38 ms·

Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

• otalp 9y ago
  Full statement: "We are very sorry for the family's loss. According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so. The fundamental premise of both moral and legal liability is a broken promise, and there was none here. Tesla is extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel. This reminder is made every single time Autopilot is engaged. If the system detects that hands are not on, it provides visual and auditory alerts. This happened several times on Mr. Huang's drive that day. We empathize with Mr. Huang's family, who are understandably facing loss and grief, but the false impression that Autopilot is unsafe will cause harm to others on the road. NHTSA found that even the early version of Tesla Autopilot resulted in 40% fewer crashes and it has improved substantially since then. The reason that other families are not on TV is because their loved ones are still alive."
  • ajross 9y ago
    I'm normally an automation booster, but this is the wrong PR take for sure. I mean, to take this at face value it sounds like Tesla is saying its autopilot doesn't actually work and that if you don't continue to drive your car you're going to die. Maybe that will work in court, but it's not going to sell a lot of cars. I mean... clearly (hopefully) this isn't the attitude being exhibited inside the company. We all know there's a big strike team or whatnot that's been assembled to figure out exactly what happened, and how. We all know that it's probably a preventable failure. So that's what we need to see, Elon. Not this excuse making.
    • rootlocus 9y ago
      > it sounds like Tesla is saying its autopilot doesn't actually work and that if you don't continue to drive your car you're going to die No, it doesn't just "sound like", it's actually > extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel. This reminder is made every single time Autopilot is engaged. If the system detects that hands are not on, it provides visual and auditory alerts.
      • deelowe 9y ago
        > Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel Clearly that's not the case, because if it "required" it the car would cease to function if you took your hands off the wheel. Instead, the Tesla continues to drive itself for some time and then after a few seconds warns you, but that's about it. If you want to see what a real requirement looks like, go explore any of the other car makers that have rolled out similar systems at this point. Those really, actually do require "the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel." Has everyone forgotten Tesla's marketing from when they first rolled this poorly implemented system out?
    • empath75 9y ago
      You’re going to die and Tesla is going to issue a press release saying that it’s your fault.
  • ProfessorLayton 9y ago
    Wow, thats terse, especially considering "the early version" of Autopilot was using Mobileye's superior product!
    • ricardobeat 9y ago
      I'm under the impression it was established that Mobileye's "superior" approach of hand-coding every possible situation would not cut it for full self-driving; they eschew deep learning in favor of having hundreds of people manually annotating images to uncover corner cases, plus a high reliance on maps, and were not happy with the level of automation Tesla wanted to push the system into.
      • rspeer 9y ago
        Can you blame them for not being happy with that? Why put "superior" in quotes if they were doing a better job? It sounds like Mobileye knows what it takes to make self-driving work given present technology, and Tesla didn't believe them and thought they were doing something so simple that their job could be automated. Every AI system that works and makes important decisions has corner cases that are designed by humans. Turns out that computer programmers do a job that matters!
  • otoburb 9y ago
    >>If the system detects that hands are not on, it provides visual and auditory alerts. This happened several times on Mr. Huang's drive that day. If the system detects that hands are not on the wheel, perhaps something else should be done that will incentivize the driver to disengage Autopilot. Perhaps, send warnings alerts to law enforcement, insurance companies, or emergency contacts? Not sure what the fallback procedure is when Autopilot detects dangerous situations for extended periods of time - presumably disengaging completely would be worse, unless there's a safe way for Autopilot to pull over to the shoulder at the next available opportunity.
    • Diederich 9y ago
      It first flashes, then beeps at you, and then disengages, so you start slowing down. I believe that if that happens, it won't re-engage again until after the car is stopped, shut off, and re-started.
      • Negitivefrags 9y ago
        To reenable autopilot you not only need to restart the car, but also go back into the car settings and turn it on again. When you do this it presents you with a window that outlines your liability that you must accept. It looks like this: https://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/autosteer-warning-tesla.jpg?quality=98&strip=all&strip=all https://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/autostee...
        • rightbyte 9y ago
          Oh ... is it real? Beta? Googleinh seems to confirm so. Other car manufacturer use trained personel for testing. I mean this is silly and should be illegal.
    • John_KZ 9y ago
      >perhaps something else should be done that will incentivize the driver to disengage Autopilot. There's a very simple solution: Don't fucking include it in the car. Require the users to show up at the car dealership and sign a legal waiver to allow the activation of the new, insecure, and dangerous feature. There are no cars on the road with airbags that sometimes work and sometimes cause 3rd degree burns. There are no seatbelts that only work if the road isn't shiny. If you want to advertise the autopilot as a safety feature available to the general public, make sure it is one. If it's not, and you advertise it as such, you're legally liable for all the deaths your lie will cause. Personally, I'm technically knowledgable enough and I know enough about Tesla's history to be wary of their products and never trust them, but what if you're the average consumer? You would rightly expect any car automation system that comes pre-installed in your car and actually drives your god damn car to be safe enough to be there in the first place! Tesla is just taking advantage of the lack of legislation and standards on autonomous driving. They're selling a defective and dangerous product. They should be held liable for it.
  • throwaway6497 9y ago
    This response from Tesla comes across as cold and shows no empathy to the victim's family. "We are very sorry for the family's loss" sounds so hollow after reading the rest of the statement. Does Tesla needs to give such strong public statement against the victim and his family? What is the point? Tesla is euphemistically saying - "Driver was stupid. Sorry but not really." This statement is really hurtful for the family and friends who got affected by this tragedy. Grow some heart Tesla. I am probably asking too much from a faceless corporation.
    • FireBeyond 9y ago
      > Grow some heart Tesla. I am probably asking too much from a faceless corporation. I'd think that Tesla is the very antithesis of a faceless corporation, for better or worse.
  • neolefty 9y ago
    People routinely ignore warnings. Did Mr. Huang normally ignore those warnings every day? If so, how are those warnings not just ass-covering by Tesla?
  • berg01 9y ago
    So the crux here is the naming of the not-really-self-driving feature. This is not an Autopilot for cars. It "requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel". That's a driving assist. Call it the world's best driving assist or whatever, but not Autopilot. (I have seen the usual reply from Tesla apologists that it's a good name because of its aircraft analogy. From a usability perspective that is just so... wrong.) I don't get why they continue down this path. Just rename the goddamn feature into something that actually makes sense. Tesla key people must be in some kind of Elon Musk reality distortion field.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > So the crux here is the naming of the not-really-self-driving feature It should be called, ”I’m Feeling Lucky.”
      • berg01 9y ago
        Love it!
      • jijojv 9y ago
        All their amazing technology is ”I’m Feeling Lucky.” https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/autopark-fail-dont-use-autopark-next-garage-pillars https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/autopark-fail-dont-use...
        • jijojv 9y ago
          Others like Bolt and Leaf give you 360 surround view parking. Tesla instead gives you Autopark but if it fails/crashes, you're at fault.
    • Retric 9y ago
      Aircraft autopilot still require actual pilots to pay attention when flying. So really autopilot is the correct term, people are simply assuming it means a level 5 self driving car when it does not. “And really there’s a sweet spot you have to find where you use automation to relieve the pilot of some amount of workload.” http://nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how-too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-lead-to-deadly-plane-crashes http://nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how... 10 years ago airlines could have gone 100% automation, but a hybrid approach really has proven safer.
  • saas_co_de 9y ago
    What a disgusting response.
  • efraim 9y ago
    > The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so. This is very misleading, he might have seen the barrier well in time but the car could have steered towards it in the last second, like it does in several of the videos demonstrating this issue.
    • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
      I think this is the critical factor. In the videos from others, the autopilot begins to move with the lane, but then crosses over into the barrier as it approaches. There's no way to anticipate that this is going to happen by simply looking ahead of you. There are no warning signs that something strange is about to occur. By the time you've processed that something is happening, it's well underway. If you were to simulate this, I wonder how many people would be able to properly react? I think this would be an interesting experiment; sit people in driving simulators and have them drive around for 30 minutes or something and randomly introduce this. Even in the context of an experiment where people are likely to be more attentive due to the novelty of the experience, I'd expect to see quite slow reactions with fairly high frequency.
  • euyyn 9y ago
    > means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road I think anyone that's ever developed software knows how naive (to be charitative) that reasoning is.
