no silver bullet, and 99.5% of Tesla owners know this and how to correctly use it.
• matte_black 9y ago
  Personally I would only use a self drive feature on the middle lanes of a highway if I was going to be distracted with something else, there’s too much bullshit going on at the edges for it to be safe.
  • octorian 9y ago
    As someone who drives this exact stretch of road every day, in a Tesla, I agree. This lane is the end of a long stretch of road with either zero or minimal shoulder, where even the slightest glitch could cause a scrape on the side of your car. I'm always paranoid driving this stretch. This concrete barrier is also quite a distance past where this left exit lane starts to separate from the rest of US-101, so there are really only two ways you'd risk hitting it. First, and probably most common, is people who change their minds last-second about taking that exit. Second, would be a serious AP screw-up (like what might have happened here). FWIW, I've never had AP engaged when driving through this spot, and almost instinctively disable it when taking a highway off-ramp/change-over.
• booblik 9y ago
  How much can we trust this data, provided by Tesla? Maybe the sensors that tell if the hands were on the wheel malfunctioned? Maybe he tried to restle the car into control? Would be helpful to have a video recording of the driver instead.
  • domevent 9y ago
    I would trust the data, because lying at this point could be criminal, or civilly significant. I wouldn’t trust all of the fluff and interpretation and hand-waving around the data though.
  • Gustomaximus 9y ago
    A level of skeptism is always healthy. Also recognise there are a endless 'maybes'. Anyone that works with data knows there has to be a level of trust and common sense otherwise you hit analysis paralysis. And on 'trust' Tesla have a history of being open and upfront. Organisations tend to repeat a culture. So for Uber I would closely question their statements given an ongoing history of unethical behaviour across many levels. It seems likely they will lie or show limited truth to reach an agenda. Tesla's history seems open and honest.
    • FireBeyond 9y ago
      Yeah, they've been open and upfront about things like the fact you can't maintain them yourself (they refuse to provide service manuals except where required by law in MA, where even then you pay a three digit fee to -view-, not get, a copy, and have to make an appointment). Or the fact that they will remotely downgrade your car (to an older software version) and remove features of it (disable ethernet ports) if they find you "snooping" and discover references to new models. Thats the kind of openness and honesty you laud them for?
• domevent 9y ago
  This is 100% anecdote: A friend of mine test drove a Tesla, and said that when he was in the far right lane on a highway, the autopilot would get a little sketchy at off ramps. It didn’t ever off or anything, he described it as “jiggling” like it wasn’t sure what do when the right lane marker disappeared. He found that less than inspiring, although he did find the acceleration intoxicating.
• bladers 9y ago
  very deceptively crafted sentence. if i drove on AP for 15 minutes and i was alerted to put my hands on the wheel 2 minutes in. It would fit tesla's specially crafted statement. It makes it look like user was warned and didn't respond by putting their hands on the wheel but its completely false. The AP drove him straight into the barrier with no warning.
  • jijojv 9y ago
    https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide... >very deceptively crafted sentence. >The AP drove him straight into the barrier with no warning. Exactly - anyone who owns autopilot knows this.
    • imh 9y ago
      It seems gross that they spend so much of this saying "yeah he died and it may be our fault, but statistically you're still better off as our customer." The atlantic had a relevant piece on the morality there this morning https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/got-99-problems-but-a-trolley-aint-one/556805/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/got-9... And that's assuming they can identify that autopilot is statistically safer. If autopilot isn't used in the same conditions as all human driving, the rates aren't apples to apples comparisons, and the "you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident" figure they imply is misleading.
      • eanzenberg 9y ago
        If that's literally the best case scenario, then that's pretty damn pitiful and a gross misleading of facts using statistics. It's a shame. Let's use "AP disengage" as the equating metric to human-caused crashes and see how it stacks up.
      • cma 9y ago
        They didn't even control for wealth. People that can afford a Tesla and the auto pilot add on are much less likely to be driving on drugs, alcohol, etc. It doesn't say anything about the statistics when auto-pilot is engaged, it just says cars with auto pilot. And it doesn't give the statistics for Teslas without auto-pilot (Teslas have other safety factors that might mean auto-pilot isn't responsible for the mortality reduction, etc.)
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• imh 9y ago
  >semiautonomous Autopilot Seems like an oxymoron that's getting drivers into danger. >Tesla said its vehicle logs show the driver’s hands weren’t detected on the wheel for six seconds before the collision, and he took no action despite having five seconds and about 500 feet of unobstructed view of a concrete highway divider. And it's not the first time.
  • userbinator 9y ago
    and he took no action despite having five seconds and about 500 feet of unobstructed view of a concrete highway divider. I suspect he may have been distracted or otherwise not paying direct attention, thinking "the car will drive itself, I know I need to watch it but I'll probably be fine if I don't watch it all the time"... and just happened to pick a very wrong time to not pay attention. ...and even when he did realise he was going to crash, there might've been a very strong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass effect which prevented him from quickly deciding which way to turn the wheel.
