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Tesla driver dies after his Model 3 stops on highway, gets hit by two other

Kaze404 5y ago
Yet another reason for me to avoid private transportation like the plague. As if humans driving 1 ton death machines wasn't bad enough, we've decided to add experimental technology into the mix. Nope. I'm sticking to trains whenever possible, thank you very much.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  But what if the bus/train stops unexpectedly and another drives into it? It happens. Mechanical failures happen. Human error happens. Accidents happen.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I think if we compare deaths / passenger miles driven between cars and trains. Trains come out very favorably. Possibly only beaten by airplanes. Edit: Numbers In the US > Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 9 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 1,606 times higher than for scheduled airlines That sounded rather high for trains (dunno what the US is doing wrong), so I checked some other country. In the UK: > Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per billion passenger kilometers was over 5 times higher than for buses, 1100 times higher than for scheduled airliners, and an infinity higher than for passenger trains (no deaths were reported). Deaths/billion passenger-km Car 1.1 Van 0.4 Water 0.4 Bus or coach 0.2 Air 0.01 Rail* 0 In general of the already almost negligible death rate, it seems that rail deaths are mostly people at rail crossings, and maintenance personnel, not passengers.
    - dymk 5y ago
      How about when you compare a Tesla in driver assist mode per-mile with a human driver per-mile?
      - llampx 5y ago
        Given that Tesla drops you out of assist mode as soon as it encounters a confusing situation, that's a tricky question.
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        Not really a fair comparison unless we can somehow only count non-autopilot accidents that happen in places where autopilot actually works.
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - cmonagle 5y ago
    Human error does happen, but it results in death an order of magnitude less frequently in buses, trains and airplanes than in private vehicles. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
- dopamean 5y ago
  Nice for you that that’s an option.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    Indeed. I'm fighting for a world where it's an option for everyone.
- rr808 5y ago
  They're usually 2 tons now.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  OTOH, most of us will die from a heart attack or cancer. So to the extent that I can control risk factors, driving a car is fairly low on the list. Especially given the degradation of lifestyle I would suffer if I tried hard to avoid it.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    That's totally understandable. I certainly don't think driving a car is a moral failure or anything. I just personally try to avoid it as much as I can because, from my perspective, it's not worth it for me or the other people involved. Ideally I would live in a world where nobody needs cars to live comfortably, but for now all I can do is optimize for myself and organize to make it happen for my grand children.
maypeacepreva1l 5y ago
Tesla’s software is dangerous. I own one and I have to be a lot more alert than when I am actually driving. Just yesterday when I was driving rural town, it was stopping every time it sees a truck in the incoming lane. I suspect if something like that happened in this case as well.
- rr808 5y ago
  As a non-owner it seems kinda scary with the regular updates that the behavior would change. One day it stops for trucks in small towns, the next day it doesnt.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Does Tesla force OTA updates, or can the owner turn they off and accept them manually?
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      There are a couple controls. You can opt-in to get releases earlier, or wait until they're a bit more fully baked. And you can refuse the update when it pops up. I don't recall it ever being forced, but I could be mistaken.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  I can't imagine having a Tesla with the drive-assist software in its current state. It's like having a mentally ill spouse at home, you always wonder what irrational thing is going to come next, you have no peace any second of the day. Now try that during something safety-critical, like driving. The constant hypervigilance is exhausting, and when you aren't looking, the Tesla drives itself into a traffic bollard. Why is such crap road-legal?
  - heliodor 5y ago
    Because our current form of government can't keep pace with the rate of new things.
dhx 5y ago
If a Model 3 decides to emergency brake without warning, can the driver still steer it to the shoulder of the highway, or are steering commands from the driver ignored? I'm guessing the first car crashed into the rear of the Model 3, causing the Model 3 to spin out into another lane. Then a second car crashed into the Model 3 (probably side impact?) as it was now very dangerously exposed to oncoming traffic in the other lane. If the driver could have steered the vehicle during the emergency braking to the shoulder of the highway they'd likely still be alive. Unfortunately if the highway was heavily congested and this driver was sandwiched between vehicles on either side, there is probably nothing additional the driver could have done to improve the situation. From the linked Facebook post there is the following comment: My husband unfortunately was one of the drivers that struck the Tesla. He said the car in front of him almost hit the car so they swerved barely missing him and then there was the Tesla right there . He absolutely could not of stopped in time. It's a very traumatic situation. My husband is now dealing with survivors guilt and is taking it extremely hard. We are so very sorry this happened....I have no doubt that the gentleman that lost his life was loved by many and God help us all to find some strength to deal with the grief.
- staktrace 5y ago
  To reply to your first question: if the car decides to emergency brake, you can still override it by pressing the accelerator. In my experience, the braking that happens is "hard" but no more hard than you would do yourself if something suddenly appeared in your drive path, and if you are paying attention you can press the accelerator within a second or so. If the person behind you has adequate following distance it shouldn't be a problem. If the car loses power entirely then it gives you a few seconds warning in which you may or may not be able to cross to the shoulder before the car coasts to a stop. In this scenario the braking is not "hard", but obviously there is no real way to recover and you'll need to get towed. I have not experienced any scenario where the car does not respond to steering or acceleration commands when it was physically able to do so.
  - staktrace 5y ago
    Self-reply to add: despite (occasionally) experiencing phantom braking and my wife once experiencing the "loss of power" scenario due to a defective drive unit, I'm still very happy with the Tesla overall. In my experience it is the best car I've owned despite the flaws that seem to disproportionately make the headlines.
_uy6i 5y ago
What’s Tesla’s exposure here - do they disclaim liability for a failure like this? Edit: Assuming this was software diver assist issue
- aldarisbm 5y ago
  we literally have zero idea if its even the Tesla's software fault.
  - _uy6i 5y ago
    Agreed - edited to include my assumption
- detaro 5y ago
  I don't think they can do that for assist features like this triggering falsely, assuming that's what happened here too. For it not reacting to something there's always the line of "it's an assistance feature, marketing aside we tell you clearly it's an assistance feature and you need to pay attention and react yourself if needed", but that doesn't work for emergency braking triggering randomly, since there's nothing the driver could've done "correctly" to prevent it?
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I believe all car manufacturers have a clause for liability in case of e.g. mechanical breakdowns (if that is the case here), if not the car companies would be sued out of existence a long time ago. Cars break down regularly, new or old, and sometimes in a dangerous situation.
  - _uy6i 5y ago
    But I would think that only relates to mechanical breakdowns due to normal wear and tear or lack of proper maintenance? Wouldn’t a manufacturer have responsibility if the breaks failed at high speed the day I drove my new car off the lot?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Cars break down all the time, new or old; until we know more details, this is not a unique situation. Did it break down and come to a rolling stop? Did it brake itself? Was Autopilot involved? Did the driver stop itself? Was there an opportunity to get onto the hard shoulder? nearly 40,000 people a year die in traffic every year in the US alone [0]. They're all tragedies, but I don't see why if it's a Tesla it gets so much more media coverage. [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
- fivestarman 5y ago
  Within the article it claims: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason."
bmmayer1 5y ago
This is sad, but it's worth noting that even with a human driver, a car that stops suddenly is not responsible for any subsequent rear end collision(s). The colliding driver has the responsibility to keep a safe stopping distance at all times.
- dazc 5y ago
