Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

Tesla engineers talked about this in great depth during the recent streaming event. Manual disengagement of Autopilot is the mechanism used to trigger an upload of the sensor data. It is automatically uploaded to Tesla servers and used to train the driving model.

We are going to have a really hard time getting out true autonomous driving if they don’t do this.

That’s how the system will learn how to deal with real life scenarios.

As a Tesla driver, I look out the windows when operating my motor vehicle. If my car crashes on AutoPilot or otherwise, it’s my fault.

When Tesla tells me I can stop looking while the car drives, instead of how they currently do it where it constantly reminds me to be alert, then I might change my position.

Until then it is abundantly clear to every single Tesla driver, who exactly is responsible for controlling the vehicle. The car reminds the driver of this when activating AutoPilot and persistently while under way.

The name of the feature could be MagicCarpet, AutoDrive, AutoCruise, SmartPilot, Pilot, Jeeves, I don’t care what. The car says in big bold letters every time you activate the feature to be alert and ready to take over.

I also expect the performance of the Beta AutoPilot software to change with each update. Navigate on Autopilot didn’t exist when I first got my Tesla. Blind Spot warning functionality either. Adaptive cruise and merging behavior have both significantly improved.

Last week a car in the lane to the left of me put on its blinker and I could have sworn my Tesla slowed down to let them in. I did not notice the car make any rightward motion to enter my lane before my car slowed slightly. It was not a jerky deceleration but just a smooth increase in the distance just enough to maintain the follow distance with the new car in place. The car changed lanes in front of me and we kept driving along. I’ve never seen that before, and I wasn’t aware Tesla could do that based on optical recognition of the blinker alone, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. It could be the Tesla saw the car moving to enter the lane before I did, but it had certainly not crossed the dashed line before the deceleration.

Drivers flirt with danger when they allow themselves to drive distracted and stop paying full attention to the road, with or without an AutoPilot capability.

Two days ago I was driving without AutoPilot and was on a phone call on speakerphone (Bluetooth through the car speakers). It was a fairly contentious call and even though I was hands-free and looking ahead it was definitely the first thing on my mind. I was approaching a left-lane must exit, in the middle of a 3 lane highway when at the last minute a car in the left lane swerved to avoid the exit in front of me.

I probably had enough time to slow down without causing an issue behind me, but I hadn’t checked my rear-view in some time due to being distracted by the call. So instead I jerked to the right and moved partially into the right lane. A car in the right lane ~3 car lengths behind me then had to hit their brakes hard enough for their tires to squeal.

After reviewing the dashcam video (Tesla records if you plug in a drive) I was unhappy with my choice there. I should have slowed quickly and stayed in lane. If I wasn’t on that call I would have made a better choice.

But worth mentioning, if AutoPilot was engaged, it would have made the better choice in that situation as well (since AutoPilot will never swerve to avoid an obstacle in fact).

His car increased speed because the adaptive cruise was set to a higher speed than his car was going, and for 4 seconds before impact there were no cars in front of him.

The adaptive cruise increased speed to his set point when his car left the flow of traffic. The AEB will not trigger on a stationary object at highway speeds. I do not believe there exists any AEB that will emergency brake at highway speed, maybe except perhaps for a pedestrian shaped object?

He hit a crash attenuator which had not been reset (so basically direct impact with concrete) after it had been hit by another car 11 days prior.

Resetting the attenuators is a simple task, but apparently this particular one is hit fairly frequently.

I won't argue against over the air for everything but when your 'autopilot' system can be updated any day for any reason, I would argue that it failing and killing you shouldn't be as excusable.