• tuna-piano 9y ago
  Their statement blames: -The driver -The crushed barrier -Statistics But they do not take responsibility themselves. It's apparent and in my opinion shameful. If Tesla's goal of this is to just share the facts, why didn't they state what AutoPilot did? In addition to statements like "...the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision.", wouldn't it make sense to have a statement like "AutoPilot seems to have made a grave error here, and steered the car into the barrier." They never admit that their car didn't perform properly. This reads like a carefully crafted, legal approved statement - not the more human statements that we see many times after tragedies. This absolutely lowers my opinion of Tesla by a decent amount. "We feel very bad about what happened... and want to take responsibility and do what's right" - A quote from the Walmart CEO after a Walmart truck accident injured Tracy Morgan and killed another man. I wish Tesla could stand up and say the same in this case (if the evidence points that way, which it appears to). https://www.cbsnews.com/video/walmart-ceo-on-tracy-morgan-car-accident-defends-companys-truck-drivers/ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/walmart-ceo-on-tracy-morgan-ca...
  • sp332 9y ago
    It was a median in the middle of the highway. The car probably continued in a straight line instead of "steering into" a barrier. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x
    • subinsebastien 9y ago
      Why the car was not able to detect and avoid the collision in such a simple situation (from a human POV)? We have seen Tesla's autopilot performing very well in a much more complex scenario than this. Ref:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FadR7ETT_1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FadR7ETT_1k
      • wcoenen 9y ago
        Stationary obstacles are a harder problem, because there are so many stationary objects and features around a road that have to be ignored. This autopilot incident is similar to the one with the tractor-trailer[1] in that regard. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-autopilot-death-self-driving-car-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-aut...
• sp332 9y ago
  I notice they don't mention that the driver complained that the autopilot had trouble with this specific spot on the highway a few times before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719736
  • sp332 9y ago
    Late edit: According to https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/tesla-says-autopilot-was-active-during-fatal-crash-in-mountain-view/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/tesla-says-autopilot-wa... Tesla has no record of his complaints.
• gonesilent 9y ago
  See also this interview. The driver said he had problems with auto pilot in same location. http://abc7news.com/automotive/exclusive-autopilot-part-of-tesla-crash-investigation-i-team-rides-in-model-x-to-site/3284757/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/exclusive-autopilot-part-of-t...
• bladers 9y ago
  I repeat. This is a very deceptively crafted sentence. if i drove on AP for 15 minutes and i was alerted to put my hands on the wheel 2 minutes in. It would fit tesla's specially crafted statement. It makes it look like user was warned and didn't respond by putting their hands on the wheel but its completely false. The AP drove him straight into the barrier with no warning. But this deceptive statement worked as Tesla carefully planned. look at Jalopink title "Tesla Says Autopilot Was On Before Fatal Model X Crash, But That Driver Didn’t Abide Warnings"
  • dang 9y ago
    Please don't post duplicate comments to HN. It lowers signal-noise ratio and makes it hard to merge threads.
• Proven 9y ago
  Tesla’s faith has been sealed. Bankruptcy in late 2018. > No one knows about the accidents that didn’t happen, only the ones that did. The same applies to jobs, and yet Obama’s “jobs saved” were cited as major accomplishment of QA. lol...
• RayVR 9y ago
  PLEASE stop comparing crash statistics for a car with MSRP $80-150k to the general population. Sample bias (among other basic problems) is such a basic consideration that Tesla ignoring it makes me sick. This company will do/say anything to manipulate public perception. People on HN should at least attempt to see through this rather than buying it because Tesla gives them the warm fuzzies. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601849/teslas-dubious-claims-about-autopilots-safety-record/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601849/teslas-dubious-cla...
• Tempest1981 9y ago
  The other factor is: At 9:30 am, the left lane (lane #2, that stays on 101) is usually packed. He may not have been able to merge in from the #1 lane (HOV-to-Hwy85-flyover lane) into that left lane. Especially if there was a big speed differential. Although 150 meters is plenty to stop in the median. (Do we know which lane he was in before hitting the divider?)
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• oldgradstudent 9y ago
  In keeping with the "Autopilot" terminology, this was "Controlled Flight info Terrain". Tesla demonstrates their usual abuse of statistics. 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles is the average across all types of terrain, conditions, and cars. The death rate in rural roads is much higher than in urban areas. The death rate on highways is much lower than average. The death rate with new cars is much lower than average. The autopilot will not engage in the most dangerous conditions. This alone will improve the fatality rate, even if the driver does all the work. Tesla cars are modern luxury cars. They appear to have done a great job building a well constructed, safe, car. This does not mean their autopilot is not dangerous.
  • packetized 9y ago
    for varying values of dangerous.