  Speaking from the UK, if you leave a safe stopping distance on a motorway then, invariably, the gap will be filled quickly with another car. The willingness of so-called intelligent beings to needlessly risk their lives (and the lives of those around them) for no gain whatsoever is truly astounding.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    If people drove such that they had enough stopping distance to come to a full stop on highway at 65+mph, traffic would get backed up very quickly. Road capacity is a function of number of lanes, the velocity of the vehicles traveling in those lanes, and the density of the vehicles traveling in those lanes. If you reduce the latter, you reduce road capacity. Theoretically, everyone would be safer if they drove far enough back from the front of the car to come to be able to come to a full stop. Practically, the political uproar of enforcing this would be untenable, but I would be entertained to see the forthcoming overpopulation vs pave over all the land with roads vs mass transit vs variable rate tolling conversations that ensue.
    - susodapop 5y ago
      I’m dubious that the equation is so simple. > Road capacity is a function of number of lanes, the velocity of the vehicles traveling in those lanes, and the density of the vehicles traveling in those lanes. If you reduce the latter, you reduce road capacity. And yet study after study shows that increasing the number of traffic lanes only worsens congestion.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
evancoop 5y ago
Unfortunately, this is a statistic without context. If a random, Toyota fails on the highway and causes a fatal collision, it's unlikely to yield an article of this ilk. So, how frequently has this type of failure occurred? How often does that type of failure result in a fatality? The analog here is that polls suggest parents believe the probability of a child abduction is higher now than 50 years ago, though the data show the opposite. The difference? The discussion on cable news when the event occurs. Availability bias is powerful. The car industry is likely to incur the same phenomenon.
- prepend 5y ago
  I think if a Toyota’s ebrake triggered on a Highway and caused a fatality, we’d hear about it in the national news. But it doesn’t happen, so we don’t. I could be wrong, but I think the interest of this article is that this type of accident never occurs with other cars, thus the newsworthiness.
  - jstream67 5y ago
    To my understanding this is an issue with pretty much all auto-braking cars https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/nhtsa-to-investigate-honda-accords-and-cr-vs-over-phantom-braking/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/nhtsa-to-investigate-ho... The Hacker News audience has an extreme hatred of tesla. I think its mostly political personally. Musk disagrees with a couple of the left's untouchable rich elites and all of a sudden you get a million submissions every time a tesla is involved in an accident.
    - fivestarman 5y ago
      Elon Musk is a fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.
    - prepend 5y ago
      Thanks for the research and posting the article. So it does exist in other cars, but much less frequently. This article has 1.7 million affected cars and “ 278 complaints, the NHTSA says that only six of them alleged collisions with minor injuries, and no severe incidents have been reported.” Compared to Tesla where there’s like half a million cars and at least one fatality. Of course, this could be user error (eg, fall asleep, wake up, slam on brakes) so I don’t think blame can be assigned, but I don’t think Tesla gets an inappropriate amount of news coverage here.
tailsdog 5y ago
Phantom braking in the Tesla Model 3 is very real and can be scary, I've experienced it several times. I've noticed that it seems to occur if it sees shadows when going under bridges on the highway. If you're alert you can override it pretty quickly by hitting acceleration. The problem is when using driving assists you get a false sense of security, you put too much trust in the system, relax, pay less attention - unfortunately this can be fatal.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  I'd say "False sense of security"
- jannyfer 5y ago
  Do you mean after it sees the shadow up ahead but not under it yet, or once it enters the shadow? If the latter... Then Tesla is in a tricky situation with camera-only Autopilot. With the low dynamic range of the cameras, if you make the software ignore big white (overexposed) rectangles, the car drives straight ahead into white trucks. If you make it recognize big white rectangles normally as obstacles, then the car sees overexposed bridge/tunnel exits as obstacles and gets rear-ended.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Agreed wrt overexposures and thresholds, just to speculate aloud, and thinking of the HDR mode on smartphones, is it possible to rapidly switch from a 1/1000 sec exposure to 1/60 sec exposure, interwoven, such that you receive 2 video streams? And it could still be adaptive, like the duty cycle of a PWM signal, could just use whatever frame has the highest entropy, don't necessarilly have to fuse them (maybe impossible under realtime constaints, I'm no CV expert)
- adriancr 5y ago
  Seems like an issue of only using cameras as sensors. It's probably triggering Automatic Emergency Braking. That is a useful feature in cities. I personally heard of one instance of a car stopping automatically for a kid that just jumped on the road...
susodapop 5y ago
The headline emphasises the vehicle make, and we assume this is another criticism of Tesla’s autopilot tech. But that determination has not been investigated yet. If the headline instead emphasised that the driver of this vehicle was seventy-four years old, we might assume it was a different criticism entirely.
- dawnerd 5y ago
  They’re just trying to dogpile on the “brake check” reporting previously. Brake checks are not car comes to a stop. There’s a lot more to this.
prepend 5y ago
This seems like when Windows decides to shut down and apply patches in the middle of a work session. I’ve been in situations where Windows thought it essential and unavoidable to reboot and stay offline for 40 minutes starting at 125pm as I was screen sharing and presenting to 50 people. We all watched the countdown. It was surreal and an example of such stupid, anti-user design. I spoke with the “IT” person who set up this policy and they explained that I should have left my computer on to patch overnight. So basically it was ok that I, and my audience, suffered because I forgot to do something I didn’t even know was necessary. In my case no one died, but I hope Tesla doesn’t apply the same logic to patching.
- vips7L 5y ago
  I’ve never had Windows do this, but my machine also isn’t managed by corporate IT. I think Windows downfall is really providing too many knobs for these people to control. Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience. They only care about their policies and not enabling you to get your job done.
  - chucksta 5y ago
    >Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience. This is a 2 way street, there is a reason they still always ask if it's been rebooted. They can tell it can't and they are being lied to. >They only care about their policies and not enabling you to get your job done. Simply not true, it's almost always the first concern. Judging by your tone you are not considering they have a job to do as well, and it's relies on your assistance, or you get a forced activity like that.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience As someone who did help-desk in the past, corporate IT is not anti-user, but pro-efficiency, though the outcomes may be indistinguishable. IT is typically under-resourced[1], and has to deal with too many users with too many requests, and prima donna users - more of them than you'd imagine - demand personalized white-glove service (but don't want support to offer that to others because it ought to expedite service to them)
athenot 5y ago
The whole premise of "almost working" autopilot is the logical thing to do from Tesla's business perspective but deeply flawed from a safety one. The allure of having a car that drives itself is to relax the mind from paying attention to the road, handling 99% of the situations correctly through the software. But the 1% that require human input are made much more dangerous because the driver not only needs to handle the situation, they need to instantly catch up and familiarize themselves with the situation they've found themselves in. What was the car trying to do? Why is it suddenly stopping? What do my blind spots look like? Is there anybody behind me? Was anybody in the process of passing me? Unfortunately the time it takes to refamiliarize with the situation could exceed the total time budget to respond. It's similar to not paying attention to the road and being in the passenger seat when a junior driver is driving instead. But there are 2 exceptions: - Most people increase the attention they pay to the road when a learner is behind the wheel. Preparing to respond and offer guidance to correct. - Self-driving software is a lot more indeterministic than a new driver. And software updates can easily change the behavior in non trivial ways. As if the driving student had Multiple Personality Disorder, one day being over cautious in certain situation and other days over-confident. Though I contend that MPD is actually more predictable than an opaque algorithm, as there are other human clues about the behavior mode of the moment that could help guide the response of the trainer.
- amelius 5y ago
  The standard argument in favor of FSD vehicles is that they perform better than the average human driver. Except it doesn't take into account the amount of adrenaline involved.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I do not see the point of conversing about full self driving when it is nowhere close to existing yet.
    - simion314 5y ago
      Tesla use this names unforunetly "FSD" and "Autopilot", instead of lane assist or driver assist... we need everyone including fanboys to demand Tesla stop push fake capabilities, maybe name it MFFSD = Maybe in future Full Self Driving
mabbo 5y ago