  • kalleboo 9y ago
    > Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location > Tesla is extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel > the false impression that Autopilot is unsafe will cause harm to others on the road "Autopilot is not perfect and you need to continually monitor and second guess what it's doing.... but it's not unsafe!" Sounds like some really mixed messages here.
• mtgx 9y ago
  This is why we need government investigators to look at crash/accident data (after the fact) and we need to ensure that the data hasn't been tampered with by anyone, including the car makers. We can't just rely on the company's words in a crash. Of course the company has all the incentive to lie or at least be as misleading as possible or try to minimize its blame as much as possible, to avoid liability or bad press. That should surprise absolutely no one. That's why we need to make sure that the company's bias is taken out of the equation altogether.
  • TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    This is Silicon Valley. "move fast and break things"
    • Ygg2 9y ago
      Move fast and end lives.
    • neolefty 9y ago
      Common in early car and aircraft cultures as well. Always a tension between innovation and safety. I don't mean that as a cop-out. Rather that there's no single "right answer". We are choosing something on a spectrum of risk vs reward. Personally, although I have no direct experience, it's starting to look like Tesla is being too risky. Yes, they're safer than human-only drivers, but the mistakes they're making are too algorithmic. They're not enough safer to call Autopilot a success. Contrast that with Waymo, who are paranoid-ly safe. They seem to be taking the long view that building trust (and not taking any chances to lose that trust) is as important as technical achievements. Edit: Or, at some other extreme of poor citizenship, Uber, who seem to have gone off the deep end of "Keep up appearances of having a self-driving research program even though it's a disaster internally."
      • TAForObvReasons 9y ago
        I firmly believe that a technology deployed in a potentially life-threatening context like a car or plane or pacemaker deserves a much more conservative development approach. "Move fast and break things" isn't appropriate when human lives are at stake. Waymo is applying the appropriate conservatism; Tesla and Uber are playing fast and loose by comparison.
• jijojv 9y ago
  This is gonna be interesting as apparently the "Barrier" [1] bug is only in newer AP2 models per latest A/B tests done by cpddan (who did the very first crash reproduction scenario in Chicago [2]) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0bR_EQ47E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0bR_EQ47E Tesla Model X with AP2.5, SW 2018.6.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zK2Om8Q0IA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zK2Om8Q0IA MS 75, AP1, SW 2018.6.1 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil.. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil.... "works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH." 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I
  • o_____________o 9y ago
    You know you're living in the future when a car driving you headlong into concrete is being correctly identified as a bug.
  • ansible 9y ago
    I get that the vision system might have been fooled by how the lane widens before the split. What I don't get is why the radar doesn't pick up the barrier itself. It should have been getting a nice, healthy return signal from it, lots of metal at all kinds of angles. What I'm saying is, this is not a stealthy barrier.
    • frafra 9y ago
      Radar is not active if the speed is higher than a specific threshold; it seems it is written in the manual.
      • ansible 9y ago
        > Radar is not active if the speed is higher than a specific threshold; it looks like it is written on the manual. I'm having trouble understanding why that would be the case. Why anyone wouldn't want the radar active when going down the highway. It is not as if it doesn't work at highway speed...
• eridius 9y ago
  I have to wonder why Tesla keeps doubling down on victim-blaming. Is this a case of Elon Musk being insecure about criticism (since he's demonstrated a tendency in the past to react poorly to it)? Or is Tesla trying to actually lower their legal liability? Edit: To clarify, in most of these crashes, it's usually a combination of Tesla's fault and the driver's fault. Which is to say, the driver could have avoided the crash, but Tesla could also have avoided it, and the driver's biggest fault lies in trusting the "autopilot" more than they should. In the case of this particular crash, I certainly agree that the driver should have been paying more attention to the road, especially because they already knew the autopilot had issues at that particular point, and if they were paying attention they could have avoided the crash. However, the fact that autopilot can't handle that barrier correctly is a problem especially because the driver reported that exact issue to Tesla multiple times in the past (heck, Tesla probably should have blacklisted that particular GPS location to force the user to take control when approaching that point, if they can't handle the barrier correctly in autopilot). Similarly, Tesla allows drivers the most freedom to ignore the road of any of the "autopilot"-like systems, and they continue to call their system "autopilot"¹, both of which only serves to make this sort of crash much more likely. ¹Yes I know it's technically correct, but it doesn't match what the general public thinks when they hear the term "autopilot". It gives the wrong impression that the system is smarter and more reliable than it actually is.
  • bentruyman 9y ago
    Where's your evidence that any of the people who've crashed in these Teslas were "victims"?
    • recursive 9y ago
      A dictionary, which will define "victim" similar to > noun > a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.
  • toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Tesla is exerting and reinforcing that it is not liable for poor driver decisions. If you use any vehicle safety aid while not paying attention, and you die or kill someone while in control of the vehicle, that is your liability. Whether they call their system "Autopilot" is immaterial. You are the responsibly party as the driver, and this is made clear both at purchase time and during vehicle use.
• exotree 9y ago
  This is a very upsetting response. Yes, the driver could have paid more attention, and yes, he shouldn't have activated Autopilot in an area where he knew Tesla's autopilot was not working correctly. However, Tesla calling it "Autopilot" should be no longer allowed. It's clear that it is most certainly not that, and customers are not treating this feature in a careful and cautious fashion, and I do believe that's due to Tesla overselling Autopilot's abilities. In addition, its warning systems are obviously not enough to get drivers to take corrective action and ensure their hands are on the wheel. (Why you can take your hands off the wheel at all when engaging autopilot is a mystery to me.)
  • supreme_sublime 9y ago
    I see your point on calling it "Autopilot", but if you think about the application of the term in terms of aviation, I think it makes more sense. Autopilot in planes won't land the plane for you. It basically will just keep you at a certain elevation and direction. I think that Tesla's Autopilot function is comparable to planes. That's probably how they will justify it. However there might be a legitimate point in that people don't have that kind of understanding of what "Autopilot" means.
    • mikepurvis 9y ago
      Aviation autopilots handle flying duties in a giant expanse of open sky. It's a way, way easier job to do than navigating a highway from behind a steering wheel. So even if the "capabilities" may be comparable between the two systems, the amount of supervision they require is not, so I don't think they should use the term. It may be "lane-keeping cruise control" isn't nearly as sexy, but it doesn't establish unrealistic expectations which get people killed.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • 9y ago
• matt2000 9y ago
  The thing that sometimes gets lost in the debate around Tesla autopilot (IMO), is that it's possible for self driving cars to be theoretically better than human drivers, AND that Tesla's implementation of that concept to be overall worse. From the recent accidents it seems clear that Tesla autopilot is just not that great in it's current form. Even if it's following a line that it mistakes for a lane marker, how is it ok that it can't stop for a large obstacle in front of the car when given plenty of distance before a crash? How is this not a totally unacceptable type of failure for a system like this?
  • thebluehawk 9y ago
    Autopilot is not an implementation of self-driving cars... You have a completely wrong understanding of this system. It's basically cruise control that has some lane keeping abilities. If you put your (non-TACC) car in cruise control on the freeway and then ignored everything around you, you will rear end someone, and it's not cruise controls fault. If you put a lane-keeping assist car (like Tesla or others) and completely ignored the road, it will crash eventually. AutoPilot is cruise control with some lane keeping abilities, it is not self-driving. You choose when to activate it (just like cruise control), and every single time you do it tells you to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel.
    • brain_dev 9y ago
      > It's basically cruise control that has some lane keeping abilities. And this is exactly why calling it Autopilot is immoral and dangerous.
• tc 9y ago
  Tesla probably shouldn't be saying anything about this at all, even just to avoid giving it more news cycles. But if they were going to say something, here's what they should have said the first time. ---- We take great care in building our cars to save lives. Forty thousands Americans die on the roads each year. That's a statistic. But even a single death of a Tesla driver or passenger is a tragedy. This has affected everyone on our team deeply, and our hearts go out to the family and friends of Walter Huang. We've recovered data that indicates Autopilot was engaged at the time of the accident. The vehicle drove straight into the barrier. In the five seconds leading up to the crash, neither Autopilot nor the driver took any evasive action. Our engineers are investigating why the car failed to detect or avoid the obstacle. Any lessons we can take from this tragedy will be deployed across our entire fleet of vehicles. Saving other lives is the best we can hope to take away from an event like this. In that same spirit, we would like to remind all Tesla drivers that Autopilot is not a fully-autonomous driving system. It's a tool to help attentive drivers avoid accidents that might have otherwise occurred. Just as with autopilots in aviation, while the tool does reduce workload, it's critical to always stay attentive. The car cannot drive itself. It can help, but you have to do your job. We do realize, however, that a system like Autopilot can lure people into a false sense of security. That's one reason we are hard at work on the problem of fully autonomous driving. It will take a few years, but we look forward to some day making accidents like this a part of history.
