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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#41
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find suddenly braking in the middle of the road poses its own dangers.

Agreed, but Tesla might need to get more aggressive now ("Confidence lost, resume control, emergency braking") and have the tail lights go to 100% brightness before braking is applied (to give the driver behind them ample time to slow). The clue stick comes in many forms.

Including "put your hands on the wheel" x2

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but Tesla might need to get more aggressive now ("Confidence lost, resume control, emergency braking") and have the tail lights go to 100% brightness before braking is applied (to give the driver behind them ample time to slow). The clue stick comes in many forms.

Including "put your hands on the wheel" x2

If you're instructing the driver to do something, and they don't, your last option is to fail as gracefully as possible (which is "what is the best path forward in the distance I need to stop at emergency braking rate + I must notify the vehicle behind me as soon as its clear I will take automated action, even if that's before I apply braking force").

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#45
post #25

TIL: car crashes happen. but because it's Tesla it gets 100x the attention

Tesla has gone out of their way to get more and more attention. For a company that sells only tens of thousands of cars it's pretty amazing. Until these recent crashes the majority of that press has been very positive.

The downside of this is that when you get bad publicity it's going to be much bigger as well.

That's the price of celebrity.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel What is then the point of having an autopilot?

As a backup to you. Not the other way around.

If this is really Tesla's line of thinking, they may want to rebrand that feature. Autopilot definitely suggests something more than helping you steer. I mean, when do you fail to steer in the first place? It's not exactly rocket science; the only use case for this is when the driver falls asleep, in which case the "autopilot" can catch the mistake, slow the car, start some heavy metal music and call the police for a fine to deter the driver from further sleepy driving.

Since that's not what it's doing at all, I think this is not how Tesla intends the feature to currently work.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#48
post #29

I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Aut…

I'd like to see a survey of how many Tesla drivers think Tesla advocates complete cession of control to Autopilot.

My suspicion is zero.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#49
post #6

I really think Tesla needs to make autopilot's "hands-on" requirement less lenient, the driver had their hands off the wheel for a full two minutes and the car didn't bark at him? I think (maybe I'm wrong and the other non-fatal one did) this is the first incident where autopilot was involved with an inattentive driver, and probably the one that is going to put the screws to Tesla, unfortunately.

> this is the first incident where autopilot was involved with an inattentive driver

The other (fatal) crash involved an inattentive driver watching a Harry Potter movie:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#50
> "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads," it said. Tesla states clearly in its owner's manual that drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel to avoid accidents when the Autopilot feature is engaged.

Most people don't read the manual unless what they're doing actively doesn't work. Especially with press surrounding Autopilot saying it's basically the best self driving car and is completely trustworthy (even if they don't explicitly state that, it's still implied), it's not unthinkable that someone would completely trust the car and not worry about sensors. The car should be much more proactive at getting the user's attention, either by actively slowing the car down to some safe speed with cautions on and/or significantly lowering the time limit of taking their hand off the wheel before any indicators appear. I'm not sure about the former, but the latter is done in every other car that has this kind of technology (e.g. cars with Lane Assist) and the time is very low, around 10 seconds.

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