While I think there's a good reason to suspect Telsa's software is at fault, I also note this: > 74-year-old Terry L. Siegel Every few years there are reports of a (usually foreign) car manufacturer having problems where the car "just accelerates on its own". But what's strange is that it only affects people over 65. Almost like above a certain age, people occasionally mistake the brake and gas pedals and don't react to the mistake quickly enough. I think it's worth waiting for the full report on this accident before loudly proclaiming that this is Tesla's fault. It may be, but it also may not be.
- 1shooner 5y ago
  I'm remembering the Santa Monica Farmers Market Crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_cr...
- deberon 5y ago
  This is a good point. There are many elderly people struggling to keep up with technological advances. I’ve seen these poor people get confused by things like WiFi passwords and self checkout kiosks at the grocery store. Of course these same people would likely never step foot in a Tesla. But it is important to think about these drivers when taking into account the safety of these systems.
littlestymaar 5y ago
“Move fast and break things”, TSLA edition.
dboreham 5y ago
One of the things a human does when emergency braking is consider what's behind them. Perhaps Tesla's software doesn't do that?
jhoechtl 5y ago
I wonder which politician has the cojones to first stand up and declare the autopilot features illegal as security threats cant currently mitigated.
TeeWEE 5y ago
Please dont make conclusions from this article. It is missing a lot of info. Even if it was FSD... If you are in a car that start stopping you take over right? This is just a very weird situation that needs more context.
- fivestarman 5y ago
  Please read the article: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason. According to the agency, these incidents, known as "phantom braking," sometimes happened at highway speeds."
sudden_dystopia 5y ago
Technically, from an auto liability perspective, this is still the fault of the vehicle that did the rear ending. Traffic comes to sudden stops all the time, no excuse for not being able to stop for a car stopped in the roadway assuming it had lights on.
callamdelaney 5y ago
My Tesla slams on the breaks every time it sees a car at an intersection waiting for me to pass, it assumes that the car won't stop or has not stopped. It does the same with cars which are stationary (parked on the road) which I am steering around while under cruise control.
- Jxl180 5y ago
  How about highway/turnpike driving? Good there?
  - callamdelaney 5y ago
    I've not experienced this on a motorway as of yet.
- MarcoZavala 5y ago
martindbp 5y ago
This was confirmed to be electrical failure, not autopilot or FSD.
karmicthreat 5y ago
I'm not sure what is going on over at Tesla but the regular ordinary software doesn't really seem to be as much of a priority as before. We had the crappy UI refresh. Phantom AP and emergency braking are still a big problem. But we still get Elon happily chirping about v-whatever of FSD coming out. That the vast majority of customers don't actually use or have. I don't know if it's a case of nobody wants to work on the boring things because there is no incentive or a disincentive to. But I'm sick of basic features not working well.
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bamboozled 5y ago
It's funny, when Tesla came out I was so excited to have an electric dumb car that looked nice and performed like a top end sport car. I think all this self-driving business could've waited.Why they had to start producing smart cars with inbuilt self-driving AI assistants is the part I don't understand, at least it seems too premature. There was already enough appeal for Tesla, stories like this though juts ruin it. Recently I drove a friends new Volkswagen with similar driver assist / self-driving features as the Tesla. It was unnerving. The car wanted to drive itself, until the lane makers suddenly disappeared on a remote icy road at night. After about 5 seconds I noticed the car had silently (except for a small icon on the dash) decided it couldn't stay in the non-existent lane anymore. I was actually behind the wheel of a car going 60mph with no one paying attention behind the wheel. It freaked me out.
mbanzi 5y ago
My Model 3 has this habit of randomly braking on the motorway and it's quite dangerous. There is a particular spot I pass by almost daily that I know already the car is going to suddently brake.. I turn off all automation, I drive for a Km and then I go back to autopilot. Super dangerous...
- bondarchuk 5y ago
  Why don't you just keep it turned off then if it's so dangerous?
- somehowadev 5y ago
  So you know it will consistently fail in some cases and yet still use it?
post_break 5y ago
I've seen videos of teslas on 2 lane roads slam on the brakes for cars coming in the opposite direction. Absolutely terrifying.
burlesona 5y ago
This kind of thing is why I think we are much farther away from true L5 self-driving than many others think. To handle current road conditions you need true AGI with the ability not just to see as well as humans can but to interpret what you see, as well as theory of mind and contextual awareness of the drivers around you. What I think will ultimately happen instead is we’ll adapt the roads to allow self-driving by dumber computers. For example, a self-driving lane on highways where there are sensors on the road to help the cars, and where all the cars in the lane must be self-driving and in communication with each other to do things like maintain stopping distance.
ricardobeat 5y ago
Everyone, and the news piece, seems to be jumping to conclusions. "the Tesla he was driving stopped" - assumes all Teslas are self-driving all the time. There is nothing yet pointing to a software issue instead of human error, or a medical emergency since the driver was 75 years old.
- fivestarman 5y ago
  Also in the article: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason."
cduzz 5y ago
Driving is a pretty dangerous activity. The forces involved are enormous. In the distant past, car accidents killed an enormous number of people. Modern cars are safer but driving is still not as safe as other activities, such as sleeping in an underground bunker. Surprisingly, people also die while sleeping in underground bunkers, so I guess safety is relative. Cars stop on highways for a variety of reasons. Cars fail, things obstruct the road and cars need to stop, drivers fall asleep or suffer medical incidents. Ideally stopping in the middle of the road shouldn't cause you to be killed by someone else who is either tailgating you or not paying attention to a car stopped in the middle of the road up ahead. A pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on the street 1/3rd of a mile from my home; I have to cross this street if I want to walk to the train station. This happens on this corner roughly on an 18 month frequency.
hulitu 5y ago
I don't underestand what the fuss is all about. The car received a security OTA update and had to restart to apply the update. Everybody does it. You would not use an insecure car, wouldn't you ?
thecleaner 5y ago
Okay screw the AI. What else can Tesla do ? I bet having a programmable car can be programmed in more deterministic ways than just "with probability so and so this is another car and the machine must stop". Wth Also I wonder how many of these incidents are buried under NDAs.
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tiahura 5y ago
This happened in one of America’s great judicial hell holes, i.e. Plaintiff friendly law, judges, and juries, so it may turn out to be quite interesting. There are multiple attorneys with multiple 9 figure verdicts within a stone’s throw of this incident.
anpat 5y ago
Holy shit! Similar thing happened to my model3 early on (late 2019) and I had a furious but futile conversation with service centre about how dangerous my situation was. They stonewaled me after “kernel panic, dont know why”. The car had it’s own “blue screen of death” in the first lane, after a turn, on central expressway right next to their Santa Clara service center. ( https://goo.gl/maps/sPVNDNJZaR9zQ66c9 https://goo.gl/maps/sPVNDNJZaR9zQ66c9) Luckily there is signal right there so people were slowing down naturally but man the car turning into a brick and not even emergency blinkers (parking lights) working was shitty experience! I’m fuming that someone paid a price for tesla’s similar failure. Edit: I was on “auto pilot”
- Handytinge 5y ago
  Whilst the software failure sucks, the agreement by most of society (as reflected in most law) is that the fault is of the driver in the car behind for not leaving a safe distance. Cars stop for all sorts of reasons, hence why there are laws for leaving these distances.
plang318 5y ago
Phantom breaking happened to me 3 times when I test drove a Model Y on CO-470 in Colorado near the Park Meadows mall last year. I was keenly aware of my surroundings as this was the first time driving a Tesla; the roads were clear, no obstructions that I could connect the dots on. I'm very thankful I wasn't rear-ended any of the times. I was pretty disappointed as I always had been a fan of the concept of self-driving cars and Tesla in general. After bringing up the behavior with the Sales associate he stated it was a known issue on CO-470 and they were working on a fix.
MauroIksem 5y ago
I'm terrified of this happening to me in my model 3. It's happened a few times when no one was behind me.
MauroIksem 5y ago
This isn't even autopilot. It's basic cruise control that they can't even get right.
joblo1981 5y ago
I almost died in a tesla when it did something similar to this. The model s just abruptly and heavily braked itself on the interstate. My family was in the car and a semi almost hit us from behind going about 80mph.
fivestarman 5y ago
Why is this post buried under 500 other posts that aren't nearly as popular?
aw9f70gae 5y ago
Private transportation and American society’s total reliance on it is a disaster