  • laingc 9y ago
    I completely agree; Tesla’s marketing modus operandi is to fudge statistics. In my view, they are consistently on the wrong side of the marketing puffery | misrepresentation borderline. I do take issue, however, with your claim that Teslas are “well constructed” - they are not. They are poorly designed, poorly constructed vehicles that feel and look cheap. Test one side by side with, say, a BMW 3-Series or a Volkswagen Golf and the difference in production quality will be palpably obvious.
    • NotSammyHagar 9y ago
      The author was talking about road safety from the cars rigorous construction. There seems to be little doubt about that non-subjective issue.
    • espadrine 9y ago
      I saw the argument that a traditional motor’s noise level hides rattling sounds and similar subtle car defects, which a fully-electric vehicle’s silence does not cover. (I haven’t seen scientific comparisons, though.)
• dzink 9y ago
  I have a lot of respect for Tesla, but this incident convinced me not to buy one any time soon. I have children with car seats. The fires that break out with battery right under the middle makes it impossible to save someone in the driver seat, let alone in the back. More importantly, self driving cars are not the same - Waymo has lidar, Tesla and Uber don’t (correct me if wrong). If a system is clearly struggling with the detection of still objects in the middle of a highway, on a sunny day, it cannot be trusted. If I ever bought a Tesla, I wouldn’t use autopilot unless their hardware proves reliable.
  • lostmsu 9y ago
    I thought fire started because rescue team cut someone out of the car.
    • userbinator 9y ago
      If you look at the pictures, I don't think much cutting was needed, and certainly any that might be would be nowhere near the batteries located beneath the car; the front end basically disintegrated completely from the impact.
  • ec109685 9y ago
    The fire started way after the crash.
  • disillusioned 9y ago
    Not quite. The battery pack actually has an aerogel like insulating layer above it in between the cabin and the pack to allow people time to exit, and ports the flames to the front and rear of the vehicle, rather than the sides for this exact reason. It will obviously eventually consume the whole vehicle, because lithium fires burn so hot, but they've done a lot to ameliorate this concern. I thought the driver in this case was removed _before_ the fire started.
  • TwoBit 9y ago
    I think you are mis-analyzing. Tesla fires are extremely rare, more so than gasoline fires. And the fires take much longer to occur.
• chaboud 9y ago
  "The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." This seems to be trying to suggest that the driver had 6 seconds of clear driving-toward-death time to correct for the car's actions without explicitly making such a ridiculous statement (while also throwing in the crushed crash attenuator). If the car makes a quick change in direction due to an autopilot error, a driver at speed would have very little time to make an effective correction. Depending on the system behavior, it could be akin to having a passenger reach over and yank the wheel. I'd honestly rather Tesla just said "ongoing investigation" instead of being so transparently evasive.
  • lozenge 9y ago
    They also said in their first post they would respect the family by not updating until the investigation was over. The investigation isn't over but here they are trying to manage their image with confusing and misleading partial information.
  • utnick 9y ago
    Yup this also mean that Tesla's radar and camera systems had 5 seconds to realize it was driving straight into an unmoving concrete barrier and did nothing...
    • Someone1234 9y ago
      What's really odd is, in my Subaru which has eyesight, if I drove straight towards that barrier the breaks would engage. Eyesight uses two visual cameras, about two feet apart, and uses the parallax between them to judge depth/distance (in the same way human eyesight judges depth). So even if Tesla's autopilot steered the vehicle towards that divider, shouldn't the auto-braking system have engaged to avert the accident? Tesla vehicles also have visual image cameras as well as radar based ones, so the information density is even higher than Subaru's system. I guess what I am getting at is: Is auto-braking disabled while autopilot is on? Wouldn't leaving auto-braking enabled (particularly using the visual cameras) offer a second layer of safety is autopilot made an error? I raised the same issue when a Tesla with autopilot on drove straight into the side of a truck and the driver was decapitated. The discussion was all about "well radar couldn't distinguish it from road signs!" while ignoring that a Tesla has visual (optical) cameras front and center.
• United857 9y ago
  The biggest failure here is Tesla's marketing department. Calling it autopilot implies full level 5 autonomous driving in the average person's mind. Very few will read the fine print. In reality, the current state of it is level 2 or so -- like an enhanced cruise control. You absolutely can't take your eyes off the road still which is what apparently happened here.
• newnewpdro 9y ago
  Wow, that's a disgusting amount of spin and statistical misuse. I had intended to buy TSLA after their next awful earnings call and hold it long, now I'm not sure I want anything to do with this business.
• riffic 9y ago
  Hey Tesla, traffic and vehicle safety advocates do not call crashes “accidents”. http://www.roadpeace.org/take-action/crash-not-accident/ http://www.roadpeace.org/take-action/crash-not-accident/ https://www.crashnotaccident.com https://www.crashnotaccident.com
  • FireBeyond 9y ago
    Yeah, when driving an emergency vehicle, in my case an ambulance and fire engine, you take a course that used to be called Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention. It's now called Emergency Vehicle -Incident- Prevention.
