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Why Tesla’s cars keep crashing
- tardibear 1y agohttps://archive.is/jqbM2 https://archive.is/jqbM2
- jekwoooooe 1y agoIt’s ridiculous that Tesla can beta test their shitty software in public and I have to be subjected to it
- thunderbong 1y agoThis is true for most software nowadays
- jsiepkes 1y agoSure, but I'm not directly affected by someone's buggy phone software. If a self driving Tesla crashes into me, that does affect me.
- timeon 1y agoI find it bit disappointing that you even need to restate this. People here should know better.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago[flagged]
- queenkjuul 1y agoLmao how
- dzhiurgis 1y agoBattery fires, battery drain leaving you stranded somewhere, all sort of GPS map issues sending people off cliff or onto railway, malware, dependent medical equipment, etc.
- ckrailo 1y agoMy self driving Tesla does better than most Tiktok-brained drivers. I know because I'm watching, just like the car. Two is better than one and I enjoy it thoroughly.
- gchokov 1y agoLet me guess, you always perfect code? Maybe just html but it’s perfect, right?
- bestouff 1y agoWho cares if your social media toy has bugs in production ? These are several tons metal things going fast amongst humans, with high-energy batteries that like to explode. This can't have bugs in production.
- dzhiurgis 1y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_Arab_Spring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the...
- zzgo 1y agoI grew up in an era of lawn darts, leaded gasoline, and Oxycontin. The end user is a test subject of all products.
- kcplate 1y agoLawn darts was fun though.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI think we're supposed to learn from incidents like that, not keep repeating the same old mistakes
- morkalork 1y agoYou should add thalidomide to your list of "end users being test subjects gone horribly wrong" list, especially with the FDA being mucked around with these days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal
- anal_reactor 1y ago[flagged]
- Dylan16807 1y ago[flagged]
- indolering 1y agoElon has tricked himself into thinking the automated statistics machine is capable of human level cognition. He thinks cars will only need eyeballs like humans have and that things like directly measuring what's physically in front of you and comparing it to a 3D point cloud scan is useless. Welp, he's wrong. He won't admit it. More people will have to die and/or Tesla will have to face bankruptcy before they fire him and start adding lidar (etc) back in. Real sad because by then they probably won't have the cash to pay for the insane upfront investment that Google has been plowing into this for 16 years now.
- 01100011 1y agoI cut elon a tiny bit of slack because I remember ten years ago when a lot of us stupidly believed that deep learning just needed to be scaled up and self-driving was literally only 5 years away. Elon's problem was that he bet the farm on that assumption and has buried himself so deep in promises that he has seemingly no choice but to double down at every opportunity.
- tempodox 1y agoSomeone in his position cannot afford fallacious thinking like that. Or so one would think.
- 01100011 1y agoHe literally has his position thanks to fallacious thinking and the resulting statements. Technofetishists and low-level tech/IT folks love to lap up the crap coming out of elon's mouth.
- rbanffy 1y agoThere has to be a point where someone’s sphere of influence is so large lying should become a crime. All sorts of dangerous misinformation floats around and ends up killing people, from “FSD is safe” to “vaccines cause autism” to “drink bleach”, there has to be some accountability for these people who use their social influence to manipulate and profit from others.
- 01100011 1y ago[flagged]
- close04 1y ago> “Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,” This is probably core to their legal strategy. No matter how much data the cars collect they can always safely destroy most because this allows them to pretend the autonomous driving systems weren’t involved in the crash. At this point it’s beyond me why people still trust the brand and the system. Musk really only disrupted the “fake it” part of “fake it till you make it”.
- Dylan16807 1y agoI'll worry about that possible subterfuge if it actually happens a single time ever. It's something to keep in mind but it's not an issue itself.
- close04 1y agoThen make sure you don’t read till the end of the article where this behavior is supported. Maybe it is just a coincidence that Teslas always record data except when there’s a suspicion they caused the crash, and then the data was lost, didn’t upload, was irrelevant, or self driving wasn’t involved. > The YouTuber Mark Rober, a former engineer at Nasa, replicated this behaviour in an experiment on 15 March 2025. He simulated a range of hazardous situations, in which the Model Y performed significantly worse than a competing vehicle. The Tesla repeatedly ran over a crash-test dummy without braking. The video went viral, amassing more than 14m views within a few days. > The real surprise came after the experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the blog Electrek, pointed out the same autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. “Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,” Lambert noted. In my previous comment I was wondering why would anyone still trust Tesla’s claims and not realistically assume the worst. It’s because plenty of people will only worry about it when it happens to them. It’s not an issue in itself until after your burned to a crisp in your car.
