Tesla, Musk likely aware of Autopilot deficiencies behind Florida fatality, says judge There is "reasonable evidence" that Tesla and Elon Musk were aware of deficiencies in Autopilot that caused the 2019 death of a Model 3 owner, a Florida judge has ruled, opening the way for yet another liability trial. Judge Reid Scott from the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County ruled [PDF] last week that the evidence …
This is why Tesla never claimed the technology was fully autonomous, it was a more a driving aid that unfortunately worked too well.
If you fly a plane on autopilot and don't keep an eye on what its doing then you're quite likely to hit something or run into terrain. It won't happen very often because the sky is a big place but the technology won't cope with all unusual circumstance, it just reduces routine workload that allows the driver to focus on other tasks. Its the same with a car. Which is ultimately the problem with Tesla's technology -- it works too well so you can't stop people from believing it can do what it can't (and there are a lot more things to run into on the road than in the air)\.
This is why Tesla never claimed the technology was fully autonomous
O RLY?
"a Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person." — Elon Musk in 2016 (YouTube link)
I know all you haters love to confuse FSD and Autopilot in order to misrepresent Tesla's claims, but they are not the same thing. Autopilot is the glorified adaptive cruise control system which comes with every Tesla, and that's what we're talking about in this case. In your video link, Elon is talking about FSD, the rather expensive Full Self-Driving upgrade; that is not relevant here.
And fraud, both securities for the multiple pump and dump stock scams he's run via Twitter, and all the false representations he's knowingly made about the capabilities of Tesla's autonomous driving software. Not to mention... well, I guess being a giant fuckwit isn't a crime, but when you get to the scale of Twitler, you start to wonder if maybe it should be.
The point is that users think it's the same, because Tesla is not making it clear that there's a difference. Even if it had been accidental it would be an issue, but after the years of discussion around the precise definition of what "autopilot" means, it's not accidental anymore — By this point, Tesla is deliberately misleading users by keeping using the term.
No, they don't, and no they don't. FSD costs $15000, while Autopilot is standard in every Tesla. That's Tesla making it very clear that there's a massive difference. It would be a pretty hard sell to get anyone to pay for FSD if they were also giving the impression that Autopilot did the same thing. I've yet to see any evidence that a single user is actually confused on that point.
"This is why Tesla never claimed the technology was fully autonomous"
In legal filings, Tesla has warranted to regulators that Autopilot/FSD is only Level 2 driving assistance. Autopilot is not expected to be improved past that designation according to Tesla.
This doesn't mean that they spend any time making sure people realize this if they don't have an electron microscope handy to read all of the fine print that's included with a whole bunch of dryly written stuff warning people to not slam the door on their or other people's body parts, to make sure to keep any plastic covers away from small children, etc. The fanbois are also out in force vlogging about how amazing the control system works and how one can bypass any safeguards that the car uses to detect if your hands are on the wheel. Every couple of new cycles there will be a statement from Elon about how much better the newest beta software release has become (a day or so before yet another Tesla on Autopilot piles into a stopped emergency vehicle). In the last earnings call, Elon boasted about how "wild west" the US is about allowing testing of autonomous autos on public streets. The developers only have to assume liability for any incidents. Like that will be any comfort when a school bus carrying the school football team, band and cheerleaders back from a game is struck by a random Tesla owner putting FSD through some extreme testing.
...and there's the fine print.
The phrase "greater safety than a person" is important. People make mistakes driving all the time resulting in accidents that cause damage, injury and death. We lose literally tens of thousands of people to auto accidents every year. Anything a vehicle can do to reduce this toll is welcome but the criteria we use to judge machines is obviously far more strict than that we use to judge people, I suspect just because "Musk" is involved (who personally designed the entire vehicle range and all its systems?).
The real problem with Tesla cars is that they're really expensive to fix, even after a minor fender bender. A relatively minor accident can write off the entire vehicle even though the vehicles should be simpler to build and so cheaper to fix.
BTW -- I'm not a Tesla fanboi, I don't own one, don't own Tesla stock or anything like that. I am an engineer, though, so I recognize what they're trying to do and I don't react emotionally to whatever their CEO is up to this week. (In the "anti-semite" stakes Musk is a non-starter compared to someone like Henry Ford -- he was not only an open antisemite but he fired members of his workforce who were Jews back in the 1920s. Musk, as far as I can tell, has just stated some "inconvenient truths". Details....details.....)
