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Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

138 points by mikequinlan 3y ago

ricardobeat 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Uu2dL https://archive.ph/Uu2dL
redserk 3y ago
> Von Ohain and Rossiter had been drinking, and an autopsy found that von Ohain died with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit — a level of intoxication that would have hampered his ability to maintain control of the car, experts said. The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue.
- charliebwrites 3y ago
  I’m not saying this is where we are now, but eventually when self driving cars are sufficiently advanced, they should be able to drive drunk people home without needing them to provide input (and probably best to forbid them from doing so all together as they’re impaired)
- psunavy03 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    Yeah. But also maybe don't call it "Full Self Driving"
  - timeon 3y ago
    Crazy that FSD is legal.
    - psunavy03 3y ago
      Why? You're supposed to be ready to take over. Marketing hype and a foolish name does not make the system inherently dangerous.
  - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
    What does FSD stand for?
- ra7 3y ago
  These two were idiots, but this highlights the dangers of L2 driver assistance systems (misleadingly marketed as "Full Self Driving") that requires driver attention at all times to prevent accidents. It gives you a false sense of security and there's no guarantee you'll take over in time to prevent an accident. If you give dumb toys to people, they will use it in dumb ways. This is why Waymo/Google abandoned their driver assistance efforts a decade ago and jumped straight to driverless. That turned out to be a masterstroke in terms of safety.
  - loceng 3y ago
    Sorry but everything after "the driver who's responsible for their decisions was drunk" is moot. But otherwise, yes, your statement otherwise about giving "toys" to "dumb" people stands no matter the technology. And knives can be used to cut steak or stab people.
    - ra7 3y ago
      You could be perfectly sober and still not be able to intervene in time to prevent a crash. Systems like this encourage inattention, but still expect drivers to turn on attention in a fraction of a second. That's the entire point. So no, it's not moot.
      - LeFantome 3y ago
        It depends on the discussion you are having. I agree that it is not “moot” in either case. Your point is that these systems need to be save even in the face of incapable drivers and that, despite the misleading marketing, they are not that ( yet ). The other point though is that people already have access to cars and, according to the evidence, cars with these features are LESS dangerous. Encouraging over-reliance is a problem but not as big a problem as having to rely on the human 100% of the time. This statement is just a fact given the statistics. Given the above, while it is too extreme to say that operation by an impaired driver is “moot”, it is fair to suggest that the most significant source of risk is the impaired driver themselves and their decision to operate a vehicle of any kind. The biggest offer to this risk are the additional safety features of the vehicle. The degree of over-confidence caused by the vehicle type is a distraction.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Someone should never drink and drive. Never! Yet, I believe that even at 0.26 blood alcohol content he had a better chance at living if driving himself.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I use a self-driving technology every time I drink. It's called Taxi or Uber.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  >seems less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue. if the car is truly autonomous, then no, its failure of a life critical system if the car is not autonomous, then calling it "Full Self Driving" is a wilful misrepresentation of it's capability. To a normal person (no ignore the driver's employment history) full self drive, means that, it drives it's self, safely. You and I know that's not the case. However the vast majority of people out there don't know it. Everyone is rightly chewing Boeing out for lax safety standards, but that door didn't kill anyone. If you are going to be annoyed at Boeing, then you need to be absolutely fucked off at tesla.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > To a normal person (no ignore the driver's employment history) But in this case, which is what the previous comment is talking about, this doesn't apply.
    - KaiserPro 3y ago
      No, it really does. For example kinder eggs are illegal in the USA, because even though the small(ish) plastic parts are inside a plastic inedible case, too many kids ate the small plastic parts. Now, the vast majority of people eating kinder eggs, don't eat the toy. However because its reasonable that an unsupervised child would eat the plastic, they were banned. But. The point of FSD is that it is safe. If its safe, a drunk person who is behind the wheel, shouldn't be able to cause it to crash, if the FSD is engaged. FSD should fail safe. but it can't fail safe, it is not "full self drive" and should never have been marketed as such. However, people's safety is supplemental to large corporation's feelings/profits/liability.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        The driver in question worked for Tesla and would be aware to not trust the marketing name of the feature. That's why it doesn't apply.
- baxtr 3y ago
  I’m not sure what “0.26” exactly means, but if it’s what I interpret to be that’s about one beer for a typical male adult. It’s not nothing but it’s not a lot either.
  - dwater 3y ago
    0.26 is pretty drunk, in my opinion. A 140lb person drinking 8 shots would leave them close to blacking out unless they drank a lot, and very often. https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-level-chart#charts https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-leve...
  - fwip 3y ago
    You may be thinking of 0.026. 0.08 is the legal limit in most states. 0.26 is drunk enough that you need to worry about them choking on their own vomit.
  - etempleton 3y ago
    It is Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) and 0.26% is about 8-12 drinks depending on the person's tolerance and weight. Legally drunk. The legal limit to drive in most states is .08% which is typically 2-3 drinks.
  - macksd 3y ago
    It's over 3 times the legal limit for the most forgiving definition of drunk driving in Colorado.
  - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
    0.26 if a BAC, would be more like 5-10 beers, one drink typically is good for 0.02-0.04
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sebb767 3y ago
    BAC is given in percent (parts per 100, %), whereas a lot of countries use permille (parts per 1000, ‰). This would equate to 2.6 permille, which is quite a lot, especially for non-drinkers.
- mihaic 3y ago
  Drunk people are told not to drive themselves. Letting something labeled "Full Self-Driving" drive them would sound logical to a drunk brain.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue. In every single discussion with Tesla fans re: FSD, we hear that "FSD is safer NOW than human drivers", but every time there's an accident it's the driver's fault. At what point are Tesla accountable for the mixed messaging around this product?
  - samatman 3y ago
    Those two facts are not necessarily contradictory.
  - redserk 3y ago
    That's not really relevant here though as there is no claim of 100% perfection with AP/FSD, nor did I advocate for support of Tesla here. This feature requires acknowledging multiple documents staying that it may make errors and is not to be classified as an autonomous driving system. This is present when you purchase the feature, in the tutorial videos about what the car is capable of, in a screen you must read before enabling this feature, and repeated in every set of release notes that appear on each update. I fail to see why all blame for impaired driving evaporates because the manufacturer of the car is Tesla. Let's put on the Product Manager hat. How would you convey to a user that they should use a feature in a responsible manner?
1970-01-01 3y ago
>Von Ohain’s widow, Nora Bass, said she has been unable to find a lawyer willing to take his case to court because he was legally intoxicated. Nonetheless, she said, Tesla should take at least some responsibility for her husband’s death. Good on Tesla for ignoring the situation. This is how FUD sausage is made.
mdorazio 3y ago