- Dylan16807 1y agoNo, turning off autopilot during a crash isn't subterfuge. The subterfuge would be using that to lie about autopilot's involvement. I'm pretty sure that has never happened, and their past data has included anyone using autopilot in the vicinity of a crash, much more than one second.
- KaiserPro 1y ago[flagged]
- te_chris 1y agoIt’s a book excerpt
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mavhc 1y ago[flagged]
- Gigachad 1y agoI’m sure the child who gets obliterated by a Tesla cares about the distinction.
- mavhc 1y agoDo they care whether it's a human or software, or what model car it is?
- boudin 1y agoThe thing that should not be taken seriously are tesla cars. FSD and autopilot are marketing term for the same underlying piece of crap technology
- mavhc 1y agoIf "software" is the technology
- timeon 1y agoDo you happen to own TSLA?
- mavhc 1y agoI happen to know more about the software than any journalist it appears
- locusm 1y agoPretty sure if firefighters got there in time they could break the glass, unless they meant the battery fire was so fierce they couldn’t approach the vehicle.
- madaxe_again 1y agoWindow glass in most modern vehicles is laminated rather than a simple tempered pane - makes them less likely to shatter in a rollover, and thereby eject occupants, but harder to break through in an emergency. TBH I see this more as a “firefighters aren’t being given the right tools” issue, as this is far from unique to Tesla, and the tools have existed since laminated side glass became a requirement - but don’t seem to yet be part of standard issue or training. https://www.firehouse.com/rescue/vehicle-extrication/product/21110646/vehicle-extrication-and-stabilization-equipment-rescue-42-the-ripper-vehicle-rescue-tool-for-laminated-side-windows-for-firefighters https://www.firehouse.com/rescue/vehicle-extrication/product...
- amriksohata 1y ago[flagged]
- mafuy 1y ago"hard left"? In what universe are you? A hard left newspaper would call for making all companies worker-owned, and I don't see anything like that from the Guardian.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoWhy's it flagged?
- kcplate 1y agoPretty much every post that even hints Tesla, Musk, or Spacex gets flagged on here.
- mdhb 1y agoBecause a bunch of people have for inexplicable reasons tied their meaningful parts of their self identity to Elon and his grievance filled simplistic worldview and they get very very upset when flaws in it are pointed out and they respond by trying to make sure nobody can publicly criticise it.
- penguin_booze 1y agoYou can only worship; you don't talk ill of billionaires. No sir, that's not tolerated here.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI would like to be generous and declare that it is due to the polarising nature of Elon Musk that the discussions end up degenerating into poor quality comments. However, I don't personally believe that as even topics which are more to do with the products rather than the man seem to get flagged extremely quickly.
- rbanffy 1y agoI haven’t seen the lack of civility that would warrant the flag. Autonomous vehicles are an important topic and Tesla’s design is not above criticism.
- karussell 1y ago> .. the issue of door handles. On Teslas, they retract into the doors while the cars are being driven. The system depends on battery power. I never will understand this horrible decision. It isn't good design if it kills people. I wonder why this isn't regulated. They could at least implement a "push to pop up" functionality that works without battery power or have a narrow slot under the handle.
- iJohnDoe 1y agoSeems Tesla is a status symbol. I’ve taken an Uber a few times in different model Teslas. I’m sorry to say, they were all a piece of crap. Everything rattled like crazy. Super loud while driving. The door handles are not intuitive. Not sure why anyone would buy one other than a status symbol.
- chrisjj 1y agoQuoting Elon: “The whole Tesla fleet operates as a network. When one car learns something, they all learn it. That is beyond what other car companies are doing.” Every Tesla driver, he explained, becomes a kind of “expert trainer for how the autopilot should work”. Good grief.
- morkalork 1y agoOn one hand, offline reinforcement learning using the sensor recordings and human driver inputs sounds cool but on the other, the average Tesla driver drives like a jerkass so maybe not the best example to learn from.
- rbanffy 1y agoIn Ireland it’d be the Audi drivers. It’s not that they are terrible drivers, or even below average, but when you hear the conversation a couple times, you start paying attention and confirmation bias kicks in. I’m not afraid of Tesla drivers. I’m concerned about uncommanded action such as accelerating without driver input. Over reliance on an unreliable autopilot can be considered reckless. My own car has a number of features, from lane keeping to adaptive cruise control that make long and boring trips easier, but it’ll complain loudly if I drive with a single hand for more than a couple seconds. Even the bad design of the door handles, which should open when airbags are deployed, the door loses power, or the vehicle comes to a stop, is a red flag for me.
- olelele 1y agoTesla is the next Enron.
- PlunderBunny 1y agoIf you’re not a subscriber already, don’t forget to make a donation to The Guardian (scroll to the very bottom of the page and click the yellow ‘Support Us’ text. Investigative journalism won’t survive on views and likes alone.