Little News From Tesla

[Elio Amazed]

Yes, and another owner tried to duplicate it and it didn't almost crash.

This accident was clearly due to a combination of factors, the largest being the poor guy that lost his life. You're supposed to monitor AP at all times, which is why it's considered semi-autonomous, not autonomous. It's programmed to follow the lines on the roadway, and if you look at pictures at the scene the best marked line is the one that would lead the vehicle directly into the barrier.

It's a tragic accident.

Yes. I couldn't agree more.
But the reality is this is going to happen again and again because people will not monitor anything.
If it weren't so, then no-one would be having accidents involving texting because no-one would be texting while driving.
People KNOW it's one of the most deadly things they can do, but they go into denial and do it anyway because it's what they want to do.

A perfect example of that mindset was the video of the Uber driver that killed the woman with the bicycle.
No-one will convince me that on some level didn't know better.

Bottom line is, you give people very dangerous toys and some will misuse them everytime.
And that will cost lives. There's and those of the people around them.

 

[johnsnownw]

Yes. I couldn't agree more.
But the reality is this is going to happen again and again because people will not monitor anything.
If it weren't so, then no-one would be having accidents involving texting because no-one would be texting while driving.
People KNOW it's one of the most deadly things they can do, but they go into denial and do it anyway because it's what they want to do.

A perfect example of that mindset was the video of the Uber driver that killed the woman with the bicycle.
No-one will convince me that on some level didn't know better.

Bottom line is, you give people very dangerous toys and some will misuse them everytime.
And that will cost lives. There's and those of the people around them.

Sure, but you could say that about many things. High performance sports cars are given to anyone that can afford them, but there is no need for vehicles that can travel 3x the highest legal speed.

You can't force people not to abuse technology, you just have to find ways to mitigate the impact of their doing so. Personal responsibility should still be a thing, even though it's easier to blame the tools.

 

[Coss]

https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week’s-accident

An Update on Last Week’s Accident
The Tesla Team March 30, 2018
Since posting our first update, we have been working as quickly as possible to establish the facts of last week’s accident. Our hearts are with the family and friends who have been affected by this tragedy.

The safety of our customers is our top priority, which is why we are working closely with investigators to understand what happened, and what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future. After the logs from the computer inside the vehicle were recovered, we have more information about what may have happened.

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. 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 wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.

The reason this crash was so severe is because the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had been crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash.

Over a year ago, our first iteration of Autopilot was found by the U.S. government to reduce crash rates by as much as 40%. Internal data confirms that recent updates to Autopilot have improved system reliability.

In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident.

Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents – such a standard would be impossible – but it makes them much less likely to occur. It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists.

No one knows about the accidents that didn’t happen, only the ones that did. The consequences of the public not using Autopilot, because of an inaccurate belief that it is less safe, would be extremely severe. There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. We expect the safety level of autonomous cars to be 10 times safer than non-autonomous cars.

In the past, when we have brought up statistical safety points, we have been criticized for doing so, implying that we lack empathy for the tragedy that just occurred. Nothing could be further from the truth. We care deeply for and feel indebted to those who chose to put their trust in us. However, we must also care about people now and in the future whose lives may be saved if they know that Autopilot improves safety. None of this changes how devastating an event like this is or how much we feel for our customer's family and friends. We are incredibly sorry for their loss.

I saw this earlier, and another item that Tesla left out is the deaths they have had in China. It throws their calculations off. But hey, it's China, they'll make another one that looks just like few that were killed.
If they are going to quote numbers, shouldn't they include all the figures?

 

[johnsnownw]

I saw this earlier, and another item that Tesla left out is the deaths they have had in China. It throws their calculations off. But hey, it's China, they'll make another one that looks just like few that were killed.
If they are going to quote numbers, shouldn't they include all the figures?

You'll have to clue me in on the deaths in China that were AP related. As far as I know there has only been one death that was supposedly while AP was running(the family wouldn't let Tesla look at the logs to confirm), and the Chinese authorities determined it to be operator error...

 

[Coss]

You'll have to clue me in on the deaths in China that were AP related. As far as I know there has only been one death that was supposedly while AP was running(the family wouldn't let Tesla look at the logs to confirm), and the Chinese authorities determined it to be operator error...