As someone who works in the autonomous driving space, it is absolutely mind boggling to me how much blind faith Tesla fans put into FSD. When you compare it to any true L4 system it’s not even close and very unlikely to get close any time soon.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  As a robotics person outside this space, it's not amazing that the shift to L4 as a goal has not been clearly grok'd by the public. After years of rhetoric, most people still believe that cars will be fully autonomous because they just don't understand the limitations. It's also quite amazing to me we, the so called smart ones, ever believed level 5 was happening but those were the good old days, huh.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    It's hard to impossible for me to know how difficult level 5 driving even is since we don't have any machine that can do it. Trying to achieve it has been a good example of turtles all the way down. At the same time I feel like people are ignoring how well self-driving works RIGHT NOW, the rate of accidents is still less than with human drivers. So I'm still pretty optimistic.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      How can you know if Tesla won't publicly release stats of interventions or accident per 100k miles?
      - bluGill 3y ago
        There is Cruise and Waymo data as well. Though I have not seen anyone independent who has access to that data making any claims about it being safer.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      > It's hard to impossible for me to know how difficult level 5 driving even is I have slightly a different opinion. I think you can easily guesstimate how difficult something will be by listing the "new" stuff. But I think you can't easily estimate how easy something will be because you can't list everything, so anything you miss could easily delay. Said another way: We should have known it would take at least a decade, but should never have said it will take at most two decades. (as technologists). And yeah - agree - lvl 3 is pretty good, feature-wise.
dncornholio 3y ago
I have the opinion that if a self driving car is not able to prevent driving into a tree or any other static object, it should not be on the road. It doesn't matter to me if the driver was drunk. Maybe he was drunk because he depended on autopilot to get home. Maybe he would have not had an accident if he drove home himself. We don't know. All I know is drunk driving is dumb and autopilot sucks ass.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Human drivers drive into trees and static objects, and I object to the idea that we need self-driving cars to have superhuman driving abilities for them to be worth using.
  - sakjur 3y ago
    There are a lot of people who shouldn’t be allowed to drive cars, too.
  - metabagel 3y ago
    Not driving into trees is a superhuman driving ability? That means I have superhuman driving ability!
- 93po 3y ago
  The allegation that it was on FSD mode was made by a drunk and shell-shocked passenger, and his statement wasn't clearly stating it was on at the time of the accident. FSD has problems for sure but don't draw conclusions from this shitty journalism
ricardobeat 3y ago
> In 2022, Tesla recalled more than 50,000 vehicles amid concerns that Full Self-Driving caused the car to roll through stop signs without coming to a full halt. Not exactly relevant, but I remember this particular instance - the slow rolling through stop signs was an intentional feature to mimic human behaviour (and avoid surprising other drivers) but was deemed illegal because it goes against a strict interpretation of the law. Another tiny example of why self-driving is so hard.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >was an intentional feature to mimic human behaviour Which is nonsense. Most of the world is not shitty California with drivers who think they are the most important person on the planet who can't even stop for a second at a literal stop sign. Rolling through stop signs is against the law, is dangerous, and should never have been on any sort of feature roadmap anywhere.
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    Not nonsense at all in my experience. I come from Brazil, and outside city centers sometimes you absolutely risk being rear-ended if you decide to come to a full stop at a stop sign. You’re expected to slowly roll past it, and only stop if there is oncoming traffic.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Decades ago, I failed my initial driving test for doing a California roll through a stop sign. It's done so commonly that I just tested like I'd practiced. (It's entirely correct for me to have failed, of course.)
  - xenadu02 3y ago
    Haha says someone who has never driven in San Francisco's Sunset district. Stop signs at every intersection... for all 40+ avenues. 90% of the time there are no other cars even remotely close to the intersection. Not even SF traffic cops come to a full stop at each one. The situation is not ideal. I wish we had a sign that meant "full stop if another vehicle is approaching the intersection, otherwise rolling stop is fine". Yield doesn't quite cover it.
eganist 3y ago
So there's an interesting legal question here. If someone's drunk (i.e diminished reasoning) and steps into the car expecting that a feature named "full self driving" will safely drive them home, how is responsibility divided between the person who got drunk and the entity who created and named the "full self driving" feature? I don't think even a reasonable person could consistently conclude that "full self driving" isn't actually full self driving.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  If it's truly self driving then the passenger shouldn't be responsible at all. Would riders be responsible for taxi drivers?
  - jMyles 3y ago
    Interesting question. If you get into a cab, and the driver is clearly drunk or exhibits violent behavior on the road, surely you have some responsibility to terminate your ride. So if you get into a Tesla with it's wink-wink-nudge-nudge-named FSD, which warns you to be ready to take over, and you then note that the person being asked to take over is intoxicated... it seems like the responsibility is clearly on the operator. But your standard - "it's truly self driving" - is a higher one. And I really don't know how to think about responsibility in that case, and it feels like a big problem. On one hand, it seems that, in the coming decades, we'll likely have actual full self-driving that operates in some situations in manners that are more safe than human drivers (especially people who are intoxicated, who also deserve a safe way home even in car-first hellscapes of urban planning). On the other hand, we've seen how most of the USA has been terraformed to accommodate the product being hocked by the auto industry, and that this product has long had an undesirable role in population-level mortality rates (even without FSD!). So yeah, I don't know. It seems like micro-mobility solutions, and getting highway vehicles out of cities, give us a better outlook altogether anyway. Particularly if there is robust public medium- and long-haul public transit which can convey micro-mobility solutions to faraway lands.
- itishappy 3y ago
  A reasonable person shouldn't be operating a 2 ton death device without an understanding of it's capabilities. Responsibility would fall to the operator unless the self driving assistance performed out of spec.
sturza 3y ago
> It was jerky, but we were like, that comes with the territory of” new technology, Bass said. “We knew the technology had to learn, and we were willing to be part of that.” -> we were willing to make anyone on the road part of that without asking them
seles 3y ago
One thing I hate about Musk saying things like "They have fewer accidents than people" is that it is only able to be engaged in the easiest of scenarios. So per mile, self driving on the easiest roads barely has less accidents than a human in adverse conditions? That doesn't seem to actually be better than people yet.
- lupire 3y ago
  It might be, or not, but no one knows, because the data is secret.
- px43 3y ago
  It's important for metrics to be measurable. Throwing in a bunch of subjective criteria like how tricky a road is will only make the analysis less meaningful. Yes, it's important to understand the limitations of the metrics, but the existence of limitations doesn't mean that the metrics should be thrown out entirely.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Measuring metrics that are easy to measure doesn't help if the metric doesn't mean anything. Comparing collision rates between human drivers in all conditions and Tesla automation in conditions where it allows activation and is activated is simply not a usable comparison. Certainly, there's not an easy way to measure the collision rate for all humans all cars in only the conditions where Tesla automation can be activated, and that makes it hard to find a metric we can use, but that doesn't mean we have to accept an unusable metric that's easy to measure.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    No, that is what any competent researcher would do. Here is an example from Waymo: https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Safety%20Performance%20of%20Waymo%20RO%20at%201M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents... But if you are like Tesla and can not even be bothered to put in a methodology section... or any analysis... or any data... really anything other than a soundbite conclusion then maybe you should not get a free pass on driving vehicles when you only demonstrate a level of safety analysis unfit for even a grade school science fair.