Yet another reason for me to avoid private transportation like the plague. As if humans driving 1 ton death machines wasn't bad enough, we've decided to add experimental technology into the mix. Nope. I'm sticking to trains whenever possible, thank you very much.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
But what if the bus/train stops unexpectedly and another drives into it? It happens. Mechanical failures happen. Human error happens. Accidents happen.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I think if we compare deaths / passenger miles driven between cars and trains. Trains come out very favorably. Possibly only beaten by airplanes. Edit: Numbers In the US > Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 9 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 1,606 times higher than for scheduled airlines That sounded rather high for trains (dunno what the US is doing wrong), so I checked some other country. In the UK: > Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per billion passenger kilometers was over 5 times higher than for buses, 1100 times higher than for scheduled airliners, and an infinity higher than for passenger trains (no deaths were reported). Deaths/billion passenger-km Car 1.1 Van 0.4 Water 0.4 Bus or coach 0.2 Air 0.01 Rail* 0 In general of the already almost negligible death rate, it seems that rail deaths are mostly people at rail crossings, and maintenance personnel, not passengers.
  - dymk 5y ago
    How about when you compare a Tesla in driver assist mode per-mile with a human driver per-mile?
    - llampx 5y ago
      Given that Tesla drops you out of assist mode as soon as it encounters a confusing situation, that's a tricky question.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Not really a fair comparison unless we can somehow only count non-autopilot accidents that happen in places where autopilot actually works.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- cmonagle 5y ago
  Human error does happen, but it results in death an order of magnitude less frequently in buses, trains and airplanes than in private vehicles. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
dopamean 5y ago
Nice for you that that’s an option.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  Indeed. I'm fighting for a world where it's an option for everyone.
rr808 5y ago
They're usually 2 tons now.
rootusrootus 5y ago
OTOH, most of us will die from a heart attack or cancer. So to the extent that I can control risk factors, driving a car is fairly low on the list. Especially given the degradation of lifestyle I would suffer if I tried hard to avoid it.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  That's totally understandable. I certainly don't think driving a car is a moral failure or anything. I just personally try to avoid it as much as I can because, from my perspective, it's not worth it for me or the other people involved. Ideally I would live in a world where nobody needs cars to live comfortably, but for now all I can do is optimize for myself and organize to make it happen for my grand children.

