9 ms·

Tesla crash driver posted videos of himself riding without hands on wheel

29 points by benrmatthews 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago
Thankfully so far these reckless sociopaths have only done self-owns. Tesla is in for a reckoning when an innocent gets killed.
- batch12 5y ago
  Not sure I fully follow your comment. Who is the reckless sociopath here?
  - sigzero 5y ago
    I am sure he means the driver.
  - 8note 5y ago
    I'd guess Elon Musk and Tesla stock owners. Tesla has sold people on these cars being self driving, and this is the natural consequence of that sales pitch
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Elon Musk plus the drivers who do things like sit in the backseat or go to sleep.
- creato 5y ago
  In this case: > Another man was seriously injured when the electric vehicle hit him as he was helping the truck driver out of the wreck.
  - FnControlOption 5y ago
    AI has gotten really good but will it ever develop the necessary imagination to be able to handle all edge cases? If we ever do reach that point, we should require all cars to be AI-driven only so that bad drivers don’t injure themselves or others when they get into these kinds of situations. Until then, something needs to be done before too many people kill themselves by thinking that autonomous cars are more capable than they actually are.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      I'm sure it will never be perfect. But i think at the very, very least, we should be well passed the point of never hitting heavy, stationary objects in the middle of the road assuming sufficient stopping distance.
      - wavegeek 5y ago
        This is poor quality thinking. The problem is that the AI is held to an impossible standard of near perfection, yet we happily accept that human drivers kill themselves and others in droves. The right question is whether self driving is better than the human driver.
    - pcbro141 5y ago
      If Tesla used Lidar for their emergency braking I doubt they'd be driving straight into stationary objects. But Elon is adamantly against Lidar and wants vision only. Then again, other car companies have emergency braking without Lidar (just radar/camera like Tesla) that doesn't seem to crash into stationary objects, so it sounds like Tesla's software is just not as good at emergency braking.
- space_rock 5y ago
  Let's keep things in perspective. Even tho it's reckless and illegal the accident rate is less than a human driver. I'd spend my engery on people looking at their phones and driving "we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven."
  - davidcbc 5y ago
    Tesla is a master of framing. The miles driving without Autopilot includes situations where you can't use Autopilot anyway. The fair comparison would be times when Autopilot could be used but isn't vs Autopilot being used.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Ya, my immediate thought upon reading that was, you could rewrite that sentence to say: "There were fewer accidents while the autopilot did the easy stuff than when humans were doing all the difficult stuff."
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    We don't actually know if it's more safe since most of those 4.19 million miles will be driven by people paying somewhat attention while being driven by the autopilot. Not by the type of person reading a newspaper in the back while the autopilot is doing its thing.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
See also "Tesla owner who 'drives' from back seat got arrested, then did it again": https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/tesla-owner-jailed-for-leaving-driver-seat-empty-says-he-feels-safer-in-back-seat/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/tesla-owner-jail...
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  I know I shouldn't laugh and it's a serious issue to be committing these crimes, but that article is hilarious. > When asked if he purchased a new Tesla after the previous one was impounded he said, "Yeah, I'm rich as [expletive]. I'm very rich." > "I feel safer back here than I do up there," Sharma also told KTVU from the right-rear passenger seat. > "I just got out of jail. I already got [another] Tesla. You feel me, I'm rich like that. I came out of the pandemic a fucking millionaire, bitch." Is this what aristocrats would once call "new money"?
ajross 5y ago
Um... "The driver [...] posted social media videos of himself riding in the vehicle without his hands on the wheel or foot on the pedal." That's... what autopilot does. What's the allegation here? That he used autopilot correctly and filmed it? More to the point, where's the allegation that autopilot was at fault here? The only detail I can find is that he hit an existing overturned vehicle in the middle of the night. That's actually a routine kind of accident for human drivers, who aren't prepared to see stationary objects in the road. Add to that "2:30am" and I think it's pretty clear we'd all view this as a terrible but unavoidable tragedy in any other vehicle. Again, what's the actual story here? I know what they want us to think based on the headline and lede. I just don't see that in the text of the article. Someone help me out here.
- poundofshrimp 5y ago
  > That... what autopilot does. Actually not true. From their website [0]: “Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.” [0] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Can someone tell me what the point of autopilot is if you are required to actually be fully in control of the vehicle at all time regardless?
    - Rumudiez 5y ago
      Gosh dang it Bobby, the point is to sell more cars!
      - DangitBobby 5y ago
        I am going to take that as a "no".
- lights0123 5y ago
metalman 5y ago
The driver in all of these fatalities was the same,err,robot and if anyother idivual showed a propensity for running amok and killing people they would lose there licence to drive,have wildly increased insurance premiums and eventualy go to jail and be kept there. What it boils down to is that the tesla robot has been given a kill permit and that this is the thin edge of the automated killing of humans wedge.Think "area denial system"
- grp000 5y ago
  This just boils down to another tesla-tard being arrogantly confident in a very imperfect system that, while improving, does fail, with very high consequences. There is a reason the automated driving system requires attentiveness and proper hand/foot placement, much less being in an entirely different seat.
mcguire 5y ago
"Another man was seriously injured when the electric vehicle hit him as he was helping the truck driver out of the wreck."
- beprogrammed 5y ago
  This is the real crime here.
simondotau 5y ago
Remember 27 days ago when Hacker News was flooded with comments insisting that the underlying problem was the "Autopilot" name? The argument, best as I can tell, is that the name of their cruise control system somehow convinces innocent, everyday consumers into having deadly high speed crashes on short cul-du-sacs. Then Consumer Reports published a video showing how to defeat Tesla's multiple safety protections by intentionally misleading the vehicle's driver occupancy sensors. Tesla was blamed for having sensors that couldn't detect intentional misuse. Turns out that Occam's Razor holds: this whole saga was nothing more than a moron doing stupid things in a high performance vehicle. It's a shame that so many people had such wildly different assumptions because it happened to be an electric car made by a company whose CEO is an eccentric nerd and twitter troll.
- alexanderdmitri 5y ago
  I don't know, if they just called it co-pilot or wingman it'd still be cool, but also more accurate. I thought the big thing was bringing an electric car to market, this feature got overblown and it's become dangerous.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    How are those more accurate? Colloquially, to be "on autopilot" describes how one can mindlessly perform familiar actions which don't require novel thought. For example, walking home from the train station. I'm sure plenty of people have been injured or killed while walking around "on autopilot." In the context of a software feature, "autopilot" implies a computer control system which is capable of maintaining rudimentary ongoing control of the vehicle. Whereas a co-pilot is a whole other pilot. Surely that's worse, implying equivalence to a human sitting next to you, with comparable levels of training and skill, intuitively capable of taking over at any time. I wonder what would happen if Ford developed a system and called it "Co-pilot". We might never know.
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chmod775 5y ago
> A message seeking comment from his wife was not returned. That made me spit out my coffee. And not because I was laughing. Journalists have to be one of the most tone-deaf and least sensitive groups of people on this planet. And I thought I was bad. If you feel like you have to write an article like that mentioning people by their full names, by all means, fine. But maybe leave a grieving wife the fuck alone - at least for a few months. Find a family member that is a few steps removed if you can't contain yourself.
- robjan 5y ago
  It's one thing to ask her for a comment, it's another to publish that she refused/ignored the request. That's usually reserved for asking an executive about a scandal at their company, not a grieving wife.

