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Consumer Reports tricks Tesla to drive with no one at wheel

31 points by weare138 6y ago

diebeforei485 6y ago
They put weights on the steering wheel[1] to trick the system into thinking there was a hand on the wheel. This is not new. I am surprised Tesla isn't using the seat weight sensors as an input to this as well. Maybe that can be done through a software update, but then someone would figure out they could put some dumbbells on the seat. This is a cat-and-mouse game, but it makes sense to have higher barriers so blame can clearly be assigned to people who go out of their way to abuse the system. If someone puts weights on the accelerator pedal, the car would still move forward. 1. https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cr-engineers-show-tesla-will-drive-with-no-one-in-drivers-seat/ https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cr-engine...
- zwily 6y ago
  They do. If you have autopilot on, and lift yourself up to take weight off the seat, AP will immediately disengage. I’ve done this accidentally before reaching for something in the other seat. (I have no idea why CR saw different behavior).
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Software updates on different versions?
dbt00 6y ago
Tying a weight to the steering wheel is frequently alluded to but never outright spoken of in most Tesla forums, moderators will ban people who say it since, as the article says, it's incredibly stupid (and damaging to one's self, and Tesla, to do so). The fact that the driver's seat weight sensor isn't used to disable AP is a silly oversight and should be fixed. Multiple people have suggested that the internal camera above the rear view mirror could try doing eye tracking, but I actually doubt it would work effectively from that angle.
- boredpeter 6y ago
  Actually, Tesla is using that camera for that exact purpose in the FSD beta already. https://insideevs.com/news/499611/tesla-cabin-camera-analyses-you/ https://insideevs.com/news/499611/tesla-cabin-camera-analyse...
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Apparently the steering wheel weight trick doesn't work for very long - a previous software update now checks that the torque on the steering wheel changes occasionally and isn't constant. Either CR has old software, or did the test for a very short time.
mcguire 6y ago
"Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California, and has disbanded its press office, did not immediately respond to inquiries about Consumer Reports’ assertions." Huh?
- klyrs 6y ago
  https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department/ https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department...
  - spikels 6y ago
    Very cool. PR is evil. Goal is to manipulate people for the benefit of the business. Despite all the Tesla hate in the media (Bloomberg and NYTimes seems to have it out for them) whenever you get a unvarnished glimpse of how they do things it always seems thoughtful.
    - alphabettsy 6y ago
      Like Elon saying this wasn’t possible? Why have a PR department BS you when the CEO can’t do it himself. /s They’re one of the most popular companies in the world, of course there’s more press good or bad, nobody cares what Suzuki is doing and you won’t see many articles about them for that reason.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Wut? In what way is Musk not manipulative?
    - t0mas88 6y ago
      Tesla manipulates the public perception of their "self driving" tech with every chance they get, starting with naming it autopilot. And Musk claiming each year that "full self driving will happen next year", doesn't really need a PR team but I wouldn't call it cool...
lebuffon 6y ago
Murphy's law of engineering: "It's impossible to make anything idiot proof because idiots are too ingenious" Perhaps Tesla just stopped trying...
- musicale 6y ago
  You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it darnedfoolproof.
  - senectus1 6y ago
    Its not like Tesla invented this probelm: https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/motorhome-crash/ https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/motorhome-crash/ Idiots have been around for as long as smart people...
  - mr_toad 6y ago
    "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." ― Douglas Adams
WalterGR 6y ago
Yesterday: CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive with No One in the Driver's Seat (consumerreports.org) 25 points by camjohnson26 1 day ago | 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26904097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26904097
- weare138 6y ago
  Well crap, I didn't know it got posted already.
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    No worries, it’s been posted tons of times. But if anyone wants to see prior discussion, there’s the link. :) (I’m not a mod btw.)
ajross 6y ago
This is such a weird take. The driver nag is a reminder to ensure driver attention, it's not designed to be a security feature. Of course you can defeat it. So what? You can put a brick on the accelerator of a Model A and get it to "drive itself" too! There have always been an infinite number of ways to deliberately behave unsafely in a car. Why did we only start caring now? Edit to propose an answer to my final question: what we have here is a confounding prior. If your prior is "Tesla Autopilot is Inherently Unsafe", then the driver nag feature becomes understood as a safety feature ("Tesla Autopilot Needs Supervision"). Thus, a failure of the driver nag becomes evidence for your prior, magically ("Tesla Autopilot is unsafe BECAUSE the Driver Nag Can Be Defeated"). And thus the clickbait. (And FWIW: I continue to believe that this recent crash did not in fact involve autopilot at all, but we'll see.)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Hasn't Musk stated that it's impossible though?
  - buffet_overflow 6y ago
    He's been wrong before. His statements should be taken as marketing, not gospel.
    - serf 6y ago
      the fact that we as a society equate 'marketing' to mean 'probably not honest' is somewhat unsettling to me.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      That's my point. If people can die lying isn't good enough.
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  One comment that struck me on Twitter is that others track your eye attention, where Tesla only does steering wheel, which is annoying and kinda pointless...
