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Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving
- progne 3y agoWaymo claims to already have a better record than human drivers. How long before we read a similar case where a driver is accused of creating unsafe conditions by taking control of the car?
- mrtksn 3y ago>Waymo claims to already have a better record than human drivers Elon Musk claims the same but there is a "terms and conditions apply" and they don't agree to assume responsibility.
- rtkwe 3y agoA while, there's only one car maker selling one car to the general public right now who's taking legal liability for crashes while their system is active.
- belltaco 3y agoThat Mercedes-Benz system is a glorified adaptive cruise control and has several limitations that Tesla autopilot does not have. > There must be a vehicle in front of your car, reasonable road conditions with readable markings and lines, and clear weather and light conditions. Drive Pilot can’t be used at night or in the rain, and the headlights and wipers must be set to auto for it to work. > It’s also only available on freeways that have been mapped by Mercedes, with GPS positioning that is precise to the centimeter and even accounts for continental drift. Drive Pilot can’t be used in construction zones.
- FireBeyond 3y agoAP will disengage or work poorly in poor weather too. Mercedes is actually being cautious about slowly rolling things out, not just yeeting it over the fence like Tesla. Little things like: > Mercedes shows us an EQS with an important visual indicator that is not yet legal: in the hopefully very near future, when Drive Pilot is active, the headlights, taillights, and side mirrors will have turquoise marking lights so other drivers know the Level 3 system is in use. and > Drive Pilot also has redundant braking and steering actuators and a separate onboard electrical system just in case one of them fails. are good things. And it drives better than Autopilot, despite being "glorified cruise control": > It does feel more precise and accurate in how the car stays in its lane and reacts to surrounding traffic, with fewer jerky movements and constant tiny adjustments. Drive Pilot even reacts to larger trucks or motorcycles that are lane splitting by moving slightly over in the lane without crossing the lines, and not only does it work in carpool lanes but also it can tell the difference between the carpool and FasTrak lanes and will let the driver decide which to use. This doesn't sound like Tesla at all: > and there’s not a single moment where Drive Pilot makes a mistake or reacts badly to a situation, even when surrounded by nightmarish LA drivers. Some of us applaud these kind of things. Remember the whole phantom braking thing a while back? And then it disappeared with an update, but another phantom braking problem arose, so then they reverted that update, and then released another update that fixed those two problems... A safety culture where a component manufacturer had firmware that took around 36 hours to work through the full test suite... released a new firmware to Tesla in response to issues. Got an email from Tesla 3 or 4 hours later saying "Thanks, this is working so much better", and when they responded with confusion about the test suite, etc., "Oh, we just flashed it onto one of our cars here and took it out on the road and tried".
- rtkwe 3y agoIt is just very fancy cruise control but it's still very significant to the whole "will a person ever get in trouble for taking over from the automated system" discussion that they're the only ones taking legal responsibility while the system is active. Everyone else including Tesla puts all the legal weight on you to stay constantly alert and take over for the system.
- natch 3y agoDon’t worry, Mercedes will also put the legal weight on you by disabling the system well in advance of any potentially risky segments of road. So their promise is essentially PR fakery. Don’t fall for it.
- rtkwe 3y agoAs long as they're not cutting out moments before a crash to shift liability at the last second I don't see the problem. Disabling the system early when it's not sure it can operate safely is way better than not doing that and plowing into the side of a truck because the driver enabled it on a road with un-signaled cross traffic. (When the car could know from map data it's on a road it's not well equipped to handle mind you)
- belltaco 3y agoIt'd be interesting to read the legalese, one article states that it's on a case by case system. Since there are so many limitations, how will it deal with, say, there no longer being a car in front of you?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> they're the only ones taking legal responsibility while the system is active They are the only ones using the consequences of general principles of product liability as a selling point, might be more accurate.
- natch 3y agoExcept that system turns itself off on the slightest hair trigger if it gets any inkling that another car might be present within ten miles.
- esjeon 3y agoI guess until all autonomous vehicles are fully equipped with real sensors (likely both lidar and radar) so that cars can almost-mechanically stop before foreseeable collisions without worrying about AI hiccups. This is technically possible even now, but it's way too expensive for now.
- jvanderbot 3y agoUnless a lot of money is paid out in campaign contributions, I suspect you're right. I'm worried about a time when the _statistical_ safety of AI driving is better than humans across the board, but there are horrifying correlations between AI induced accidents, like "Children on tricycles are not well recognized" or "slight fog in Seattle induces 150 car pileup". Or, AI causes worse accidents less frequently than humans. Whereas humans have lots more fender benders and minor injuries to older adults. Not saying this is true, but it's a scenario I think about a lot.
- brandonagr2 3y agoA lot more minor injuries? You are aware that over 100 people are killed in cars every single day in the US alone right?
- colonelpopcorn 3y agoTBH, that stat seems low.
- jvanderbot 3y agoI think you missed the part where I'm not saying this is current reality, just saying it's something I worry about. Continuing your example just for exposition / hypothetical, if those are 100 individual deaths with varying causes, vs 99 children run over by AI b/c they were walking in a line holding hands and were interpreted as road markers, well that's not _better_ is it? This is purely hypothetical, but statistics gloss over those human details.
- richiebful1 3y ago
- tibbydudeza 3y agoThe same cars that comes to a halt because people put a traffic cone on the bonnet.
- zardo 3y agoDon't you have to defeat a safety interlock to allow hands off the wheel driving in a Tesla?
- jvanderbot 3y agoYou have to nudge the wheel every 30s or so, and respond to audible prompts to "wiggle" the wheel or steering control will be disabled for the rest of the drive.
- adrr 3y agoI think its by distance. On the freeway its more "whiny" for you to wiggle wheel.
- _ea1k 3y agoIt also nags much more in certain "dangerous" situations. For example, too many traffic cones nearby or detected emergency vehicles. It has gotten pretty good at that last one, though it often alerts to emergency vehicles on the opposite side of a divided highway.
- gdubs 3y agoHave you never used your legs to kind of hold the wheel or even steer in a car when you've taken your hands off for a moment? That's what I'm going to guess was going on here.
- vinni2 3y agoWhat about all these porn stars who have sex while driving Tesla. They should definitely be guilty of dangerous driving. edit: link to the article about it https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7015229/Elon-Musk-reacts-couple-recording-having-sex-moving-Tesla.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7015229/Elon-Musk-r...
- gwbas1c 3y agoI haven't seen any of the videos. I'd assume that there's some creative use of a camera to give the illusion that no one is behind the wheel. After all, in the the "two girls one cup" video the girls eat chocolate ice cream. There was a camera cut between filling the cone (with something that is not ice cream) and the girls eating from the cone. It's clear that in the cut when the girls are eating from the cone, the brown runny soft soft substance is chocolate ice cream. Your imagination fills in that it was the "not ice cream" from the first shot. Edit: You must have added the link while I wrote the above comment.
- aaronkjones 3y agoThanks for the reminder of that videos existence!
- tenpies 3y ago> There was a camera cut between filling the cone Somewhere on the internet, someone is now fact checking this claim.
- smegger001 3y agoI perhaps naïvely, assum the car they are in is actually being towed while they fuck in the drivers seat otherwise it seems insane what if they were to bump the wheel and drive into a jersey barrier.
- sschueller 3y agoWhat's the point if you can so easily fake this without any of the safety issues? Hook the car and toe it, remove the toe bar in post, done.
- neilv 3y ago> Asked if the unexpected happened, would he be able to react as quickly as a person with their hands on the steering wheel, he said “I would be unsure of that.” > Judge Hughes asked if he accepted it would be better to have two hands on the wheel to take control of the vehicle, and he answered: “Probably yes”. If these were candid responses, rather than coached with lawyer, sounds like a real engineer. And the interaction with the judge sounds civilized and good faith, in both directions. (Not that I approve of Tesla's autonomous driving tech when other people's lives are at risk, nor with having hands off wheel even if somehow monitoring diligently; just commenting on this judicial interaction.)
- TeeMassive 3y agoThey sound like honest answers. The question is more if it is dangerous enough to constitute actual negligence. I'd argue that self driving cars are statically safer that having your arms crossed doesn't really constitute a risk.
- uoaei 3y agoI saw a Tesla driving down I-5 yesterday and the person in the driver's seat was wearing headphones and holding their phone in a way that made it seem like they were playing video games (landscape mode, both thumbs hovering). In the passing lane. Barely doing the speed limit. Simply unacceptable on this highway where the right lane typically travels 0-5mph below the speed limit and the left lane travels 5-15mph over. We locked eyes and you could tell they were embarrassed but I highly doubt they stopped. It looked like actual tech/screen addiction to me. I think they were just worried I was a cop, but when they saw just a normal car they went right back to it. In some ways we can't blame Tesla for this kind of thing. But it's hard to believe they're doing anything to discourage or mitigate antisocial behaviors. At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. Many transplants seem oblivious why people passing on the right are so much more aggressive than those passing on the left.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. You expect this from a company that writes software that will intentionally roll through stop signs?!? Or that lets you set parameters on how much to exceed the speed limit by?
- epivosism 3y agoI love the european style of driving on the right, but blaming Tesla for not following it in California where doing the opposite is standard seems like going too far. I think Tesla reasonably is trying to match local conditions, and why shouldn't they? Making California drivers not pace each other on 2 lane roads & block all traffic, or making them cruise in the right lane rather than the left when they have the option, is a tough mission to add on top of creating FSD
- uoaei 3y ago
- lawlessone 3y agoFor those unfamiliar. The road mostly has four lanes on each side. And speed limit is 100-120km/ph depending on what part you are on.
- nimbius 3y agowhatever autopilot is, its definitely some wild energy. the number of times ive seen a tesla try to zipper merge onto the interstate whilst some do-nothing behind the wheel scrolls instagram is just terrifying. wobbling between lanes like a drunk, pumping the brakes like a madman until finally some poor landscaping truck takes pity on them and just lets them slowly drift into traffic like a plastic bag.