jgalt212 3y ago
There is no difference between advertising "Full Self Driving" and advertising "Guaranteed Investment Returns", but only the latter is illegal. Your move, Lina.
- lupire 3y ago
  All my investments have guaranteed returns between -100% and +100000000000%. (I don't sell puts)
  - vorvac 3y ago
    My robotaxi is basically a money printing machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFxTTC-tm0&t=546s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFxTTC-tm0&t=546s
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
While I don't know how good Tesla's self-driving is, I do have experience with a limited keep-your-lane system in a BMW. The one that actually steers. It requires a lot of force to override it. And remember, it requires you to keep the hands on the wheel. But you are not expecting to have to fight it, so there are some delays there. Then you're fighting a system that you don't know how much force it takes to override it. You don't want to apply too much force because you might be barreling down the freeway at 80mph. At those speeds you just nudge the steering wheel. But that's not the case when you need to override the car. And it happens more then you expect. Every time the car mis-calculates the actual lines on the road it'll do it. Changes in paint where the old one is still there for example. Or just faded paint and all of the sudden it detects a diagonally going split between 2 slabs of concrete as the lane separator. Or you're doing 50mph, and you're passing a couple of cyclists. If you don't turn on your turn signal and you weave to the left to pass them the car will literally steer back into the direction of the cyclists. Scary.
- trbleclef 3y ago
  This all feels very MCAS to me.
  - nickpinkston 3y ago
    I drove one of these BMWs too and had the same thought. It seems like too far in the other direction.
  - jlkuester7 3y ago
    Yes this is it! I was trying to describe my misgivings with this functionality and this is exactly it. You have a powerful system with a ton of edge cases where the penalty for getting a minor edge case wrong is that someone(s) dies.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    No? MCAS was necessary because Boeing made the plane aerodynamically unstable. They did so because of pressure to compete against superior Airbus offerings, and because a new airframe (the proper solution) would have been a huge undertaking and airlines wouldn't like it because they'd have to get pilots certified on the new airframe. Boeing then did not implement sufficient redundancy in the system, proper warning annunciators, training, documentation, etc. Many pilots had no idea the system existed. There are similarities, however. A large part of the reason Tesla has so many problems is because Musk decreed that radar was too expensive and discontinued installing them, forcing the system to rely on stereo camera vision. Even worse: Tesla disabled the radar systems in older cars because they didn't want the older cars to be more capable - it would be a very inconvenient way for the public, press, and regulators to see how deficient the camera-only approach was.
ra7 3y ago
As I said in another comment, these two were idiots driving drunk. Let's get that out of the way. The bigger issue here is how this deniability is all too convenient for Tesla. The process goes like this: 1. Ship a clearly half baked system called "Full Self Driving". 2. Require driver's hands on the wheel at all times. 3. Be extremely non-transparent about your system's safety. Tesla's crash reports in the public NHTSA database contains absolutely no details. Everything is redacted, we can't even know if the crash happened with FSD or with plain old Autopilot [1]. This is in stark contrast to the reports filed by driverless companies like Waymo and Cruise to the CA DMV [2], which Tesla refuses to do. Also publish a "safety report" that's entirely marketing BS, which doesn't control for many factors (highway vs city streets, geography, time of day, age of cars, safety features, demographics) and hence is not apples-to-apples. Claim it's "safer than humans". [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting#data https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/autonomous-vehicle-collision-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... 4. When an accident happens, just say it's the driver's fault and that they should've known it's just an L2 system. 5. Tweet about FSD vN+1 that's going to totally bring Full Self Driving by end of the year.
- basisword 3y ago
  It should be illegal for them to call it full self drive. It's 100% false advertising not to mention the 'danger' that people will assume it is what it says it is.
  - staunton 3y ago
    It probably is illegal...
    - Towaway69 3y ago
      ... and the fines have been factored into the bottom line.
    - bluGill 3y ago
cptcobalt 3y ago
This is a sensationalized hit piece against Tesla Autopilot. It is definitely unfortunate the drunk employee operating the car was involved in a crash, that at least from the wp reporting sounds avoidable—Autopilot active or not. Any death is unfortunate, and an opportunity to improve vehicle safety. Tesla's Q4 2023 stats should speak for themselves: > In the 4th quarter, we recorded one crash for every 5.39 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 1.00 million miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the United States there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles. https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport The stats are incredible, and—based on stats—Autopilot is safer than human-only driving. Don't be taken by sensation. I personally feel safer driving while monitoring FSD, especially in unfamiliar driving situations, like new cities where I'm not 100% certain about the streets I'm navigating. If you speak to reasonable Tesla drivers who have experience using FSD, they'll undoubtably acknowledge the hiccups with Autopilot, but the data shows its improving over time.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Tesla continues to misleadingly use this comparison, and somehow people continue to fall for it. Autopilot will refuse to engage in a wide variety of situations. It will only engage in the easiest, safest scenarios. You cannot compare those miles against all miles driven by human drivers, which include narrow winding mountain passes, two inches of snowy slush, etc. Even the 1M non-autopilot comparison; you're comparing against a car population that includes 20 year old beaters with far fewer safety features.
  - Kerbonut 3y ago
    Normalizing the data to make a direct comparison is a hard problem. Do you know of any research done to try to do that?
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      It's a lot easier to tease out the impact of individual safety features. For example, there's quite a bit of evidence that lane departure warnings/assistance helps: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-warning-systems-prevent-crashes-research-shows/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-wa... Less indication backup cameras do anything: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-back-up-cameras-20160617-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-back-up-cameras-20... Tesla's non-autopilot numbers likely reflect the fact that they're exclusively newer vehicles with safety features that aren't yet widely standard. You'd probably see similarly nice numbers for other $50k+ luxury vehicles with similar bells-and-whistles.
deleted 3y ago
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throw7 3y ago
I won't use self driving until legal liability is on the manufacturer. And self driving to me means I can tell the car to come pick me up at the airport. I'm not optimistic that will happen in my lifetime.
- izzydata 3y ago
  I don't think it will happen ever and I don't even think it should happen ever. The first step in making this possible would probably be standardization of all road infrastructure everywhere. That will never happen so instead I think we should abandon our car centric society and start building trains. Something on a track is way easier to automate.
miga 3y ago
Whether it is "half-baked", or not: how many driving hours passed before the first fatality? How do they compare to human driving hours per fatality?