maypeacepreva1l 5y ago

Tesla’s software is dangerous. I own one and I have to be a lot more alert than when I am actually driving. Just yesterday when I was driving rural town, it was stopping every time it sees a truck in the incoming lane. I suspect if something like that happened in this case as well.

rr808 5y ago
As a non-owner it seems kinda scary with the regular updates that the behavior would change. One day it stops for trucks in small towns, the next day it doesnt.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Does Tesla force OTA updates, or can the owner turn they off and accept them manually?
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    There are a couple controls. You can opt-in to get releases earlier, or wait until they're a bit more fully baked. And you can refuse the update when it pops up. I don't recall it ever being forced, but I could be mistaken.
HarryHirsch 5y ago
I can't imagine having a Tesla with the drive-assist software in its current state. It's like having a mentally ill spouse at home, you always wonder what irrational thing is going to come next, you have no peace any second of the day. Now try that during something safety-critical, like driving. The constant hypervigilance is exhausting, and when you aren't looking, the Tesla drives itself into a traffic bollard. Why is such crap road-legal?
- heliodor 5y ago
  Because our current form of government can't keep pace with the rate of new things.

dhx 5y ago

If a Model 3 decides to emergency brake without warning, can the driver still steer it to the shoulder of the highway, or are steering commands from the driver ignored? I'm guessing the first car crashed into the rear of the Model 3, causing the Model 3 to spin out into another lane. Then a second car crashed into the Model 3 (probably side impact?) as it was now very dangerously exposed to oncoming traffic in the other lane. If the driver could have steered the vehicle during the emergency braking to the shoulder of the highway they'd likely still be alive. Unfortunately if the highway was heavily congested and this driver was sandwiched between vehicles on either side, there is probably nothing additional the driver could have done to improve the situation. From the linked Facebook post there is the following comment: My husband unfortunately was one of the drivers that struck the Tesla. He said the car in front of him almost hit the car so they swerved barely missing him and then there was the Tesla right there . He absolutely could not of stopped in time. It's a very traumatic situation. My husband is now dealing with survivors guilt and is taking it extremely hard. We are so very sorry this happened....I have no doubt that the gentleman that lost his life was loved by many and God help us all to find some strength to deal with the grief.

staktrace 5y ago
To reply to your first question: if the car decides to emergency brake, you can still override it by pressing the accelerator. In my experience, the braking that happens is "hard" but no more hard than you would do yourself if something suddenly appeared in your drive path, and if you are paying attention you can press the accelerator within a second or so. If the person behind you has adequate following distance it shouldn't be a problem. If the car loses power entirely then it gives you a few seconds warning in which you may or may not be able to cross to the shoulder before the car coasts to a stop. In this scenario the braking is not "hard", but obviously there is no real way to recover and you'll need to get towed. I have not experienced any scenario where the car does not respond to steering or acceleration commands when it was physically able to do so.
- staktrace 5y ago
  Self-reply to add: despite (occasionally) experiencing phantom braking and my wife once experiencing the "loss of power" scenario due to a defective drive unit, I'm still very happy with the Tesla overall. In my experience it is the best car I've owned despite the flaws that seem to disproportionately make the headlines.