• houqp 9y ago
  The thing I don't understand is the driver has complained about AP not working on this same location multiple times in the past yet still kept the hands off the wheels for more than 5 seconds?
  • dlp211 9y ago
    We don't know that is what happened. Tesla is using weasel wording to confuse.
• meganibla 9y ago
  I’m not saying it happened here because I don’t know any details about the person but there could be something like suicide by Tesla People could purposely set their cars on collision courses
  • leggomylibro 9y ago
    Doesn't seem like a great idea. It would probably fall under the usual ~29/30 chance you wind up in the hospital with more problems instead of succeeding, and with all those lithium batteries you'd have a good chance of going out burning which I think most people would prefer to avoid. At that point, why not just drive off a cliff or find a tall building?
    • heavenlyblue 9y ago
      And besides, a car w/out an autopilot is probably easier to crash into a wall.
      • meganibla 9y ago
        But no headlines and no expensive crash investigation. Say you’re in the car business and you don’t like Tesla and say you want to find people who are suicidal or maybe have some kind of debt and you can help them as long as they help you. Their family will be taken care of as long as they crash their Tesla into a concrete divider. I’m definitely not saying that’s what happened here but possible to imagine this scenario. Hey even shorting the stock could make this worth someone’s while.
        • danso 9y ago
          He bought the Tesla after being recently hired as an Apple engineer. He had been living and working in the are for more than a decade: http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-victim-who-died-in-tesla-crash-had-complained-about-auto-pilot/3275600/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-victim-who-d...
• fwgwgwgch 9y ago
  I have a question- why keep ap on at all? Are they beta testing it and using metrics? Because I don't think it's the difference between someone buying a car and not.
• lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  I have two quite different takes on this and the recent Uber crash 1. Simply stop using automated driving in real world until we have clear golden standards (something like billions of hours of simulated driving against real world data collected by other systems makers sensors. The accidents so far have been characterised by "that should not have been possible, not that was really hard edge case" 2. Accident reports make horrific reading (and upsetting for families especially). But like reports in day the FAA, there are benefits - openly sharing crash data makes (ok should make - see 1.) the next round safer. secondly just reading these things makes the humans involved more ... aware. Some time ago i visited Ireland and was amazed to hear the local news announcing recent car deaths - it was a mandated thing, to try and raise awareness and reduce future accidents - it apperntly worked.
• simion314 9y ago
  I am wondering if 100 Tesla would have passed that spot at that time would all 100 hit the barrier? Tesla should reveal why they can't detect solid objects and hit into them.
• jVinc 9y ago
  I really hate the whole Tesla angle of "technically we are not lying but we know people are going to mis-remember and misrepresent what we are writing". Take for instance: > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive... What this means is that during this incident there were No visual or audible clues that a crash was about to happen What they are saying is that while he was driving there was an earlier point at which the car did not crash, where the car gave a visual and audible clues. And you have to ask? Why the hell is that relevant? It isn't. They are stating it as a fact because they know some people will incorrectly claim that the car warned the driver prior to the crash. With their eager to try to explain what happened why aren't they talking about what actually went wrong? Why did the car drive straight into a barrier. If their claim is that it was cased by the driver not having his hands on the wheel for 5 seconds, then they need to fold the company and give up trying to create self driving cars. That is Not acceptable of a self driving system. The fact that the barrier was damaged intensified the accident, but that does not in any way excuse their system driving straight into it. And no, you can't get out of culpability by claiming statistical superiority. That's like a gang-member drying to get out of jail after killing a rival gang member because his gang statistically kills fewer people. Tesla has put a product in the hands of consumers, when it kills those consumers they need to step up to the plate and be honest about their fuckups, not just blame the drivers, blame the infrastructure and point to statistics.
  • Rapzid 9y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty crafty PR. The CPC must be green with envy, while Uber is still ruing their reputation. Such a difference in conversation; so many people laying the blame squarely on the driver(he is ultimately the PIC tbh, but Tesla and particularly CalTrans messed up bad), however Uber is being raked through the coals when somebody literally walked in front of their car.. Just Say'n EDIT: While I believe Tesla and the driver are the ultimate source of the accident, I believe CalTrans messed up worse with that barrier. At least Tesla owns up to the limitations and warns drivers to stay in control, but why the hell was that barrier not replace d?! What systemic mediocracy is playing out there that they have road work signs with dates 3 years old on them, and a critical safety barrier is just missing with traffic flow as usual?!
• rkagerer 9y ago
  If the driver had "five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider", then didn't the car, too? I'm not disputing their statistics, but reading past the first two paragraphs of this article left a sour taste in my mouth. Feel like a better message ought to have been "we're going to learn from this, and won't stop improving until the crash rate is 0".
