81–90 of 447 posts
I have a lot of respect for Tesla, but this incident convinced me not to buy one any time soon. I have children with car seats. The fires that break out with battery right under the middle makes it impossible to save someone in the driver seat, let alone in the back. More importantly, self driving cars are not the same - Waymo has lidar, Tesla and Uber don’t (correct me if wrong). If a system is clearly struggling wi…
> In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. Would've loved to know the exact moments we are talking about here. Is it 5 seconds or 5 minutes? > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wh…
If you ignore it long enough, the autopilot will disengage entirely. The car will drive in a straight line and coast to a stop.
In this case, it would be more like "drive in a straight line and... collide to a stop."
Perhaps braking to a stop at a reasonable rate would be the right thing to do, given that it surely should've detected it was going to hit something?
This seems to be trying to suggest that the driver had 6 seconds of clear driving-toward-death time to correct for the car's actions without explicitly making such a ridiculous statement (while also throwing in the crushed crash attenuator). If the car makes a quick change in direction due to an autopilot error, a driver at speed would have very little time to make an effective correction.
Depending on the system behavior, it could be akin to having a passenger reach over and yank the wheel. I'd honestly rather Tesla just said "ongoing investigation" instead of being so transparently evasive.
I have a lot of respect for Tesla, but this incident convinced me not to buy one any time soon. I have children with car seats. The fires that break out with battery right under the middle makes it impossible to save someone in the driver seat, let alone in the back. More importantly, self driving cars are not the same - Waymo has lidar, Tesla and Uber don’t (correct me if wrong). If a system is clearly struggling wi…
I thought fire started because rescue team cut someone out of the car.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the auto pilot warned the driver to take control of the vehicle or is that incorrect? There is probably a lot more we don't know and it would be premature to place the blame on the auto pilot and Tesla. This isn't a lvl 5 system. It still requires the drivers attention and that is something we need to consider ( he obviously didn't have his hands on the wheel).
Technically tesla's statement says he was warned at some point to take control during his drive. That could have been 5 seconds into his commute, or it could have been 5 seconds before he hit the barrier. He may have taken control at that time, and then reengaged it later. He may or may not have been warned to take control before hitting the barrier. Tesla's statement is not clear on this at all.
If that was the case, they would have said so. Their vagueness here is telling.
In keeping with the "Autopilot" terminology, this was "Controlled Flight info Terrain". Tesla demonstrates their usual abuse of statistics. 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles is the average across all types of terrain, conditions, and cars. The death rate in rural roads is much higher than in urban areas. The death rate on highways is much lower than average. The death rate with new cars is much lower than average…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm obviously not privy to the details of the prior crash, but I'm pretty sure any healthy human would not deliberately drive into the barrier. The most likely scenarios I can think of would be not paying attention and drifting into the barrier, attempting to avoid a car merging into the lane (and not paying enough attention), or being struck by another car and being forced into the barrier.
At that particular point, what I see the most is people deciding that they either need to exit or not and abruptly crossing from one HOV lane to the other. Lots of crazy shit. So I'm not sure your scenarios have much relevance -- how many times have you driven through this intersection? I've been through it maybe a thousand times since it was built.
In reality, the current state of it is level 2 or so -- like an enhanced cruise control. You absolutely can't take your eyes off the road still which is what apparently happened here.
In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged... The rest may be true, may be germane, or may not be. The only part that matters to me until the results of the NTSB investigation is made public, is that the autopilot did this.
When the NTSB is investigating an aircraft or train accident we don't see the vehicle manufacturer rushing out a "well we told him to take control" statement and a dump of telemetry. At most they state "we are of course working with the authorities to establish the cause and any corrective actions" until the investigation is completed.
Tesla needs to mature from a blame-the-user software-industry mentality to something more befitting their responsibilities.
In keeping with the "Autopilot" terminology, this was "Controlled Flight info Terrain". Tesla demonstrates their usual abuse of statistics. 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles is the average across all types of terrain, conditions, and cars. The death rate in rural roads is much higher than in urban areas. The death rate on highways is much lower than average. The death rate with new cars is much lower than average…
I do take issue, however, with your claim that Teslas are “well constructed” - they are not. They are poorly designed, poorly constructed vehicles that feel and look cheap. Test one side by side with, say, a BMW 3-Series or a Volkswagen Golf and the difference in production quality will be palpably obvious.