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Tesla was likely on autopilot in deadly fire truck crash in Bay Area, feds say
- obblekk 4y agoImportant to note, this was a 2014 Model S. Most 2014s did not have any autopilot (just standard cruise control), and the ones that did used an off the shelf module from a third party company.
- WheatMillington 4y agoDo you always specify when a part is made by a third party, or just when you're trying to insulate a trillion dollar corporation from liability? Because most parts in most cars are manufactured by "third party" vendors.
- obblekk 4y agoI used to drive this exact model and all it had was cruise control. I think it's relevant because back then Tesla did not advertise "FSD", whatever that means. If you look at my comment history, you can see I routinely criticize their practices around FSD, not insulate them from liability.
- flutas 4y ago> used an off the shelf module from a third party company iirc Mobileye right?
- Alupis 4y agoVehicles are expected to last on the road for more than 9 years. Today, the average age of a vehicle on the road is a little over 12 years[1] - average. It's a significant problem if vehicle's critical safety software/parts fail yet are still on the road. The future utopia of self driving vehicles can never become a reality if slightly older models kill people because they are no longer supported or updated. [1] https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2022/02/how-old-are-cars/#:~:text=The%20average%20age%20of%20a%20car%20compared%20to%20the%20average,be%20an%20all%2Dtime%20high.&text=Americans%20hold%20on%20to%20their,average%20age%20was%2011.4%20years https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2022/02/how-old-are-cars/#:~:....
- imgabe 4y agoUsing an unapproved third-party part that fails and causes a crash is not an example of the vehicle not lasting.
- Alupis 4y agoThe article says the vehicle was likely using Autopilot, which is a Tesla installed feature - not an unapproved 3rd party component. What led you to say that?
- WheatMillington 4y agoIt's not an unapproved third party part. I can understand why you would think that given GP's misleading characterisation of a vendor-supplied OEM part as third party, but Teslas of this era came equipped with MobileEye technology as selected, specified and installed by Tesla.
- imgabe 4y agoIt’s still a nonstandard modification to the original vehicle. It’s not that the car wore out or didn’t last. It was never designed to have FSD in the first place. The categorization of this as a reliability problem is not accurate.
- obblekk 4y agoYes completely agree. But, this car never even pretended to advertise driving itself. Most likely, it advertised plain, vanilla "cruise control." At best, it also advertised lane keeping and radar cruise control.
- Alupis 4y agoOk, and that lane assist radar cruise control thingy drove straight into a parked, stationary emergency vehicle and killed it's own occupants. Where is the disconnect happening here? Not driving full-speed into stationary objects strikes me as "Driver Assist 101" stuff...
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoYou know that most of the cars use off the shelf components. Like the 3d view in many cars is just a Bosch module.
- et-al 4y ago> AP News was unable to reach Tesla for comment, but that’s no surprise. The electric car company disbanded its public relations department in 2020. That's some salt.
- Alupis 4y agoIt's pathetic that a journalist would write something like that in an otherwise factual, unopinionated piece.
- CJefferson 4y agoWhat isn’t factual about that?
- Alupis 4y agoThe snark is unbecoming of a journalist presenting facts about an event that really happened. Apparently, blind hatred for someone can excuse an awful lot of illicit behavior...
- jonas21 4y agoI mean it's SFGATE, which is more of a blog than proper journalism (they used to be associated with the SF Chronicle, but the two split a few years ago). The AP story [1] that they based their post on strikes a more professional tone: > Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its public relations department. [1] https://apnews.com/article/tesla-firetruck-autopilot-investigation-c6d64b941f546f7ae70fb8355d765cb3 https://apnews.com/article/tesla-firetruck-autopilot-investi...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt's purely factual, just not formal, and your allegation of 'blind hatred' seems hyperbolic. It's odd to me how the tech community celebrates iconoclasm and disruption when things are going well but retreats into formalities when they're not. It seems more unbecoming to me to keep marketing and selling a system called 'autopilot' without responding to the very reasonable criticism that it has a rather dubious safety record - 'According to AP News, “at least 15 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles nationwide while using the system.”' I don't have fine-grained accident statistics for emergency vehicles year by year, but that seems disproportionately high for a somewhat niche brand.
- next_xibalba 4y agoIt’d be cool to know what the crash rate and death and/or injury from crashes rate is for Teslas (running autopilot or not) vs all other cars. If I had to bet, I’d bet on Teslas having better numbers. A guy intentionally drove off a cliff in a murder-suicide attempt and failed, after all.