fortran77 3y ago
I have FSD in my Tesla's (an "S" from 2018 and a 2023 "Plaid"). I don't have any confidence in it. After the initial fun of playing with it wore off, I've never used it. I do like the smart cruise control where it will maintain speed based on the speed of the car in front of me, and the features to nudge me back in lane if I drift, etc, but not when the car drives for me. I'm wondering if there are cut corners in the budget "3" that make it even worse... That being said, the driver was drunk, and I have little sympathy for drunk drivers. I'm grateful he didn't kill anyone else on the road. From the article: > Von Ohain and Rossiter had been drinking, and an autopsy found that von Ohain died with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit — a level of intoxication that would have hampered his ability to maintain control of the car, experts said. Still, an investigation by the Colorado State Patrol went beyond drunken driving, seeking to understand what role the Tesla software may have played in the crash. Obviously, any legal action the family wants to take against Tesla will be an uphill battle because juries aren't sympathetic to drunk drivers, either.
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
I just hope future cars don't take controls from my hands. I don't particularly enjoy driving but it is one thing I want to take some control with. The current division between automation and manual is perfect for me. Neither do I want it to record too many details. The state might use that to sue you and the insurance company might use that to "improve" their profit margin.
kramerger 3y ago
How can this be the first death? Tesla is involved in 700+ court cases covering multiple deaths [1]. Tesla drivers are involved in more accidents for some reason [2]. I suspect the first death happened far before this. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a... [2] https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/
- 93po 3y ago
  It's pretty shitty journalism in general. The claim that it was on FSD mode was by a drunken, shell-shocked passenger. And the zero injuries and deaths was based on: > Two years ago, a Tesla shareholder tweeted that there “has not been one accident or injury” involving Full Self-Driving, to which Musk responded: “Correct.” And wapo clearly did zero research or effort beyond this statement. The key here is likely "FSD" versus "autopilot" and playing loose of the definition of when it's engaged. Does FSD disengage and tell the driver "good luck" immediately before 99% of accidents? If so it's not technically and FSD accident/injury/death, maybe? Elon is being misleading, WaPo is pushing shitty bias, and the journalist is being deliberately lazy for a better clickbait headline
  - kramerger 3y ago
    > a Tesla shareholder tweeted that I think they simply wanted the most click baity title. They are contradicting themselves in the other article
robbyiq999 3y ago
Tesla legal and PR teams are and will be the innovators long before the 'full self driving'
mzs 3y ago
Oh God … So it's fully engulfed and there's one inside? It will not be out of fire for several hours. You know how Teslas are.
mannyv 3y ago
The article totally ignores the fact that there have been 900 crashes reported since 2021, which is a ridiculously low number of crashes. This is basically a Tesla hit piece. Teslas are safer than human drivers by far, even when the systems are abused by their drivers. Using 2020 stats (Forbes) there were an estimated 5,250,837 car crashes in 2020. Of those, < 1% have fatalities (35,766 accidents with fatalities). https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/car-accident-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/car-accident-statistics...
- 93po 3y ago
  There's ridiculous bias in the writing and presentation along with rage-bait, of course it's a hit piece. Corporate journalism is a joke.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Correct take. Go and look up their fire statistics, and you'll get a similar conclusion. Its getting much better YoY. https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires-2020/ https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires... https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-deaths?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-deaths?op=1
  - Veserv 3y ago
    Okay, now do the statistics for the number of people who burned to death. Actually, no need, I have them right here. The NFPA (the same organization Tesla is quoting for vehicle fire counts) estimates 560 fire deaths per year in the US over 290 million registered vehicle years [2] or ~1.93 deaths per million vehicle-years. Third party reports show at least 20 people burned to death in their Tesla's in the US in 2022 [1]. There were ~3.65 million Tesla's worldwide in 2022. If we divide US deaths by worldwide Teslas you get ~5.47 people burning to death per million vehicle-years or ~2.8x deadlier if every worldwide Tesla was in the US. By 2022 the US probably accounted for ~50% of vehicles, so you are probably ~5x more likely to burn to death in a Tesla than the average car (which by the way is ~10 years old, half the price, with fewer safety features). That is not 500% more likely to burn to death given that you get into a fire, that is 500% more likely to burn to death total. If you get into a fire in a Tesla then you are ~5,000% more likely to die in it. Quite odd how Tesla read the same reports yet only published analysis on the non-safety critical cases that make themselves look good instead of the safety critical cases that make them look dramatically more dangerous than the Pinto. Must be because their data analysis team consists of people with the analytical capability of grade schoolers since any competent individual could easily do this analysis. I mean, the only other possibility is that the analysts and their management are deliberately perpetrating criminal fraud by sacrificing human lives to line their own pockets. One or the other, pick one. [1] https://www.tesla-fire.com/ https://www.tesla-fire.com/ [2] https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-research/fire-statistical-reports/vehicle-fires?l=343 https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...
Gud 3y ago
FSD is such a strange hill for Tesla to die on, reputation wise. They already revolutionised the world with the electric car, killing a 100 years reliance of gasoline. So why make such bold(and outright wrong) claims about a feature that is at best secondary? Makes no sense to me.
rickyc091 3y ago
The issue is if you have FSD (beta) enabled and you attempt to yank it, TACC will still be engaged, which makes you drive straight. If they had lane assist on as well, it would essentially swing you back and forth. It's dangerous if you aren't aware of it since it suddenly goes from FSD to why does my car have a mind of it's own. If you ever see a Tesla on the highway frantically swinging back and forth, the driver is probably trying to disable the car and fighting with the other safety features. Hitting the brakes will ensure FSD/TACC gets disabled properly. Note: Most of the time people are referring to FSD as FSD beta. Most videos you see online are FSD beta. FSD is still very dumb, but includes stop light awareness. FSD beta is what allows you to "self drive" in the city.
trekz 3y ago
I'm curious of whether, in the US, Tesla can be sued if their cars hit other drivers who arent using a Tesla. Legally speaking, it seems that the hit driver has legal grounds to sue either Tesla or the driver.
regpertom 3y ago
I think I read a lot of these Tesla comments, I don’t know if it’s just people hating Musk but I scratch my head remember a Darwin Award (maybe honorary) from 2000’s of a caravan driver who crashed because they thought cruise control meant it would steer (or FSD in current terminology) and so was having a shower in the back or something. Everywhere I go there’s some claim I’m not meant to take literally, but I feel only with Tesla things do I hear talk of ‘well if someone believed that at face value’. No where, anywhere, afaict, can I do that and things work out fine. No where at no time do I get to say, I don’t think, ‘I took a personal risk based on a title in your marketing material and ignored all the pop ups saying otherwise’. For example, a real estate agent can sell you a house with the property boundaries incorrectly marked, pulled from official records, and well, sucks you be you. What do you mean you didn’t look over every bit of small print and made even the slightest assumption of fairness. I guess it just falls down to whether or not you’re in with lawyers or have an axe to grind. At this point I feel as though Musk and Trump should be appointed ceo of everything and then everything will be audited with a fine tooth comb. Put everything to the standard we put people we don’t like.

