Responsible Tesla self driving car kills driver.

foophil said:
Considering this is the first fatality in 130 million autopilot miles driven when the national average is one fatality for every 93 million miles, that is a good sign the current assist technology is working well...
Click to expand...
How many crashes without fatalities have occurred with Tesla on Autopilot?
 
foophil said:
Considering this is the first fatality in 130 million autopilot miles driven when the national average is one fatality for every 93 million miles, that is a good sign the current assist technology is working well (though of course there is always room for improvement, like getting other humans to stop driving their cars into oncoming traffic).
Click to expand...

Meaningless statistics, as I mentioned upthread. I don't know what Americans call young men who think that flashy driving at high speed will give them bigger dicks and make them socially popular might be, but in the UK they're often called 'boy racers'. Also 'wankers'.

The national fatality stats include these boy racers plus people with poorly maintained cars and so on and so on. The various high-risk groups are unlikely to be driving Teslas.
 
NPR this morning mentioned he might have been watching a movie on his center console while driving.

You don't have to be a young fast driving guy to be a wanker, or to be in a high risk group. In this case the high risk was "ignoring the road and playing with your toys." Stupid rich guys are another class of wanker.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
NPR this morning mentioned he might have been watching a movie on his center console while driving.
Click to expand...
The truck driver goes as far as saying it was a Harry Potter movie on the screen. But Tesla says that its onboard screen will not play movies when Autopilot is engaged. The police report makes no mention of a movie being watched.
 
CNN said:
Experts have cautioned since Tesla unveiled autopilot in October that the nature of the system could lead to unsafe situations as drivers may not be ready to safely retake the wheel.

If Tesla's autopilot determines it can no longer safely drive, a chime and visual alert signals to drivers they should resume operation of the car. A recent Stanford study found that a two-second warning -- which exceeds the time Tesla drivers are sure to receive -- was not enough time to count on a driver to safely retake control of a vehicle that had been driving autonomously...
Click to expand...
If I interpret that correctly, Stanford says that it could be "too late" when the Tesla tells you that you need to take over the driving.


http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/30/technology/tesla-autopilot-death
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
You don't have to be a young fast driving guy to be a wanker, or to be in a high risk group. In this case the high risk was "ignoring the road and playing with your toys." Stupid rich guys are another class of wanker.
Click to expand...

Very true.

I'm also very bothered that the non-visual systems on the car didn't pick up the truck. This car sounds like rather an unsafe 'toy'.
 
As I said upthread, the technology is at a stage I'd compare to tiller steering. It will improve.

Smarter machines makes stupider operators, though, and eventually the thechnology be such that on certain roads only digital driving will be allowed, and on highways there will be automation only lanes. Old analog drivers with our old analog cars will be disparaged on social media and made fun of by comedians.

And then the fun really begins, when NOBODY knows how to drive any more than people now know how to crank start an engine and quickly yank the ignition advance rod into running position before the engine stalls.
 
The truck driver said that the Tesla continued for hundreds of feet after going under his truck and even knocked down a pole and ended up in a lawn. It's possible that the car didn't even apply the brakes or properly steer after the roof was sheared off.
 
William Parcher said:
How many crashes without fatalities have occurred with Tesla on Autopilot?
Click to expand...


I'm not sure. My Google-Fu is not working as all I'm getting is pages and pages of the current story.


GlennB said:
Meaningless statistics, as I mentioned upthread. I don't know what Americans call young men who think that flashy driving at high speed will give them bigger dicks and make them socially popular might be, but in the UK they're often called 'boy racers'. Also 'wankers'.

The national fatality stats include these boy racers plus people with poorly maintained cars and so on and so on. The various high-risk groups are unlikely to be driving Teslas.
Click to expand...


All the more reason to get as many cars automated rather than letting the idiots drive.

And hand waving this statistic away as meaningless is a bit silly. It can be useful as a place to start. Plus, those wankers are on the same roads as the cars with autopilots. Sure, that subsect of society is a higher risk to themselves, but they are also a risk to others on the road as well.

But you do make a good point. I guess a more meaningful statistic would be comparing the same age group and socioeconomic group as the Tesla drivers who are using the assisted driving mode. I don't think that has been done yet.


Jrrarglblarg said:
As I said upthread, the technology is at a stage I'd compare to tiller steering. It will improve.

Smarter machines makes stupider operators, though, and eventually the thechnology be such that on certain roads only digital driving will be allowed, and on highways there will be automation only lanes. Old analog drivers with our old analog cars will be disparaged on social media and made fun of by comedians.

And then the fun really begins, when NOBODY knows how to drive any more than people now know how to crank start an engine and quickly yank the ignition advance rod into running position before the engine stalls.
Click to expand...


This can't come soon enough. Nearly 1.3 million people die in auto accidents around the world every year. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 15-29. In the US, while it is only 37,000 a year that die in crashes, that is still over 1,600 children a year. Technology which can lower that number should be embraced and not poo-poo'd on.
 
William Parcher said:
The truck driver said that the Tesla continued for hundreds of feet after going under his truck and even knocked down a pole and ended up in a lawn. It's possible that the car didn't even apply the brakes or properly steer after the roof was sheared off.
Click to expand...