  • mjamesaustin 9y ago
    What a stark difference in tone this kind of statement would have made. Tesla's statement reeks of a desire to protect themselves from liability or a potential lawsuit. It's very sad to see them adopting such language in the face of such a tragedy.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • Johnny555 9y ago
      What company can afford to embrace a wrongful-death lawsuit? And it's not just this one, it's all the others that they'll suddenly be accepting liability for.
• TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  I am a huge fan of Elon Musk and a small TSLA share holder, but there is something about Tesla and Musk’s response to this that feels so wrong. It seems two faced. On the one hand, they shout about how great and safe their technology is, and on the other hand they blame someone for dying when they chose to rely on that technology. Is it safe or unsafe? I know it’s not that simple, but this response still saddens me. I know they must have people who want to bring them down through legal action. And I think they want to establish a precedent that they are not liable in any crashes out of a desire to protect the corporation. But still, this response seems so cold, and so uncaring, that I am reminded that Tesla is still a corporation that in the end must protect itself. I want self driving cars, but not a world without compassion. Why is it that we seem forced to choose one versus the other? EDIT: Immediately after hitting send, two Model 3’s passed me one after the other, before any other vehicles passed. The universe is strange.
  • robotkdick 9y ago
    I hope you're not driving...or using autopilot.. while you wrote this (kidding)
    • TaylorAlexander 9y ago
      Hah, nope just walking through a Mountain View parking lot.
  • yborg 9y ago
    "Move fast and break things." This is a sad situation because a man died, but a Valley engineer being killed by the (current) Valley mindset is also kind of ironic. Tesla is getting a lot of heat here for hubris and insensitivity to the human cost of their actions, but doesn't this define almost every company in that place? Certainly the money backing most of these firms.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• wehadfun 9y ago
  We need FAA style oversight on self driving cars.
  • Robotbeat 9y ago
    This isn't self-driving, though. It isn't called self-driving.
    • brain_dev 9y ago
      How else would you describe an Automatically Piloted Vehicle then? If it's not self-driving, don't call it Autopilot, and don't lull people into a false sense of security. Even with alarms to try and keep the driver engaged, people are inherently going to place more faith in 'Autopilot' than 'Enhanced Cruise Control' or something similarly named. The marketing around this feature is reckless, and Tesla + Musk should be ashamed. To the point that I would consider working on that team to be immoral. For what it's worth, this is coming from a big Musk fan.
      • Robotbeat 9y ago
        It’s called autopilot because “autopilot” already has a technical meaning which doesn’t imply self-driving. Heck, some aircraft autopilots are so primitive they only keep the aircraft in level flight without terrain following (although some do that). No versions of autopilot mean the pilot doesn’t have to pay attention. This is all already established through broad use before Tesla introduced the term to cars. The same linguistic games you’re trying to play for “autopilot” apply just as well to “cruise control” or worse, since that term didn’t have an already-understood technical definition when introduced to cars.
  • chaboud 9y ago
    I think the NTSB examined the crash, so there's at least some federal oversight.
    • gsnedders 9y ago
• tshannon 9y ago
  I agree that this statement seems cold, and blames the driver, but from a legal perspective, can it be anything else? They can't admit anything or publically take any responsibility, because it could be used against them in the court case right? Even in their statement they don't say "Autopilot is not perfect" they say "According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect". The only thing the actually admit in the statement is that "Tesla is extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel". It's cold and heartless, but anything else opens them up to liability right?
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I agree that this statement seems cold, and blames the driver, but from a legal perspective, can it be anything else? Yes. The law doesn't require, or even create an incentive, for them to make a statement at all. The law doesn't require, or create an incentive, for them include any attribution of blame or responsibility in any statement they do make. This is a hamfisted attempt at PR management by directing the public blame for the incident to the driver, not soemthing made necessary by legal requirements or incentives related to legal liability.
    • tshannon 9y ago
      Thanks, my comment was a genuine question. If that is the case, then their PR statement is indeed very cold.
  • saas_co_de 9y ago
    They could do what Uber did and take responsibility, apologize and settle with the family.
  • lozenge 9y ago
    They initially said that out of respect for the family, they would not make further statements until the investigation has completed. This is the second time they have broken that promise.
• robotkdick 9y ago
  GM's recent TV advertisement shows the driver engaging their version of autopilot and crossing his hands...I was like woah! That would never make it through legal if they weren't very very confident about their tech. Contrast that image with Tesla's demand that drivers keep their hands on the wheel and it seems that GM is miles ahead of everyone on autopilot.
  • emiliobumachar 9y ago
    Well, does GM actually, officially allow users to cross arms in their car on live roads, or is it all artistic license?
    • kodis 9y ago
      Again, from what I've seen and read, it doesn't matter what the driver does with his hands and arms, only that he keep his eyes on the road.
  • kodis 9y ago
    From what I've read, GM is less confident about their system's ability to operate under as wide a variety of situations as Tesla's does. Yes, it operates in a hands-free manner, but does so only on well mapped uninterrupted divided highways, and even then it requires the driver pay attention. It does this by way of the IR lights and camera mounted in the steering wheel, which only allow the driver to look away from the road for a few seconds at a time. Given the bad press that Tesla gets after any Autopilot driven accident, GM seems to have made a safe choice here.
    • gamblor956 9y ago
      GM's AV systems are leap-years ahead of Tesla's. Pretty much everyone in the AV world is, including Uber (the recent accident notwithstanding). However, GM is taking the safe and conservative approach: restrict the usage of a feature that could potentially kill its users to a specific set of situations in which extraordinary testing has demonstrated that it won't. And that's exactly the right way to do it until they get to true self-driving.
• dqpb 9y ago
  > "Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel." By that definition every car I've ever driven has been fully self-driving.
  • Robotbeat 9y ago
    It's called autopilot, not self-driving.
    • hashbig 9y ago
      Autopilot is a miss-leading product name. It implies automation of the process of driving. It doesn't function like an autopilot and requires no co-pilot. Taking a technical term used in aviation is meaningless and dangerous.
      • Robotbeat 9y ago
        It functions similar to an autopilot (ie follows terrain, but not perfect). Even general aviation aircraft have them and don’t require copilots.
• timewarrior 9y ago
  I own a Model X. I love the car in many ways. However, I also think the automation is stupider than a 2 year old. Would you trust a 2 year old to drive your car or to decide when to close your Garage door? I use the Auto-Steer, only when road is empty, is in a reasonably straight line and I am in the middle lane of at least 3 lane road. Otherwise I don't use it. It might also be fine to use it in stop and go on a divided highway because there is on way you will die at those speeds even if you are in an accident. But sadly, some people trust the car automation with much more than what it is capable of. This leads to accidents like these. And I would blame Tesla here. Tesla has clearly been misleading in marketing this feature. Not everyone is very savvy and they sometimes take what a company says at face value. I have really smart friends who have seen the AutoPilot link [https://www.tesla.com/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/autopilot] and think that Tesla already have these advanced features. In the end Tesla is just slightly more advanced than autonomous features of other manufacturers. However, Tesla claims to be much more advanced than others. Because it claims a lot more credit than it deserves, it's only fair that they also face criticism proportionately when the system fails. Normally, I am against unnecessary regulation. However in this case, I think it is important to bring regulations around consistent messaging and 3rd party rating for autonomous features from all manufactures. We can't have "Move fast and break things" kill people. It's not the same thing as a social app losing a few posts. Tesla should rename it's feature to "Drive Assist+" whatever, because that is all it is. On an ending note - I feel sad that the deceased continued to use Autopilot at this spot, when it was known to them that is has failed at the same spot multiple times. If someone well educated, tech savvy and already aware of the problem can fall for this, I worry that a lot more people might do worse.
  • cpt1138 9y ago
    If the usage is so subjective, I can't even understand why its allowed. You seem to be saying its no better than a two year old driving. You create a situation in which its "ok" for a two year old to drive? We have laws that state no 2yo's are allowed to be behind the wheel. Why is this 2yo allowed at all?
