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Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

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Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#51

Post by ricardobeat »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #9
otalp wrote: post #2

Full statement: "We are very sorry for the family's loss. According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is i…

Wow, thats terse, especially considering "the early version" of Autopilot was using Mobileye's superior product!

I'm under the impression it was established that Mobileye's "superior" approach of hand-coding every possible situation would not cut it for full self-driving; they eschew deep learning in favor of having hundreds of people manually annotating images to uncover corner cases, plus a high reliance on maps, and were not happy with the level of automation Tesla wanted to push the system into.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#52

Post by [deleted] »

Robotbeat wrote: post #40
watwut wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How they call the system drives user expectations and trust. They call it autopilot so that people buy it due to having these expectations. It is consequential and thus legitimate subject to critique.

Calling it autopilot implies you have to pay attention. It implies it's NOT self-driving or autonomous any more than airplanes (which virtually all have some sort of autopilot) are.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#54

Post by TAForObvReasons »

neolefty wrote: post #26
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Silicon Valley. "move fast and break things"

Common in early car and aircraft cultures as well. Always a tension between innovation and safety. I don't mean that as a cop-out. Rather that there's no single "right answer". We are choosing something on a spectrum of risk vs reward. Personally, although I have no direct experience, it's starting to look like Tesla is being too risky. Yes, they're safer than human-only drivers, but the mistakes they're making are t…

I firmly believe that a technology deployed in a potentially life-threatening context like a car or plane or pacemaker deserves a much more conservative development approach. "Move fast and break things" isn't appropriate when human lives are at stake. Waymo is applying the appropriate conservatism; Tesla and Uber are playing fast and loose by comparison.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#55

Post by cornholio »

tc wrote: post #18

Tesla probably shouldn't be saying anything about this at all, even just to avoid giving it more news cycles. But if they were going to say something, here's what they should have said the first time. ---- We take great care in building our cars to save lives. Forty thousands Americans die on the roads each year. That's a statistic. But even a single death of a Tesla driver or passenger is a tragedy. This has affecte…

The general sentiment is correct but the wording implies some degree of acceptance of liability: Autopilot was engaged... took no evasive action... engineers are investigating... failed to detect.

They should have issued a single, very simple statement that they are investigating the crash and that any resulting improvements would be distributed to all Tesla vehicles, so that such accidents can no longer happen even when drivers are not paying sufficient attention to the road and ignore Autopilot warnings. Then double down on the ideea that Autopilot is already safer than manual driving when properly supervised and that it constantly improves.

The specifics of the accident, victim blaming, whether the driver had or not his hands on the wheel or was aware of Autopilot's problems is something that should be discussed by lawyers behind closed doors. And of course, deny it media attention and kill it in preliminary investigation, which I imagine they will have no problem in doing, he drove straight into a steel barrier for God's sake.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#56

Post by jhall1468 »

exotree wrote: post #10

This is a very upsetting response. Yes, the driver could have paid more attention, and yes, he shouldn't have activated Autopilot in an area where he knew Tesla's autopilot was not working correctly. However, Tesla calling it "Autopilot" should be no longer allowed. It's clear that it is most certainly not that, and customers are not treating this feature in a careful and cautious fashion, and I do believe that's due…

Autopilot is a marketing term here. It's correct if we think of Autopilot = autonomous but it isn't. The thing alarms at you (visually and via sound) when you take your hands off the wheel. The fact that drivers ignore that isn't Tesla's fault, and saying it's "not enough" is kind of absurd. What the hell are they going to do if you take your hands off the wheel? Stop the car in the middle of a freeway?

I could use your exact same argument to say Ford isn't doing enough to force people to put on their seat belt. It's a silly argument. It provides seatbelts, alarms when you fail to put it on. At that point, any harm is user-error. That's the exact same case here.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#57

Post by slavik81 »

supreme_sublime wrote: post #21
exotree wrote: post #10

This is a very upsetting response. Yes, the driver could have paid more attention, and yes, he shouldn't have activated Autopilot in an area where he knew Tesla's autopilot was not working correctly. However, Tesla calling it "Autopilot" should be no longer allowed. It's clear that it is most certainly not that, and customers are not treating this feature in a careful and cautious fashion, and I do believe that's due…

I see your point on calling it "Autopilot", but if you think about the application of the term in terms of aviation, I think it makes more sense. Autopilot in planes won't land the plane for you. It basically will just keep you at a certain elevation and direction. I think that Tesla's Autopilot function is comparable to planes. That's probably how they will justify it. However there might be a legitimate point in th…

> Autopilot in planes won't land the plane for you.

For unmanned aircraft, autoland is an safety feature. After loss of link, an autopilot might be configured to land at a designated location, rather than just circling until it runs out of fuel and drops out of the sky. Though admittedly, crashing in a safe place is less serious when the vehicle has no people in it.

The Tesla autopilot needs much closer supervision than any of the autopilots I've worked with. That's more a result of its domain than of its sophistication, but it still makes me very uncomfortable with the name.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#59

Post by txcwpalpha »

I used to be in awe of Teslas and I have always been a big fan of Musk, and even after the crash I still imagined myself one day buying a Tesla. But after this response, I've completely lost respect for the company, for Musk, and I don't think I'll ever buy one or advocate for someone buying one.

The driver had previously reported to Tesla 7 to 10 times that there was an issue with autopilot, but Tesla told him "no there is no issue". There is also video evidence of this same issue happening in other parts of the world, but with similar road conditions. But again, Tesla's response has been "there is no issue."

And now their response is "the driver knew there was an issue but he used autopilot anyway"? Seriously? Either there is an issue or there isn't, Tesla. At first you said there is no issue, and now you're saying there is an issue? And as the cherry on top, you're blaming the driver for continuing to use the feature even after you told him repeatedly that it's okay to use?

For shame, Tesla. For shame.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#60

Post by dragonwriter »

tshannon wrote: post #35

I agree that this statement seems cold, and blames the driver, but from a legal perspective, can it be anything else? They can't admit anything or publically take any responsibility, because it could be used against them in the court case right? Even in their statement they don't say "Autopilot is not perfect" they say "According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect". The only thing…

> I agree that this statement seems cold, and blames the driver, but from a legal perspective, can it be anything else?

Yes.

The law doesn't require, or even create an incentive, for them to make a statement at all.

The law doesn't require, or create an incentive, for them include any attribution of blame or responsibility in any statement they do make.

This is a hamfisted attempt at PR management by directing the public blame for the incident to the driver, not soemthing made necessary by legal requirements or incentives related to legal liability.

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