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This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. The NTSB foun

by sowbug 4y ago

This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. The NTSB found that none of the driver-assistance features were activated, and the driver was probably tossed into the backseat from the impact: Although the driver’s seat was found vacant and the driver was found in the left rear seat, the available evidence suggests that the driver was seated in the driver’s seat at the time of the crash and moved into the rear seat postcrash. Specifically, residential security video showed both the driver and passenger getting into the front seats prior to driving away from the residence. In addition, the EDR data showed active accelerator pedal inputs consistent with driver activity in the 5 seconds prior to the impact with the tree, and that the driver’s seat belt was connected at the time of the crash. Finally, the steering wheel examination conducted by the NTSB Materials Laboratory indicated an impact to the upper left quadrant, consistent with the driver loading the steering wheel during a frontal crash. The entire journey appears to have lasted less than a minute (9:07pm is mentioned both as the time the car left the driveway, and as the time of the crash), so it's unlikely the driver jumped into the back seat as a stunt while driving. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HIR2302.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

anonporridge 4y ago
> This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on."
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Tesla is damaging the idea of self-driving cars in spite of the media, not because of it. Self driving cars were billed as the cool new thing. Then Tesla started charging people for "Full Self Driving" with a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety by using public roads for beta testing an intentionally hamstrung* L2-billed-as-L5 driving stack. It's frustrating to watch as someone working in the AV space, and it's silly to act like this one case was isolated enough that the fact it was wrong changes any of that reality. We know Tesla's stack has killed people: it became normalized once the first few times it happened they were able to get away with victim blaming. By 2021 it was already accepted, this incident was already business as usual. *humans just need eyes so self driving cars just need cameras
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    The thing is, I would have thought that Tesla's stance on repairability alone would have made their brand radioactive to the average Hacker News commenter, way before the Pedo Guy accusations or Elon Musk burning a bunch of money to make Twitter worse. Tesla is everything we claim to hate about Apple.
    - a4isms 4y ago
      If Apple owned Tesla, there wouldn't be enough room in this comment to list all the reasons HN would hate it: 1. What do you mean, the OS and all its software is proprietary? Why can't I sideload my own fart app? 2. Highest margins in the industry? No we won't praise their business genius, we'll complain that they're charging a Tesla Fanboi Tax. 3. Like you said, RIGHT TO REPAIR, this is John Deere stuff, only it's a car and not a tractor. 4. Shit build quality would have us raving about butterfly keyboards 2.0. And so on, and so forth. Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." So does Elon Musk, and it's aimed squarely at a certain very obvious demographic.
      - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
        From a business perspective, a demographic bigger than the HN readership.
  - ajross 4y ago
    > a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety Cite? Everyone likes to throw around the word "safety" as a qualitative thing, but the only data we have points to the system being extremely safe.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      Mid 2000s LKA was passive systems in the US market: they were backups that vibrated the seat or steering wheel, or provided mild outputs. That meant they couldn't actively put the driver into danger, making them inherently safer than a system that will gladly drive onto a sidewalk Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on. You need to watch the driver to ensure they're full attentive: https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-ls-600hls-driver-monitoring-system/ https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-l... In markets with LKA, that same module was used to ensure that drivers were actively watching the road while it was activated. In other words a 2007 Lexus did a better job on the one thing that Tesla is still getting dinged on (https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-monitoring-fails-to-keep-driver-focus-on-road-a3964813328/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-moni...) Tesla blamed a man for playing Candy Crush when his Tesla drove into a barrier and killed him. Lexus had solved the problem that killed this man over a decade prior. A 2007 Lexus would have used its Driver Awareness Module to recognize the man was not paying attention and stopped lane centering. The solution was not complex, not expensive, iirc Tesla even had interior facing cameras by then but was still resisting turning them on until much more recently. Tesla put their not-marketing ahead of human life, because if they had enabled more aggressive awareness monitoring than capacitance sensing or silly steering wheel jiggles, Elon wouldn't get to tweet about how "you're just there for regulatory reasons" - Also slightly off topic, but I think my biggest internet pet peeve is when people ask for a citation on a complex problem that requires critical thinking. I can't chew and pour the conclusion for you, but you're free to research before making low effort commentary like "Cite"
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident. > "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on." It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer, even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.
- bena 4y ago