Then it is on Tesla to restrict where it can be used, so that when it detects something it doesn't know how to handle (like cross traffic) it is disabled. They never warned customers "you can only use this on highways with controlled entry/exit", and obviously an inability to handle cross traffic would mean it cannot be used on any city street.
Where were the warnings? The same year as that accident Musk claimed that within a year people would be able to operate their Tesla as an autonomous taxi making them $100K a year. Why do Tesla fanboys constantly excuse this with the lame example of how autopilot works on an airplane? If you took a poll of average people, I'll bet a majority believe autopilot is completely autonomous on an airplane.
Even if you use that excuse for autopilot on a technicality, they have for several years been selling something called "full self driving" which it absolutely isn't. It isn't even the most advanced autonomous driving system!
I haven't seen it lately. But I think GMC or Chevy has a type of FSD they are advertising on TV. I caught in the ad that it only worked on "select" roads. It would seem like you could use a built in GPS to figure out if a road was on the select roads list.
So if cross traffic is a problem for autopilot, don't let work as independently on roads that have cross traffic.
OK, so what does the combination of 'auto' and 'pilot' mean to you, given that this term has been in use for decades in airplanes to fly autonomously (but in a space that is heavily restricted and controlled, a little factoid that Tesla cannot claim)?
Potayto, potato from the perspective of most car users.
Here's something else obvious.
A lot more people know the term "autopilot" than fly planes or know what it really does. There's even a colloquial use of the term "on autopilot" and I CBA right now but I'm sure a quick search would suggest the colloquial use is actually far more common than the aeronautical one. Hardly anyone knows what the autopilot in a plane does, hence the joke in Airplane!
I'll tell you what Tesla DID know --- what most people understand by the term 'autopilot' --- even if they are technically wrong. Whatever Tesla do or don't claim about the technology, they had already started the deceit by using that name.
The Tesla had right of way but the road layout was dangerous. The visible part of the road was clear when the truck driver started to pull out. The Tesla had time to slow down and prevent the accident.
The fun bit about this ruling is it does not depend on Tesla terms and conditions. The key feature is Musk statements that he must have known were false (evidence and a judge's ruling like "funding secured"). Sometimes a bus load of street fighter lawyers cannot save you from stupid comments on social media.
"He got away with calling some poor guy a pedo because apparently it is a term of humour in South Africa."
I fully expected to see some slap down in that case. The defense was ludicrous. It would make no difference that marijuana is legal in Canada if I'm arrested for possession in Singapore. (I don't smoke anything, just for the record). The threshold for defamation or slander will vary quite a lot from country to country and this case wasn't being heard in SA so I don't see the excuse as being valid.
> because apparently it is a term of humour in South Africa.
At most, was humour in the same way “faggot” was “humour”. If he said it to anyone apart from a friend, he’d have lost a few teeth… it was not “generally acceptable behaviour” anywhere.
I’m a South African living in the US now. I used to think Musk a sort of hero making it in the US the way he did. Now I hope I never have the misfortune to be affected by him or anything he’s touched.
I don’t think there are many South Africans left who feel honoured for the association to him.
"Why would he pay attention? He had Autopilot engaged."
I know you are being sarcastic, but some people saying the same thing elsewhere aren't.
Autopilot shouldn't have been abled to be engaged in the first place as the road(s) weren't suitable. Secondarily, the fine print says not to do it, but these people went ahead and did it anyway and now we can't asked them if they actually read the warnings or did what we all do and just scroll to the bottom and click the button so we can get on with engaging the magic new self-driving feature (sarc).
Autopilot shouldn't have been abled to be engaged in the first place as the road(s) weren't suitable
You know, if you're claiming your systems are so good they practically drive themselves, then it should not be beyond the reach of the more probable to have the thing detect if the location is actually suitable for enabling it. Also, it has GPS - a simple starting point would have been checking applicable speed limits.
Last but not least, even if the roads were suitable, I'd say that a big MoFo HGV straight across your path counts by any logic as something worth slowing down for. Which it didn't. Again.
"And consider how many people die in road crashes in the USA compared to say France, Germany or the UK"
This is the same as the city telling me their usurious business license fees are much less than those of another city. The comparison isn't valid. Since the city gives me nothing in return for having a business license, any price is automatically too much.
"But then
it depends on who had right of way, what if any stop signs there were and did either the tesla or other vehicle ignore said signage."
There's Right of Way and then there is the law of gross tonnage.
