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Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

irishtimes.com

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Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#21

Post by uoaei »

I saw a Tesla driving down I-5 yesterday and the person in the driver's seat was wearing headphones and holding their phone in a way that made it seem like they were playing video games (landscape mode, both thumbs hovering). In the passing lane. Barely doing the speed limit. Simply unacceptable on this highway where the right lane typically travels 0-5mph below the speed limit and the left lane travels 5-15mph over.

We locked eyes and you could tell they were embarrassed but I highly doubt they stopped. It looked like actual tech/screen addiction to me. I think they were just worried I was a cop, but when they saw just a normal car they went right back to it.

In some ways we can't blame Tesla for this kind of thing. But it's hard to believe they're doing anything to discourage or mitigate antisocial behaviors.

At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. Many transplants seem oblivious why people passing on the right are so much more aggressive than those passing on the left.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#22

Post by liquidgecka »

zardo wrote: post #6

Don't you have to defeat a safety interlock to allow hands off the wheel driving in a Tesla?

What's interesting is that blue cruise in my car specifically says "hands off" when it's active. Though it does also say "be ready to take over at any time" and yells at you if you look away.

I didn't realize that Ford was ahead of Tesla in that department!

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#23

Post by aaronkjones »

gwbas1c wrote: post #19
vinni2 wrote: post #11

What about all these porn stars who have sex while driving Tesla. They should definitely be guilty of dangerous driving. edit: link to the article about it https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7015229/Elon-Musk-r...

I haven't seen any of the videos. I'd assume that there's some creative use of a camera to give the illusion that no one is behind the wheel. After all, in the the "two girls one cup" video the girls eat chocolate ice cream. There was a camera cut between filling the cone (with something that is not ice cream) and the girls eating from the cone. It's clear that in the cut when the girls are eating from the cone, the…

Thanks for the reminder of that videos existence!

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#24

Post by jvanderbot »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #12
jvanderbot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless a lot of money is paid out in campaign contributions, I suspect you're right. I'm worried about a time when the _statistical_ safety of AI driving is better than humans across the board, but there are horrifying correlations between AI induced accidents, like "Children on tricycles are not well recognized" or "slight fog in Seattle induces 150 car pileup". Or, AI causes worse accidents less frequently than hum…

A lot more minor injuries? You are aware that over 100 people are killed in cars every single day in the US alone right?

I think you missed the part where I'm not saying this is current reality, just saying it's something I worry about.

Continuing your example just for exposition / hypothetical, if those are 100 individual deaths with varying causes, vs 99 children run over by AI b/c they were walking in a line holding hands and were interpreted as road markers, well that's not _better_ is it?

This is purely hypothetical, but statistics gloss over those human details.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#26

Post by watwut »

gdubs wrote: post #8
zardo wrote: post #6

Don't you have to defeat a safety interlock to allow hands off the wheel driving in a Tesla?

Have you never used your legs to kind of hold the wheel or even steer in a car when you've taken your hands off for a moment? That's what I'm going to guess was going on here.

Genuinely, I have never ever done that. I am driving for over 20 years.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#27

Post by lawlessone »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #10
esjeon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess until all autonomous vehicles are fully equipped with real sensors (likely both lidar and radar) so that cars can almost-mechanically stop before foreseeable collisions without worrying about AI hiccups. This is technically possible even now, but it's way too expensive for now.

Why should lidar be a requirement when that's not a requirement for humans to be able to drive? The goal is to reduce traffic fatalities, humans are not reliable, if you say we can't have automation until its 100% perfect, then you are actively choosing to have more traffic fatalities.

>when that's not a requirement for humans to be able to drive?

If it get's cheap enough it will be.

But the AI isn't human and things a human would recognize, like a a large grey truck up ahead doing a turn on an overcast day an AI can just miss.

> if you say we can't have automation until its 100% perfect,

That's why we need the lidar.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#28

Post by FireBeyond »

belltaco wrote: post #18
rtkwe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while, there's only one car maker selling one car to the general public right now who's taking legal liability for crashes while their system is active.

That Mercedes-Benz system is a glorified adaptive cruise control and has several limitations that Tesla autopilot does not have. > There must be a vehicle in front of your car, reasonable road conditions with readable markings and lines, and clear weather and light conditions. Drive Pilot can’t be used at night or in the rain, and the headlights and wipers must be set to auto for it to work. > It’s also only availabl…

AP will disengage or work poorly in poor weather too.

Mercedes is actually being cautious about slowly rolling things out, not just yeeting it over the fence like Tesla.

Little things like:

> Mercedes shows us an EQS with an important visual indicator that is not yet legal: in the hopefully very near future, when Drive Pilot is active, the headlights, taillights, and side mirrors will have turquoise marking lights so other drivers know the Level 3 system is in use.

and

> Drive Pilot also has redundant braking and steering actuators and a separate onboard electrical system just in case one of them fails.

are good things.

And it drives better than Autopilot, despite being "glorified cruise control":

> It does feel more precise and accurate in how the car stays in its lane and reacts to surrounding traffic, with fewer jerky movements and constant tiny adjustments. Drive Pilot even reacts to larger trucks or motorcycles that are lane splitting by moving slightly over in the lane without crossing the lines, and not only does it work in carpool lanes but also it can tell the difference between the carpool and FasTrak lanes and will let the driver decide which to use.

This doesn't sound like Tesla at all:

> and there’s not a single moment where Drive Pilot makes a mistake or reacts badly to a situation, even when surrounded by nightmarish LA drivers.

Some of us applaud these kind of things.

Remember the whole phantom braking thing a while back? And then it disappeared with an update, but another phantom braking problem arose, so then they reverted that update, and then released another update that fixed those two problems...

A safety culture where a component manufacturer had firmware that took around 36 hours to work through the full test suite... released a new firmware to Tesla in response to issues. Got an email from Tesla 3 or 4 hours later saying "Thanks, this is working so much better", and when they responded with confusion about the test suite, etc., "Oh, we just flashed it onto one of our cars here and took it out on the road and tried".

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#29

Post by rtkwe »

belltaco wrote: post #18
rtkwe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while, there's only one car maker selling one car to the general public right now who's taking legal liability for crashes while their system is active.

That Mercedes-Benz system is a glorified adaptive cruise control and has several limitations that Tesla autopilot does not have. > There must be a vehicle in front of your car, reasonable road conditions with readable markings and lines, and clear weather and light conditions. Drive Pilot can’t be used at night or in the rain, and the headlights and wipers must be set to auto for it to work. > It’s also only availabl…

It is just very fancy cruise control but it's still very significant to the whole "will a person ever get in trouble for taking over from the automated system" discussion that they're the only ones taking legal responsibility while the system is active. Everyone else including Tesla puts all the legal weight on you to stay constantly alert and take over for the system.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#30

Post by FireBeyond »

uoaei wrote: post #21

I saw a Tesla driving down I-5 yesterday and the person in the driver's seat was wearing headphones and holding their phone in a way that made it seem like they were playing video games (landscape mode, both thumbs hovering). In the passing lane. Barely doing the speed limit. Simply unacceptable on this highway where the right lane typically travels 0-5mph below the speed limit and the left lane travels 5-15mph over.…

> At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too.

You expect this from a company that writes software that will intentionally roll through stop signs?!? Or that lets you set parameters on how much to exceed the speed limit by?

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