Wow, Tesla instantly went from my dream car (having replaced Bentley) to Do Not Buy. I simply will not buy a car or other dangerous equipment from a company that doesn’t care if I die and only cares about their brand.
Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
511–520 of 850 posts
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
So he had his hands on the wheel and took no action for 6 seconds while driving straight to the barrier. Doesn't make it look any better for the driver TBH.
Well, the Tesla had the same amount of visibility and drove straight into the barrier. Victim blaming doesn't get Tesla off the hook.
Tesla is a fucking computer. The dude that took his hands off is a human. One of those has actual intelligence. You don't get to blame user error on the computer because someone died.
He. Took. His. Hands. Off. The. Wheel.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#513Tesla 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…
Pretty bold to think you could singlehandedly wirte a release for Tesla. Feels like the communications equivalent of Dropbox is a weekend project. Just curious, what’s your writing background?
Except... he actually wrote it. It’s like if someone said Dropbox is a weekend project and then it was available for download the next Monday.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to preface my post to say that I think developing self-driving automobiles is so important that it's worth the implied cost of potentially tens of thousands of lives in order to perfect the technology, because that's what people do; make sacrifices to improve the world we live in so that future generations don't have to know the same problem. But I think you're right. I think the "best" way to move forward unt…
While I agree with your conclusion, the opening line strikes me as silly. Why is it "so important" to have self-driving cars? These cars that can't detect stationary objects directly in front of them are nowhere close to the self-driving pipe dream that's been around for a century. Maybe by 2118 we'll be making more progress.
It won't take that long.
Also, people are terrible at detecting objects directly in front of them and just like computers, the human brain can be cheated, overloaded, inept or inexperienced leading to an accident.
Now we have cars with lane assist, smart breaking, auto pilot features and that's only in the past 5-10 years.
Of all the places where technology can save lives, its definitely in vehicles/transportation.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#515Tesla 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…
Great copywriting. It seems in part this is a user interface issue in that the limitations of the system are not clearly enough surfaced so people’s expectations are off-base.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#516Tesla 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…
>t's a tool to help attentive drivers avoid accidents that might have otherwise occurred. This needs far more discussion. I just don't buy it. I don't believe that you can have a car engaged in auto-drive mode and remain attentive. I think our psychology won't allow it. When driving, I find that I must be engaged and on long trips I don't even enable cruise control because taking the accelerator input away from me is…
I agree, I find the same of myself, and I beat myself up over any loss of concentration.
The solution might be a system where the driver drives at a higher level of abstraction, but ultimately still drives. Driving should be like declarative programming. For example, the driver still moves the steering wheel left and right, but the car handles the turn. Or when the driver hits the breaks, which is now more of a on/off switch, the car handles the breaking. The role for the driver is to remain engaged, indicating their intention at every moment and for the car to work out the details.
Edit: On second thought, that might end up being worse. I can think of situations where it might become ambiguous to the driver of what they are handling and what the car is handling. Maybe autopilot is all or nothing.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#517Tesla 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…
>t's a tool to help attentive drivers avoid accidents that might have otherwise occurred. This needs far more discussion. I just don't buy it. I don't believe that you can have a car engaged in auto-drive mode and remain attentive. I think our psychology won't allow it. When driving, I find that I must be engaged and on long trips I don't even enable cruise control because taking the accelerator input away from me is…
I agree, and I think the psychological effect will be stronger if the feature is called autopilot. It conveys the idea that the car can pilot itself.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they need to make it crystal clear that the car performed as expected. That hasn't even been definitively established yet (regardless of what Tesla says), as the multiple videos of post-update Teslas steering directly toward crash barriers demonstrate.
... in a Level 2 system, that's a fine thing.
No, it is absolutely not. I'm not sure why you keep posting this as if it is definitive.
Let me put it very clearly for you: it is not acceptable, in any shape or manner, to expect your users to have to "save themselves" from your product killing them every 5 seconds. If your product requires that, it is a bad product.
Furthermore, your entire argument of "it's just a level 2 system..." falls apart when you consider that Tesla jumps through several marketing hoops to deceive people and make them believe it isn't just a level 2 system. When you visit Tesla's webpage on autopilot [1], the first and only thing you see at the top of the page are the following words in big, bold text:
>Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
>All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
It is not until you get to nearly the very bottom of the page that Tesla displays a disclaimer that "when we say 'full self-driving', we don't actually mean full self-driving, because that would be illegal and isn't available yet." There is only one single sentence, buried within a paragraph mid-page, that says drivers must remain alert and prepare to take over. The rest of the page is also filled with language indicating that autopilot is capable of turning itself, switching lanes itself, speeding itself up/slowing itself down, etc.
It is not unreasonable whatsoever for someone to read this webpage and assume that autopilot will magically take them whereever they need to go. This webpage is in stark contrast to the reality, where autopilot will actively steer you into a concrete barrier and kill you if you do not babysit it. And to make things worse, Tesla apparently considers this to be a "feature".
According to your Twitter, you own a Tesla, so it seems you have a little bit of fanboy-ist bias going on here. I'd suggest you take off the Tesla fanboy ballcap and consider how you would feel if this were a different product. If someone sold you a smartphone, but told you "this phone never requires charging because it has a mini nuclear reactor in it. Be careful though, because if you don't keep your eyes on the phone at all times and press the 'please don't explode and kill me' button every 5 minutes, you'll die!" would you be defending that phone in the same way you're defending Tesla?
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#519Tesla 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 car cannot drive itself
It seems like Tesla is careful not to dispel the illusion it can. Like how alcohol does not get you women- but all the adverts deftly imply it can, without actually saying it can.
Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash
#520I don't get it. Doesn't autopilot mean that the car is steering itself? "Perfect" or not, if the car is steering itself, what is the point of having your hands on the wheel? I get the point about being alert, and needing to take over if you see an issue, but I would fear that I'd be overcompensating autopilot by having my hands on the wheel while cruising along.
Can somebody explain?