I just watched a "Court" TV show where a city councilor that had the right of way hit a bicyclist that didn't in an intersection and didn't stop, continuing on to some "important meeting" that it would be bad to to be late for. It was a big impact, not just a minor contact so there was no reason why she wouldn't have noticed.
"Right of Way" is a guiding principal, not a "get out of jail free" card.
Not merely a video, but allegedly a Disney animated movie.
Of course, other sources insist that it was, ahem, somewhat harder core. One persistent fellow says that it was Italian, starring a Hungarian who later became a Euro MP. And her horse. I couldn't possibly comment.
I would imagine detecting cross traffic is exponentially more difficult using optical cameras instead of LiDAR. It's just so much more difficult to judge distances with a two-dimensional image. It can be done, but it's just so much easier if you have something giving you that data to begin with.
I think this is the essential problem with the Tesla approach. If you are trying to do it with visual spectrum cameras you are almost already trying to build a better than human brain to interpret the images, when (albeit more expensive) sensors are available that can literally measure the difference to an object in millimetres.
Strange, the law says exactly the same but BOTH hands on the wheel unless there's a driving reason for otherwise (e.g. changing gear or indicating).
It's almost like we don't need fancy tech-barons trying to tell us what they intended when the law is very, very clear, even for Tesla and other automated vehicles.
'"it was technically a 'very hard thing' for the hardware and software to account for cross traffic," according to one engineer'
A semi truck doesn't move at rocket speed, so "cross traffic" is red herring. Not really a different recognition problem whether the truck was moving or stationary. "Can't tell when the road ahead is blocked by a truck" would be a more realistic description of the defect, and that's a pretty basic defect. As indeed in the case of an AImotive "autonomous vehicle" (model unknown) reported in a 2002 "disengagement report" (where a driver had to take over) that nearly collided with a vehicle in another lane because "[o]ur software has a limitation in that we do not (yet) cancel lane changes once it has been initiated. [...] This isn’t a software bug, it’s a known issue that is being worked on."
The detachment from reality beggars belief in both cases.
Less and less so by the day between his wide open mouth subjecting him to lawsuits and his stellar business acumen at running X-itter.
Face it. Musk is rich because he got very, very lucky with Tesla and rolled in the dough. But he's proving to be a one-hit wonder who is flailing hopelessly at most of his other endeavours since.
Only the fanbois still think he's above reproach and untouchable; the real world is proving that theory very, very false.
OK, but then you can't claim to be eco to your neighbours, nor can you then set yourself up for thousands in extra, even on omnium non-insured costs if the thing catches fire* and we're not talking a few quid here, that apparently can run into the thousands depending on how much effort it takes to put the fire out. One towing setup I know states it gets a Toasty Tesla report about weekly (versus twice annually for ICE).
* The costs come from the effort to put it out:
- hiring the special container and the location to park it to let the fire exhaust itself
- the water filling up that container
- decontaminating that water before it can be disposed of (that alone can cost thousands)
Just ask your insurer. You may have to pressure them a bit, it's not something they like to discuss.
"One towing setup I know states it gets a Toasty Tesla report about weekly (versus twice annually for ICE)."
I suppose that will depend on where you live. I see reports on the news about flaming EV's, but when I see a car-b-que on the roadside, it's an ICE.
For all problems or activities theres always the choice of not doing it.
For example you can do cocaine or pretend theres a safe way to do cocaine or maye you can NOT do cocaine.
The problem is not chosing public transports over cars or over ICE or EV, maybe the choice is to CUT DOwn on living your life commuting ?
Over here the minibus taxi industry create their own traffic rules and there is extremely little law enforcement. E.g. if there are three lanes they can be left-turn lanes, right-turn lanses U-turn lanes, parking bays, whatever the occasion requires.Talk about getting cross in the traffic. I don't think these Teslas stand much of a chance under such driving conditions.
"if there are three lanes they can be left-turn lanes, right-turn lanses U-turn lanes, parking bays, whatever the occasion requires."
How would they program a car to expect all of that? It's hard enough to have a car navigate itself assuming everybody else is doing the expected. The first DARPA Grand Challenge was a big dose of WTF. I was covering it for a magazine and had a chance to talk with some of the teams. That gave me a ton of insight into the sorts of things they had to consider. The race was off-road with all vehicles supposed to be going in the same direction with no cross traffic, traffic signals, stop signs on an unimproved road (Dirt). Nobody finished the first time with the leader that was making a good go breaking a drive shaft, something their vehicle model was well known for.
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