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Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

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Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#131

Post by divbzero »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #17

You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the govern…

Tesla should have branded the current system “Copilot”, and reserved “Autopilot” for trumpeting true level 5 self-driving.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#132

Post by greglindahl »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #17

You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the govern…

People who actually drive Tesla cars see a lot more information than people who see Tesla marketing. Market surveys of Tesla owners say that they aren't confused about it requiring driver attention.

Have you ever driven a Tesla?

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#133

Post by greglindahl »

FireBeyond wrote: post #71
rileymat2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be curious about the stats though, If accidents are less frequent, is it at fault for accidents, or did it save us from a bunch of accidents?

There's also those other issues: Tesla has not been counting collisions caused by the driver having to brake hard because the autopilot was about to happily slam into another vehicle/object/person? Tesla's summation of those is that they were not a failing of Autopilot, because it was not active at the moment of impact. That's ... disingenuous ... at best. And then: "It would have avoided this accident [by braking, s…

Source? I've seen people speculate about the first, but just speculation. And that Google/Waymo does the same thing. I don't think it's true for either: public companies get sued for lies like that, and the NTSB is not stupid.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#134

Post by sjwright »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #80
sjwright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aggressively cut in whenever they want with impunity and zero consequences? Self driving cars will always avoid obstacles where possible and never suffer road rage. The only thing that keeps a check on the impulses of the most aggressive human drivers is the unpredictability of other human drivers.

Just do not do this if you drive a fire truck, obviously.

Ha ha, except a Model S on AutoPilot isn't really being driven by the computer, it's just automating a greater portion of the tasks performed by a human driver.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#135

Post by greglindahl »

jsjohnst wrote: post #62
fleitz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of autopilot systems that smash into shit, sailboats are one of them, you can put your sailboat on autopilot and it's going to smash into stuff. Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft.

> Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft. Wrong! There are autopilots which integrate TCAS into the autopilot (A380 among them). Source: http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/eas...

TCAS in a plane is like Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) in a car. It's active 100% of the time in cars, not just when you're using super-cruise-control or other automation.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#136

Post by exodust »

jread wrote: post #81

As a current Tesla owner and frequent autopilot user I can attest to this being a scenario where autopilot has not worked for me - traveling at high speed and approaching a stopped vehicle from a distance. I now always take it off autopilot when this occurs because it will not brake in time.

Just curious what action is needed to disengage autopilot, is it simply a matter of grabbing steering wheel, or does a button need to be pressed? Is there a "hybrid" mode where it remains in autopilot but with option to manually adjust speed and steering?

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#137

Post by greglindahl »

colordrops wrote: post #129
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #17

You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the govern…

Wait a sec, did they get to root cause of this accident? It's a bit early to be reaching a verdict. And what are stats of accidents on Auto-pilot vs without? If less, I'd say it's a success.

From the photo, it looks like the car slowed down a lot before the collision. But you'd expect that anyway from AEB.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#138

Post by sjwright »

greglindahl wrote: post #128
sjwright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equally interesting question is what you think computer drivers should do differently when driving near a car that is under computer control. For example, if your computer control car knows that the car behind is also computer controlled, it could be more aggressive on the brakes to avoid a forward collision without causing a rear collision.

Lots of cars have automatic braking these days, and I bet exactly zero of them care about the car behind them.

Correct, that's the situation today.

Tomorrow, the situation might be that a computer controlled car could see that the car behind is tailgating and the car in the next lane is computer controlled — then determine the safest action would be to swerve into the next lane rather than brake suddenly...

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#139

Post by greglindahl »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #99

Firefighter here. This kind of collision happens all the time -- although it's usually a manually-driven car. This is why we park the BRT* behind the accident and we try to stay in front of the truck. A moving 4000-lb car is no match for a stationary 30,000-lb fire truck. *Big Red Truck

Yeah, it's pretty amazing how tough that truck is compared to the car.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#140

Post by jsjohnst »

greglindahl wrote: post #135
jsjohnst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft. Wrong! There are autopilots which integrate TCAS into the autopilot (A380 among them). Source: http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/eas...

TCAS in a plane is like Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) in a car. It's active 100% of the time in cars, not just when you're using super-cruise-control or other automation.

Of course TCAS is always enabled while in flight and is technically unrelated to autopilot. That doesn’t negate the point that many Airbus planes will automatically follow RAs when on autopilot if that is enabled by the flight crew.
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