138 points by mikequinlan 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Uu2dL https://archive.ph/Uu2dL

> Von Ohain and Rossiter had been drinking, and an autopsy found that von Ohain died with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit — a level of intoxication that would have hampered his ability to maintain control of the car, experts said. The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue.

charliebwrites 3y ago
I’m not saying this is where we are now, but eventually when self driving cars are sufficiently advanced, they should be able to drive drunk people home without needing them to provide input (and probably best to forbid them from doing so all together as they’re impaired)
psunavy03 3y ago
[flagged]
- wombat-man 3y ago
  Yeah. But also maybe don't call it "Full Self Driving"
- timeon 3y ago
  Crazy that FSD is legal.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    Why? You're supposed to be ready to take over. Marketing hype and a foolish name does not make the system inherently dangerous.
- maximinus_thrax 3y ago
  What does FSD stand for?
ra7 3y ago
These two were idiots, but this highlights the dangers of L2 driver assistance systems (misleadingly marketed as "Full Self Driving") that requires driver attention at all times to prevent accidents. It gives you a false sense of security and there's no guarantee you'll take over in time to prevent an accident. If you give dumb toys to people, they will use it in dumb ways. This is why Waymo/Google abandoned their driver assistance efforts a decade ago and jumped straight to driverless. That turned out to be a masterstroke in terms of safety.
- loceng 3y ago
  Sorry but everything after "the driver who's responsible for their decisions was drunk" is moot. But otherwise, yes, your statement otherwise about giving "toys" to "dumb" people stands no matter the technology. And knives can be used to cut steak or stab people.
  - ra7 3y ago
    You could be perfectly sober and still not be able to intervene in time to prevent a crash. Systems like this encourage inattention, but still expect drivers to turn on attention in a fraction of a second. That's the entire point. So no, it's not moot.
    - LeFantome 3y ago
      It depends on the discussion you are having. I agree that it is not “moot” in either case. Your point is that these systems need to be save even in the face of incapable drivers and that, despite the misleading marketing, they are not that ( yet ). The other point though is that people already have access to cars and, according to the evidence, cars with these features are LESS dangerous. Encouraging over-reliance is a problem but not as big a problem as having to rely on the human 100% of the time. This statement is just a fact given the statistics. Given the above, while it is too extreme to say that operation by an impaired driver is “moot”, it is fair to suggest that the most significant source of risk is the impaired driver themselves and their decision to operate a vehicle of any kind. The biggest offer to this risk are the additional safety features of the vehicle. The degree of over-confidence caused by the vehicle type is a distraction.
elzbardico 3y ago
Someone should never drink and drive. Never! Yet, I believe that even at 0.26 blood alcohol content he had a better chance at living if driving himself.
elzbardico 3y ago
I use a self-driving technology every time I drink. It's called Taxi or Uber.
KaiserPro 3y ago
>seems less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue. if the car is truly autonomous, then no, its failure of a life critical system if the car is not autonomous, then calling it "Full Self Driving" is a wilful misrepresentation of it's capability. To a normal person (no ignore the driver's employment history) full self drive, means that, it drives it's self, safely. You and I know that's not the case. However the vast majority of people out there don't know it. Everyone is rightly chewing Boeing out for lax safety standards, but that door didn't kill anyone. If you are going to be annoyed at Boeing, then you need to be absolutely fucked off at tesla.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > To a normal person (no ignore the driver's employment history) But in this case, which is what the previous comment is talking about, this doesn't apply.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    No, it really does. For example kinder eggs are illegal in the USA, because even though the small(ish) plastic parts are inside a plastic inedible case, too many kids ate the small plastic parts. Now, the vast majority of people eating kinder eggs, don't eat the toy. However because its reasonable that an unsupervised child would eat the plastic, they were banned. But. The point of FSD is that it is safe. If its safe, a drunk person who is behind the wheel, shouldn't be able to cause it to crash, if the FSD is engaged. FSD should fail safe. but it can't fail safe, it is not "full self drive" and should never have been marketed as such. However, people's safety is supplemental to large corporation's feelings/profits/liability.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      The driver in question worked for Tesla and would be aware to not trust the marketing name of the feature. That's why it doesn't apply.
baxtr 3y ago
I’m not sure what “0.26” exactly means, but if it’s what I interpret to be that’s about one beer for a typical male adult. It’s not nothing but it’s not a lot either.
- dwater 3y ago
  0.26 is pretty drunk, in my opinion. A 140lb person drinking 8 shots would leave them close to blacking out unless they drank a lot, and very often. https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-level-chart#charts https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-leve...
- fwip 3y ago
  You may be thinking of 0.026. 0.08 is the legal limit in most states. 0.26 is drunk enough that you need to worry about them choking on their own vomit.
- etempleton 3y ago
  It is Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) and 0.26% is about 8-12 drinks depending on the person's tolerance and weight. Legally drunk. The legal limit to drive in most states is .08% which is typically 2-3 drinks.
- macksd 3y ago
  It's over 3 times the legal limit for the most forgiving definition of drunk driving in Colorado.
- whaleofatw2022 3y ago
  0.26 if a BAC, would be more like 5-10 beers, one drink typically is good for 0.02-0.04
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Sebb767 3y ago
  BAC is given in percent (parts per 100, %), whereas a lot of countries use permille (parts per 1000, ‰). This would equate to 2.6 permille, which is quite a lot, especially for non-drinkers.
mihaic 3y ago
Drunk people are told not to drive themselves. Letting something labeled "Full Self-Driving" drive them would sound logical to a drunk brain.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue. In every single discussion with Tesla fans re: FSD, we hear that "FSD is safer NOW than human drivers", but every time there's an accident it's the driver's fault. At what point are Tesla accountable for the mixed messaging around this product?
- samatman 3y ago
  Those two facts are not necessarily contradictory.
- redserk 3y ago
  That's not really relevant here though as there is no claim of 100% perfection with AP/FSD, nor did I advocate for support of Tesla here. This feature requires acknowledging multiple documents staying that it may make errors and is not to be classified as an autonomous driving system. This is present when you purchase the feature, in the tutorial videos about what the car is capable of, in a screen you must read before enabling this feature, and repeated in every set of release notes that appear on each update. I fail to see why all blame for impaired driving evaporates because the manufacturer of the car is Tesla. Let's put on the Product Manager hat. How would you convey to a user that they should use a feature in a responsible manner?

