New Footage Shows Tesla On Autopilot Crashing Into Police Car After Alerting Driver 150 Times::Six officers who were injured in the crash are suing Tesla despite the fact that the driver was allegedly impaired
It’s also so misleading that Tesla use the word Autopilot for what is basically adaptive cruise control and lane assist
150 more warnings than a regular car would give, ultimately it’s the driver’s fault.
Tesla actively markets their cars as ‘‘the car drives itself’’.
Source or stfu
There’s this sweet new website called Google. Try using that before you throat Musk.
Oh I tried, since I am so bad at googling please provide the source
Where I live you can right now go to Tesla’s website and buy a car with “Full Self-Driving Capability” with a small print that includes the disclaimer that it doesn’t make the vehicle autonomous, for whatever that’s worth…
FSD is a paid feature that i assume was not being used during the accident, autopilot was being usedAh I see, now that you’ve been proven wrong you’re pretending you asked a different question.
You admit that Tesla advertises a “Full Self-Driving Capability” feature, which is basically what the person you said “source or stfu” to.
Whether or not the feature was used in this instance is not what we’re discussing here.
We can have this discussion if you’re feeling like you’re up for it in good-faith, I think both are true that people are overall terrible at the activity of driving so more driver aids are overall better, but also current driver aids are very limited and drivers are not necessarily great at understanding and working within those limits.
They’re not the only ones, but Tesla is really the worst offender at overstating their cars’ capabilities and setting people up for failure - like in this case.
Yes you’re right
What was used in this accident had nothing to do with my question and yes it looks like tesla advertisement is misleading
It’s literally called autopilot
Here is a video from 2016 where Tesla claims that “the car drives itself”.
Sadly, Tesla has no such technology.
Do we have any evidence from the driver stating that he didn’t realize he was using a glorified cruise control similar to autopilot on an airplane?
If the driver was unresponsive in a normal car, it would stop.
TIL cruise control doesn’t exist
The driver was responding. If he didn’t respond the car would have stopped.
If this was a normal car he probably would have just crashed earlier.
Yes, even in self driving cars the driving is expected to pay attention in case they need to take control in unexpected events
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You’re completely right and I’ve never seen this for traffic stops in Europe, they’ll make you park somewhere safe, at the very worst, in the emergency lane, but even that is rare for traffic stops. The only times I see lanes blocked is when there’s been an accident/breakdown and then the first thing they do is bring massive light panels well ahead of the spot to make everyone clear the lane.
Hard to argue Tesla at fault when clearly the driver was impaired and at fault here.
It’s what you get when you design places that require cars for everything
wtf I love Tesla now
lol
Tesla is the new MAGA hat.
I’m not sure if the MAGA (and similar) crowd likes electric cars :-P
Officers injured at the scene are blaming and suing Tesla over the incident.
…
And the reality is that any vehicle on cruise control with an impaired driver behind the wheel would’ve likely hit the police car at a higher speed. Autopilot might be maligned for its name but drivers are ultimately responsible for the way they choose to pilot any car, including a Tesla.
I hope those officers got one of those “you don’t pay if we don’t win” lawyers. The responsibility ultimately resides with the driver and I’m not seeing them getting any money from Tesla.
Well, in the end it’s up to whether Tesla’s ADAS is compliant with laws and regulations. If there really were 150 warnings by the ADAS without it disengaging, this might be an indicator of faulty software and therefore Tesla being at least partially at fault. It goes without saying that the driver is mostly to blame but an ADAS shouldn’t just keep on driving when it senses that the driver is incapacitated.
Also from the article:
Data from the Autopilot system shows that it recognized the stopped car 37 yards or 2.5 seconds before the crash. Autopilot also slows the car down before disengaging altogether.
Don’t see how that’s a Tesla problem… Drunk/high driver operating their car incorrectly.
By driving it
Tesla wasn’t driving it, the drunk/high owner was.
Right
It was on autopilot, so technically the drunk wasn’t driving it. But he is the one responsible.
Autopilot doesn’t work that way, the drunk should have known that when he wasn’t drunk and not tried to use it that way.
It’s like the old shaggy dog story about the guy driving a camper, setting the cruise control, then going into the back to make lunch.
That’s not the fault of the cruise control.
Thanks for the ELI5 that I wasn’t aware of needing.
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I’m not so sure disengaging autopilot because the driver’s hands were not on the wheel while on a highway, is the best option. Engage hazard lights, remain in lane (or if able move to the slowest lane) and come to a stop. Surely that’s the better way?
Just disengaging the autopilot seems like such a copout to me. Also the fact it disengaged right at the end “The driver was in control at the moment of the crash” just again feels like bad “self” driving. Especially when the so-called self-driving is able to come to a stop as part of its software in other situations.
Also if you cannot recognize an emergency vehicle (I wonder if this was a combination of the haze and the usually bright emergency lights saturating the image it was trying to analyse) it’s again a sign you shouldn’t be releasing this to the public. It’s clearly just not ready.
Not taking any responsibility away from the human driver here. I just don’t think the behaviour was good enough for software controlling a car used by the public.