_uy6i 5y ago

What’s Tesla’s exposure here - do they disclaim liability for a failure like this? Edit: Assuming this was software diver assist issue

aldarisbm 5y ago
we literally have zero idea if its even the Tesla's software fault.
- _uy6i 5y ago
  Agreed - edited to include my assumption
detaro 5y ago
I don't think they can do that for assist features like this triggering falsely, assuming that's what happened here too. For it not reacting to something there's always the line of "it's an assistance feature, marketing aside we tell you clearly it's an assistance feature and you need to pay attention and react yourself if needed", but that doesn't work for emergency braking triggering randomly, since there's nothing the driver could've done "correctly" to prevent it?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I believe all car manufacturers have a clause for liability in case of e.g. mechanical breakdowns (if that is the case here), if not the car companies would be sued out of existence a long time ago. Cars break down regularly, new or old, and sometimes in a dangerous situation.
- _uy6i 5y ago
  But I would think that only relates to mechanical breakdowns due to normal wear and tear or lack of proper maintenance? Wouldn’t a manufacturer have responsibility if the breaks failed at high speed the day I drove my new car off the lot?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Cars break down all the time, new or old; until we know more details, this is not a unique situation. Did it break down and come to a rolling stop? Did it brake itself? Was Autopilot involved? Did the driver stop itself? Was there an opportunity to get onto the hard shoulder? nearly 40,000 people a year die in traffic every year in the US alone [0]. They're all tragedies, but I don't see why if it's a Tesla it gets so much more media coverage. [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

fivestarman 5y ago
Within the article it claims: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason."

bmmayer1 5y ago

This is sad, but it's worth noting that even with a human driver, a car that stops suddenly is not responsible for any subsequent rear end collision(s). The colliding driver has the responsibility to keep a safe stopping distance at all times.

dazc 5y ago
Speaking from the UK, if you leave a safe stopping distance on a motorway then, invariably, the gap will be filled quickly with another car. The willingness of so-called intelligent beings to needlessly risk their lives (and the lives of those around them) for no gain whatsoever is truly astounding.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  If people drove such that they had enough stopping distance to come to a full stop on highway at 65+mph, traffic would get backed up very quickly. Road capacity is a function of number of lanes, the velocity of the vehicles traveling in those lanes, and the density of the vehicles traveling in those lanes. If you reduce the latter, you reduce road capacity. Theoretically, everyone would be safer if they drove far enough back from the front of the car to come to be able to come to a full stop. Practically, the political uproar of enforcing this would be untenable, but I would be entertained to see the forthcoming overpopulation vs pave over all the land with roads vs mass transit vs variable rate tolling conversations that ensue.
  - susodapop 5y ago
    I’m dubious that the equation is so simple. > Road capacity is a function of number of lanes, the velocity of the vehicles traveling in those lanes, and the density of the vehicles traveling in those lanes. If you reduce the latter, you reduce road capacity. And yet study after study shows that increasing the number of traffic lanes only worsens congestion.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago

evancoop 5y ago

Unfortunately, this is a statistic without context. If a random, Toyota fails on the highway and causes a fatal collision, it's unlikely to yield an article of this ilk. So, how frequently has this type of failure occurred? How often does that type of failure result in a fatality? The analog here is that polls suggest parents believe the probability of a child abduction is higher now than 50 years ago, though the data show the opposite. The difference? The discussion on cable news when the event occurs. Availability bias is powerful. The car industry is likely to incur the same phenomenon.

prepend 5y ago
I think if a Toyota’s ebrake triggered on a Highway and caused a fatality, we’d hear about it in the national news. But it doesn’t happen, so we don’t. I could be wrong, but I think the interest of this article is that this type of accident never occurs with other cars, thus the newsworthiness.
- jstream67 5y ago
  To my understanding this is an issue with pretty much all auto-braking cars https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/nhtsa-to-investigate-honda-accords-and-cr-vs-over-phantom-braking/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/nhtsa-to-investigate-ho... The Hacker News audience has an extreme hatred of tesla. I think its mostly political personally. Musk disagrees with a couple of the left's untouchable rich elites and all of a sudden you get a million submissions every time a tesla is involved in an accident.
  - fivestarman 5y ago
    Elon Musk is a fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.
  - prepend 5y ago
    Thanks for the research and posting the article. So it does exist in other cars, but much less frequently. This article has 1.7 million affected cars and “ 278 complaints, the NHTSA says that only six of them alleged collisions with minor injuries, and no severe incidents have been reported.” Compared to Tesla where there’s like half a million cars and at least one fatality. Of course, this could be user error (eg, fall asleep, wake up, slam on brakes) so I don’t think blame can be assigned, but I don’t think Tesla gets an inappropriate amount of news coverage here.

tailsdog 5y ago

Phantom braking in the Tesla Model 3 is very real and can be scary, I've experienced it several times. I've noticed that it seems to occur if it sees shadows when going under bridges on the highway. If you're alert you can override it pretty quickly by hitting acceleration. The problem is when using driving assists you get a false sense of security, you put too much trust in the system, relax, pay less attention - unfortunately this can be fatal.

HPsquared 5y ago
I'd say "False sense of security"
jannyfer 5y ago
Do you mean after it sees the shadow up ahead but not under it yet, or once it enters the shadow? If the latter... Then Tesla is in a tricky situation with camera-only Autopilot. With the low dynamic range of the cameras, if you make the software ignore big white (overexposed) rectangles, the car drives straight ahead into white trucks. If you make it recognize big white rectangles normally as obstacles, then the car sees overexposed bridge/tunnel exits as obstacles and gets rear-ended.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Agreed wrt overexposures and thresholds, just to speculate aloud, and thinking of the HDR mode on smartphones, is it possible to rapidly switch from a 1/1000 sec exposure to 1/60 sec exposure, interwoven, such that you receive 2 video streams? And it could still be adaptive, like the duty cycle of a PWM signal, could just use whatever frame has the highest entropy, don't necessarilly have to fuse them (maybe impossible under realtime constaints, I'm no CV expert)
adriancr 5y ago
Seems like an issue of only using cameras as sensors. It's probably triggering Automatic Emergency Braking. That is a useful feature in cities. I personally heard of one instance of a car stopping automatically for a kid that just jumped on the road...

susodapop 5y ago

The headline emphasises the vehicle make, and we assume this is another criticism of Tesla’s autopilot tech. But that determination has not been investigated yet. If the headline instead emphasised that the driver of this vehicle was seventy-four years old, we might assume it was a different criticism entirely.