musicale 6y ago
CR also discovered that Tesla vehicles currently allow human drivers to drive while drunk, blindfolded, and distracted by small children – resulting in a "WORST" rating for safety. Elon Musk says this will be fixed in a future software update.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  That...maybe that will actually happen someday? I mean, software detects when the driver is driving erratically, and automatically limits speed and/or activates flashing hazard lights? The problem would be legal liability, I guess: in America's weird legal system, trying to do anything to curtail inhibited driving might make you entirely responsible if it happens anyways.
avalys 6y ago
In other news, Consumer Reports demonstrates in a shocking analysis that Teslas can be driven off cliffs, into brick walls, and into crowds of people, and there is NO WARNING LABEL or advisory of any kind alerting consumers not to do this. In fact, Tesla relies only on the “driver’s judgement” not to do these things, and hides behind arcane product liability laws (also used by gun manufacturers and cigarette companies) to avoid responsibility for these dangerous uses of their products.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
steveBK123 6y ago
These takes are funny because the steps required are pretty onerous. There's always a bigger idiot out there. I learned to drive in the days before texting, moved to NYC and stopped driving for 15 years or so. It's been amazing seeing the people texting&driving and just full on distracted driving nowadays. I hope that driver assist tech does not get hampered by American litigiousness because some a percent of people are going to going to misuse it. If you are a thoughtful driver to start with, these technologies provide an extra layer of protection and reduction to driver fatigue. If you are an idiot, you will continue to be an idiot. No software is going to fix idiots. If you drive with your hands on the wheel.. as the instructions say, the screen tells you every single time, and the sensors attempt to confirm and remind you every 30-60 seconds.. it's another layer of safety beyond your own eyes&brain. Some people were buying or fabricating devices to provide sufficient torque to trick the sensor to believe hands were on wheel. These are the same galaxy brains which will buy a defeat device for the next safety check that is introduced - weights to trick seat sensors, googly eyed sunglasses to trick cameras, fake heat & capacitive touch to trick the wheel to believe a human hand is there, etc.
camjohnson26 6y ago
For all the people saying this is a non issue because you can put a brick on the accelerator of other cars, or that putting a weight on the steering wheel is onerous, you are completely missing the point. Try to understand why this is a problem before pulling out irrelevant excuses. The fact is, Tesla has oversold their level 2 driver assistance system in countless promos over the last 4 years. It is trivially easy to put the car in autopilot with no one in the driver seat. We have seen dozens of YouTube clips of people doing exactly this, not to mention sleeping. Tesla has been begged over and over and over and over to attach the existing weight sensor in the seat to autopilot activation and to add eye tracking. They have the tech to do this. The only reasonable conclusion, even if it sounds cynical, is Tesla encourages these videos because they make good marketing stunts and make people think they are close to full self driving, which they are not. Don’t forget Elon made a joke about the porno that was filmed on autopilot. And I don’t care what Elon says on Twitter, I trust the eye witnesses and the officers at the scene who say they are 100% sure no one was driving the Tesla that crashed outside of Houston. Those men were 60 and 70 years old and they believed the hype about their car that Musk and the media have been pumping for years. Yes they were foolish to put the car in this mode, but it was foreseeable and Tesla could have built reasonable safeguards, but they chose not to.
Brian_K_White 6y ago
This is such a fundamentally anti_feature... "Guys, I have the best idea! How about we make the car put the driver to sleep? No, no, hear me out this is great. It only sounds dumb to dumb people without enough vision. The way it works is, you make the car do almost all the work of driving for hours at a time, so that the driver can't help but fall asleep or get distracted by something else. BUT, here's where the really genius part comes in: The car can't really do the whole job of driving so, inevitably, cars will just plow right into things because the drivers will never be already alert and engaged in the task of driving when the totally expected unexpected happens. ... I know right? Right? And just to make sure no one mistakes what the driver should do and what we want to happen, let's call the feature "Autopilot". It's not an autopilot, it's not even a co-pilot, because even a co-pilot is a full pilot in their own right and fully able to do the complete job and handle all situations on their own, but that's the genius part! Don't let the engineers call it "driver assist" or "extra eyes" or anything dumb like that. This is gonna be awesome."
- elisharobinson 6y ago
  Autopilot in aircraft does not land the plane or take off and the pilot is trained to take over if anything goes wrong this maps well with expectations you should have about tesla AP. And IMO a torque sensor is much less intrusive / complex safety check than driver monitoring . And people do fall a sleep on the wheel people drink and drive the fact of the matter is if you're paying the insurance it's on you to keep the car from crashing . FSD will be prod ready only after Tesla has data to release an insurance per car covering the passenger aswell.
  - mshook 6y ago
    Autopilot can actually land an aircraft and has been doing so for a long time (like since the 60s). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland The only non automatic thing is taking off but there were demos by Airbus showing AP doing taxiing and taking off... https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/airbus-demonstrates-first-fully-automatic-visionbased-takeoff.html https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/ai...