Not to mention, of course, the reason for suing Tesla isn’t because they think they’re more liable. It’s because they can actually get some money from them.
The video is very thorough and goes into the hazy video caused by the flashing lights being one of the issues.
That’s not the main problem. It is more like an excuse. The main problem has been explained in the video right before that:
Their radar is bad at recognizing immobile cars on the road. This means all objects. All obstacles on your road!
The emergency vehicles just happen to be your most frequent kind of obstacles.
The fallback to the camera is a bad excuse anyway, because radar is needed first to detect any obstacles. The cam will usually be later (=at closer distance) than the radar.
The even better solution (Trigger warning: nerdy stuff incoming) is to always mix all results of all kinds of sensors at an early stage in the processing software. That’s what european car makers do right from the beginning, but Tesla is way behind with their engineering. Their sensors still work indepently, and each does their own processing. So every shortcoming of one sensor creates a faulty detection result that has to be covered later (read: seconds later, not milliseconds) by other kinds of sensors.
Their radar is bad at recognizing immobile cars on the road. This means all objects. All obstacles on your road!
Teslas don’t use radar, just cameras. That’s why Teslas crash at way higher rates than real self driving cars like Waymo.
Their radar is bad at recognizing immobile cars on the road. This means all objects. All obstacles on your road!
I feel like this is bad tech understanding in journalism (which is hardly new). There’s no reason radar couldn’t see stationary vehicles. In fact, very specifically, they’re NOT stationary relative to the radar transceiver. Radar would see them no problem.
My actual suspicion here is that Tesla actively ignores stationary vehicles (it can know they’re stationary by adding its known speed to the relative speed) not in front of the vehicle. Now, in normal streets this makes sense (or at least those on the non-driver’s side). Do you pay attention to every car parked by the side of the road when driving? You’re maybe looking for signs of movement, or lights on, etc. But you’re not tracking them all, and neither will the autopilot. However, on a highway if you have more than 1 vehicle on the shoulder every now and then it should be making you wonder what else is ahead (and I’d argue a single car on the shoulder is a risk to keep watch on). A long line of them should definitely make you slow down.
I think Human drivers would do this, and I think an autopilot should be considering what kind of road it is on, and whether it should treat scenarios different.
I also have another suspicion, but it’s just a thought. If this Tesla was really using radar as well as cameras, haze or not, it should have seen that stationary vehicle further ahead than it did. Since newer Tesla cars don’t have radar, and coming from a software development background, I can actually see a logical (in terms of corporate thinking) reason to remove the code for radar. They would do this simply because they will not want to maintain it if they have no plans to return to radar. Think of it like this. After a few versions of augmenting the camera detection logic, it is unlikely to work with the existing radar logic. Do they spend the time to make them work together for the older vehicles, or only allow camera based AI on newer software versions? I would suspect the latter would be the business decision.
The question here is, could you see there was a reason to stop the car significantly (more than 3 seconds) before the autopilot did? If we can recognize it through the haze the autopilot must too.
Moreover, it needs to now be extra good at spotting vehicles in bad lighting conditions because other sensors are removed on newer Teslas. It only has cameras to go on.
Data from the Autopilot system shows that it recognized the stopped car 37 yards or 2.5 seconds before the crash.
Is the video slowed down? In the video, if you pause 2.5s before the crash, the stopped police car seems to be very close already. A (awake) human driver would’ve recognized the stopped police car from way more distance than that.
I find that it can be hard to tell when a car ahead is stopped, maybe the visual system on the tesla has similar limitations. I think autopilot is controlled by the cameras alone but I’m not super up to date on tesla stuff. I would assume even a basic radar set up could tell something was stationary from quite far away.
This source keeps pushing tesla propaganda. There’s always an angle trying to sell that it wasn’t the tesla’s fault
In fact, by the time the crash happens, it’s alerted the driver to pay more attention no less than 150 times over the course of about 45 minutes. Nevertheless, the system didn’t recognize a lack of engagement to the point that it shut down Autopilot
I blame the driver, but if the above is true there was a problem with the Tesla as well. The Tesla is intended to disengage and disable autopilot for the remainder of the drive after a small number of ignored alerts. If the car didn’t do that, there’s a bug in the Tesla software.
I think it’s more likely the driver used a trick to make the car think he was engaged when he was not. You can do things like put a water bottle wedged in the steering wheel to make the car think you have tugged on the steering wheel to prove you are engaged. (Don’t ask me how I know)
After 3 alerts, it’s off until you park. There are visual cues that precede the alert though and these do not count. I don’t recall how many there are and for how long, but you start by seeing a message asking to have your hands on the wheel, then a blue line at the top, them the line starts pulsing ,then you’ve got an audio alert that is the first strike. Three strikes during the same drive and you need to park before using autopilot again.
And those alerts don’t come if you’ve overridden the system by putting a weight on the wheel or something.
These days it’ll detect that and shut down anyway.
I’ve had my hand misdetected as a ‘defeat device’ once.
Like an orange?