dawnerd 5y ago
They’re just trying to dogpile on the “brake check” reporting previously. Brake checks are not car comes to a stop. There’s a lot more to this.

prepend 5y ago

This seems like when Windows decides to shut down and apply patches in the middle of a work session. I’ve been in situations where Windows thought it essential and unavoidable to reboot and stay offline for 40 minutes starting at 125pm as I was screen sharing and presenting to 50 people. We all watched the countdown. It was surreal and an example of such stupid, anti-user design. I spoke with the “IT” person who set up this policy and they explained that I should have left my computer on to patch overnight. So basically it was ok that I, and my audience, suffered because I forgot to do something I didn’t even know was necessary. In my case no one died, but I hope Tesla doesn’t apply the same logic to patching.

vips7L 5y ago
I’ve never had Windows do this, but my machine also isn’t managed by corporate IT. I think Windows downfall is really providing too many knobs for these people to control. Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience. They only care about their policies and not enabling you to get your job done.
- chucksta 5y ago
  >Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience. This is a 2 way street, there is a reason they still always ask if it's been rebooted. They can tell it can't and they are being lied to. >They only care about their policies and not enabling you to get your job done. Simply not true, it's almost always the first concern. Judging by your tone you are not considering they have a job to do as well, and it's relies on your assistance, or you get a forced activity like that.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > Corporate IT is inherently anti-user in my experience As someone who did help-desk in the past, corporate IT is not anti-user, but pro-efficiency, though the outcomes may be indistinguishable. IT is typically under-resourced[1], and has to deal with too many users with too many requests, and prima donna users - more of them than you'd imagine - demand personalized white-glove service (but don't want support to offer that to others because it ought to expedite service to them)

athenot 5y ago

The whole premise of "almost working" autopilot is the logical thing to do from Tesla's business perspective but deeply flawed from a safety one. The allure of having a car that drives itself is to relax the mind from paying attention to the road, handling 99% of the situations correctly through the software. But the 1% that require human input are made much more dangerous because the driver not only needs to handle the situation, they need to instantly catch up and familiarize themselves with the situation they've found themselves in. What was the car trying to do? Why is it suddenly stopping? What do my blind spots look like? Is there anybody behind me? Was anybody in the process of passing me? Unfortunately the time it takes to refamiliarize with the situation could exceed the total time budget to respond. It's similar to not paying attention to the road and being in the passenger seat when a junior driver is driving instead. But there are 2 exceptions: - Most people increase the attention they pay to the road when a learner is behind the wheel. Preparing to respond and offer guidance to correct. - Self-driving software is a lot more indeterministic than a new driver. And software updates can easily change the behavior in non trivial ways. As if the driving student had Multiple Personality Disorder, one day being over cautious in certain situation and other days over-confident. Though I contend that MPD is actually more predictable than an opaque algorithm, as there are other human clues about the behavior mode of the moment that could help guide the response of the trainer.

amelius 5y ago
The standard argument in favor of FSD vehicles is that they perform better than the average human driver. Except it doesn't take into account the amount of adrenaline involved.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I do not see the point of conversing about full self driving when it is nowhere close to existing yet.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Tesla use this names unforunetly "FSD" and "Autopilot", instead of lane assist or driver assist... we need everyone including fanboys to demand Tesla stop push fake capabilities, maybe name it MFFSD = Maybe in future Full Self Driving

mabbo 5y ago

While I think there's a good reason to suspect Telsa's software is at fault, I also note this: > 74-year-old Terry L. Siegel Every few years there are reports of a (usually foreign) car manufacturer having problems where the car "just accelerates on its own". But what's strange is that it only affects people over 65. Almost like above a certain age, people occasionally mistake the brake and gas pedals and don't react to the mistake quickly enough. I think it's worth waiting for the full report on this accident before loudly proclaiming that this is Tesla's fault. It may be, but it also may not be.

1shooner 5y ago
I'm remembering the Santa Monica Farmers Market Crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_cr...
deberon 5y ago
This is a good point. There are many elderly people struggling to keep up with technological advances. I’ve seen these poor people get confused by things like WiFi passwords and self checkout kiosks at the grocery store. Of course these same people would likely never step foot in a Tesla. But it is important to think about these drivers when taking into account the safety of these systems.

littlestymaar 5y ago

“Move fast and break things”, TSLA edition.

dboreham 5y ago

One of the things a human does when emergency braking is consider what's behind them. Perhaps Tesla's software doesn't do that?

jhoechtl 5y ago

I wonder which politician has the cojones to first stand up and declare the autopilot features illegal as security threats cant currently mitigated.

TeeWEE 5y ago

Please dont make conclusions from this article. It is missing a lot of info. Even if it was FSD... If you are in a car that start stopping you take over right? This is just a very weird situation that needs more context.

fivestarman 5y ago
Please read the article: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason. According to the agency, these incidents, known as "phantom braking," sometimes happened at highway speeds."

sudden_dystopia 5y ago

Technically, from an auto liability perspective, this is still the fault of the vehicle that did the rear ending. Traffic comes to sudden stops all the time, no excuse for not being able to stop for a car stopped in the roadway assuming it had lights on.

callamdelaney 5y ago

My Tesla slams on the breaks every time it sees a car at an intersection waiting for me to pass, it assumes that the car won't stop or has not stopped. It does the same with cars which are stationary (parked on the road) which I am steering around while under cruise control.

Jxl180 5y ago
How about highway/turnpike driving? Good there?
- callamdelaney 5y ago
  I've not experienced this on a motorway as of yet.
MarcoZavala 5y ago

martindbp 5y ago

This was confirmed to be electrical failure, not autopilot or FSD.

karmicthreat 5y ago

I'm not sure what is going on over at Tesla but the regular ordinary software doesn't really seem to be as much of a priority as before. We had the crappy UI refresh. Phantom AP and emergency braking are still a big problem. But we still get Elon happily chirping about v-whatever of FSD coming out. That the vast majority of customers don't actually use or have. I don't know if it's a case of nobody wants to work on the boring things because there is no incentive or a disincentive to. But I'm sick of basic features not working well.