31 points by weare138 6y ago

They put weights on the steering wheel[1] to trick the system into thinking there was a hand on the wheel. This is not new. I am surprised Tesla isn't using the seat weight sensors as an input to this as well. Maybe that can be done through a software update, but then someone would figure out they could put some dumbbells on the seat. This is a cat-and-mouse game, but it makes sense to have higher barriers so blame can clearly be assigned to people who go out of their way to abuse the system. If someone puts weights on the accelerator pedal, the car would still move forward. 1. https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cr-engineers-show-tesla-will-drive-with-no-one-in-drivers-seat/ https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cr-engine...

zwily 6y ago
They do. If you have autopilot on, and lift yourself up to take weight off the seat, AP will immediately disengage. I’ve done this accidentally before reaching for something in the other seat. (I have no idea why CR saw different behavior).
- falcolas 6y ago
  Software updates on different versions?

dbt00 6y ago

Tying a weight to the steering wheel is frequently alluded to but never outright spoken of in most Tesla forums, moderators will ban people who say it since, as the article says, it's incredibly stupid (and damaging to one's self, and Tesla, to do so). The fact that the driver's seat weight sensor isn't used to disable AP is a silly oversight and should be fixed. Multiple people have suggested that the internal camera above the rear view mirror could try doing eye tracking, but I actually doubt it would work effectively from that angle.

boredpeter 6y ago
Actually, Tesla is using that camera for that exact purpose in the FSD beta already. https://insideevs.com/news/499611/tesla-cabin-camera-analyses-you/ https://insideevs.com/news/499611/tesla-cabin-camera-analyse...