1970-01-01 3y ago

>Von Ohain’s widow, Nora Bass, said she has been unable to find a lawyer willing to take his case to court because he was legally intoxicated. Nonetheless, she said, Tesla should take at least some responsibility for her husband’s death. Good on Tesla for ignoring the situation. This is how FUD sausage is made.

mdorazio 3y ago

As someone who works in the autonomous driving space, it is absolutely mind boggling to me how much blind faith Tesla fans put into FSD. When you compare it to any true L4 system it’s not even close and very unlikely to get close any time soon.

jvanderbot 3y ago
As a robotics person outside this space, it's not amazing that the shift to L4 as a goal has not been clearly grok'd by the public. After years of rhetoric, most people still believe that cars will be fully autonomous because they just don't understand the limitations. It's also quite amazing to me we, the so called smart ones, ever believed level 5 was happening but those were the good old days, huh.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  It's hard to impossible for me to know how difficult level 5 driving even is since we don't have any machine that can do it. Trying to achieve it has been a good example of turtles all the way down. At the same time I feel like people are ignoring how well self-driving works RIGHT NOW, the rate of accidents is still less than with human drivers. So I'm still pretty optimistic.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    How can you know if Tesla won't publicly release stats of interventions or accident per 100k miles?
    - bluGill 3y ago
      There is Cruise and Waymo data as well. Though I have not seen anyone independent who has access to that data making any claims about it being safer.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    > It's hard to impossible for me to know how difficult level 5 driving even is I have slightly a different opinion. I think you can easily guesstimate how difficult something will be by listing the "new" stuff. But I think you can't easily estimate how easy something will be because you can't list everything, so anything you miss could easily delay. Said another way: We should have known it would take at least a decade, but should never have said it will take at most two decades. (as technologists). And yeah - agree - lvl 3 is pretty good, feature-wise.

dncornholio 3y ago

I have the opinion that if a self driving car is not able to prevent driving into a tree or any other static object, it should not be on the road. It doesn't matter to me if the driver was drunk. Maybe he was drunk because he depended on autopilot to get home. Maybe he would have not had an accident if he drove home himself. We don't know. All I know is drunk driving is dumb and autopilot sucks ass.

faeriechangling 3y ago
Human drivers drive into trees and static objects, and I object to the idea that we need self-driving cars to have superhuman driving abilities for them to be worth using.
- sakjur 3y ago
  There are a lot of people who shouldn’t be allowed to drive cars, too.
- metabagel 3y ago
  Not driving into trees is a superhuman driving ability? That means I have superhuman driving ability!
93po 3y ago
The allegation that it was on FSD mode was made by a drunk and shell-shocked passenger, and his statement wasn't clearly stating it was on at the time of the accident. FSD has problems for sure but don't draw conclusions from this shitty journalism

ricardobeat 3y ago

> In 2022, Tesla recalled more than 50,000 vehicles amid concerns that Full Self-Driving caused the car to roll through stop signs without coming to a full halt. Not exactly relevant, but I remember this particular instance - the slow rolling through stop signs was an intentional feature to mimic human behaviour (and avoid surprising other drivers) but was deemed illegal because it goes against a strict interpretation of the law. Another tiny example of why self-driving is so hard.

mrguyorama 3y ago
>was an intentional feature to mimic human behaviour Which is nonsense. Most of the world is not shitty California with drivers who think they are the most important person on the planet who can't even stop for a second at a literal stop sign. Rolling through stop signs is against the law, is dangerous, and should never have been on any sort of feature roadmap anywhere.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Not nonsense at all in my experience. I come from Brazil, and outside city centers sometimes you absolutely risk being rear-ended if you decide to come to a full stop at a stop sign. You’re expected to slowly roll past it, and only stop if there is oncoming traffic.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Decades ago, I failed my initial driving test for doing a California roll through a stop sign. It's done so commonly that I just tested like I'd practiced. (It's entirely correct for me to have failed, of course.)
- xenadu02 3y ago
  Haha says someone who has never driven in San Francisco's Sunset district. Stop signs at every intersection... for all 40+ avenues. 90% of the time there are no other cars even remotely close to the intersection. Not even SF traffic cops come to a full stop at each one. The situation is not ideal. I wish we had a sign that meant "full stop if another vehicle is approaching the intersection, otherwise rolling stop is fine". Yield doesn't quite cover it.

eganist 3y ago

So there's an interesting legal question here. If someone's drunk (i.e diminished reasoning) and steps into the car expecting that a feature named "full self driving" will safely drive them home, how is responsibility divided between the person who got drunk and the entity who created and named the "full self driving" feature? I don't think even a reasonable person could consistently conclude that "full self driving" isn't actually full self driving.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
If it's truly self driving then the passenger shouldn't be responsible at all. Would riders be responsible for taxi drivers?
- jMyles 3y ago
  Interesting question. If you get into a cab, and the driver is clearly drunk or exhibits violent behavior on the road, surely you have some responsibility to terminate your ride. So if you get into a Tesla with it's wink-wink-nudge-nudge-named FSD, which warns you to be ready to take over, and you then note that the person being asked to take over is intoxicated... it seems like the responsibility is clearly on the operator. But your standard - "it's truly self driving" - is a higher one. And I really don't know how to think about responsibility in that case, and it feels like a big problem. On one hand, it seems that, in the coming decades, we'll likely have actual full self-driving that operates in some situations in manners that are more safe than human drivers (especially people who are intoxicated, who also deserve a safe way home even in car-first hellscapes of urban planning). On the other hand, we've seen how most of the USA has been terraformed to accommodate the product being hocked by the auto industry, and that this product has long had an undesirable role in population-level mortality rates (even without FSD!). So yeah, I don't know. It seems like micro-mobility solutions, and getting highway vehicles out of cities, give us a better outlook altogether anyway. Particularly if there is robust public medium- and long-haul public transit which can convey micro-mobility solutions to faraway lands.
itishappy 3y ago
A reasonable person shouldn't be operating a 2 ton death device without an understanding of it's capabilities. Responsibility would fall to the operator unless the self driving assistance performed out of spec.

sturza 3y ago

> It was jerky, but we were like, that comes with the territory of” new technology, Bass said. “We knew the technology had to learn, and we were willing to be part of that.” -> we were willing to make anyone on the road part of that without asking them

seles 3y ago

One thing I hate about Musk saying things like "They have fewer accidents than people" is that it is only able to be engaged in the easiest of scenarios. So per mile, self driving on the easiest roads barely has less accidents than a human in adverse conditions? That doesn't seem to actually be better than people yet.

lupire 3y ago
It might be, or not, but no one knows, because the data is secret.
px43 3y ago
It's important for metrics to be measurable. Throwing in a bunch of subjective criteria like how tricky a road is will only make the analysis less meaningful. Yes, it's important to understand the limitations of the metrics, but the existence of limitations doesn't mean that the metrics should be thrown out entirely.
- toast0 3y ago
  Measuring metrics that are easy to measure doesn't help if the metric doesn't mean anything. Comparing collision rates between human drivers in all conditions and Tesla automation in conditions where it allows activation and is activated is simply not a usable comparison. Certainly, there's not an easy way to measure the collision rate for all humans all cars in only the conditions where Tesla automation can be activated, and that makes it hard to find a metric we can use, but that doesn't mean we have to accept an unusable metric that's easy to measure.
- Veserv 3y ago
  No, that is what any competent researcher would do. Here is an example from Waymo: https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Safety%20Performance%20of%20Waymo%20RO%20at%201M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents... But if you are like Tesla and can not even be bothered to put in a methodology section... or any analysis... or any data... really anything other than a soundbite conclusion then maybe you should not get a free pass on driving vehicles when you only demonstrate a level of safety analysis unfit for even a grade school science fair.