I gave up what I know from reading about it today. They didn't include a lot of details, because I don't think they had much.
It was mentioned the same way I included it, so you have everything I already had. Sorry, they didn't get into much detail because I don't think they had any; China has a habit of only giving parts of a story, and very little detail.

 

[johnsnownw]

I gave up what I know from reading about it today. They didn't include a lot of details, because I don't think they had much.
It was mentioned the same way I included it, so you have everything I already had. Sorry, they didn't get into much detail because I don't think they had any; China has a habit of only giving parts of a story, and very little detail.

Then I think it's a little misleading to present it as Tesla leaving out deaths in China, in order to present a narrative that there are more AP deaths than what's being reported...IMHO.

The fact is that most accidents where the driver has stated AP was active have turned out to be false. No real surprise, as people tend to place blame away from themselves. Of the deaths that have occurred with AP active, all of them have been due to negligence on the part of the driver. All semi-autonomous systems from ALL manufacturers have the caveat that certain stationary objects may not be detected by the system...and ALL AP deaths have involved the vehicle hitting stationary objects (except where the FL crash went under a semi trailer that was moving horizontally). This is not a coincidence.

Anyway, as someone who uses AP on a daily basis I can tell you that it's not perfect, but if you use it as designed it's fantastically helpful, and extremely safe.

 

[Rob Croson]

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/...na-involved-autopilot-government-tv-says.html

I read about that accident in China a while back. There was a dashcam video from the car involved. The video shows the car just driving perfectly straight and smooth, right into the back of a street sweeper truck. The driver obviously was not paying attention, and did nothing to avoid or prevent the accident. The car was damaged. The log files could not be read remotely, and the owner of the vehicle would not cooperate with Tesla to allow the data to be recovered.

“Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers, and we therefore have no way of knowing whether or not Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash,” a Tesla spokeswoman, Alexis Georgeson, said in the company’s statement. “We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so,” she said of the car’s owner, Mr. Gao’s father.

...

Police investigators concluded that Mr. Gao was responsible for the accident, CCTV reported. But in July his family sued the dealer who had sold the Tesla.

The driver’s father, Gao Jubin, told CCTV he thought his son had been relying on Autopilot to drive the car and so was not watching the road when the crash took place.​

Jalopnik did a very good article on it in February, with lots of updated information. It has some pictures, and the youtube video from the dashcam.

https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting-tesla-over-aut-1823189786

According to the Tesla: "Yaning, Tesla said, took no action even though the road sweeper “was visible for nearly 20 seconds.”"

 

[Made in USA]

Another Tesla owner recreated the accident situation but in the exact same location in California. It would have crashed.

https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier-markings-fatal-model-x-accident/

Now I think that autonomous vehicles will eventually be safer than humans, but until they get better I suggest the drivers keep their hands on the wheels and pay attention. Fully trusting the systems would be foolish.

I also noticed they have replaced the crash barrier. Looks like they need better lines.

 

[johnsnownw]

Another Tesla owner recreated the accident situation but in the exact same location in California. It would have crashed.

https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier-markings-fatal-model-x-accident/

Now I think that autonomous vehicles will eventually be safer than humans, but until they get better I suggest the drivers keep their hands on the wheels and pay attention. Fully trusting the systems would be foolish.

I also noticed they have replaced the crash barrier. Looks like they need better lines.

The lines and the design of the gore point are the issue, not AP. AP, as well as all semi-autonomous systems, use the lines as reference points to stay within the lane.

CalTrans has been found culpable in accidents like this before:

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the San Jose, California, crash was the failure of the California Department of Transportation to properly delineate the crash attenuator and the gore area, which would have provided improved traffic guidance.

 

[Made in USA]

So johnsnownw, you think Tesla has absolutely no issues with their AP and that is all the fault of the highway crews?
Or, maybe the operator, but Tesla is in no way responsible at all?

I guess when that Tesla in Florida drove straight into the side of a semi truck it was bad lane markings as well?
Oh right, that was totally the operators fault too.

Your bottom line then is that anybody who uses the Tesla AP and is in a accident, it is either the highway department or the operators fault?

Sounds to me like it is the fault of the operator for using the Tesla AP in the first place.