Balancing an orange on the steering wheel?
Pressing it between the spokes of the steering wheel, jamming it in place.
The Tesla is intended to disengage and disable autopilot
What about: slow down, pull up to the right, stop the car, THEN disengage?
This is what it does already: https://youtu.be/oBIKikBmdN8
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/oBIKikBmdN8
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That wasn’t what it did here.
Like all the poor delusional fanbois here, you are going on the wrong assumption that some warning has been ignored. Just watch the initial video again and listen better this time.
I’m not even replying to the article or the original commenter. I’m replying to the person that said “why doesn’t the car slow down and stop when the warnings are ignored?” which is precisely what it does.
I’m far from a Tesla fanboy, and there is no shortage of valid criticisms against Tesla. However, misrepresenting what autopilot does in the event of a forced disengagement isn’t right either.
I think that’s what it was supposed to do. I remember seeing a few videos about this.
IIRC it doesn’t pull up to the side, but it does slow down slowly and safely until a full-stop.
Then the autopilot disengage.
i still think tesla did a poor job in conveying the limitations on the larger scale. they piggybacked waymo’s capability and practice without matching it, which is probably why so many are over reliant. i’ve always been against mass-producing semi-autonomous vehicles to the general public. this is why.
and then this garbage is used to attack the general concept of autonomous vehicles, which may become a fantastic life-saver, because then it can safely drive these assholes around.
I have a lot of trouble understanding how the NTSB (or whoever’s ostensibly in charge of vetting tech like this) is allowing these not-quite self driving cars on the road. The technology doesn’t seem mature enough to be safe yet, and as far as I can tell, nobody seems to have the authority or be willing to use that authority to make manufacturers step back until they can prove their systems can be integrated safely into traffic.
That’s similar to cruise control. Cruise control can be dangerous because someone could fall asleep (not having to manage your speed can afford up sleepiness) and the car wouldn’t slow down.
In my opinion, those options are all the driver’s responsibility to know their own limit and understand that the tool is just a tool and you are responsible to making sure your driving is safe for others. Tesla autopilot adds a ton of safety features that avoid a lot of collisions based on lacking attention, sleepiness, and actively avoiding other drivers faults. But it’s still just a tool and the driver is responsible of their own car and driving.
The problem with Tesla is that their entire marketing is based on “Our cars drives themselves”.
The difference is that cruise control will maintain your speed, but ‘autopilot’ may avoid or slow down for obstacles. Maybe it avoids obstacles 90% of the time or 99% of the time. It apparently avoids obstacles enough that people can get lulled into a false sense of security, but once in a while it slams into the back of a stationary vehicle at highway speed.
It’s easy to say it’s the driver’s responsibility, and ultimately it is, of course, but in practice, a system that works almost all of the time but occasionally causally kills somebody is very dangerous indeed, and saying it’s all the driver’s fault isn’t really realistic or fair.
A lot of modern cruise control systems will match the speed of the car in front of you and stop if they stop. They’ll also keep the car in the current lane. And even without cruise control, most modern cars will stop if a pedestrian steps onto the road.
It’s frustrating that Tesla’s system can’t detect a stationary police car in the middle of the road… but at the same time apparently that’s quite a difficult thing to do and it’s not unique to Tesla.
It’s honestly not too much to ask a driver to step on the brakes if there’s a cop car stopped on the road.
It’s actually not that hard to do, but Tesla is not willing to spend the necessary time and resources to solve the hard problems.
Maybe it avoids obstacles 90% of the time or 99% of the time.
99 is not enough!
99 means many many more dead people.
You need to go for 99.99%
Actually it’s absolutely realistic and fair. I don’t like Musk, or Tesla for that matter. But they make it pretty damn clear that you’re 100% responsible for the vehicle when using that feature. Anyone who assumes they don’t need to pay attention is a moron and should be held responsible. If a 747 autopilot system starts telling the pilot to take control of the plane and they don’t… we wouldn’t blame the manufacturer, we’d blame the shitty pilot that didn’t do their job.
If the driver gets lulled into a false sense of security by a convenience system like this and the automation fails, it’s one thing to blame the driver, and that may or may not be fair depending on how much trust you place in the average driver’s competence, but the (hypothetical) victim is still dead, and who we decide to blame won’t make one iota of difference to that.
I can’t wait to get smacked by a Tesla beta tester and have everyone debate whether the car or the driver is responsible for my innards being spread across 4 lanes. Progress!
$$$ that’s how.
It’s just ADAS - essentially fancy cruise control. There are a number of autonomous vehicle companies who are carefully and successfully developing real self-driving technology, and Tesla should be censured and forbidden for labeling their assistance software as “full self-driving.” It’s damaging the real industry.
It’s not “not-quite-self-driving” though, it’s literal garbage. It’s cruise control, lane assist and brake assist. The robot vision in use is horrible.
There are Tesla engineers bad mouthing the system openly.
Musk is a scammer and they need to issue an apology for all of the claims around autopilot, probably pay a great deal of money, and then change the name and advertising around it.
Oh, and also this guy should never drive again.