    • darkstar999 9y ago
• kyberias 9y ago
  What exactly is Tesla intending the Autopilot to be used if the driver has to keep hands on the wheel?
• joering2 9y ago
  Autopilot means it will pilot itself.. automatically. Tesla is using "guidance assistant". Huge difference. Their terminology is either very confusing at the best, or bluntly deceiving at the worst.
  • jhall1468 9y ago
    Twice now people using absolutely stupid arguments to defend the driver here. He knew what Autopilot was and STILL took his hands off the wheel. Autopilot is a name in the same way Amazon.com isn't a damn rain forest. It's a term taken from aviation, but "autopilot" in a plane and "Autopilot" in a Tesla aren't even remotely the same thing. And literally everyone understands that, yet any time this occurs we start blaming semantics. This guy wasn't confused. He explicitly stated his car was having trouble with this section of the road and he trusted his car to handle it. It got him killed. The word "autopilot" did not get him killed.
    • cjhopman 9y ago
      > STILL took his hands off the wheel That's not clear. The car didn't detect his hands on the wheel, but that doesn't mean his hands weren't on it. Tesla's implementation of hand detection (like many of their other systems) is rather unreliable.
      • kid0m4n 9y ago
        So he had his hands on the wheel and took no action for 6 seconds while driving straight to the barrier. Doesn't make it look any better for the driver TBH.
        • ProfessorLayton 9y ago
          Well, the Tesla had the same amount of visibility and drove straight into the barrier. Victim blaming doesn't get Tesla off the hook.
          • 9y ago
• rasengan 9y ago
  Why the fuck is this on page 3?
• txcwpalpha 9y ago
  I used to be in awe of Teslas and I have always been a big fan of Musk, and even after the crash I still imagined myself one day buying a Tesla. But after this response, I've completely lost respect for the company, for Musk, and I don't think I'll ever buy one or advocate for someone buying one. The driver had previously reported to Tesla 7 to 10 times that there was an issue with autopilot, but Tesla told him "no there is no issue". There is also video evidence of this same issue happening in other parts of the world, but with similar road conditions. But again, Tesla's response has been "there is no issue." And now their response is "the driver knew there was an issue but he used autopilot anyway"? Seriously? Either there is an issue or there isn't, Tesla. At first you said there is no issue, and now you're saying there is an issue? And as the cherry on top, you're blaming the driver for continuing to use the feature even after you told him repeatedly that it's okay to use? For shame, Tesla. For shame.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • slg 9y ago
    At the heart of this issue is the fact Teslas are the first car that can have its functionality changed drastically from day to day (this "drive into a median" bug is believed to be a recent issue introduced within the last few months of autopilot updates). I think that ability to update is one of the most exciting things about Teslas compared to other cars, but it presents a huge organizational problem. How does Tesla communicate out those changes to their customers, mechanics, sales staff, and customer service people? I think the reporting of this specific issue and the original "there is no issue" response is simply from a company failing to communicate in multiple directions rather than any type of sinister motive that some people seem to be implying (Hanlon's razor and all).
    • txcwpalpha 9y ago
      As someone elsewhere in this thread put it, this is a case where silicon valley's posterchild slogan "move fast and break things" has turned into a reality of "move fast and end lives". Fast updates can be a great thing, but companies (in this case, Tesla) need to do a better job of figuring out when to apply this mentality of "move fast" and when to instead apply a mentality of "move slower because even the slightest error in this update could result in bodily harm to someone". There's a reason that most non-software industries (think aviation, medical, most car manufacturers not named Tesla) move excruciatingly slow when rolling out new features.
• josecurioso 9y ago
  The reason tesla needs to make this kind of statements is very simple: Guy in a renault has this accident and it is just routine, renault won't see their shares fall and there will be next to no coverage of the incident. In the case of tesla any accident gets to the front page of reddit, trends in twitter, is shared in facebook, let alone printed on newspapers, these statements are needed to fight that amount of bad PR.
  • saagarjha 9y ago
    Well, Renault doesn't have self driving technology that they're touting as "autonomous†". †While the driver continues to pay attention and basically does everything they need to do while driving, without actually performing any actions
  • chaboud 9y ago
    Well, to be fair, if someone in the US is able to find a running Renault that can go faster than 30mph under its own power, it's pretty exceptional. I think that Tesla's response is tone-deaf and ill-advised. I'm not presently a Tesla shareholder, but I do have a Model 3 reservation coming up soon. Guess which one of those this public statement makes me want to change...
    • semi-extrinsic 9y ago
      I think this classic Renault will do a little over 30mph. https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/renault/r5-turbo-2/2082048.html https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/renault/r...
      • chaboud 9y ago
        There was one of these tooling around the campsites at Le Mans a few years ago (probably there every year). Lamborghinis, Ferraris, TVRs. No. The R5 Turbo got all of the crowds. It was awesome. Nonetheless, I haven’t seen a Renault in the US, in person, in a few years.
• coenhyde 9y ago
  This is a disappointing response from Tesla. I understand why they are trying to limit liability but they fucked up. They need to take responsibility. The autopilot actively veered towards the barrier. That's very different from autopilot failing to avoid a danger.
• imh 9y ago
  It should be noted that the 40% crash reduction they keep quoting is done with an extremely simplistic analysis and is only a brief paragraph of the full report. https://www.scribd.com/embeds/337007075/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-DgnugphNmXkiFVNAWAvV https://www.scribd.com/embeds/337007075/content?start_page=1... It's not nearly as definitive as people (and Tesla) seem to claim it as. edit: The full analysis (from page 10 of the link): >5.4 Crash rates. ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package, either installed in the vehicle when sold or through an OTA update, to calculate crash rates by miles travelled prior to^21 and after Autopilot installation.^22 Figure 11 shows the rates calculated by ODI for airbag deployment crashes in the subject Tesla vehicles before and after Autosteer installation. The data show that the Tesla vehicles crash rate dropped by almost 40 percent after Autosteer installation.
  • waitwhatt 9y ago
    I would argue that the people who can afford a Tesla are rich people and thus likely well educated and are safer drivers. Poor people with bad cars, no education and unsafe driving practices probably have more accidents. I don't think these stats mean much.
    • imh 9y ago
      It's not as bad as that. It looks their methods could take that into account, they just don't detail anything. I copied the analysis from the report into my original comment, so it's clearer what they did. There's still no proper control, because people driving habits (and many other things) change with time and a before/after analysis has selection bias with time. Maybe they get used to the car as time goes on and crash less, for example. A nice way to get around this would be to look at people who didn't get autopilot and see how the autopilot reduction compares to the non-autopilot reduction (difference in differences). Only then can you start to say it may be due to autopilot, and it's still a fuzzy statement.
    • zaroth 9y ago
      I keep seeing statements to this effect, and they are incorrect. The comparison is between Tesla cars with and without the AutoPilot feature installed. The statistic has nothing to do with people not driving a Tesla. “...airbag deployment crashes in the subject Tesla vehicles before and after Autosteer installation. The data show that the Tesla vehicles crash rate dropped by almost 40 percent after Autosteer installation.”
• cynusx 9y ago
  They should probably take a page from Waze and allow drivers to report areas where autopilot doesn't function properly. Fleet learning but not crowd sourcing?
  • zmarty 9y ago
    They technically do, in a Tesla you can report a bug using your voice while you are driving. Now, I don't know if/how they act on the bug reports.
• zaidf 9y ago
  "The reason the other families aren't on TV are because their loved ones are still alive." Wow, this sounds like a horrible, tasteless burn to end the statement with. And I am a Tesla fan.
  • waitwhatt 9y ago
    "99% of people survive and our software bug only drives a few people violently in to concrete barriers at seconds notice and decapitates them. It just so happens that your loved one is now dead but he shouldn't have used our product, as he knew it didn't work there. kthxbye"
  • zmarty 9y ago
    And where exactly does it say that?
    • marcell 9y ago
      The statement is here: https://twitter.com/dannoyes/status/983899361779236864/photo/1 https://twitter.com/dannoyes/status/983899361779236864/photo...
  • thegeekpirate 9y ago
    Shocked you're the first to mention this, I was speechless after reading it. Whoever was responsible for that line _really_ needs a little bit of empathy, especially when their product is partially at fault for causing this debacle in the first place.
  • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
    I have to imagine someone will get fired for that. You could easily have made that, "Those families have been sparred that grief," or something to that effect. So many ways to say it that don't suggest that the family is on TV in bad faith, or directly contrast their loss with the happiness of others. It's also grammatically incorrect "The reason ... is because". Just bizarre.
  • stordoff 9y ago
    I can't believe anyone writing wouldn't immediately think "Anyone involved is doing to read that as 'Your loved ones are dead'" and change it. Throwing your customer under the bus (_even_ if they are 100% at fault), then ending with a statement like that, is tasteless. I can't see why they couldn't say something like "We are proud of this record, but continue to strive to improve and save even more families from this pain" -- still supports the product (which I'm not is the right path to take, but it's clearly the path they _are_ taking), but acknowledges the grief and avoids so directly/crassly comparing to it others' happiness.
• mrb 9y ago
  Blaming the autopilot for the death of Walter Huang is like blaming the bullet for a firearm-related death. The man at the wheel or the man at the trigger is ultimately responsible.
  • rohit2412 9y ago
    What if Smith and Wesson announced that their guns will update over the air and suddenly the bullets will become non-lethal and infact save lives as they'll include water from the fountain of youth? Because I don't see much difference from how Elon Musk makes misleading and clearly false statements.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • matte_black 9y ago
    No it isn't, guns do not fire by themselves using AI trained for that purpose. A man has been killed here by faulty engineering.
    • mrb 9y ago
      When you engage the trigger, firearms require a responsible human to aim with attention. When you engage the autopilot, the system requires a responsible human to watch the road with attention. I really don't see any difference.
      • gamblor956 9y ago
        A gun is deliberately aimed at a target. The bullet isn't responsible because it has no agency; it is a propelled piece of mass. A self-shooting gun has agency, and does not require the human to aim with attention. (There are currently no self-shooting guns on the market absent hacked firearms.) A Tesla Autopilot is like a self-shooting gun. Autopilot decides where to go, independently of the human. The car is in control, not the human. Moreover, the car does not actually require the human to watch the road with attention because it continues to maintain control even in the absence of human involvement. Ergo, they're nothing alike.
• blackrock 9y ago
  It sounds like you need life insurance, as we enter into the age of alpha-tested autonomous cars. You need it to be a driver or passenger when inside a robotic car. And you also need it when you are just a pedestrian, while walking your bike on the road. Because you never know when a robotic car is going to run you over.
• BlueGh0st 9y ago
  >Tesla sent Dan Noyes a statement Tuesday night that reads in part, "Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel... No it doesn't. Maybe the agreement when you use that feature does but if they really wanted to/cared enough they would make it so it only works while your hands are on the wheel. I'm still on the fence and think commercially releasing this very experimental technology as a product to the public is incredibly irresponsible.
  • thelastidiot 9y ago
    It is absolutely irresponsible. While facebook is in the news as a reminder that companies that unethically exploit the lack of regulations in emerging technologies for the competitive purpose of getting higher customer adoption will, at one point, have to report to congress and become responsible.
• samfisher83 9y ago
  They need to change the name of the feature from autopilot to lane assist. That might keep people paying attention to the road.
• arh68 9y ago
  Insurance rates will probably go up on "self-crashing cars" if this trend continues. For some reason, people aren't dying so dramatically due to cruise control. I love cruise control, because it helps me focus on "driving" (which I consider steering + observing). The Tesla autopilot feature seems to do the opposite: it helps you focus on not driving. This ain't Volvo, folks.
  • craftyguy 9y ago
    Any car in motion has the potential to be 'self-crashing' if the driver does not pay attention. All straight roads end eventually.
  • Robotbeat 9y ago
    Cruise control DOES cause deaths: http://www.indianainjury.com/trucking-accident-verdict-leads-change-cruise-control-policy/ http://www.indianainjury.com/trucking-accident-verdict-leads... ...but it's not Tesla, so a single death isn't plastered over every news site and discussed ad nauseum by tech sites. EDIT: More cruise control deaths: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/24/skoda-driver-decapitated-in-stuck-cruise-control-mystery https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/24/skoda-drive... https://www.levylaw.com/cruise-control-accidents-defective-product-liability-lawsuits-levy-phillips-a-konigsberg/ https://www.levylaw.com/cruise-control-accidents-defective-p... https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5645195/m1-motorway-crash-lorry-driver-cruise-control-hands-free-call-eight-dead/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5645195/m1-motorway-crash-lorr...
    • supertrope 9y ago
      Even I, a non-CDL driver who never learned how to use a manual transmission, know when cruise control is appropriate: only under good conditions with daylight when there are no other cars around.
    • arh68 9y ago
      The last one with the truck does count, I agree. If it enables inattentiveness, it's likely to cause harm. The Skoda driver makes less sense: if you are trying (like he was) to stop, brakes should always outpower the engine. Unless the brakes failed. Toyota went through a huge ordeal just like that (possibly floormats, possibly ECU stack overflow, who knows). An attentive & trained driver should be able to handle it. The truckers were willfully ignoring what pretty much every driving manual tells you. If you drive at night without lights, in a blizzard, with summer tires, I don't see how you can blame the car manufacturer if you hit something. But if all you do is consistently go over potholes, and consistently lose power steering & lights when the serpentine belt comes loose, I think you can blame the manufacturer.
• justsomedood 9y ago
  What is the point of Autopilot? It's not self-driving. You're not supposed to let go of the steering wheel and you have to be completely alert to take over if there are problems. Isn't it easier to just not use it in the first place?
• ypzhang2 9y ago
  The issue with the statements from Tesla is that they seem to prioritize PR and obfuscation before actual relevant factual statements. The fact that the driver received disengagement warnings prior in the drive is not very relevant to the accident per se. Might as well say the driver has received multiple disengagement warnings during his ownership of the Tesla. It is not relevant to the actual circumstances of the accident. Note that they do not say "he received disengagement warnings right before the accident and chose not to respond". Tesla instead says that his hands were not detected on the wheel 6 seconds prior to the accident. Okay, so thats the case, but obviously the Autopilot system allows that to happen, as disengagement warnings were not active at that time, therefore THE SYSTEM WAS OPERATING WITHIN ITS ESTABLISHED BOUNDS. This leaves it down to, the autopilot system drove into the barrier while the driver wasn't paying attention, but was operating the vehicle within the defined bounds of the semi-autonomous system, but violated the parameter of "pay attention to the road and be ready to take control". He did not receive any system warning before the accident, he just simply chose not to correct the system behavior before the accident happened. Everything else is just trying to kick up dust and obfuscate the facts of the situation it seems. The issue with Tesla's semi-autonomous system and to a certain extent, other systems, is that there is a poor boundary between system responsibilities and user responsibilities. This causes issues around the boundary where sometimes the autonomous system will accomplish something, but sometimes it can't and the user must. Because of this fuzzy boundary, I think its almost more important to invest into disengagement logic, equipment, and programming than pure self-driving technology. A good example of investment into this arena is actually GMs Super Cruise, which seems to have MUCH better user engagement detection and much sharper boundaries than systems like Tesla's
  • toast0 9y ago
    > The issue with the statements from Tesla is that they seem to prioritize PR and obfuscation before actual relevant factual statements. The issue with their statements is that they have no problem throwing their customers under the bus. The proper release is simply "We are investigating the circumstances of this tragic event in cooperation with the NTSB. something something nice words about the family" If pushed, refuse to discuss the issue while it's under investigation. This is a perfectly justifiable position, lots of groups don't make statements while an issue is under investigation; and you let the NTSB report throw the customer under the bus.