LeoPanthera 6y ago

Apparently the steering wheel weight trick doesn't work for very long - a previous software update now checks that the torque on the steering wheel changes occasionally and isn't constant. Either CR has old software, or did the test for a very short time.

mcguire 6y ago

"Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California, and has disbanded its press office, did not immediately respond to inquiries about Consumer Reports’ assertions." Huh?

klyrs 6y ago
https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department/ https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department...
- spikels 6y ago
  Very cool. PR is evil. Goal is to manipulate people for the benefit of the business. Despite all the Tesla hate in the media (Bloomberg and NYTimes seems to have it out for them) whenever you get a unvarnished glimpse of how they do things it always seems thoughtful.
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    Like Elon saying this wasn’t possible? Why have a PR department BS you when the CEO can’t do it himself. /s They’re one of the most popular companies in the world, of course there’s more press good or bad, nobody cares what Suzuki is doing and you won’t see many articles about them for that reason.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Wut? In what way is Musk not manipulative?
  - t0mas88 6y ago
    Tesla manipulates the public perception of their "self driving" tech with every chance they get, starting with naming it autopilot. And Musk claiming each year that "full self driving will happen next year", doesn't really need a PR team but I wouldn't call it cool...

lebuffon 6y ago

Murphy's law of engineering: "It's impossible to make anything idiot proof because idiots are too ingenious" Perhaps Tesla just stopped trying...

musicale 6y ago
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it darnedfoolproof.
- senectus1 6y ago
  Its not like Tesla invented this probelm: https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/motorhome-crash/ https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/motorhome-crash/ Idiots have been around for as long as smart people...
- mr_toad 6y ago
  "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." ― Douglas Adams

WalterGR 6y ago

Yesterday: CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive with No One in the Driver's Seat (consumerreports.org) 25 points by camjohnson26 1 day ago | 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26904097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26904097

weare138 6y ago
Well crap, I didn't know it got posted already.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  No worries, it’s been posted tons of times. But if anyone wants to see prior discussion, there’s the link. :) (I’m not a mod btw.)

ajross 6y ago

This is such a weird take. The driver nag is a reminder to ensure driver attention, it's not designed to be a security feature. Of course you can defeat it. So what? You can put a brick on the accelerator of a Model A and get it to "drive itself" too! There have always been an infinite number of ways to deliberately behave unsafely in a car. Why did we only start caring now? Edit to propose an answer to my final question: what we have here is a confounding prior. If your prior is "Tesla Autopilot is Inherently Unsafe", then the driver nag feature becomes understood as a safety feature ("Tesla Autopilot Needs Supervision"). Thus, a failure of the driver nag becomes evidence for your prior, magically ("Tesla Autopilot is unsafe BECAUSE the Driver Nag Can Be Defeated"). And thus the clickbait. (And FWIW: I continue to believe that this recent crash did not in fact involve autopilot at all, but we'll see.)

mhh__ 6y ago
Hasn't Musk stated that it's impossible though?
- buffet_overflow 6y ago
  He's been wrong before. His statements should be taken as marketing, not gospel.
  - serf 6y ago
    the fact that we as a society equate 'marketing' to mean 'probably not honest' is somewhat unsettling to me.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    That's my point. If people can die lying isn't good enough.
dzhiurgis 6y ago
One comment that struck me on Twitter is that others track your eye attention, where Tesla only does steering wheel, which is annoying and kinda pointless...

musicale 6y ago

CR also discovered that Tesla vehicles currently allow human drivers to drive while drunk, blindfolded, and distracted by small children – resulting in a "WORST" rating for safety. Elon Musk says this will be fixed in a future software update.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
That...maybe that will actually happen someday? I mean, software detects when the driver is driving erratically, and automatically limits speed and/or activates flashing hazard lights? The problem would be legal liability, I guess: in America's weird legal system, trying to do anything to curtail inhibited driving might make you entirely responsible if it happens anyways.