jgalt212 3y ago

There is no difference between advertising "Full Self Driving" and advertising "Guaranteed Investment Returns", but only the latter is illegal. Your move, Lina.

lupire 3y ago
All my investments have guaranteed returns between -100% and +100000000000%. (I don't sell puts)
- vorvac 3y ago
  My robotaxi is basically a money printing machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFxTTC-tm0&t=546s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFxTTC-tm0&t=546s

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

While I don't know how good Tesla's self-driving is, I do have experience with a limited keep-your-lane system in a BMW. The one that actually steers. It requires a lot of force to override it. And remember, it requires you to keep the hands on the wheel. But you are not expecting to have to fight it, so there are some delays there. Then you're fighting a system that you don't know how much force it takes to override it. You don't want to apply too much force because you might be barreling down the freeway at 80mph. At those speeds you just nudge the steering wheel. But that's not the case when you need to override the car. And it happens more then you expect. Every time the car mis-calculates the actual lines on the road it'll do it. Changes in paint where the old one is still there for example. Or just faded paint and all of the sudden it detects a diagonally going split between 2 slabs of concrete as the lane separator. Or you're doing 50mph, and you're passing a couple of cyclists. If you don't turn on your turn signal and you weave to the left to pass them the car will literally steer back into the direction of the cyclists. Scary.

trbleclef 3y ago
This all feels very MCAS to me.
- nickpinkston 3y ago
  I drove one of these BMWs too and had the same thought. It seems like too far in the other direction.
- jlkuester7 3y ago
  Yes this is it! I was trying to describe my misgivings with this functionality and this is exactly it. You have a powerful system with a ton of edge cases where the penalty for getting a minor edge case wrong is that someone(s) dies.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  No? MCAS was necessary because Boeing made the plane aerodynamically unstable. They did so because of pressure to compete against superior Airbus offerings, and because a new airframe (the proper solution) would have been a huge undertaking and airlines wouldn't like it because they'd have to get pilots certified on the new airframe. Boeing then did not implement sufficient redundancy in the system, proper warning annunciators, training, documentation, etc. Many pilots had no idea the system existed. There are similarities, however. A large part of the reason Tesla has so many problems is because Musk decreed that radar was too expensive and discontinued installing them, forcing the system to rely on stereo camera vision. Even worse: Tesla disabled the radar systems in older cars because they didn't want the older cars to be more capable - it would be a very inconvenient way for the public, press, and regulators to see how deficient the camera-only approach was.

ra7 3y ago

As I said in another comment, these two were idiots driving drunk. Let's get that out of the way. The bigger issue here is how this deniability is all too convenient for Tesla. The process goes like this: 1. Ship a clearly half baked system called "Full Self Driving". 2. Require driver's hands on the wheel at all times. 3. Be extremely non-transparent about your system's safety. Tesla's crash reports in the public NHTSA database contains absolutely no details. Everything is redacted, we can't even know if the crash happened with FSD or with plain old Autopilot [1]. This is in stark contrast to the reports filed by driverless companies like Waymo and Cruise to the CA DMV [2], which Tesla refuses to do. Also publish a "safety report" that's entirely marketing BS, which doesn't control for many factors (highway vs city streets, geography, time of day, age of cars, safety features, demographics) and hence is not apples-to-apples. Claim it's "safer than humans". [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting#data https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/autonomous-vehicle-collision-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... 4. When an accident happens, just say it's the driver's fault and that they should've known it's just an L2 system. 5. Tweet about FSD vN+1 that's going to totally bring Full Self Driving by end of the year.

basisword 3y ago
It should be illegal for them to call it full self drive. It's 100% false advertising not to mention the 'danger' that people will assume it is what it says it is.
- staunton 3y ago
  It probably is illegal...
  - Towaway69 3y ago
    ... and the fines have been factored into the bottom line.
  - bluGill 3y ago

cptcobalt 3y ago

This is a sensationalized hit piece against Tesla Autopilot. It is definitely unfortunate the drunk employee operating the car was involved in a crash, that at least from the wp reporting sounds avoidable—Autopilot active or not. Any death is unfortunate, and an opportunity to improve vehicle safety. Tesla's Q4 2023 stats should speak for themselves: > In the 4th quarter, we recorded one crash for every 5.39 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 1.00 million miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the United States there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles. https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport The stats are incredible, and—based on stats—Autopilot is safer than human-only driving. Don't be taken by sensation. I personally feel safer driving while monitoring FSD, especially in unfamiliar driving situations, like new cities where I'm not 100% certain about the streets I'm navigating. If you speak to reasonable Tesla drivers who have experience using FSD, they'll undoubtably acknowledge the hiccups with Autopilot, but the data shows its improving over time.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Tesla continues to misleadingly use this comparison, and somehow people continue to fall for it. Autopilot will refuse to engage in a wide variety of situations. It will only engage in the easiest, safest scenarios. You cannot compare those miles against all miles driven by human drivers, which include narrow winding mountain passes, two inches of snowy slush, etc. Even the 1M non-autopilot comparison; you're comparing against a car population that includes 20 year old beaters with far fewer safety features.
- Kerbonut 3y ago
  Normalizing the data to make a direct comparison is a hard problem. Do you know of any research done to try to do that?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    It's a lot easier to tease out the impact of individual safety features. For example, there's quite a bit of evidence that lane departure warnings/assistance helps: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-warning-systems-prevent-crashes-research-shows/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-wa... Less indication backup cameras do anything: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-back-up-cameras-20160617-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-back-up-cameras-20... Tesla's non-autopilot numbers likely reflect the fact that they're exclusively newer vehicles with safety features that aren't yet widely standard. You'd probably see similarly nice numbers for other $50k+ luxury vehicles with similar bells-and-whistles.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

throw7 3y ago

I won't use self driving until legal liability is on the manufacturer. And self driving to me means I can tell the car to come pick me up at the airport. I'm not optimistic that will happen in my lifetime.

izzydata 3y ago
I don't think it will happen ever and I don't even think it should happen ever. The first step in making this possible would probably be standardization of all road infrastructure everywhere. That will never happen so instead I think we should abandon our car centric society and start building trains. Something on a track is way easier to automate.

miga 3y ago

Whether it is "half-baked", or not: how many driving hours passed before the first fatality? How do they compare to human driving hours per fatality?

fortran77 3y ago

I have FSD in my Tesla's (an "S" from 2018 and a 2023 "Plaid"). I don't have any confidence in it. After the initial fun of playing with it wore off, I've never used it. I do like the smart cruise control where it will maintain speed based on the speed of the car in front of me, and the features to nudge me back in lane if I drift, etc, but not when the car drives for me. I'm wondering if there are cut corners in the budget "3" that make it even worse... That being said, the driver was drunk, and I have little sympathy for drunk drivers. I'm grateful he didn't kill anyone else on the road. From the article: > Von Ohain and Rossiter had been drinking, and an autopsy found that von Ohain died with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit — a level of intoxication that would have hampered his ability to maintain control of the car, experts said. Still, an investigation by the Colorado State Patrol went beyond drunken driving, seeking to understand what role the Tesla software may have played in the crash. Obviously, any legal action the family wants to take against Tesla will be an uphill battle because juries aren't sympathetic to drunk drivers, either.