- mastodon_acc 4y agoI understand your ulterior motive is to defend Tesla here, but Tesla themselves stopped publishing those stats https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stopped-reporting-autopilot-safety-statistics-online https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stop...
- croddin 4y agoIt looks like they are up to date now: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
- next_xibalba 4y agoIdgaf about Tesla. I just bought a Subaru and love it. It’s kind of cringe that you jumped to that conclusion. Pretty sure there is government agency that tracks these data…
- electrondood 4y agohttps://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport Autopilot results in 10x fewer accidents than a car without it.
- ahahahahah 4y agoYou either don't understand the data you linked to or are deliberately misrepresenting it. I'll assume the best and that its the former.
- dham 4y agoAre we publishing a story every-time someone gets in an accident with adaptive cruise control? It would be hard to buy a car in 2023 that didn't have adaptive cruise control with lane assist, which is all autopilot is.
- bentlegen 4y agoMy Mazda CX-5 has those adaptive cruise features. Nowhere in the manual is it described as “autopilot”. If that’s all autopilot is, why not market it as adaptive cruise control? Search in your heart, I believe you know the answer.
- dham 4y agoYes, that's the problem. Autopilot was named Autopilot which is just ACC. Full self driving is level 2 self driving. FSD should be renamed to Autopilot and Autopilot just take on another name or just ACC.
- TheAlchemist 4y agoBut then, the company itself could be worth 0 (per Musk own estimation). That is the real problem.
- v0idzer0 4y agoWhy would a company with billions in quarterly profits be worth zero?
- richbell 4y agoAsk Elon Musk. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basically-zero-without-self-driving-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...
- dtagames 4y agoIf it weren't for tax handouts, stock manipulation, and crypto schemes, it would be worth zero now.
- electrondood 4y ago> investigators already suspect the crash took place when the driver of the Tesla was employing an automated driving system Contradicts the headline, which implies that NHTSA told AP that they had specific reason to believe Autopilot was engaged. Tesla Autopilot is 10x safer than driving without it [0]. We keep seeing speculative clickbait headlines because "Tesla" gets clicks. We also keep seeing confirmation a few months later that, oh yeah... turns out the driver was drunk and pressing the accelerator, and Autopilot wasn't engaged. Telemetry clears these up easily. Also the "recall" (OTA software update) they mention at the end was for FSD, not Autopilot, and it was unrelated: they asked Tesla to eliminate human-like rolling stop behavior and to stop at yellow lights. [0] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
- joshuamorton 4y ago> Tesla Autopilot is 10x safer than driving without it [0]. No, Autopilot only works in relatively safe conditions where accident rates are already lowest (highway driving). A fair comparison would be accidents per mile for Autopilot vs. Accidents per mile with human drivers in similar conditions, where Autopilot is almost certainly not significantly better, and that's why Tesla doesn't share that data. > Contradicts the headline, which implies that NHTSA told AP that they had specific reason to believe Autopilot was engaged No it doesn't unless both the original headline and HN updated in the past 3 minutes.
- steveBK123 4y agoExactly - theres huge selection bias at play, plus Tesla selecting what numbers to release to prove how much safer they are. If you are using AP as intended, then you are using it on the easiest places to drive - limited access highways in good weather. All of the accidents my family & I have been in over the course of our lives have been in places you are not supposed to be using AP. Crossing traffic, left hand turns, mall parking lots, etc are where the majority of accidents happen. There is also arguably selection bias in the driver profiles. Young males (16~20ish) and older people (75+) have significantly higher accident rates but are less likely to be driving a Tesla, on AP.
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- pengaru 4y ago> According to AP News, “at least 15 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles nationwide while using the system.”
- dekhn 4y agoI invoke the fallacy of base rates.
- maxcan 4y agoOk, and how many drivers have crashed into emergency vehicles when being driven by humans? Without that number, at a minimum, the article conveys very little meaningful information. Also, anyone who has ever used an actual aircraft autopilot knows that they are actually very similar to what Tesla has. They relieve you of making constant control inputs need near constant supervision. Is the marketing deceptive, perhaps, but its not incorrect.
- anigbrowl 4y agoYou are right about the airplane autopilot, but otoh it's a lot more difficult to qualify as a pilot than it is to get a driving license, isn't it?
- maxcan 4y agoYou are absolutely right. When I look at the ridiculous numbers of preventable vehicle deaths in our country, caused almost entirely by carelessness, I do wish that getting a driver's license was much much harder and that we actually bothered to enforce traffic laws consistently.
- v0idzer0 4y agoIn 90 days they’ll announce it wasn’t on like usual