  It wasn't "media disinformation", it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-fire/285-c28a4993-5b5f-43f4-a924-e39638390647 https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-f... And even in that article, there's an addendum a couple of months later stating that a person was seen getting in the driver's seat and that the NTSB reenactment wasn't able to engage the autosteering when trying to replicate the crash. I don't know what more you want from the press. They reported what they were told by the authorities. And then when new information came in, they reported that as well.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    What most people actually want is better attention from the public, not better reporting from the media.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    > it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong Possibly it's the media's job to question when law enforcement comments seem implausible?
    - bigmattystyles 4y ago
      True, but are you questioning the NTSB as well?
    - prawn 4y ago
      What general reporter would have the experience and evidence to override an authority speaking with that confidence? They're reporting news. They report the law enforcement side and then the Tesla side. They updated (at the top of the article) twice as more information came to hand.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  Related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
- Smoosh 4y ago
  Conspiracy theory: Autonomous driving is being undermined by traditional car companies who see that if it is successful, it would hugely change personal transportation and greatly reduce total sales of vehicles.
  - hnburnsy 4y ago
    Alternate conspiracy theory: Tesla does not market its cars, while traditional automakers spend billions advertising dollars per year. Reporters work for organizations that rely on advertising.
    - Moto7451 4y ago
      This isn’t really a conspiracy theory. Any time you see a positive puff piece listed as being written by “staff” or similarly vague term… that’s a marketing piece that is a paid placement.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    > greatly reduce total sales of vehicles. This is one of those things that always struck me as a weird, poor argument... how is autonomous driving supposed to suddenly make everyone want to stop owning their cars and use taxis instead?
    - epgui 4y ago
      When you own a car, you typically only use it a small percentage of the day (it certainly is true of the average owner). When you're offering a ride service, that one car is being utilized a much higher proportion of the day. Ignoring the driver, taxi/ride-hail/autonomous-ride services are much more efficient uses of a vehicle over time. (And this is just a side note, but obviously if you don't have to pay for a human driver, you make the cost of operating the vehicle much lower per kilometre, and then it becomes much more attractive, from a purely financial POV, for most people than owning their own vehicle.)
      - palata 4y ago
ajross 4y ago
Worth pointing out that the most recent Tesla crash freakout was similarly thinly sourced. We have one line in a police report saying AP was in use, and no statements from the driver nor telemetry from the vehicle. And that was enough to drive thousand-comment threads right here on HN. (And yeah, I'm on record saying that it's extremely unlikely autopilot commanded the lane change in that Bay Bridge accident. It just doesn't work like that, the blinkers came on simultaneous with the motion. That's a human driver for sure.)
- gamblor956 4y ago
  The NHTSA is on record as saying FSD was "definitely" engaged during the recent Bay Bridge accident in the tunnel. And notably, Musk did not chime in to blame the driver like he always does when the driver is at fault, which is very strong circumstantial evidence that FSD was engaged.
  - ajross 4y ago
    No, they aren't "on record". Go find the cite. One paper had a source saying that it was active within 30 seconds of the collision (which is like 3x longer than the time shown on the video we have). Look, the clearly most likely scenario here is that the driver got confused, overrode the AP, and then failed to maintain awareness as they commanded the sudden lane change. Obviously that's not what people want to hear, but it's the best explanation. I've pulled AP out and changed lanes manually, probably rapidly, on a bunch of occasions. All it takes is to do that when not paying attention... All your logic was equally applicable to the accident in the linked article, and it was all wrong there too. (Also... Musk didn't "blame the driver" in the linked case? Not sure what you're citing. Tesla generally doesn't say anything about their customers' accidents, for some very obvious reasons.) Just wait. All I'm telling you is that I drive with this product every day and I'm not seeing FSD behavior in that video. If it turns out I'm wrong then I'll sheepishly admit it. But I know which direction the spin runs and my BS detector is pretty good.
    - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y ago
brewdad 4y ago
I'm confused by this description. Are they saying the impact caused the driver to be ejected from the front seat to the rear? I'm not sure physics works that way. Are they saying the driver left the front seat and climbed into the rear so that he could blame autopilot when the police arrived on scene?
- lalopalota 4y ago
  the commenter said "tossed", the NTSB said "moved". there was no speculation as to why.
  - sowbug 4y ago
    The sentence's grammar is vague. The "was" might have been meant to apply to both clauses, so that the driver "was seated" at the time of the crash and then "was moved" during the ensuing mayhem. Or he crawled into the back and died. The NTSB might have been trying to use neutral language for uncertain events, like how "the position changed" could mean intent or just a force of nature. I don't know what the right interpretation is.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
- King-Aaron 4y ago
  Unfortunately, I've seen first-hand that passengers in the front of a vehicle can be thrown into the rear of a vehicle in a crash. The way that excerpt describes it though, it makes me wonder if they tried to crawl out of the car "post crash" via the rear, and checked out before they could get out of the car?
- akira2501 4y ago
  You'll find plenty of failed seats in crashes, it's a known factor and an item that has had it's share of recalls. I'm sure you can find many improperly or poorly positioned seats that also contributed to the post accident conditions.

by sowbug 4y ago

anonporridge 4y ago

> This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on."

BoorishBears 4y ago
Tesla is damaging the idea of self-driving cars in spite of the media, not because of it. Self driving cars were billed as the cool new thing. Then Tesla started charging people for "Full Self Driving" with a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety by using public roads for beta testing an intentionally hamstrung* L2-billed-as-L5 driving stack. It's frustrating to watch as someone working in the AV space, and it's silly to act like this one case was isolated enough that the fact it was wrong changes any of that reality. We know Tesla's stack has killed people: it became normalized once the first few times it happened they were able to get away with victim blaming. By 2021 it was already accepted, this incident was already business as usual. *humans just need eyes so self driving cars just need cameras
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The thing is, I would have thought that Tesla's stance on repairability alone would have made their brand radioactive to the average Hacker News commenter, way before the Pedo Guy accusations or Elon Musk burning a bunch of money to make Twitter worse. Tesla is everything we claim to hate about Apple.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    If Apple owned Tesla, there wouldn't be enough room in this comment to list all the reasons HN would hate it: 1. What do you mean, the OS and all its software is proprietary? Why can't I sideload my own fart app? 2. Highest margins in the industry? No we won't praise their business genius, we'll complain that they're charging a Tesla Fanboi Tax. 3. Like you said, RIGHT TO REPAIR, this is John Deere stuff, only it's a car and not a tractor. 4. Shit build quality would have us raving about butterfly keyboards 2.0. And so on, and so forth. Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." So does Elon Musk, and it's aimed squarely at a certain very obvious demographic.
    - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
      From a business perspective, a demographic bigger than the HN readership.
- ajross 4y ago
  > a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety Cite? Everyone likes to throw around the word "safety" as a qualitative thing, but the only data we have points to the system being extremely safe.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Mid 2000s LKA was passive systems in the US market: they were backups that vibrated the seat or steering wheel, or provided mild outputs. That meant they couldn't actively put the driver into danger, making them inherently safer than a system that will gladly drive onto a sidewalk Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on. You need to watch the driver to ensure they're full attentive: https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-ls-600hls-driver-monitoring-system/ https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-l... In markets with LKA, that same module was used to ensure that drivers were actively watching the road while it was activated. In other words a 2007 Lexus did a better job on the one thing that Tesla is still getting dinged on (https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-monitoring-fails-to-keep-driver-focus-on-road-a3964813328/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-moni...) Tesla blamed a man for playing Candy Crush when his Tesla drove into a barrier and killed him. Lexus had solved the problem that killed this man over a decade prior. A 2007 Lexus would have used its Driver Awareness Module to recognize the man was not paying attention and stopped lane centering. The solution was not complex, not expensive, iirc Tesla even had interior facing cameras by then but was still resisting turning them on until much more recently. Tesla put their not-marketing ahead of human life, because if they had enabled more aggressive awareness monitoring than capacitance sensing or silly steering wheel jiggles, Elon wouldn't get to tweet about how "you're just there for regulatory reasons" - Also slightly off topic, but I think my biggest internet pet peeve is when people ask for a citation on a complex problem that requires critical thinking. I can't chew and pour the conclusion for you, but you're free to research before making low effort commentary like "Cite"
tablespoon 4y ago
> And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident. > "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on." It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer, even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.
bena 4y ago
It wasn't "media disinformation", it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-fire/285-c28a4993-5b5f-43f4-a924-e39638390647 https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-f... And even in that article, there's an addendum a couple of months later stating that a person was seen getting in the driver's seat and that the NTSB reenactment wasn't able to engage the autosteering when trying to replicate the crash. I don't know what more you want from the press. They reported what they were told by the authorities. And then when new information came in, they reported that as well.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  What most people actually want is better attention from the public, not better reporting from the media.
- dboreham 4y ago
  > it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong Possibly it's the media's job to question when law enforcement comments seem implausible?
  - bigmattystyles 4y ago
    True, but are you questioning the NTSB as well?
  - prawn 4y ago
    What general reporter would have the experience and evidence to override an authority speaking with that confidence? They're reporting news. They report the law enforcement side and then the Tesla side. They updated (at the top of the article) twice as more information came to hand.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Smoosh 4y ago
Conspiracy theory: Autonomous driving is being undermined by traditional car companies who see that if it is successful, it would hugely change personal transportation and greatly reduce total sales of vehicles.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Alternate conspiracy theory: Tesla does not market its cars, while traditional automakers spend billions advertising dollars per year. Reporters work for organizations that rely on advertising.
  - Moto7451 4y ago
    This isn’t really a conspiracy theory. Any time you see a positive puff piece listed as being written by “staff” or similarly vague term… that’s a marketing piece that is a paid placement.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > greatly reduce total sales of vehicles. This is one of those things that always struck me as a weird, poor argument... how is autonomous driving supposed to suddenly make everyone want to stop owning their cars and use taxis instead?
  - epgui 4y ago
    When you own a car, you typically only use it a small percentage of the day (it certainly is true of the average owner). When you're offering a ride service, that one car is being utilized a much higher proportion of the day. Ignoring the driver, taxi/ride-hail/autonomous-ride services are much more efficient uses of a vehicle over time. (And this is just a side note, but obviously if you don't have to pay for a human driver, you make the cost of operating the vehicle much lower per kilometre, and then it becomes much more attractive, from a purely financial POV, for most people than owning their own vehicle.)
    - palata 4y ago

