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I kept honking at a sleeping Tesla driver on the freeway, but she didn’t wake up
- LeoPanthera 5y agoPaywall, so I have no idea what the article says. I wonder how many lives Autopilot has saved so far.
- 2dollars27cents 5y agoSaved is a generous way to put it.
- InTheArena 5y agoSeizures and strokes behind the wheel is far more prevalent then people think. I can't speak for the entire USA, but having had a family member who suffered for that for years, the second someone has seizures, doctors usually work to revoke their licenses immediately. So yes, Autopilot does saves lives. We know how many people have died with autopilot on, and I suspect it's a fraction of thoose who die with it off. Autopilot does some things poorly, somethings far better then a human can do. It's a technology with it's strengths and weaknesses. In my case, I was on autopilot driving through Denver, when the car suddenly swerved out of the lane into a adjacent lane. I freaked out thinking the system was going wonky. Turns out that some drunk "street driving enthusiasts" decided to have a Race on I-70, and one of them missed that the lane he was trying to merge into from my rear right was occupied by a truck. It was in my blind spot, so while I was paying attention to the front of the car, autopilot was monitoring where my eyes could not. In californium, I was driving a Tesla in Cueprtino on a fairly busy highway but late at night. The car started doing it's "pay attention now" beeps, a second before I realized that someone was driving the wrong way on my side of the freeway. Would either of these been a fatality? Probably not, but possibly so. People fall asleep all the time behind wheels. They plot into parked cars all the time. They drive in the wrong side of the road. They plow into emergency vehicles. Anything we can that makes things safer is nothing but good. I bought a early Model 3 - and i will tell you that Autopilot is night and day better now then it was. The evolution wasn't in hardware, but in software. As more people use it, the software and hardware get bigger.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hackeraccount 5y agoOdds are it's about 50/50 regarding lives saved vs. lives cut short.
- kevinmchugh 5y agoCould you walk us through the math here?
- HiroProtagonist 5y agoIt’s possible that she wasn’t sleeping and instead may have been experiencing a medical emergency like heart attack or stroke.
- wikidani 5y agoLiterally my first thought
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoThat was mentioned in the article.
- kazinator 5y agoIn 2007, a Piper Seneca plane crashed into a condo building in Richmond, BC, Canada. Right over fairly busy intersection, too. The elderly pilot had a heart attack or something. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/1-dead-2-injured-after-plane-crashes-into-building-in-richmond-b-c-1.664005 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/1-dead-2-inj...
- sdoering 5y agoI remember a story in Germany the other way around were a Tesla driver detected a car on the highway with an unconcious driver. He set himself in front of the other car, braked and stopped slowly until both cars came to a halt. Both insurances did not want to pay for the damage (voluntarily induced damage and such crap) and Tesla paid the bill for the Tesla driver's repair. [1] [1 German]: https://www.waz-online.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Tesla-uebernimmt-Reparaturkosten-fuer-Heldentat https://www.waz-online.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Tesla-ueberni...
- Griffinsauce 5y agoThis sounds nice but you should NOT stop on a highway. This could've killed both + whoever slams into them. People die all the time even when stopped on the emergency lane (you should really step over the barrier to be safe).
- amatecha 5y agohttps://archive.is/CvcN2 https://archive.is/CvcN2
- mrkwse 5y agoThanks, I'm getting a 'please disable your ad blocker' when I don't even use one
- flerchin 5y agoSo the sound dampening works well too?
- andix 5y agoIt should be possible to overtake a self driving car and carefully slow down in front of it until a full stop. Normally they detect that and stop too.
- modeless 5y agoTesla autopilot can overtake slow cars. You might have to swerve and block it. Certainly possible, as it is not aggressive, but it wouldn't be as straightforward to stop it as with regular traffic aware cruise control.
- jsight 5y agoThat's possible, but the article said that it changed lanes to the left while signaling to the right. That rules out having NoA enabled with "confirmationless" lane changes.
- modeless 5y agoThat would rule out autopilot entirely, wouldn't it? If true then this is just a case of someone falling asleep behind the wheel that could happen in any car. But with modern safety features like lane departure avoidance and automatic emergency braking. Tesla's active safety features can even brake for stop signs and traffic lights in addition to cars and pedestrians. And regenerative braking will bring the car to a stop much more quickly than a gas car when the accelerator is not pressed.
- jsight 5y agoI'm trying to think of weird edge cases, but yeah it does seem like the odds are against AP being on in this case. Maybe TACC was on, but even that seems a little inconsistent with the report.
- WalterSear 5y agoI, for one, am not getting into a car fight with our robot overlords.
- invisible 5y agoIt's pretty crazy how often people fall asleep behind the wheel.
- crossroadsguy 5y agoOne of the biggest fear that stops me from buying a four wheeler. I have fucking slept on my two wheeler :( (Yes, it’s a concern and I’ll be a danger to others as well. I feel so comfortable and sleepy on moving vehicles)
- cpuguy83 5y agoWhen I was younger I would get road hypnosis, particularly at night. Don't even have to be tired, just start "zoning out" completely despite doing things to combat that (roll down windows for fresh air in my face and blast music). I feel like this lightened up a bit in my late 20s. In any case, I love that I now live in a city where I don't have to drive and do not own a car.