29 points by benrmatthews 5y ago

Thankfully so far these reckless sociopaths have only done self-owns. Tesla is in for a reckoning when an innocent gets killed.

batch12 5y ago
Not sure I fully follow your comment. Who is the reckless sociopath here?
- sigzero 5y ago
  I am sure he means the driver.
- 8note 5y ago
  I'd guess Elon Musk and Tesla stock owners. Tesla has sold people on these cars being self driving, and this is the natural consequence of that sales pitch
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Elon Musk plus the drivers who do things like sit in the backseat or go to sleep.
creato 5y ago
In this case: > Another man was seriously injured when the electric vehicle hit him as he was helping the truck driver out of the wreck.
- FnControlOption 5y ago
  AI has gotten really good but will it ever develop the necessary imagination to be able to handle all edge cases? If we ever do reach that point, we should require all cars to be AI-driven only so that bad drivers don’t injure themselves or others when they get into these kinds of situations. Until then, something needs to be done before too many people kill themselves by thinking that autonomous cars are more capable than they actually are.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    I'm sure it will never be perfect. But i think at the very, very least, we should be well passed the point of never hitting heavy, stationary objects in the middle of the road assuming sufficient stopping distance.
    - wavegeek 5y ago
      This is poor quality thinking. The problem is that the AI is held to an impossible standard of near perfection, yet we happily accept that human drivers kill themselves and others in droves. The right question is whether self driving is better than the human driver.
  - pcbro141 5y ago
    If Tesla used Lidar for their emergency braking I doubt they'd be driving straight into stationary objects. But Elon is adamantly against Lidar and wants vision only. Then again, other car companies have emergency braking without Lidar (just radar/camera like Tesla) that doesn't seem to crash into stationary objects, so it sounds like Tesla's software is just not as good at emergency braking.
space_rock 5y ago
Let's keep things in perspective. Even tho it's reckless and illegal the accident rate is less than a human driver. I'd spend my engery on people looking at their phones and driving "we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven."
- davidcbc 5y ago
  Tesla is a master of framing. The miles driving without Autopilot includes situations where you can't use Autopilot anyway. The fair comparison would be times when Autopilot could be used but isn't vs Autopilot being used.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Ya, my immediate thought upon reading that was, you could rewrite that sentence to say: "There were fewer accidents while the autopilot did the easy stuff than when humans were doing all the difficult stuff."
- cinntaile 5y ago
  We don't actually know if it's more safe since most of those 4.19 million miles will be driven by people paying somewhat attention while being driven by the autopilot. Not by the type of person reading a newspaper in the back while the autopilot is doing its thing.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

See also "Tesla owner who 'drives' from back seat got arrested, then did it again": https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/tesla-owner-jailed-for-leaving-driver-seat-empty-says-he-feels-safer-in-back-seat/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/tesla-owner-jail...