ajross 4y ago

Worth pointing out that the most recent Tesla crash freakout was similarly thinly sourced. We have one line in a police report saying AP was in use, and no statements from the driver nor telemetry from the vehicle. And that was enough to drive thousand-comment threads right here on HN. (And yeah, I'm on record saying that it's extremely unlikely autopilot commanded the lane change in that Bay Bridge accident. It just doesn't work like that, the blinkers came on simultaneous with the motion. That's a human driver for sure.)

gamblor956 4y ago
The NHTSA is on record as saying FSD was "definitely" engaged during the recent Bay Bridge accident in the tunnel. And notably, Musk did not chime in to blame the driver like he always does when the driver is at fault, which is very strong circumstantial evidence that FSD was engaged.
- ajross 4y ago
  No, they aren't "on record". Go find the cite. One paper had a source saying that it was active within 30 seconds of the collision (which is like 3x longer than the time shown on the video we have). Look, the clearly most likely scenario here is that the driver got confused, overrode the AP, and then failed to maintain awareness as they commanded the sudden lane change. Obviously that's not what people want to hear, but it's the best explanation. I've pulled AP out and changed lanes manually, probably rapidly, on a bunch of occasions. All it takes is to do that when not paying attention... All your logic was equally applicable to the accident in the linked article, and it was all wrong there too. (Also... Musk didn't "blame the driver" in the linked case? Not sure what you're citing. Tesla generally doesn't say anything about their customers' accidents, for some very obvious reasons.) Just wait. All I'm telling you is that I drive with this product every day and I'm not seeing FSD behavior in that video. If it turns out I'm wrong then I'll sheepishly admit it. But I know which direction the spin runs and my BS detector is pretty good.
  - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y ago

brewdad 4y ago

I'm confused by this description. Are they saying the impact caused the driver to be ejected from the front seat to the rear? I'm not sure physics works that way. Are they saying the driver left the front seat and climbed into the rear so that he could blame autopilot when the police arrived on scene?

lalopalota 4y ago
the commenter said "tossed", the NTSB said "moved". there was no speculation as to why.
- sowbug 4y ago
  The sentence's grammar is vague. The "was" might have been meant to apply to both clauses, so that the driver "was seated" at the time of the crash and then "was moved" during the ensuing mayhem. Or he crawled into the back and died. The NTSB might have been trying to use neutral language for uncertain events, like how "the position changed" could mean intent or just a force of nature. I don't know what the right interpretation is.
kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]
King-Aaron 4y ago
Unfortunately, I've seen first-hand that passengers in the front of a vehicle can be thrown into the rear of a vehicle in a crash. The way that excerpt describes it though, it makes me wonder if they tried to crawl out of the car "post crash" via the rear, and checked out before they could get out of the car?
akira2501 4y ago
You'll find plenty of failed seats in crashes, it's a known factor and an item that has had it's share of recalls. I'm sure you can find many improperly or poorly positioned seats that also contributed to the post accident conditions.