- oefrha 5y agoA few years ago I nodded off on a 50mph thoroughfare. I was jet lagged from a transpacific flight a day earlier; I knew I was falling asleep, but there was nothing I could do to stay awake, and there was no exit I could take. Eventually I drifted into the lane on the left, hit a cargo truck, bounced off and hit another car on the right. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it could have turned out really ugly. Don’t drive when you’re jet lagged — or fatigued, generally speaking.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago> but there was nothing I could do to stay awake, and there was no exit I could take. Surely there was a shoulder for use during emergencies. Why on earth didn't you pull over and turn on your hazards?
- 1123581321 5y agoProbably extreme sleep deprivation? It can be hard to evaluate the width/safety of a shoulder in that state, or even ascertain whether you're looking at a shoulder or another lane. Scary stuff.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoHe could be dead, actually. I imagine a modern adaptation of "The headless horseman": a murdered driver rides in his electric vehicle, self-charging on charging stations and automatically riding between the locations frequented by the deceased owner. ...
- m-p-3 5y agoThat could be an interesting premise for a Neo-Noir Sci-Fi novel.
- sdoering 5y agoOh what a beautiful idea for a short story. Would have been a great writing prompt over in the redditverse probably. [Edit:] Could be a crime novel. A classical who-dun-it, but with the need to trackback the route and stuff like this and things happening in between and the data of the car being tampered with or stuff like this.
- lemmsjid 5y agoThere's a powerful sci fi short story I read in an anthology quite a while ago (I believe called The Flying Dutchman) describing a crewless bomber being repaired, fueled, taking off, bombing its target, landing, and then doing the same thing again. As it describes this repetition, you slowly realize that humanity has long since been wiped out and the bombing runs are automated systems repeating themselves. (That's my memory of the story, anyhow, I read it in the 80's :) ). (Edit: found it, "Flying Dutchman" by Ward Moore, it's from the 50's and you can find its text online with those terms)
- rvz 5y ago> My questions are these: At what point does the self-driving car stop driving since the person’s hands were still on the wheel? Was there anything else I could have or should have done? "Steering wheel torque-based driver monitoring" is not good enough for monitoring the attention of the driver. It is a '"poor surrogate" for driver attention'. Not my words, but the words from the NTSB [0]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/feds-scold-tesla-for-slow-response-on-driver-monitoring/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/feds-scold-tesla-for-sl...
- jsight 5y agoIt likely was not using any driver monitoring in the provided scenario.
- commandlinefan 5y agoWell, I know you're not supposed to fall asleep while "driving" a Tesla right now but... isn't that the ultimate end goal? Cars that self-drive so well that you can take a nap while you're alone in them?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jsight 5y agoLiterally as written, this sounds like a medical emergency. From the article: "It had its right turn indicator on, but it drifted slowly to the left, into my lane, before slowly going back into its own lane." For this to have happened, the vehicle could not have had autosteer engaged. At most, it would have had regular traffic aware cruise control on, which would not have been monitoring for wheel input at all anyway. This strongly implies to me that the operator was at least operating the vehicle intentionally to a significant degree. In any event, calling 911 is an appropriate response to an unresponsive driver.
- chrischen 5y agoIs it not possible for AP to lose the lane lines temporarily and then self correct?
- bpodgursky 5y agoExceedingly unlikely unless the lane demarcation is extremely bad. Lane-holding tech is really standard and reliable now (and even if you don't think AP is great, it's not stupider than what ships in mass-market cars).
- gambiting 5y ago>>unlikely unless the lane demarcation is extremely bad Which is the case.....a lot of the time actually? At least here in UK the lane marking is frequenly so bad that my Volvo Pilot Assist disengages because it can't see the lanes anymore - and I'm like yeah, duh, I can't see them either.
- WalterSear 5y agoThe lane demarcation on the freeway south from San Francisco is so bad that it frequently confuses me, and I've been driving on it for 20 years.
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- slg 5y agoSomething sounds fishy here. The car changing speeds without anything prompting it and swerving in and out of lanes is not behavior that would be seen if it was driving on Autopilot.
- ggreer 5y ago> It had its right turn indicator on, but it drifted slowly to the left, into my lane, before slowly going back into its own lane. Then it started to slow down considerably. Autopilot won't let you signal in one direction while changing lanes in the opposite direction. The only way to do that is by driving manually. My guess is the Tesla was under manual control and the driver was intoxicated, extremely sleep deprived, or having a medical issue.
- r053bud 5y agoThis exact same thing happened to be in LA. I was driving behind a really slow Tesla (like 35mph on the freeway). I switched lanes to pass him and noticed he was just asleep at the wheel. Maybe he also had a medical emergency, but it seemed like he was just sleeping. Maybe I should have called 911.
- tantalor 5y agoMaybe AutoPilot/self-driving status should be obviously indicated by some light, sort of like an on-duty taxicab. This could alert drivers to be wary; there maybe/is no human driver.
- adwww 5y agoI've always thought this about even cruise control. I've quite often been sat at 75mph with CC engaged, start an overtake and have the car I'm passing speed up so just tuck in behind... then they slow down and I go to overtake again... I think a purple (??) CC light, or autopilot light would help people avoid getting aggro about an algorithm.
- ajay-b 5y agoIf given the time, location, and description of the vehicle, could Tesla track them down?
- eointierney 5y agoI refuse to drive because I'm terrified of the responsibilty and risk anyway, notwithstanding people trusting software sufficiently to sleep while responsible. Please take care driving, said with love and maybe understanding. Cycling in Dublin is both gorgeous and scary, what with fellow drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Walking is great. The odds on killing somebody while walking are small.