• DannyBee 9y ago
  I don't get taking this position. Even if they don't want to engage on the autopilot issue, the hands on wheel vs crash avoidance issue is a lost cause already (IE in most states, they'd lose in any lawsuit on it). If i take any 2018 model year car with front crash avoidance (outside of a tesla :P), and try to drive it into a barrier like this, depending on speed, most avoid the collision, all of them slowed down (AFAICT - i went through the summaries by category on iihs.org). None of them require you have your hands on the wheel to do that. In most jurisdictions, to show a defective design, it's enough to show the existence of an alternative design that would have worked (it doesn't usually even have to have been implemented) , and that it is feasible, economically feasible, and would still perform the original function. Almost all of these cases live and die by the cost of that design and whether it's "too much". Unfortunately for Tesla, there are tons of them here, they all almost certainly cost less than what Tesla is doing, and also all exist. So i'm positive any lawsuit will either settle, or they will show plenty of them would have worked, by driving cars into an identical setup barrier, and Tesla will lose. (This assumes, of course, Tesla can't force them into a jurisdiction with weird defective design rules)
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• cmurf 9y ago
  I think the name "Autopilot" matters less than how it works. Do the raw (whatever Tesla and NTSB have access to in a lab) recordings include hand position, temperature and pressure? Or is the raw data a binary state true/false similar to the in-car UI experience? Back to autopilot: there's a wide range of autopilots in airplanes. Single engine planes might not have them unless they're IFR equipped. There's no requirement to have one, but they are useful for reducing cockpit workload. Perhaps the most common, is just a simple hold heading autopilot where you use a knob to set a bug on the direction gyro and the autopilot holds that heading. Literally all it does is hold a heading. Not altitude, not speed, not power. And then way on the opposite end of the spectrum are autopilots certified for ILS CAT IIIc landings, and include autoland.
• loser777 9y ago
  I think a good litmus test in this situation is "will this end up in an engineering ethics textbook in 10 years?" Unfortunately, Tesla seems to be taking the Ford Pinto route here. "It's only dangerous if you aren't paying full attention 100% of the time" doesn't sound too far off from "it's only dangerous if you get in a rear-end collision." Driving with autopilot sounds like being a driving instructor with your own set of controls: you have to be ready to react at less than a moment's notice, yet feel comfortable to hand off controls most of the time. Most people are not trained driving instructors, so I can't see how autopilot is not inherently unsafe.
• zamalek 9y ago
  The Tesla warns you, what, 6 times before disabling autopilot. Why not have the car engage the emergency lights and gradually slow down for each warning - eventually coming to a full stop. This plays directly into human impatience, likely resulting in hands on the steering wheel after the first warning. In the event that the driver does not react there is probably something wrong (e.g. seizure) and the car should come to a complete stop for safety. This is a very real trolley scenario because a stopped car on the highway is asking to be rear-ended, but it's still far better than a car traveling at 60mph with an incapacitated driver. My last idea on how to eliminate these types of casualties was met with fair criticism (TL;DR - battery ejection)[1]. Am I missing anything with this idea? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16720680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16720680
• sabareesh 9y ago
  I am not sure why there is so much anti Tesla sentiment here in HackerNews. I am a new model 3 owner and very well informed so many times that "Enhanced Autopilot" is nothing other than advanced cruise control and my attention is always on the road. This is a great technology but someone cannot be more obvious than this on how to use it responsibly.
  • buvanshak 9y ago
    >I am not sure why there is so much anti Tesla sentiment here in HackerNews. I just hope it is not limited to HN, and there is more anti Tesla sentiment out there as well. They deserve every bit of it.
    • sabareesh 9y ago
      Please provide more info on why "They deserve every bit of it". I respect HN that is why i am surprised a lot, and regarding other places on Internet there is so much going on to manipulate the stock price.
      • buvanshak 8y ago
        Can you list all unwarranted ones among all the Tesla hate you see?
  • aiCeivi9 9y ago
    We hated the name as soon as it was announced, before any incident. People thought it was misleading and we have another proof it is.
    • sabareesh 9y ago
      I dont think the driver was misinformed and he was clearly aware this is not level 5 autonomy.
• enduser 9y ago
  “NHTSA found that even the early version of Tesla Autopilot resulted in 40% fewer crashes ...” True “... and it has improved substantially since then.” Non-specific to the point of being subjective. Untrue according to many HW2 users. Bad logic.
• AcerbicZero 9y ago
  I suspect many of the same arguments being made in this thread would have been made about cruise control when it was first introduced.
• sorokod 9y ago
  Given the nature of the product, the strategy for handling this must have been ironed out a while ago. This is it.
• mluu510 9y ago
  he complains about the autopilot being unreliable yet he still chooses to use it again and again. i think the negligence was on his part then.
• plussed_reader 9y ago
  I think autopilot is worth it if it cuts down the drunk driving rate. I can't imagine the edge cases that result in fatality for Autopilot would be greater than the damage done by drunk driving.
• awestley 9y ago
  I had an early version of the Model S with the autopilot (P85D). Once it was made available I noticed a DECREASE in the reliability after every update. From day one it was great. It would be glued to the car in front of it and kept me safe. Over the three years I owed it, it only got worse. My theory was that they tried to make the car drive too much like a human. Rather than going safely down the middle of the lane when passing it would try to give a little more space and thus get closer to the median. It only got worse from there. I no longer have the Model S, but it was the best car I ever owned. That said, I won't get another until there are huge improvements to the autopilot.
• mnl 9y ago
  "Well, too bad another of our customers made a mistake and killed himself because he didn't get what 'autopilot' means (for us). Deal with it. Yours, Tesla" You all know the game Elon is playing here, what's the point of arguing? Either you're OK with that or you aren't. It's that simple. Imagine Ford doing this everytime. Oh, the outrage...
• cowpig 9y ago
  Does HN have a policy against posting things that autoplay video/sound? If not, I believe it should (or at least require a tag).
• ilitirit 9y ago
  Given the facts, who/what else would be to blame? This IMO has more to do with PR than anything else. Well... marketing too. I've never felt comfortable with the term "auto pilot" as it is used in the context of Tesla's vehicles. This is potentially a finnicky topic, but I think there should be better standards and legislation around what can be reasonably marketed as "auto pilot".
• oldpond 9y ago
  The solution is to require ALL vehicles to have self driving features like collision avoidance.
• SCAQTony 9y ago
  First off, Tesla has no business calling it auto-pilot; it's over promising. Call it driver assist to be more clear because if you have to keep your hands on the steering wheel and your eyes on the road, that is not auto pilot: "... Automatic Pilot: noun: a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot. ..."
• jumelles 9y ago
  Not a good look for Tesla.
• rootusrootus 9y ago
  This reads like they're making a legal argument but in the court of public opinion. Maybe it will be effective, but as a PR move I am not at all impressed. Best to leave the legal wrangling for the real courtroom and stick to "We feel terrible about this tragedy, and have no further comment." when speaking to the public. Blaming the victim, especially when he is dead, is bad form. I have to think a reputable PR firm would understand this, which makes me think Musk is forcing his team to make these kinds of statements.
• mentos 9y ago
  Most surprising part of the crash to me was not that the car followed the wrong lane markers but that it had no concept of a completely static barrier in its path. This should have resolved with the driver calling Tesla to complain about whiplash from last minute breaking.. not plowing full speed into a concrete barrier tearing the front of the car off. Tesla will definitely now make a point to update their tests for this case and similar deaths will definitely be avoided in the future. That is value that has been added to Tesla's system at the cost of Mr. Huang's life. If I was a lawyer on this case I'd probably take that position. "What does Tesla feel Mr. Huang's life is worth for this improvement to their system?"
• thsowers 9y ago
  > "Tesla is extremely clear that Autopilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel." I am a Tesla fan, and although I previously didn't understand the criticism for the name, I now see some negatives of a name like "autopilot". IMO it implies non-intervention (and yes I know Tesla warns about this etc), but at the current stage of technology and regulation, maybe "autopilot" wasn't the best naming choice?
• philliphaydon 9y ago
  "We know that he's not the type who would not have his hands on the steering wheel, he's always been (a) really careful driver," said Will. Isn’t it obvious he didn’t have his hands on the wheel?!? If he did he would have corrected the car. I’m not saying Tesla or the driver are to blame. I know very little about this incident cos I haven’t followed it. But can’t say he always has his hands on the wheel when they’d clearly not the case. Likewise everyone says he apparently reported it to Tesla 7-10 times? But he still felt the need to not pay attention on this particular stretch of road he was worried about?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• josto 9y ago
  The line about fundamental legal/moral principle being a broken promise is dead wrong. Who wrote this? Tesla has a horrible pr firm appareantly. The fundamental principle is standard of care. One could say it was reasonably foreseeable this would happen since the driver reported it! Tesla was negligent and their best hope would be to show comparative fault by the driver. But forget negligence. Products liability is strict liability. Someone died here. Causation is the only issue and imo it looks bad for Tesla.The fundamental premise of both moral and legal liability is a broken promise, and there was none here Very very stupid statement on their part. They should have quietly settled this. Bad pr and legally peroulous. As a shareholder this makes me question their competence to deal with these matters. They should fix the issue and settle. All the discovery and everything about mobile eye and radar. Horrible strategy by Tesla. It’s like they take it personal since auto pilot failed. People are dumb. It doesn’t matter if they warned him to keep his hands on the wheel. Someone died. There was an alternative design that was safer. Whoever wrote that statement should be fired
• skywhopper 9y ago
  Tesla's marketing around this feature is completely at odds with what they say when a problem happens. If you are required to be paying attention with hands on the wheel at all times, then the "Autopilot" name itself is fraudulent, not to mention all the blather about how it's safer than a human driver. Even if self-driving cars were imminent (they aren't), this sort of blatant misrepresentation by the likes of Tesla (a company who surely doesn't need the lure of self-driving to sell its cars) would set back consumer interest and adoption by years.