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

I just hope future cars don't take controls from my hands. I don't particularly enjoy driving but it is one thing I want to take some control with. The current division between automation and manual is perfect for me. Neither do I want it to record too many details. The state might use that to sue you and the insurance company might use that to "improve" their profit margin.

kramerger 3y ago

How can this be the first death? Tesla is involved in 700+ court cases covering multiple deaths [1]. Tesla drivers are involved in more accidents for some reason [2]. I suspect the first death happened far before this. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a... [2] https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/

93po 3y ago
It's pretty shitty journalism in general. The claim that it was on FSD mode was by a drunken, shell-shocked passenger. And the zero injuries and deaths was based on: > Two years ago, a Tesla shareholder tweeted that there “has not been one accident or injury” involving Full Self-Driving, to which Musk responded: “Correct.” And wapo clearly did zero research or effort beyond this statement. The key here is likely "FSD" versus "autopilot" and playing loose of the definition of when it's engaged. Does FSD disengage and tell the driver "good luck" immediately before 99% of accidents? If so it's not technically and FSD accident/injury/death, maybe? Elon is being misleading, WaPo is pushing shitty bias, and the journalist is being deliberately lazy for a better clickbait headline
- kramerger 3y ago
  > a Tesla shareholder tweeted that I think they simply wanted the most click baity title. They are contradicting themselves in the other article

robbyiq999 3y ago

Tesla legal and PR teams are and will be the innovators long before the 'full self driving'

mzs 3y ago

Oh God … So it's fully engulfed and there's one inside? It will not be out of fire for several hours. You know how Teslas are.

mannyv 3y ago

The article totally ignores the fact that there have been 900 crashes reported since 2021, which is a ridiculously low number of crashes. This is basically a Tesla hit piece. Teslas are safer than human drivers by far, even when the systems are abused by their drivers. Using 2020 stats (Forbes) there were an estimated 5,250,837 car crashes in 2020. Of those, < 1% have fatalities (35,766 accidents with fatalities). https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/car-accident-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/car-accident-statistics...

93po 3y ago
There's ridiculous bias in the writing and presentation along with rage-bait, of course it's a hit piece. Corporate journalism is a joke.
1970-01-01 3y ago
Correct take. Go and look up their fire statistics, and you'll get a similar conclusion. Its getting much better YoY. https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires-2020/ https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires... https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-deaths?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-deaths?op=1
- Veserv 3y ago
  Okay, now do the statistics for the number of people who burned to death. Actually, no need, I have them right here. The NFPA (the same organization Tesla is quoting for vehicle fire counts) estimates 560 fire deaths per year in the US over 290 million registered vehicle years [2] or ~1.93 deaths per million vehicle-years. Third party reports show at least 20 people burned to death in their Tesla's in the US in 2022 [1]. There were ~3.65 million Tesla's worldwide in 2022. If we divide US deaths by worldwide Teslas you get ~5.47 people burning to death per million vehicle-years or ~2.8x deadlier if every worldwide Tesla was in the US. By 2022 the US probably accounted for ~50% of vehicles, so you are probably ~5x more likely to burn to death in a Tesla than the average car (which by the way is ~10 years old, half the price, with fewer safety features). That is not 500% more likely to burn to death given that you get into a fire, that is 500% more likely to burn to death total. If you get into a fire in a Tesla then you are ~5,000% more likely to die in it. Quite odd how Tesla read the same reports yet only published analysis on the non-safety critical cases that make themselves look good instead of the safety critical cases that make them look dramatically more dangerous than the Pinto. Must be because their data analysis team consists of people with the analytical capability of grade schoolers since any competent individual could easily do this analysis. I mean, the only other possibility is that the analysts and their management are deliberately perpetrating criminal fraud by sacrificing human lives to line their own pockets. One or the other, pick one. [1] https://www.tesla-fire.com/ https://www.tesla-fire.com/ [2] https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-research/fire-statistical-reports/vehicle-fires?l=343 https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...

Gud 3y ago

FSD is such a strange hill for Tesla to die on, reputation wise. They already revolutionised the world with the electric car, killing a 100 years reliance of gasoline. So why make such bold(and outright wrong) claims about a feature that is at best secondary? Makes no sense to me.

rickyc091 3y ago

The issue is if you have FSD (beta) enabled and you attempt to yank it, TACC will still be engaged, which makes you drive straight. If they had lane assist on as well, it would essentially swing you back and forth. It's dangerous if you aren't aware of it since it suddenly goes from FSD to why does my car have a mind of it's own. If you ever see a Tesla on the highway frantically swinging back and forth, the driver is probably trying to disable the car and fighting with the other safety features. Hitting the brakes will ensure FSD/TACC gets disabled properly. Note: Most of the time people are referring to FSD as FSD beta. Most videos you see online are FSD beta. FSD is still very dumb, but includes stop light awareness. FSD beta is what allows you to "self drive" in the city.

trekz 3y ago

I'm curious of whether, in the US, Tesla can be sued if their cars hit other drivers who arent using a Tesla. Legally speaking, it seems that the hit driver has legal grounds to sue either Tesla or the driver.

regpertom 3y ago

I think I read a lot of these Tesla comments, I don’t know if it’s just people hating Musk but I scratch my head remember a Darwin Award (maybe honorary) from 2000’s of a caravan driver who crashed because they thought cruise control meant it would steer (or FSD in current terminology) and so was having a shower in the back or something. Everywhere I go there’s some claim I’m not meant to take literally, but I feel only with Tesla things do I hear talk of ‘well if someone believed that at face value’. No where, anywhere, afaict, can I do that and things work out fine. No where at no time do I get to say, I don’t think, ‘I took a personal risk based on a title in your marketing material and ignored all the pop ups saying otherwise’. For example, a real estate agent can sell you a house with the property boundaries incorrectly marked, pulled from official records, and well, sucks you be you. What do you mean you didn’t look over every bit of small print and made even the slightest assumption of fairness. I guess it just falls down to whether or not you’re in with lawyers or have an axe to grind. At this point I feel as though Musk and Trump should be appointed ceo of everything and then everything will be audited with a fine tooth comb. Put everything to the standard we put people we don’t like.