avalys 6y ago

In other news, Consumer Reports demonstrates in a shocking analysis that Teslas can be driven off cliffs, into brick walls, and into crowds of people, and there is NO WARNING LABEL or advisory of any kind alerting consumers not to do this. In fact, Tesla relies only on the “driver’s judgement” not to do these things, and hides behind arcane product liability laws (also used by gun manufacturers and cigarette companies) to avoid responsibility for these dangerous uses of their products.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

steveBK123 6y ago

These takes are funny because the steps required are pretty onerous. There's always a bigger idiot out there. I learned to drive in the days before texting, moved to NYC and stopped driving for 15 years or so. It's been amazing seeing the people texting&driving and just full on distracted driving nowadays. I hope that driver assist tech does not get hampered by American litigiousness because some a percent of people are going to going to misuse it. If you are a thoughtful driver to start with, these technologies provide an extra layer of protection and reduction to driver fatigue. If you are an idiot, you will continue to be an idiot. No software is going to fix idiots. If you drive with your hands on the wheel.. as the instructions say, the screen tells you every single time, and the sensors attempt to confirm and remind you every 30-60 seconds.. it's another layer of safety beyond your own eyes&brain. Some people were buying or fabricating devices to provide sufficient torque to trick the sensor to believe hands were on wheel. These are the same galaxy brains which will buy a defeat device for the next safety check that is introduced - weights to trick seat sensors, googly eyed sunglasses to trick cameras, fake heat & capacitive touch to trick the wheel to believe a human hand is there, etc.

camjohnson26 6y ago

For all the people saying this is a non issue because you can put a brick on the accelerator of other cars, or that putting a weight on the steering wheel is onerous, you are completely missing the point. Try to understand why this is a problem before pulling out irrelevant excuses. The fact is, Tesla has oversold their level 2 driver assistance system in countless promos over the last 4 years. It is trivially easy to put the car in autopilot with no one in the driver seat. We have seen dozens of YouTube clips of people doing exactly this, not to mention sleeping. Tesla has been begged over and over and over and over to attach the existing weight sensor in the seat to autopilot activation and to add eye tracking. They have the tech to do this. The only reasonable conclusion, even if it sounds cynical, is Tesla encourages these videos because they make good marketing stunts and make people think they are close to full self driving, which they are not. Don’t forget Elon made a joke about the porno that was filmed on autopilot. And I don’t care what Elon says on Twitter, I trust the eye witnesses and the officers at the scene who say they are 100% sure no one was driving the Tesla that crashed outside of Houston. Those men were 60 and 70 years old and they believed the hype about their car that Musk and the media have been pumping for years. Yes they were foolish to put the car in this mode, but it was foreseeable and Tesla could have built reasonable safeguards, but they chose not to.

Brian_K_White 6y ago

This is such a fundamentally anti_feature... "Guys, I have the best idea! How about we make the car put the driver to sleep? No, no, hear me out this is great. It only sounds dumb to dumb people without enough vision. The way it works is, you make the car do almost all the work of driving for hours at a time, so that the driver can't help but fall asleep or get distracted by something else. BUT, here's where the really genius part comes in: The car can't really do the whole job of driving so, inevitably, cars will just plow right into things because the drivers will never be already alert and engaged in the task of driving when the totally expected unexpected happens. ... I know right? Right? And just to make sure no one mistakes what the driver should do and what we want to happen, let's call the feature "Autopilot". It's not an autopilot, it's not even a co-pilot, because even a co-pilot is a full pilot in their own right and fully able to do the complete job and handle all situations on their own, but that's the genius part! Don't let the engineers call it "driver assist" or "extra eyes" or anything dumb like that. This is gonna be awesome."

elisharobinson 6y ago
Autopilot in aircraft does not land the plane or take off and the pilot is trained to take over if anything goes wrong this maps well with expectations you should have about tesla AP. And IMO a torque sensor is much less intrusive / complex safety check than driver monitoring . And people do fall a sleep on the wheel people drink and drive the fact of the matter is if you're paying the insurance it's on you to keep the car from crashing . FSD will be prod ready only after Tesla has data to release an insurance per car covering the passenger aswell.
- mshook 6y ago
  Autopilot can actually land an aircraft and has been doing so for a long time (like since the 60s). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland The only non automatic thing is taking off but there were demos by Airbus showing AP doing taxiing and taking off... https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/airbus-demonstrates-first-fully-automatic-visionbased-takeoff.html https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/ai...