• oblib 9y ago
  As far as I know Tesla has never endorsed letting their cars drive themselves for more than a short time and only when traffic and road conditions are optimal. I'd be fine with anyone showing me otherwise but I'm pretty sure I seen statements specifically saying do not use the autopilot in city highway traffic conditions. The driver is the only one to blame in this case. That's not a cold or heartless thing to do, it's just a fact. Tesla cannot remain silent about this. They have to tell people to not do what this driver was doing. It could have been worse. He could have killed others driving nearby.
  • FireBeyond 9y ago
    > As far as I know Tesla has never endorsed letting their cars drive themselves for more than a short time They used to only require you to put your hands on the wheel every 15 minutes, before being "encouraged" to reduce that to 1 minute.
• neya 9y ago
  At first, I thought the news was click bait. I watched the video fully to understand if a company like Telsa would really say something to this extent. Tesla's auto-pilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means the only way for this accident to have occured is if Mr.Huang was not paying attention to the road. This is the official response. I'm completely baffled and at a loss of words. I feel very sorry for the family and I hope they sue the sh*t out of Tesla just for this arrogant statement. And as for Tesla, you should fire the guy that wrote this. If this official response was something approved by Musk, I just lost all respect for him. Personally, this is why I am a hardcore manual guy. I drive a stick/manual. I don't even trust automatics to do the job right, let alone some software. There's no way I'm trusting a self driving car. I personally opine that driving is actually very relevant to planning ahead. If you drove a stick, you would know you need to shift down before a steep curve to maintain traction and to reduce your inertia to turn around safely. Or, if you're planning to overtake someone, or you foresee a situation that requires braking, you downshift. As much inefficient as gearboxes + clutches + ICEs are, the ability to plan ahead and downshift correctly is an exclusive human edge that I believe strongly that computers can't mimic. If they could, we wouldn't have automatics (in 2018) that can't even downshift even with all that data from its sensors. Even the most expensive automatics w/ some sort of software fail to downshift correctly. Unfortunately, in the driving world, it's not enough if your car can drive 99% accurately as even one instance of wrong downshit/upshift can kill you easily. I strongly believe driving is best left to humans and there are simply too many variables that could be reliably fixed with mathematical algorithms. Sometimes, it just doesn't "feel" right and maybe it's ok to just trust our instincts.
• RyanShook 9y ago
  The Apple Watch is fully submersible and in reality waterproof but Apple is smart enough not to call it waterproof for the purpose of liability. Tesla has chosen to market their product as “autopilot” and will have to face the consequences of that marketing decision.
• fipple 9y ago
  Wow, Tesla instantly went from my dream car (having replaced Bentley) to Do Not Buy. I simply will not buy a car or other dangerous equipment from a company that doesn’t care if I die and only cares about their brand.
• tompetry 9y ago
  I don't get it. Doesn't autopilot mean that the car is steering itself? "Perfect" or not, if the car is steering itself, what is the point of having your hands on the wheel? I get the point about being alert, and needing to take over if you see an issue, but I would fear that I'd be overcompensating autopilot by having my hands on the wheel while cruising along. Can somebody explain?
• stevew20 9y ago
  I vote that ABC News has it's journalism license revoked! All in favor?
• InternetOfStuff 9y ago
  Unless they have other data to back up their claim of the hands not being on the wheel, such as camera images, Tesla isn't making a statement of fact. Rather they are recounting what imperfect sensors might be telling them (that's convenient in the upcoming lawsuit). To give perspective: I have a car (BMW) with lane-keeping "autopilot", which often gets wrong whether I have my hands on the wheel. It seems to me that it senses resistance to rotation to determine hands-onness. If my hands are very relaxed, just letting the steering wheel do its thing, apparently the sensor can't pick it up anymore. I had my hands on the wheel, dammit car! Stop beeping and flashing at me all accusatory.
• Animats 9y ago
  Tesla's system demands more from drivers than manual driving. The driver has to detect automation failures after they occur, but before a crash. This requires faster reaction time than merely avoiding obstacles. Here's a good example - a Tesla on autopilot crashing into a temporary road barrier which required a lane change.[1] This is a view from the dashcam of the vehicle behind the Tesla. At 00:21, things look normal. At 00:22, the Tesla should just be starting to turn to follow the lane and avoid the barrier, but it isn't. By 00:23, it's hit the wall. By the time the driver could have detected that failure, it was too late. Big, solid, obvious orange obstacle. Freeway on a clear day. Tesla's system didn't detect it. By the time it was clear that the driver needed to take over, it was too late. This is why, as the head of Google's self driving effort once said, partial self driving "assistance" is inherently unsafe. Lane following assistance without good automatic braking kills. This is the Tesla self-crashing car in action. Tesla fails at the basic task of self-driving - not hitting obstacles. If it doesn't look like the rear end of a car or truck, it gets hit. So far, one street sweeper, one fire truck, one disabled car, one crossing tractor trailer, and two freeway barriers have been hit. Those are the ones that got press attention. There are probably more incidents. Automatic driving the Waymo way seems to be working. Automatic driving the Tesla way leaves a trail of blood and death. That is not an accident. It follows directly from Musk's decision to cut costs by trying to do the job with inadequate sensors and processing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c
  • maxxxxx 9y ago
    " Tesla's system demands more from drivers than manual driving. The driver has to detect automation failures after they occur, but before a crash. This requires faster reaction time than merely avoiding obstacles." I have been thinking that too. At what point do you decide that the autopilot is making a mistake and take over? That's an almost impossible task to perform within the available time.
    • linkmotif 9y ago
      Also what is the point of such an auto pilot? Seems really dangerous. Telling people you don’t have to drive but you have to pay attention ignores fundamental psychology.
• JonasJSchreiber 9y ago
  Maybe the cost of improvement is failure in this case. For Tesla to fix the issue of a crossing tractor trailer not being positively detected there had to be an instance of a Tesla hitting a crossing tractor trailer. Maybe for road work barriers that change position as the road work progresses to be avoided there needs to be an impetus for Tesla engineers to build in detection of these cases. This is all a way of saying that I reject the notion that autonomous vehicles are more unsafe as compared to manually driven vehicles. This isn't an impulsive reaction either; data compiled by the NHTSA has proven this out.
  • mempko 9y ago
    no, this isn't how you train computer vision algorithms.
  • toast0 9y ago
    The choice isn't really autonomous vehicles vs manually driven vehicles. The choice is autonomous vehicles vs manually driven vehicles vs manually driven vehicles with computer assistance. It turns out that humans are really bad at paying attention to be able to take over for an autonomous system; but computers are pretty good at paying attention in order to take over for a human driven system. I do believe that eventually autonomous vehicles could be safer than a manually driven vehicle with computer assistance, but Telsa's are not currently autonomous vehicles, despite the perception that many of their drivers apparently have.
• axaxs 9y ago
  This is so frustrating to me. 50 years ago we had the ability to fly to the moon. A played out trope, sure. But today we can't even do a basic 'dont run into shit' on a perfectly clear day. Physics in this way is and has been a solved problem for decades. The fact that people are dying from hitting stationary objects should be criminal. At lightest, they should bar these companies from even participating.
  • lsc 9y ago
    >But today we can't even do a basic 'dont run into shit' on a perfectly clear day. so,uh, the emergency braking systems on other cars...so called 'AEB' systems, or what Honda calls Collision Mitigation Braking System... would that have caught this? I would expect this sort of thing "big object in road" to trigger the AEB system... even if it didn't stop me, I'd expect it to trigger before the collision and slow me down. Are my expectations off? or is it just that the tesla system, 'passive sensors only, with machine classification' isn't as good? I guess people rely on the tesla system more than the honda system, due to advertising, so it could be that both systems make errors at similar rates, it's just that advertising means that the tesla system is triggered more often.