BelenusMordred 5y ago
I know I shouldn't laugh and it's a serious issue to be committing these crimes, but that article is hilarious. > When asked if he purchased a new Tesla after the previous one was impounded he said, "Yeah, I'm rich as [expletive]. I'm very rich." > "I feel safer back here than I do up there," Sharma also told KTVU from the right-rear passenger seat. > "I just got out of jail. I already got [another] Tesla. You feel me, I'm rich like that. I came out of the pandemic a fucking millionaire, bitch." Is this what aristocrats would once call "new money"?

ajross 5y ago

Um... "The driver [...] posted social media videos of himself riding in the vehicle without his hands on the wheel or foot on the pedal." That's... what autopilot does. What's the allegation here? That he used autopilot correctly and filmed it? More to the point, where's the allegation that autopilot was at fault here? The only detail I can find is that he hit an existing overturned vehicle in the middle of the night. That's actually a routine kind of accident for human drivers, who aren't prepared to see stationary objects in the road. Add to that "2:30am" and I think it's pretty clear we'd all view this as a terrible but unavoidable tragedy in any other vehicle. Again, what's the actual story here? I know what they want us to think based on the headline and lede. I just don't see that in the text of the article. Someone help me out here.

poundofshrimp 5y ago
> That... what autopilot does. Actually not true. From their website [0]: “Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.” [0] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  Can someone tell me what the point of autopilot is if you are required to actually be fully in control of the vehicle at all time regardless?
  - Rumudiez 5y ago
    Gosh dang it Bobby, the point is to sell more cars!
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      I am going to take that as a "no".
lights0123 5y ago

metalman 5y ago

The driver in all of these fatalities was the same,err,robot and if anyother idivual showed a propensity for running amok and killing people they would lose there licence to drive,have wildly increased insurance premiums and eventualy go to jail and be kept there. What it boils down to is that the tesla robot has been given a kill permit and that this is the thin edge of the automated killing of humans wedge.Think "area denial system"

grp000 5y ago
This just boils down to another tesla-tard being arrogantly confident in a very imperfect system that, while improving, does fail, with very high consequences. There is a reason the automated driving system requires attentiveness and proper hand/foot placement, much less being in an entirely different seat.

mcguire 5y ago

"Another man was seriously injured when the electric vehicle hit him as he was helping the truck driver out of the wreck."

beprogrammed 5y ago
This is the real crime here.

simondotau 5y ago

Remember 27 days ago when Hacker News was flooded with comments insisting that the underlying problem was the "Autopilot" name? The argument, best as I can tell, is that the name of their cruise control system somehow convinces innocent, everyday consumers into having deadly high speed crashes on short cul-du-sacs. Then Consumer Reports published a video showing how to defeat Tesla's multiple safety protections by intentionally misleading the vehicle's driver occupancy sensors. Tesla was blamed for having sensors that couldn't detect intentional misuse. Turns out that Occam's Razor holds: this whole saga was nothing more than a moron doing stupid things in a high performance vehicle. It's a shame that so many people had such wildly different assumptions because it happened to be an electric car made by a company whose CEO is an eccentric nerd and twitter troll.

alexanderdmitri 5y ago
I don't know, if they just called it co-pilot or wingman it'd still be cool, but also more accurate. I thought the big thing was bringing an electric car to market, this feature got overblown and it's become dangerous.
- simondotau 5y ago
  How are those more accurate? Colloquially, to be "on autopilot" describes how one can mindlessly perform familiar actions which don't require novel thought. For example, walking home from the train station. I'm sure plenty of people have been injured or killed while walking around "on autopilot." In the context of a software feature, "autopilot" implies a computer control system which is capable of maintaining rudimentary ongoing control of the vehicle. Whereas a co-pilot is a whole other pilot. Surely that's worse, implying equivalence to a human sitting next to you, with comparable levels of training and skill, intuitively capable of taking over at any time. I wonder what would happen if Ford developed a system and called it "Co-pilot". We might never know.
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chmod775 5y ago

> A message seeking comment from his wife was not returned. That made me spit out my coffee. And not because I was laughing. Journalists have to be one of the most tone-deaf and least sensitive groups of people on this planet. And I thought I was bad. If you feel like you have to write an article like that mentioning people by their full names, by all means, fine. But maybe leave a grieving wife the fuck alone - at least for a few months. Find a family member that is a few steps removed if you can't contain yourself.

robjan 5y ago
It's one thing to ask her for a comment, it's another to publish that she refused/ignored the request. That's usually reserved for asking an executive about a scandal at their company, not a grieving wife.