  • dlp211 9y ago
    You should dispute the use of statitics here. They make no attempt to control for various factors and compare apples to apples.
• bambax 9y ago
  > In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. This is incomplete and therefore, very misleading. One has to compare what's comparable: what is the sample size for each? That is, how many miles are driven by Tesla vehicles per year, versus how many miles total for all US vehicles on US roads? It seems, Tesla puts up around 3.2 billion miles/year, vs 3.2 trillion miles for all US vehicles; while the numbers are both big, that's a 1000x times difference, or 3 orders of magnitude. Tesla numbers seem to imply there are around 10 people killed per year using a Tesla or being hit by a Tesla (because 3.2 billion / 320 million = 10). So, if a Tesla with 5 people on board crashes into a wall this year, and kills everyone inside, that will represent a 50% increase in the fatality rate. And the phrase "3.7 times less likely" is also very misleading. People who drive Teslas usually wouldn't be driving dangerous vehicles (such as small, 4-door cars which are the deadliest), if they didn't have a Tesla. They would probably drive a German car (BMW, Audi, Mercedes) which are the safest cars in the US today. > There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. This is another level of nonsense entirely. "Worldwide"? A lot of things happen worldwide; in some countries there are more scooters than cars; in others, there are many very unsafe and poorly maintained country/dirt roads. The Tesla numbers are shady enough when limited to the US, but expanding them for a worldwide comparison is ludicrous.
• MaikuMori 9y ago
  Now that we're set on introducing more and more autopilot and autonomous vehicles why dont we add sensors and beacons to our infrastructure to make all these things easier. Nothing really has changed since traffic lights. It would help if barriers and construction obstacles would have beacons in them. This is not to replace cameras and radars but to help augment data whenever possible. I think there is an opportunity for governments to help solve autopilot and autonomous vehicle challanges.
• biktor_gj 9y ago
  I don't care about Tesla at all, not a fan boy or anything, but I don't understand all the blaming on Tesla for this accident. So, the guy had complained 'between 7 and 10 times' about Autopilot malfunctioning there, yet he kept on using it Autopilot disengaged before the crash, giving visual and audible alerts before turning off, yet he didn't take the wheel, so he probably was doing something else instead of keeping attention in a zone where he said the thing failed... How many times do they have to say that even if you're using AP you need to stay focused on the road? I'm sorry for the guy, but if you don't trust a system that's as critical as this you either don't use it or you're very cautious when using it.
  • lozenge 9y ago
    The article doesn't say when the visual and audible alerts happened, they could have been minutes previous on another stretch of road. I agree he should have disabled Autopilot there if he knew it was an issue, however why didn't Tesla recommend that to him when he made the report? And the removal of the concrete barrier may have been a new factor that he didn't expect and caused Autopilot to fail much more severely.
  • yougotit 9y ago
    Ha, you just fell for Tesla PR. Maybe you should read their statement again. It is gullible people like you that they create these misleading statements.
    • kj65557 9y ago
      No need for ad hominem attacks. You make no rebuttals to the points made by the comment above and just dismiss it as PR. Just because something is (or isn't) PR doesn't mean that it's false.
      • yougotit 9y ago
        I love people on this site. It is literally the only site where you respond to a comment and people start listing fallacies. My answer stands. Numerous people in other comments have explained how Tesla carefully crafted the statement so that gullible people would think it said something different and this guy fell for it. Better start listing some more fallacies in this response! Here is a list if you need help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
• IkmoIkmo 9y ago
  I hate how Tesla framed this as a statistics game. It's like an amazing heart doctor one day suddenly stabbing his patient in the heart with a scalpel, killing him, and then saying... well, sometimes I malfunction, but by and large I cure patients 10x more often than my colleagues. That isn't okay and it's important to talk about that strange behaviour to fix it.
  • polar8 9y ago
    Sure it’s strange behavior, but I’d still choose him over his colleagues.
  • fastball 9y ago
    Doesn't look like very aberrant behavior by AP in this instance, this exit ramp is a very misleading one which looks exactly like a normal lane up until it dead ends in a barrier.
• Neil44 9y ago
  The driver has ultimate responsibility for operating their car safely. Autopilot does not change that, it says so in the manual.
  • dlp211 9y ago
    And yet, that is not how Tesla advertises autopilot.
• bob1847 9y ago
  The dude didn’t have his hands on the steering wheel for over 5seconds? Madness
• theclaw 9y ago
  I can understand this happening if the Tesla was following a human driver with “follow-distance set to minimum,” and that driver dodged the barrier, meaning the Tesla had no time to brake and could not move out of the solid-white lines. According to another comment here the Tesla manual states that if you’re following another car that moves to reveal a stationary object, the autopilot may not be able to stop in time.