    • axaxs 9y ago
      Maybe, who knows. The difference is that Honda and others aren't advertising an auto driving but a warning system. If i'm designing such a system, the obvious answer is 'if I don't know my exact next x feet, stop the car.' And I mean exact. A confused autodrive system should stop in the highway, not smash a barrier.
      • haeffin 9y ago
        A car that stops for no reason is a safety risk for the cars that follow it, so that's not a good option either.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
• jijojv 9y ago
  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.'
  • axaxs 9y ago
    You don't beta test with human lives.
    • tjomk 9y ago
      Or you don't use beta features where the ultimate mistake can cost you your life.
      • axaxs 9y ago
        No. You don't put beta features in that have life on the line. People always laugh at ridiculous warning labels, saying not to stick a fork in a toaster, or not to do something else obvious. Funny as it is, they are there for a reason, and it's not a corporations sense of humor. Tesla is the opposite of that, more or less advertising a feature that could kill you. It should be illegal, and if not, they'll eventually find out why those silly labels exist when they're filing chapter 11.
        • tjomk 9y ago
          This is exactly the point why I will never understand people in US and the sort of thing with labels and warnings. You don't microwave a cat just because there is no warning label saying you cannot do that. You do not dry your hair submerged in a bath just because there's no warning label. And knowing how imperfect and faulty this system is (which is what the family says the driver told them), I would avoid engaging Autopilot at all costs even if Tesla had no warnings and instead praised this feature as being the safest. Unless you absolutely have to (in case with a doctor), you do not outsource the life-threatening decisions to someone else. If you're tired and cannot drive, park and have a rest instead of watching movies while driving on Autopilot. What I'm trying to say is that in the end it's your decision, and you have to live with the consequences.
• beedogs 9y ago
  Things like this have me fully convinced that we're never going to see ubiquitous driverless cars in my lifetime.
• lafar6502 9y ago
  Missing good old cars already oś still excited about meeting Tesla lawyers every time something happens to you?
• abalone 9y ago
  May I ask a very simple question here. I’ve never heard a cogent answer. What exactly is the point of autopilot if you have to remain 100% attentive with your hands on the wheel? What is the benefit? I get that cruise control lets you take your foot off the wheel, letting your foot physically rest. And it is my understanding that emergency braking and collision avoidance is active on Teslas at all times even without autopilot. So that basically leaves autosteering. So, what is the benefit of autosteering when you have to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road with exactly the same attentiveness as you would without it? What is it doing for you, now, at level 2, apart from (a) “gee whiz look at what it can almost do” and (b) seducing you into trusting it so you can mentally relax?
  • dayaz36 9y ago
    Trains itself for levels 3,4,5
• lumberjack 9y ago
  Tesla gambled with their lane assist by calling it autopilot in the hopes that it would give them good PR as the first car manufacturer with a self driving car. It failed spectacularly with multiple deaths. Most (all?) of the crashes are the result of the impossible nature of the task for the human driver. You cannot react fast enough when autopilot brain-farts in a seemingly trivial length of road. They fucked up big.
• lovetrump 9y ago
  you would think that a self driving car would be aware of any obstacle anywhere around the car (360 degrees) and aware of them far enough to have time to react... where are their sensors looking if they can't even see fixed obstacles in front of the car...
• dayaz36 9y ago
  >"We know that he's not the type who would not have his hands on the steering wheel, he's always been (a) really careful driver," said Will. I don't understand. The victims family is trying to make the case that the driver had his hands on the steering wheel but blame Tesla's AP at the same time? So are they saying AP drove off road against his will while he was trying to steer the car? Because that would be ridiculous.
• discordance 9y ago
  We heavily regulate factors/distractions that may reduce a drivers attention from the road (alcohol, drugs, mobile phones etc). If Autopilot still requires a user to monitor the road, but results in a reduction in driver attention to the road, then why is it not regulated like mobile phone usage?
• abalone 9y ago
  Tesla is recklessly using its own customers to train their fleet for level 5. AT BEST their response is, drivers need to be 100% as attentive as they would without autopilot. What then is the point of autopilot, except to train the fleet? They are in complete denial that autosteering can seduce reasonable people into lowering their guard and mentally relaxing. Again, what other immediate user benefit would it provide? What would a reasonable person expect autopilot to do? Isn’t it contradictory to offer an automation feature while claiming that legally it does ZERO automation for you? Note: collision avoidance and emergency braking are on by default even without autopilot. “Autopilot” here really means the autosteering feature.
  • sschueller 9y ago
    Why are Tesla's permitted on European roads with the autopilot feature? Roads are quite different compared to the US. Additionaly I am very concerned about the OTA autopilot updates which do not go through any government or 3rd party certification. In fact I have read on hacker news that Tesla will sometimes push code changes to cars on the same day.
  • deepGem 9y ago
    I think the phrase 'Auto-pilot' is a misnomer. It's a lead-on phrase, confuses people to let their eyes off the road. They should have named it 'driver assist' or something mundane people shouldn't get confused by. Auto-pilot for any person means that the car will steer automatically, which it does, but also kills you. At least by now, it should be obvious that a half baked auto-steering or auto-pilot is a colossal mistake. Admit that you made a mistake and be done with it. Tell people explicitly not to use auto pilot. Tesla can still use the onboard cameras and everything else for training the AI.
    • abalone 9y ago
      Yeah, Tesla’s response to that is it’s like a plane: autopilot means you still have be at the controls. But it’s nothing like a plane. Concrete walls don’t suddenly appear in the sky. The required reaction time to avoid an autopilot collision in some of these videos is seconds.
• basicplus2 9y ago
  "She told the ABC7 News I-Team that Walter complained that his Tesla's Autopilot had steered toward that same barrier on several occasions, she recognized the location and the blue Model X."
• sunstone 9y ago
  The self driving tech is trying to do everything 'by itself' in that it's trying to drive perfectly without help but in the ends roads will probably have to meet the tech part way. That is, the roads will need some (hopefully not to expensive) adjustments or additions to make the self driving tech more reliable.
• dasanman 9y ago
  Wow this is a terrible article
• blackrock 9y ago
  If the guy didn't use the Tesla Autopilot, then he would still be alive today. I don't know how else to clearly say this. When you are travelling at 65 MPH, then there is no ability to safely react, should the car decide to go berserk. You probably have less than 0.25 seconds to react. And even if you had your hands on the wheel, there is just no way for you to safely process the situation, and react to safely take control of the vehicle. And if you do react, then you might end up over-reacting, which would cause a different kind of accident. And which, Tesla would blame on you, for human error for over-reacting. This is not a good situation. The only way to survive, is to not play. I have over hundreds of thousands of miles of driving experience, and I as a human, would have never gotten into this situation.
• aviv 9y ago
  The naming of their self driving features "autopilot" will go down in history as Tesla's biggest mistake.
• thelastidiot 9y ago
  Driving a Tesla in the "auto-pilot" is like taking my 16yo kid for a teaching lesson while I am in the passenger seat, sweating and sometimes hoping for the best when she makes a mistake that could be fatal. And as a software engineer, I have more faith in my daughter than Tesla's software.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ersh 9y ago
  Waiting for Ilon to be questioned in the Congress too.
• kgc 9y ago
  Tesla should just change Autopilot to Copilot and reserve the Autopilot name for when they achieve full self driving.
• xHopen 9y ago
  I have to say I was a firm supporter of tesla's autopilot, but you know, this is rediculous, Tesla should be ashamed say sorry, say oour system is crap , is a demo version and it doesn't work, and thats it. The rest is history, I was about to get a new tesla, not anymore.
• pvaldes 8y ago
  As most routes in a normal journey are a repetition, maybe the car could learn from an human first. The owner drive a few times in their normal route and the car uses this info to train the autopilot in the same route and paying attention to the differences between what the car would have done and the human really did.
• pvaldes 8y ago
  As most routes in a normal journey are a repetition, maybe the car could learn from an human first. The owner drive a few times in their normal route and the car uses this info to train the autopilot paying attention to the differences between what the car would have done and what the human really did.
• jaakl 8y ago
  The good news is that Tesla does not manufacture toys for children. Otherwise, for them label "not suitable for children under 3 years, must be used carefully etc" would make every deadly mistake just another user's fault.