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bamboozled 5y ago

It's funny, when Tesla came out I was so excited to have an electric dumb car that looked nice and performed like a top end sport car. I think all this self-driving business could've waited.Why they had to start producing smart cars with inbuilt self-driving AI assistants is the part I don't understand, at least it seems too premature. There was already enough appeal for Tesla, stories like this though juts ruin it. Recently I drove a friends new Volkswagen with similar driver assist / self-driving features as the Tesla. It was unnerving. The car wanted to drive itself, until the lane makers suddenly disappeared on a remote icy road at night. After about 5 seconds I noticed the car had silently (except for a small icon on the dash) decided it couldn't stay in the non-existent lane anymore. I was actually behind the wheel of a car going 60mph with no one paying attention behind the wheel. It freaked me out.

mbanzi 5y ago

My Model 3 has this habit of randomly braking on the motorway and it's quite dangerous. There is a particular spot I pass by almost daily that I know already the car is going to suddently brake.. I turn off all automation, I drive for a Km and then I go back to autopilot. Super dangerous...

bondarchuk 5y ago
Why don't you just keep it turned off then if it's so dangerous?
somehowadev 5y ago
So you know it will consistently fail in some cases and yet still use it?

post_break 5y ago

I've seen videos of teslas on 2 lane roads slam on the brakes for cars coming in the opposite direction. Absolutely terrifying.

burlesona 5y ago

This kind of thing is why I think we are much farther away from true L5 self-driving than many others think. To handle current road conditions you need true AGI with the ability not just to see as well as humans can but to interpret what you see, as well as theory of mind and contextual awareness of the drivers around you. What I think will ultimately happen instead is we’ll adapt the roads to allow self-driving by dumber computers. For example, a self-driving lane on highways where there are sensors on the road to help the cars, and where all the cars in the lane must be self-driving and in communication with each other to do things like maintain stopping distance.

ricardobeat 5y ago

Everyone, and the news piece, seems to be jumping to conclusions. "the Tesla he was driving stopped" - assumes all Teslas are self-driving all the time. There is nothing yet pointing to a software issue instead of human error, or a medical emergency since the driver was 75 years old.

fivestarman 5y ago
Also in the article: "Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary investigation into Tesla after hundreds of owners reported that their vehicles would sometimes unexpectedly slam on the brakes for no apparent reason."

cduzz 5y ago

Driving is a pretty dangerous activity. The forces involved are enormous. In the distant past, car accidents killed an enormous number of people. Modern cars are safer but driving is still not as safe as other activities, such as sleeping in an underground bunker. Surprisingly, people also die while sleeping in underground bunkers, so I guess safety is relative. Cars stop on highways for a variety of reasons. Cars fail, things obstruct the road and cars need to stop, drivers fall asleep or suffer medical incidents. Ideally stopping in the middle of the road shouldn't cause you to be killed by someone else who is either tailgating you or not paying attention to a car stopped in the middle of the road up ahead. A pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on the street 1/3rd of a mile from my home; I have to cross this street if I want to walk to the train station. This happens on this corner roughly on an 18 month frequency.

hulitu 5y ago

I don't underestand what the fuss is all about. The car received a security OTA update and had to restart to apply the update. Everybody does it. You would not use an insecure car, wouldn't you ?

thecleaner 5y ago

Okay screw the AI. What else can Tesla do ? I bet having a programmable car can be programmed in more deterministic ways than just "with probability so and so this is another car and the machine must stop". Wth Also I wonder how many of these incidents are buried under NDAs.

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tiahura 5y ago

This happened in one of America’s great judicial hell holes, i.e. Plaintiff friendly law, judges, and juries, so it may turn out to be quite interesting. There are multiple attorneys with multiple 9 figure verdicts within a stone’s throw of this incident.

anpat 5y ago

Holy shit! Similar thing happened to my model3 early on (late 2019) and I had a furious but futile conversation with service centre about how dangerous my situation was. They stonewaled me after “kernel panic, dont know why”. The car had it’s own “blue screen of death” in the first lane, after a turn, on central expressway right next to their Santa Clara service center. ( https://goo.gl/maps/sPVNDNJZaR9zQ66c9 https://goo.gl/maps/sPVNDNJZaR9zQ66c9) Luckily there is signal right there so people were slowing down naturally but man the car turning into a brick and not even emergency blinkers (parking lights) working was shitty experience! I’m fuming that someone paid a price for tesla’s similar failure. Edit: I was on “auto pilot”

Handytinge 5y ago
Whilst the software failure sucks, the agreement by most of society (as reflected in most law) is that the fault is of the driver in the car behind for not leaving a safe distance. Cars stop for all sorts of reasons, hence why there are laws for leaving these distances.

plang318 5y ago

Phantom breaking happened to me 3 times when I test drove a Model Y on CO-470 in Colorado near the Park Meadows mall last year. I was keenly aware of my surroundings as this was the first time driving a Tesla; the roads were clear, no obstructions that I could connect the dots on. I'm very thankful I wasn't rear-ended any of the times. I was pretty disappointed as I always had been a fan of the concept of self-driving cars and Tesla in general. After bringing up the behavior with the Sales associate he stated it was a known issue on CO-470 and they were working on a fix.

MauroIksem 5y ago

I'm terrified of this happening to me in my model 3. It's happened a few times when no one was behind me.

MauroIksem 5y ago

This isn't even autopilot. It's basic cruise control that they can't even get right.

joblo1981 5y ago

I almost died in a tesla when it did something similar to this. The model s just abruptly and heavily braked itself on the interstate. My family was in the car and a semi almost hit us from behind going about 80mph.

fivestarman 5y ago

Why is this post buried under 500 other posts that aren't nearly as popular?

aw9f70gae 5y ago

Private transportation and American society’s total reliance on it is a disaster