• jacquesm 9y ago
  > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. This would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. So did Tesla's autopilot!
• _pmf_ 9y ago
  > After the logs from the computer inside the vehicle were recovered, we have more information about what may have happened. Why does Tesla have access to the car after the accident at all? > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive No. The logs likely show that signals to trigger the warning signals have been issued; they most likely do not indicate whether they had any effect (minor issue, since they most likely had an effect, but still presenting the likely "happy case" as a fact).
• obeattie 9y ago
  To me there is a stunning lack of compassion and decency in the response to these incidents by both Tesla and Uber. Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant. They’re trying to bamboozle the reader in an effort to improve their images at the expense of victims who can’t defend themselves. I don’t understand why it is so impossible for these companies to act humbly and with a sense of dignity around all this. I don’t expect them to accept responsibility if indeed their technology was not to blame, but frankly that isn’t for them to decide. Until the authorities have done their jobs, why not show remorse, regardless of culpability, as any decent human would?
  • zethraeus 9y ago
    Could you source the assertion that Uber (as opposed to the local police) has indicated the victim in the crash was homeless? (That would be an inexcusable and cynical deflection.)
    • misun78 9y ago
      Uber never came out mentioning the homelessness of the person. The police did. This is typical HN banter on Uber, thanks for calling it out.
      • eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
        That's because Uber never released an official statement on the accident. At least, I can't find one on their website.
  • Donald 9y ago
    This was clearly vetted (or written) by a lawyer who is interested in changing the narrative for his future wrongful death defense rather than exercising empathy.
    • psychedelic 9y ago
• tardo99 9y ago
  I get downvoted reliably for taking issue with Tesla and Musk, but here I largely agree with them. People need to consider such incidents in the context of the overall danger of driving. That said, Tesla needs to maintain its PR in order to do their next capital raise shortly or they may be out of luck.
• devit 9y ago
  Comparing the accident rate of autopilot Teslas to all cars is absurd and disingenuous, since obviously Tesla drivers are wealthier than average (they bought an expensive car), and thus much less likely to have accidents in the first place (car better maintained, more intelligent, more risk averse, less stressed, less dangerous behavior, etc.) They are also admitting that their system can be used as a self-driving system (you can not have your hands on the wheel, and the warnings can apparently be ignored), and that it failed to act as such for 5 seconds and 150m hitting a static object. Again, there should be criminal liability for them, and they should not be allowed to offer any system that is autonomous enough to be used without hands on the wheel but that can't correctly self-drive the car.
• hartator 9y ago
  > In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. "Equipped with Autopilot" is different than running with Autopilot. As far as I know, all model S fatal accidents except one was with Autopilot engaged. Making Autopilot far more dangerous than manual driving from a statistical standpoint.
  • pooya13 9y ago
    They all had windshield wipers as well. Maybe that is the cause?
• zadwang 9y ago
  I just wouldn’t buy a Tesla at this point because: 1) the autopilot is not reliable. The accident shows clearly that it can dive straight into wrong path without giving warning. This is unacceptable, however small the probability. 2) the battery explosion is making the accident ever so dangerous. 3) Tesla’s response is disgusting. It may be true that statistically or on the average it is safer, but I am not a number. If I drive responsibly I can beat the statistic. Plus, relying too much on the comfort of statistics may be attributing to the lack of human intervention. 4) price is also a factor but the least important one compared to the above three.
  • nugi 9y ago
    My ONLY reason I don't already own one (before recently) is their draconian anti-repair strategy, remote bricking, and other heavyhanded tactics against 'owners'. Apparently you are just paying for the privlige of borrowing one from tesla.
• michjedi 9y ago
  Does anyone have any data of % of accidents of autopilot vs drivers that don't speed? I am wondering, because I recently say some statistics that showed that a majority of drivers normally speed by at least 10mph, and that the majority of crashes occur when people are driving over the speed limit.
• mannykannot 9y ago
  In several places, this statement is missing some important information, which leads to the impression that the story is being spun to imply the driver had more responsibility in this crash than may have been the case. The statement says "The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." (my emphasis.) What is not stated here is how long before the impact was it clear that the car was off course and was not going to make a correction - i.e. how much time would an attentive driver have to realize that something was going wrong? Tesla may not yet know the answer to that question, but if it does not, I do not think it should suggest that the driver had five seconds to respond (the only information I have read on this matter is Tesla's own statements, so I do not know if other reporting on the crash shows that this was the case.) Hands off the wheel does not prove that the driver is inattentive. More importantly, hands on the wheel does not show that the driver is attentive. IMHO, something at least as effective as eye tracking is necessary to establish that. Furthermore, Tesla's own statement indicates that it is allowing too long a period of inattentiveness, even for highway driving. It is reasonable for Tesla to use statistics to justify the utility of their systems, so long as they compare like with like. Unfortunately, this statement is cagey about that: "If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident." Compared to what? Teslas without such hardware? Regardless of whether the hardware is being used? depending on what they are comparing it to, these statistics might be on account of simpler, more reliable safety features of the vehicle, or even owner demographics. Finally, the absence of a working crash attenuator, while a tragic fact, has no bearing on the issue of Autopilot's reliability.
• snarfy 9y ago
  There have been too many times when driving that I've needed to visually make eye contact with either another driver or pedestrian in order to decide how to proceed. Can an autopilot differentiate between a 6 year old chasing a ball into the street unaware and an 8 year old chasing the same ball but also sees the car coming? Or someone patiently waiting to cross the street while another impatiently sees they are missing their bus and dart across the road anyway? I see it in their face and body language and respond differently. Can autopilot do that? Until it can I don't trust it. At best it should be restricted to roads without pedestrians like freeways.
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• perilunar 9y ago
  Why isn't the end of the barrier tapered instead of vertical e.g.: http://fortressfencing.com.au/pub/media/catalog/product/d/b/db80-08.jpg http://fortressfencing.com.au/pub/media/catalog/product/d/b/... (I know there was a previously destroyed crush zone, but still, better to be lifted and deflected than brought to a sudden stop.)
  • perilunar 9y ago
    Answering my own question: "These crashes often led to vehicles flying at high speed into the very objects which guardrails or barriers were supposed to protect them from in the first place. To address the vaulting and rollover crashes, energy-absorbing terminals were developed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_barrier#Barrier_end_treatments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_barrier#Barrier_end_tr...
• reubenswartz 9y ago
  The one thing I want from a self driving system is to not drive at full speed into an object straight ahead of me. Knowing that the auto pilot system had problems on this stretch of road, I don’t know if it makes good sense to trust it, but this shows we have a ways to go on the most basic test.
• AKifer 9y ago
  Humans do not understand such an arguments in such a situation. Hope you will do better business on Vulcan dear Tesla.
  • nugi 9y ago
    Watch that edge bud.
• prepend 9y ago
  “For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident.” Their stat is for miles in vehicles equipped with autopilot, not miles driven by autopilot. So if their claim was whether a Tesla equipped with autopilot is safer than a standard car, this would be valid. The comparison should be with miles driven with autopilot engaged. They must know this number because Tesla tracks everything. It’s unethical of them to publish such misleading stats. Cynically, I also think that the fatality rate of autopilot miles is either really bad or just not comparable due to too few miles. Either way, they should reveal this.
  • ricardobeat 9y ago
    True, they know this number, it is public and has been ratified by transit authorities; see pages 10-11: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF
    • slavik81 9y ago
      Why do they use weasel words and misleading statistics when they have this? A crash rate of 1.3 per million miles before installation and 0.8 per million miles after sounds like a slam dunk for the autopilot's statistical safety.
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• mentos 9y ago
  I wonder if Tesla can recreate the crash environment given the data captured from their sensors to reproduce the failure in a simulation? See this article about a company attempting to do this in Unreal Engine 4 https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/51vr-crafts-photorealistic-city-streets-in-unreal-engine-for-ai-training?sessionInvalidated=true https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/51vr-crafts-photorea... Imagine a future where every car uploads their sensor data to reconstruct a growing 3D model of the road network. Using this network AI can simulate millions of miles of driving without ever risking a physical real world crash. Any update to the cars autopilot system could first prove itself against 1 billion miles of simulation before ever being deployed to the 'real' world.
  • thebruce87m 9y ago
    I would hope the serious players are already doing this.
• Jerry64545 9y ago
  Forget about Software / Ai bugs, My understanding is there is a hardware(lidar or radar) in tesla car. Shouldn't the car should have stopped when it's hardware sensed that its definitely going to hit the wall.
• 1024core 9y ago
  Apparently, the victim had complained to Tesla repeatedly that the autopilot would veer towards the barrier: http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-victim-who-died-in-tesla-crash-had-complained-about-auto-pilot/3275600/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-victim-who-d... On the other hand, if I knew the autopilot was trying to do such things, I would not use it so much.
  • fastball 9y ago
    Yeah, and it looks like the AP got confused by the lack of attenuation barrier, so a double whammy -- the AP probably would've avoided it if the barrier had been there, and it would've saved his life. Honestly, I agree with Tesla in that maybe blame shouldn't be directed towards them. They should be held responsible for the crash, but not the death -- if you want to save lives, those barriers should be replaced immediately, and that is something CalTrans should definitely do.
• tptacek 9y ago
  According to the IIHS, which is sponsored by insurance companies and rates cars for safety, for models years 2009-2012, the following cars have had zero fatalities: * Kia Sorento * Lexus RX 350 * Subaru Legacy * Mercedes Benz GL * Audi A4 4WD * Honda Odyssey * Toyota Highlander * Toyota Sequoia
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• jehlakj 9y ago
  I find it terrifying how auto pilot cars give the driver a false sense of security. When a car has statistically proven claim that it is safe, drivers are more likely to have less focus on the car. It’s like comparing reaction times of a manually driving individual to that of a passenger. What seems to be 6 seconds may in reality feel like a split second due to the lack of context. I want to say that there are overhead costs to getting back into driving mode when you haven’t been fully aware of your surroundings. This happens with a much lesser degree when I’m using cruise control, but I still avoid it when there is a fair number of cars on the road. If I have to be well aware of the warnings that the system puts out, I might as well stick to no auto pilot. The chances are low, but any chance is enough to keep me from using it. the roads are designed for humans after all.
• yashap 9y ago
  I can’t help but feel that Tesla, Uber and others are being crazy reckless with their self driving technology, maybe even criminally so. Google have put massively more effort into their self-driving tech, AFAIK massively more engineering and QA hours (by probably better engineers and ML people), and they still don’t consider their tech ready for sale to the general public. Tesla seem to be shipping an MVP, which is insane for safety critical software. Tesla claim “Tesla’s equipped with autopilot have a 3.7x lower fatality rate compared to the average car,” but that’s a very weak claim. It doesn’t say anything about the safety of the autopilot tech itself, as it’s lumping in “normal driver” stats. Also, do new, expensive cars simply have lower than average fatality rates in general? I think self-driving cars will be great for society, but we need to be super cautious about shipping them. Google seem to be very cautious, Tesla seem to be very reckless. If it’s found they shipped autopilot without strong evidence that it’s much safer than human drivers, and it’s out there killing people, IMO Tesla execs should go to jail.
• deleted 9y ago
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• diebir 9y ago
  Is this going to be inherent and unavoidable for the machine learning based self driving cars? Perhaps self driving is never going to become a reality, just because of the problems like this (unless/until the road infrastructure supports them explicitly).
• bastijn 9y ago
  > “In the past, when we have brought up statistical safety points, we have been criticized for doing so, implying that we lack empathy for the tragedy that just occurred.” I have to say that is exactly how I felt reading the piece and I’m by no means easily offended by these kind of stories. The whole piece reads like a story Uber would have published. Throwing all sorts of excuses why it isn’t their fault but the big bad world being in their way. No matter if it is true or not, this is not the kind of tone people want from you right now. They could have brought the same information and show some empathy; especially when criticized before.
• breatheoften 9y ago
  I think there the possibility to find a standard for response that genuinely serves the maximum future good. In my mind — the standard response to such accidents should be to setup an endowment dedicated to the study of techniques promoting the enhancement of autonomous safety, named after the victim, in the geographical region of the accident. Build a damn research facility near the accident site — spread the valuable high tech knowledge across generations and demographics — along with the understanding that the ultimate mission being pursued is the safest autonomous systems possible. This kind of response would go over really well I think and have a lot of benefits beyond just PR. There are very real possibilities that accident rates will not be uniform across driving regions due to the inability of models to optimize for the uneven distribution of risk sources across all driving scenarios. This gets _really evil_ if profit motive is allowed to be be the only mechanism driving the development of vehicle safety models. I cringe for a future where car accidents are biased to occur more often in poor or ethnic neighborhoods ...
• linsomniac 9y ago
  As far as the autopilot previously giving several audible and visual warnings previously in the drive, and not detecting his hands on the wheel 6 seconds prior to the crash... The Tesla model S detection of hands on the steering wheel is, in my experience, not very reliable. It often detects my hands off the wheel if I'm holding it lightly, ready to take over. And it often detects me taking control and disengages if I am holding it firmly. And if I'm paying attention to traffic, I will about a fifth of the time not see the visual warning in the dash. These additional pieces of data can't really provide information on whether the driver was paying attention. However, I am really curious about the reports that this driver had several times reported to Tesla that the autopilot was trying to drive him into this barrier. If so, I wonder why Tesla hasn't reported that fact. And why the driver would be using autopilot in that area at all, let alone not paying attention while doing so.
• jwtadvice 9y ago
  Reading between the lines: > The Tesla brand name takes this seriously. Question the headlines, opinions, etc. > You are safe using Tesla. What happened to this person won't happen to you. > The driver made some questionable decisions; the blame isn't uniquely Tesla's. Other safety mechanisms not under Tesla's control also failed. > Statistically, Tesla Autopilot is safer than not using Autopilot. > We accept that we will not be able to prevent all deaths. You need to too. Telsa has saved lives in addition to taking them. Focus on this please. > We care about safety.
• animex 9y ago
  I just cancelled my Model 3 reservation based on the way this is being spun.
• lancewiggs 9y ago
  Imagine if every single fatality caused by a car had this much scrutiny. They should, and while Tesla is copping it , I’m very happy that safety in autos is actually a topic of interest.