I read similar in The Guardian report. Scary. Conceivably the crash disabled electronic systems, but you'd hope the brakes would always default to a rapid stop in the case of a catastrophe.

Is there any record of the speed the car was doing? SOunds like it must have been damn fast. iirc British trailers have a substantial bar low along the side to prevent cars from sliding right under the body of the trailer, or at least slow it down a lot. No idea what the US regs. might be.

I'm surprised this Tesla technology is licenced for general use, given how easily it can be abused/misunderstood. I see that the autosteer system is openly marketed as "beta" :rolleyes:
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
As I said upthread, the technology is at a stage I'd compare to tiller steering. It will improve.

Smarter machines makes stupider operators, though, and eventually the thechnology be such that on certain roads only digital driving will be allowed, and on highways there will be automation only lanes. Old analog drivers with our old analog cars will be disparaged on social media and made fun of by comedians.

And then the fun really begins, when NOBODY knows how to drive any more than people now know how to crank start an engine and quickly yank the ignition advance rod into running position before the engine stalls.
Click to expand...

The skill of knowing how to drive would tend to be rather useless in a world where nothing exists that needs the be driven, wouldn't it? I fail to see why that's a horrible thing.
 
Checkmite said:
The skill of knowing how to drive would tend to be rather useless in a world where nothing exists that needs the be driven, wouldn't it? I fail to see why that's a horrible thing.
Click to expand...

You have more faith in software developers than I do, then. If nobody knows how to operate a device manually they won't be able to when it's required. These "smarter" cars are going to be stone clubs for quire a while longer before the technology settles down.

Heck, we can't even get point of sale credit card machines to have anything resembling a consistent interface.

Car makers are experimenting with increasingly bizarre shifter gizmos.

Car stereos (aftermarket, not factory that I've seen yet) have gotten completely unusable because engineers make more features available but the interface requires both hands, a flashlight and several minutes p undivided attention to crawl through the layers of nested menus just to turn the bass down for NPR.

We still don't have even crude heads-up-display to allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road, and now we're adding television screens to the dashboard guaranteeing some number of idiots will kill themselves and others because they couldn't stand to not be stimulated and distracted from their own skull contents by shiney colors for a few minutes.

I don't need to adjust the valves on my car, because engineers solved the underlying problem.

I don't foresee a lack of need to keep my eyes on the road for many years yet, because engineers don't live in the real world and marketing keeps strapping more and more crap on.
 
I heard on the radio that this guy had six tickets.

Let's just suppose that people in these Teslas are more likely to get in accidents (maybe the autopilot lures too many into watching movies or going to sleep). So what should happen? Well, if that were the case -- and it probably isn't -- then the cars should probably lose their self-driving capability. Why should all of the responsible, law-abiding AR-15 Tesla owners get punished for the behavior of a few jackasses? Because that's how the world works. Some people ruin it for the rest of us.

It would be great if sixteen year-olds were allowed to drink (even though some are going to do it anyway). It would be great if adults could all have guns, grenades, and endless lines of cocaine. It would be great if we were just generally more evolved and responsible. But we're not.

Obviously prohibition is not the only approach. When it comes to toys like self-driving Teslas and (most) guns, instead of presuming responsibility, we could simply make it so people demonstrate responsibility.
 
Clark Howard on the radio was talking about his Tesla and from memory he said he took his hands off the wheel, leaned back, and let it drive him down the freeway.

When these self-driving cars arrive, are we going to be sitting in the driver's seat in a state of near panic, ready to take over at the slightest sign of malfunction? I'd just as soon drive.
 
Cain said:
I heard on the radio that this guy had six tickets.
Click to expand...

8 in 6 years, according to The Guardian report here, which quotes Associated Press. How did he retain his licence with such a crappy driving record?
 
Fudbucker said:
Clark Howard on the radio was talking about his Tesla and from memory he said he took his hands off the wheel, leaned back, and let it drive him down the freeway.

When these self-driving cars arrive, are we going to be sitting in the driver's seat in a state of near panic, ready to take over at the slightest sign of malfunction? I'd just as soon drive.
Click to expand...

Amen.
 
I'll trust a self driving car eventually, but it'll be a darned long time. I'm a dad, and if I could poke my iPhone to send the minivan off to go pick up kids from school without me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. When the machine is reliable. Until then, no thanks.


I expect we'll see a drunk "but the car was driving" case in the news sooner rather than later.
 
Last edited:
Fudbucker said:
Clark Howard on the radio was talking about his Tesla and from memory he said he took his hands off the wheel, leaned back, and let it drive him down the freeway.
Click to expand...
There is conflicting information at play here. The Tesla Company says that if you take your hands off of the steering wheel the car will start squawking at you to put them back. If you don't do that it starts slowing down.

What is the truth?
 
William Parcher said:
There is conflicting information at play here. The Tesla Company says that if you take your hands off of the steering wheel the car will start squawking at you to put them back. If you don't do that it starts slowing down.

What is the truth?
Click to expand...

Probably me misremembering what Howard said.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom