Sleeping Tesla driver wonders why his car ploughed into 11 traffic cones on a motorway A Tesla Model 3 driver reportedly fell asleep with the car's misleadingly named "Autopilot" lane-keeping feature enabled – and promptly crashed into a pile of barrels. "This accident was my fault. I fell asleep at the wheel. I wasn't sleepy prior to falling asleep or I would have done something about that. That's actually the …
Obvious. The gods and goddesses enjoy a could laugh at the expense of humanity.
You have not apparently read any greek/roman mythology. Most of the other religious gods are just purely hateful, vindictive, and generally nasty - just like real life.
A certain minister, attempting to show the Love of God, once gave a sermon about blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, blessed are a whole series of disadvantaged
. He eventually got on to blessed are the thick although he was much more PC about it
and carried on to explain that winners of the Darwin Award were gathered back into the breast of the Lord.
It was a later sermon virtually stating that "you can be the biggest thief, rapist, murderer in history, but as long as you believe in "God" you go to heaven, but if you save others lives, give all your wealth to charities, you go straight to hell if you don't believe in that god", which turned me into an atheist.
Assuming from "minister" it was a vaguely Christian/Christian derived church, the latter sermon is a rejection of traditional/mainstream Christian beliefs that 1) repentance, not belief is what is required for forgiveness and 2) sincere non-believers may be saved.
it’s actually even more perverse: the “right” God isn’t “equally available” at all locations: if you’re living in say India, your Gods claim your allegiance, so you wouldn’t necessarily have much option to switch to Christianity. If Allah on the other hand turns out, after death, to have been the correct choice, then we are most unfortunate not to be living in Saudi Arabia.
This was discussed at length at Vatican 2.
I believe (this was along time ago, I don't recollect much of it) that the formula adopted implied that,say, a Hindu or Jain who never encountered Christianity but endeavoured to lead a good life would be saved because the Catholic Church existed, thus changing somewhat the meaning of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The Catholic Church had finally had to face up to the fact that the "world" of the first 1400 years AD was obsolete and the idea that Catholic missionaries would convert the entire world was nonsense.
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Which one? Adonai, Elohim, Yahveh, Ba'al or Rimmon? You make your sacrifices and you take your pick.
(The Omrids, perhaps the most successful Hebrew dynasty, worshipped Ba'al. The Yahvists eventually got back into power and of course got to write the book, hence the bad press for Jezebel. Personally I wish she'd managed to get rid of that bigoted bore Elijah.)
"That would mean God is Evil"
Total number killed by God in the Bible
- Using biblical numbers only: 2,821,364
- With estimates: 25 million
https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
It's an autopilot - it continues in a land based equivalent of straight and level flight.
The fact that is isn't called 'self drive' says more about it that people having no idea what an auto pilot does. Indeed in the article the driver (asleep or not, he was still legally the driver) takes responsibility for the incident and then wonders why the cameras didn't pick up the cones as something that needed avoiding.
That's a good question - and one that deserves a response. Particularly since from a cursory inspection they had retroreflective bands on them - did they dazzle the cameras with reflected IR?
"the Autopilot system is designed as a driver-assistance aid, despite its idiotic and misleading name"
As far as I am aware, an autopilot on a plane maintains altitude, speed and direction. Some may also do course changes on a preprogrammed rope, or altitude changes on command. However, the pilot must maintain control and stay alert at all times.
The Tesla Autopilot is absolutely an Autopilot system. It is a driver-aid with a set of caveats, every bit as sophisticated (if not more sophisticated) as the caveat-laden aviation equivalent (which requires millions of pounds worth of specialist ground-based navigation aids and doesn't have to worry about pedestrians even conflicting traffic at 30,000ft thanks to armies of controllers maintaining separation).
Tesla's Autopilot is an incredible bit of engineering. The fact some retards think that pilots just push a button and the planes fly themselves (and that cars will now drive themselves) is entirely on them. In the case of Tesla, the only people who have been killed are the jeb-ends who ignored the loud and forced warnings to this effect every time Autopilot is engaged. They haven't killed any innocent road users (unlike Uber), which in the scheme of things I would treat as a win. I have no problem with people removing themselves from the gene pool so long as they don't take anyone else with them.
"The average idiot doesn't know how autopilots work."
If your technology is using a word that a significant percentage of your users misunderstands, perhaps fatally so, then the problem is your use of that word.
Calling your users idiots for not understanding the word is not a solution.
I strongly distrust technology like this, mostly because I have encountered Nissan's take on this and have found it to be an utter pain in the bum.
Nissan cars have a millimetre radar unit hiding behind the logo panel. This millimeter wave is supposed to detect obstacles in the road ahead, but the defective unit my car was supplied with (now replaced under warranty) detected a whole lot more than that. Road signs, for instance, were thought by it to be deadly obstacles worthy of jamming the brakes on to avoid, which doesn't half wake the tailgating driver behind you up.
The replacement unit is fully working, or as working as this wretched abomination ever can be. The radar is absorbed by water, so a rainy evening or even slight sleet will render this autonomous braking unusable (the machine shows a warning that it has deactivated the autonomous braking system).
Worryingly, Nissan is now working on an even more sophisticated system, which also ropes in a camera into this mobile circus of a system (although Nissan's response to the diesel NOx problem is rather more robust now, and involves adblue).
I'm interested why they dont include a dead mans switch in the cars for this very topic. I mean trains have had driver assist aids for ages, and yes they found through unfortunate experience that yes they make the drivers sleepy or unattentive, thats why they have various dead man switches in them, so that if the person has a heart attack falls asleep etc, the train willl bring itself to a gentle stop. Maybe thats exactly what tesla needs...
Not sure whether it is the same on newer tube stock, but with older stock I'm familiar with, the stop is anything but gentle, being analogous to passing a signal at danger, whereupon the compressed air in the braking system is evacuated to atmosphere, forcing the air brakes to assume their fail-safe state (no air pressure) causing them to clamp the wheels to bring the train to an emergency stop.
On the Underground the signalling system is designed to ensure that, even if a train is running at the maximum speed limit enforced on a given section, there is no chance of a train passing a red signal and hitting another train.
Whereas with roads, you get motorists that have a tendency to drive like the lorry in Duel, which is the reason for pile-ups when someone in front brakes unexpectedly. One hopes that self-drive systems work out the safe braking distance added to the thinking distance (like on the tube, there should be a safety factor embedded in the calculation), plus a multiplier for adverse weather conditions, and remain at least that distance away from the vehicle in front. (Is that chart still printed on the back of the Highway Code?). Trouble is, that distance is often big enough for the person behind to want to fill it.
With beacons mentioned in my previous post it should be possible for a self-drive car to signal to the car behind it's exact intentions in a more measured way, rather than relying solely on the binary indications of brake-lights.
With that kind of beacon telemetry in place you could potentially design systems to sync cars together, reducing latency at traffic lights.
"Trouble is, that distance is often big enough for the person behind to want to fill it."
Someone *always* moves into the safe space I leave between myself & vehicle in front on UK motorways (never lucky enough to travel on the roads at a time when traffic density low enough that it won't happen).
But in UK, traffic police numbers are very low so you can get away with all sorts of inconsiderate driving as chance of getting caught minimal ("tailgating" is very common).
Only thing they bother about in UK is speeding (and that's mainly via automated camera systems, get teh occasional mobile police speed traps too)
"Only thing they bother about in UK is speeding"
You might be "happy" to know that the latest generation of speed cams are pitching up the ability to detect tailgaters - both at fixed locations (relatively easy) and at distances of up to 1km.
You might be "happy" to know that the latest generation of speed cams are pitching up the ability to detect tailgaters - both at fixed locations (relatively easy) and at distances of up to 1km.
But will they do anything with the information? Anything meaningful?
As a motorcyclist, I'm much more likely to get hurt by someone tailgating than I am by speeding - me or them. In fact in many jurisdictions the cops encourage riders to travel a little faster than traffic so they stay well ahead of cars to prevent this, and that's also why lane splitting/lane sharing etc is legal in most of the world - we're more likely to be in an accident where we're hit from behind than anything else.
So I applaud and pray for any moves that lessen tailgating - but it's the meaningful use of the information that's important. Just sending someone a 'tut tut' letter does nothing (like the file-sharing letters), sending the plod with a towtruck to take their car and license - that'd get people re-thinking fairly quickly.
> The car makes a noise if the driver's hands leave the steering wheel.
I was recently in a hired Jag FPace (horrible car) that had cruise control (the adaptive bit *never* worked, it always said it wasn't appropriate for the conditions) and lane departure warnings.
The lane departure system had two modes: "vibrate steering wheel" which did an uncanny job of simulating hum lines, and "steering correction" which 'nudged' you in the right direction, you could steer through it, but it felt like you were steering up a kerb.
I tried (on an empty stretch of motorway) holding my hands half an inch off the wheel and the steering system did it's job - the car always pulled to the right, and 'bounced' off that lane marking, then continued to pull slightly to the right and so bounced off again. On a curve in the motorway it managed quite well.
It took it a *long* time to tell me to put my hands back on the wheel.
Assuming I had had a heart attack - what should the car do?
Stopping in lane 'n' of a motorway is pretty dangerous, but the car isn't equipped to change lanes.
In a non assisted vehicle I'd have plowed off to the side pretty quickly I imagine - depending on whether my foot had come off or pressed down on the accelerator as a result of the heart attack.
It's not a simple question - and applies equally to basic driver aids as it does to more complex ones. It's only once a vehicle is fully autonomous (or at least capable of it) that the question becomes simple. I think the Tesla has sufficient capability to pull over if there is an obvious hard shoulder - I don't know if it will though.
"I'm interested why they dont include a dead mans switch in the cars for this very topic"
They do - the car expects regular resistance applied to the steering wheel. If it thinks the driver is not responding, it tries a couple of warnings and ultimately, bring the car to a stop, with the hazard flashers on.
The fact that is isn't called 'self drive' says more about it that people having no idea what an auto pilot does.
Tesla can argue until they're blue in the face that they only meant to invoke the avionics equipment, but nobody's going to take them seriously if they try to claim they didn't know people would take it to mean the sort of autonomy implied by the typical usage of the term. Not to excuse the driver, but it's beyond time to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and start holding them to account.
Yes, it's time to hold the driver to account - it's pretty well described by Tesla...the fact that people don't read the warning is not on Tesla, it's on the drivers not reading (and heeding) the warning.
Human nature I'm afraid. While this is totally on the driver (you are responsible if you're behind the wheel, no ifs buts or maybes (unless the car does something crazy and unexpected like override your input and swerve without need or warning) the simple fact of the matter is humans tend to either not read such descriptions or gloss over them and only take out the little they understand - which is often quite distorted in its own right.
I don't absolve Tesla of any of this, but I do understand the difficulty of passing on even simple instructions to people. Especially when you give it such a stupid name as "auto pilot"! And buying a car that has 'full self drive hardware' in it, 'well my boyfriend tells me hardware is like the computer, and if it has the full self-drive computer in there it can fully drive it self. I didn't bother to listen to the sales guy, he said it couldn't fully self drive but what does he know? He's just a car sales guy!'
According to Google and Amazon they need many hundreds and thousands shots for each.
That's why Telsa conducts field training. Personally, I think the fair thing to do is just allow the War of the Robots. Obviously, to be fair and permit innocent plastic barrels (radar transparent? really?) a fighting chance, those barrels also need to be AI equipped.
This will naturally allow improvements in the ability for inanimate objects to detect Teslas, and vice-versa. Then to make it even more fair, fit the barrels with dispensers so water becomes a non-Newtonian fluid*. Barrels could thus still perform heroic acts of self-sacrifice for non-'Autoeuthanasia' piloted cars, and help Darwin out with other vehicle owners.
*cheap solution (or is that mixture?), ie simple corn starch or maybe custard powder. No idea if custard would help or hinder battery fires though.
Those barrels remind me of the Vulcan Phalanx close-in weapon system.
Whilst that is a flippant remark, the guidance system uses Ku-band radar and FLIR to detect and track incoming projectiles.
Not true and this is a well known limitation of automatic braking. Fully stationary objects, especially if they aren't recognised as a vehicle don't work very well. If the cones were moving slowly then it would work or if the cones had moved slowly then stopped it would.
Lidar would also have worked in this situation.
However regular AEB from most (all?) will struggle and probably fail here. It is easy for them to be detected and work with stationary objects it's just your car will be driving like a kangaroo for many journeys through town and you'll be constantly rear ended. There AEB only kicks in when it is sure.
Back in the 1990s there was a crash of an American Airlines flight (995) in Columbia that was caused by improperly programming a flight computer. The plane had gone off course and the crew had programmed a correction into the system. Unfortunately they had already passed the next waypoint so the plane turned around and flew into a mountain. All systems were functioning normally but the pilots still needed to use a bit of common sense. This time they overlooked a detail and it killed them.
Tesla's autopilot is a fine system but its not infallible. Any driver who relies on it without overseeing what its doing deserves the best that Darwin has to offer. The whole point of all of these driver aids is to take the routine workload off the driver and so enhance driver safety. (That's why ABS is so useful -- under the right circumstances a skilled driver can out perform ABS but under the vast majority of driving conditions the computer will always out perform the driver. The driver still has to command the vehicle to stop, though.)
Incidentally, that was no motorway, that's an Interstate in the US. This won't be the first time a careless driver has run through a set of traffic cones that's trying to protect roadworks or some such. Just be thankful that all we have is squashed plastic, not squashed highway workers.
Haven't looked at the video (I don't watch stupid-porn) but most every US highway repair crew has one (or more!) huge trucks/trailers out behind them. The trailers do nothing but catch the brainless four-wheeled moths irresistibly attracted to men-at-work.
Why more than one trailer? Furthest back and far away from the work crew is to catch the usual drifters. Far enough that the big trucks will be slowed down or stopped without threatening the crew. The second trailer is quite close to the crew, for the ADHD twitchers, to minimize casualties.
Kinda silly that highway crews have more backup systems than banks, huh?
"Kinda silly that highway crews have more backup systems than banks, huh?"
IMHO, not really.
Highway crew fail to safeguard themselves, with redundancies = dead or injured highway crew.
Bank CEO fails to safeguard their bank = golden parachute, early retirement, knighthood.
If you reward failure, you get more failure. If you punish failure, then you get redundancies.
"Tesla's autopilot is a fine system but its not infallible."
I disagree. I believe that it lies in the middle ground where it works well enough much of the time, but has a strong tendency to lull drivers into complacency, or in this case, sleep. Since this guy was not actively engaged in driving the car, he dozed off. There just isn't much viewing excitement on an interstate highway. Terror occasionally, but not excitement. If you are just sitting there bored out your mind, your brain may just take that as a cue to switch off for a little while.
I regularly drive a Nissan LEAF with ProPilot during a 51 mile commute on an interstate highway. My car is terrible in the edge lanes (far left or far right) because that’s where weird stuff happens. In particular, on-ramps, off-ramps, and lane closures confuse the system. The system works very well when in a middle lane (and there is no construction).
One morning I was sleepy and accidentally nodded off in the middle lane, snapping back awake five miles later. Fortunately, nothing happened.
Pretty sure that people in non-Semi Autonomous cars also fall asleep at the wheel. In fact it's a pretty massive problem generally. The only difference is that with a Semi-Autonomous system you have a reasonable chance that you will not end up dead, whereas a standard car, falling asleep at the wheel for any significant amount of time will be a near certainty that you will have a major accident.
I am curious to know if the car stopped itself after the collisions or if the alleged driver woke up and stopped it manually.
Based on the header pic on the article, the incident appears to have happened in North Carolina (approximately here); read into that what you will.
Having watched the video, I can't believe that anyone could have slept through the noise of the impacts. Being jolted awake by barrel crunching, to find yourself being squeezed between lane closures and a big truck, might have required immediate change of underwear.
I'm not going to join in poster-bashing - it seems to me that sharing the near-miss information is contributing to a more safety-conscious regime. Exactly that culture is what contributes to air travel being as safe as it is.
Icon: TTTR - Teach Tesla To Read
I fell asleep in that stretch some twenty-odd years ago, driving across the state late after graduating and moving out of my college apartment. My mid-80s Buick was not so good at self driving - I took out a bunch of median poles and destroyed the car, but was not injured and fortunately no one else was involved. Glad it was only superficial damage for this gentleman.
That night I did receive a ticket for driving too fast while being asleep. It was certainly true and I paid it, along with enhanced insurance rates for some years My parents also paid for the DOT to replace the median catcher for the next sleepy fool - my graduation/survival present!
In NC most road construction sites are not populated; often cones are put up at the extreme ends and stay up for the years it takes to finish a project. Not to justify running the barrier but odds are good no one was actually at the site beyond the other drivers. From the video I'm glad the driver did not instinctively jerk to the right upon waking!
The fault does not need to lie with just one element. The driver was clearly not operating the vehicle competently. No one will reasonably dispute that. But I have to ask why, with all the smarts that a Tesla supposedly has, no safety feature noticed the prominent, easily-recognisable, large obstacles directly in the car's path? There is clearly a major fault in the autopilot and/or collision avoidance system, either in detection or decision-making, to allow this to happen.
Even if the driver is at fault, you can still blame the seatbelts that chose to disconnect and eject him out the windshield because it was a rainy day on a Wednesday, and sue the car/seatbelt manufacturer. I don't see why such a glaring fault in the automation here should be excused any more than a faulty seatbelt would.
I was recently considering a new car with all the recent "bells and whistles" as a safety aspect, now being a 70 yr old senior. After test driving several, I decided not. As a person who loves to drive and always has, some years I put 70,000+ miles on a car. And admittedly I like to drive rather fast at times, though much less these days than in my youth. My decision to keep my 2004 Pontiac Bonneville GXP was based on the idea that I can still see OK, I can still use my mirrors and I can bend my neck (plus the Bonnie is in excellent condition). The last thing I want is complacency that will lull me to sleep and a false sense of the infallibility of an "auto-pilot". Driving is still a serious job, assuming a person values their life and the lives of others.
I'm with you, Elsmarc. I've been driving for many years and really don't want my car doing anything unexpected while I'm at the controls. If I don't want to drive, I'll take the train or con somebody else into doing it so I can let my attention wander. When I can no longer set the cruise control and keep the car in the lane myself, it's time to hand in my license.
Hopefully by the time I'm 70 I'll be able to own a proper autonomous vehicle where I can and will deliberately sleep while it is driving me down the interstate. Well, I'll try to, falling asleep is something I've never been good at so I'll probably be surfing the web, reading a book or watching a movie.
That's the thing though, this is an all or nothing thing. You can't do it halfway like Tesla is trying to do, because it is too easy for drivers to ignore the road or fall asleep when the car can keep going in a straight line by itself. You either need to be an active participant in the driving process, or a passenger. There's no in between.
From Wikipedia:
"Its 3.7:1 final drive ratio is the most aggressive found on any car in its class."
The rest of it sounds nice but I really wouldn't want the final drive trying to bite my legs off. (It's FWD, I was paying attention.)
US motor industry speak is sometimes beyond parody. Perhaps it's that kind of hyperbolic nonsense that led to "Autopilot" for "Fancy cruise control".
Another agreement !!
Too little to do, especially on a dull monotonous motorway/freeway, and lethargy soon strikes.
I hate driving down the M40/42 for exactly this reason, the scenery is rubbish, the road is too straight, and until you near London, not enough curves or hills.
Sometimes, the only way to stay awake is to keep yourself busy, so using the inside lane as it is supposed to be used, pulling out, overtaking, and pulling in at every opportunity to keep you eyes moving and your brain in action.
My current 11 y/o car has cruise control; other than a few plays when I first bought it, it has never been used.
That's a good point, and one I'd also considered.
It's often claimed that the safety features on modern cars (ABS, airbags, seatbelt tensioners etc) have encouraged people to drive in a more dangerous manner and take more risks.
Once the car is capable of driving itself to a reasonable standard, does that encourage drivers to become even more complacent? The current evidence of cases such as this would suggest a trend towards that.
When I started driving there were fewer cars on the roads and about 7000 people got killed every year.
Now there are more cars and it's about 2000.
I will take the safety features and put up with the idiot drivers, thanks*.
*Though I'm sympathetic to anyone suggesting ground to ground missiles for use against SUV and BMW drivers.
Let's do away with the misleading 'Auto Pilot' name and call it what it is.
And since you mentioned it...
Mrs Commswonk & I went to the cinema [1] yesterday evening and one of the very loud advertisements before the film was for another make of car equipped with "ProPilot Technology".[2]
Below all the hype (in a rather smaller font) there was a very brief appearance (as in blink and you'll miss it) of a disclaimer which boiled down to "may not always work". Caveat Emptor, as usual.
[1] The story might be a bit juvenile but the CGI in The Lion King is breathtakingly good.
[2] Am I the only person who gets pissed off by marketing adding the word "Technology" to all and sundry these days?
AI isn't a computer or calculator, AI understands and answers:
]un·der·stand
/ˌəndərˈstand/
1.
perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or a speaker).
"he didn't understand a word I said"
2.
interpret or view (something) in a particular way.
"as the term is usually understood, legislation refers to regulations and directives"
How?
Through AI-parsing AI gets patterns, which helps is to detect the correct dictionary definitions, and having these definitions AI understands texts. For more please read "Eliminating bias in AI", by Patchen Barss, University of Toronto; https://techxplore.com/news/2019-07-bias-ai.html
1. perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or a speaker).
Each dictionary definition word means something in the dictionary, almost each dictionary definition has a at least one synonym, some has up to 500 synonyms. Why to make a new dictionary training your data on unknown texts, why to spend resources correlating them, while there is a well established dictionary with all proper and well-established connections? Train your data on well-known dictionaries! And your AI will literally understand you!
Am I the only one that watched that and thought it was impressive that the car appeared to choose hitting the plastic barrels rather than swerving into the truck? It certainly looked like it started to steer into the next lane and then changed its mind. Obviously the brakes would have been a better option, so maybe I'll wait until it comes out of beta...
" It may have continued looking at the lines on the road"
It may have done. My point was that if you watch it, it doesn't look like that. The car clearly started veering to the right before the truck caught up. When the truck is level it then seemed to "change its mind" and turned back.
I've never driven a Tesla, perhaps they veer around like that all the time anyway? Regardless, my point wasn't what did happen, it's that first impression from that video is that it made a good decision. We're constantly being told car AI can't make such choices, so this is a big thing if it did.
Honest ? Not quite enough. Yes, he recognizes that he fell asleep, and then blames the car for not stopping.
Sorry bud, you are at the wheel, you are responsible.
Your fancy Tesla has a bunch of stuff to help you, not replace you.
Pascal, I can't up or down vote your comment. Yes, he is ultimately responsible, but he does make a good point that the car is supposed to have an emergency braking system. Most of those braking systems only operate at lower speeds to prevent a bigger accident from slamming on the brakes at a higher speed and spinning out. I'd also hate to have that system override me if I was well aware that I had hit something trying to get away from a more dangerous situation. It's not nice to contemplate, but there are situations where I would run somebody over and drive away really fast.
These systems will slow and accelerate the car in normal traffic speed modulation. In emergency the car warns first and brakes if there is no driver response, if the driver gets on the brakes then the car hands over to the driver.
In the video, the car does seems to be slowing to a stop after finding that the lane to the right is occupied by a truck towing a truck. It seems to violate one of the rules of defensive driving, which is to make sure that you always have an escape available.
It probably was a bit confused that the truck was moving backwards, rather than "thinking" that it was a truck towing a truck. This is arguably what makes AI so impossible.
What is needed in self-drive environments is a "beacon" on bollards saying "no you can't use this lane" and a "beacon" on the towed truck saying "this is not what you think it is, use yer brain". This beacon would be supplied to recovery companies to fix on their vehicles when towing.
*A beacon being something that emits a warning radio signal which is recognised by all self-driving cars.
I do not think the problem of self driving cars can even start to be solved by the Tesla approach. As with railways, it is a systems problem. The roads need to be fixed first, and that is going to need a system of machine readable signs using radio which link to cars.
5G is a start. Millimetre wave transceivers are a first step. "Smart" cones and traffic lights next. Cars develop in parallel.
Tesla or Nissan will not be part of the solution because they are still wedded to the "individual driver" mode.
The question is whether neoliberal economies can deliver large projects depending on co-operation.
The roads need to be fixed first, and that is going to need a system of machine readable signs using radio which link to cars.
Yup, make the roads/signs etc car-friendly. We have enough tech out there to do this now, and fairly reliably as well I expect. There will need to be some redundancies applied, and make the signals obvious (ie don't just have a "50k speed limit" signal but a "50 k northbound from [co-ordinates] on [road]" or something, so you can have different limits being transmitted in close proximity without issue. And repeat the signals a short distance down the road, especially approaching road works and pedestrian crossings etc.
Have the cars read the signs by camera only as a backup.
Honest ? Not quite enough. Yes, he recognizes that he fell asleep, and then blames the car for not stopping.Sorry bud, you are at the wheel, you are responsible.
Never fallen asleep at the wheel, twice technically but not actually been at fault in minor accidents (ie I hit the back of the vehicle in front, pretty much a strict liability in NZ unless the person who causes you to swerve into another lane sticks around and takes the blame - wish I had a dash cam 20 years ago!). I do recognise however that even the best of us can have a bad moment, and I have had the odd time where I've gone from feeling awake and alert to being asleep in a matter of moments (perhaps 'something in the air'?). The guy should've stopped if he was feeling tired but as others have said, the advertising of the car's features can easily lull an owner into a false sense of security. He does say he felt awake.
But yes, he was responsible for the car. However, the car had a braking system that failed to do what it should've done. Perhaps he brought the car because of the safety features rather than the penis-envy factor (oh look, the bacon delivery drone is about to arrive!) knowing full well that should he make a mistake or not see something the car would help him out.
He's at fault for falling asleep, but Tesla is at fault as well for their car failing to detect the markers. Hopefully Tesla will give him a fairly decent refund and he'll learn to be more careful.
That is a really good video. Stepping away from the Tesla specific conversation, I'm impressed at how well the highway crew's safety measures worked. The large but light plastic barrels appear to have done minimal damage to the vehicle. They also don't seem to have risked the vehicle going out of control and causing a more severe accident than was already in the cards. And I'm guessing that the impact noise rapidly woke the driver up, and thus he was able to pull to the side before hitting the truck. Seems like a good outcome all around.
Now I'd like to see a video of vehicle colliding with the safety truck, to see how well it's engineered.
The insurance company will get it back one way or another.
Meanwhile, in what sort of world does a headlamp cost that much? It looks as if Musk has thought up a long term way of making Tesla profitable. (Morgan I believe works the same way - the profit is from spare parts, not car sales.)
(Morgan I believe works the same way - the profit is from spare parts, not car sales.)
That at least used to be the standard with everything. At least up until the Japs started making very reliable vehicles (by comparison) thus killing much of the spares market :)
And that price seems rather cheap compared to what Honda sells parts for in NZ. Even their dealers recommend you buy from overseas or aftermarket!
If the Tesla Not-An-Autopilot-Autopilot is switched on, the car starts beeping loudly and obnoxiously the moment one of the driver's hands is off the wheel. Not both hands off the wheel, just one.
Keep your paws on the 1000 and 1400 positions, just like it sez in the novice driver's manual when you took the Learner's Permit test as a teenager.
And the beep feature cannot be disabled.
And by loud and obnoxious I mean something that would wake up the dead.
If you want to drive with only one hand, or whatever, you can't enable the so-called Autopilot.
>Plus you're gonna have false alarms when the driver releases a hand to steer (as turning often can't be done with both hands in grip all the time, unless your body is made of plastic).<
A turn requiring that degree of input should pretty much never be made at highway speeds--at least on a public road. Racing etc is a different application, of course.
Not even to swerve? A sudden commotion directly in front of you, for example?
Nope, not even to swerve. Unless your car has bloody terrible steering!
Then there's this thing called "shuffle steering" which is taught at the better driving schools. While your hands aren't fully gripping the wheel[1], both hands are on the wheel.
[1] With the steering on my car, I don't really need much of a grip - and mine's considered 'heavy', so I'm not fully in support of that comment :)
Shuffle steering is fine for when everything is in control, but hopeless when things deviate suddenly. I took advanced driving classes some years ago (taught by police drivers - i.e. the "White Caps"), and during one of the classes got chatting to the instructor about my rally driving. He said, without any leading, that I should remember that what I was learning on the course was good, but that I was probably more advanced than most advanced drivers simply because I know what a car will do when it is "loose" and also have better appreciation of the energy inherent in a moving vehicle. He also said that police drivers tend to drop the shuffle when it all kicks off because it is too slow to respond to changes in situation. As long as both hands are controlling the car (including changing gear), there isn't much can go wrong, he reckoned - though he didn't seem to be taking Murphy into account with that comment!
though he didn't seem to be taking Murphy into account with that comment!
Yup..
I remember once pointing something out to an instructor when I was going for a license test. He chastised me on NOT having my thumbs inside the steering wheel. I pointed out that I've been driving tractors for the last x years, beginning when I was a lot younger, and I learned real quick that broken thumbs can be caused by just that.
What may be good and proper control in one circumstance is a bloody stupid idea that'll get you hurt in another!
For motorway driving, shuffling is still normally best - at those speeds your average driver ain't gonna swerve enough to need more and still keep the car upright!
Oh - and though we drive in different lands, thanks heaps for doing more than usual driver training!
I can think of lots of times when you only have one hand on the steering wheel.
Adjusting the lights
Changing gear
Changing the heating / ventilation
Changing the radio settings
Opening a window
Putting sunglasses on or off, especially when approaching a tunnel
Reversing
Gesticulating at other drivers (ok you probably shouldn’t do that)
An alarm that went off every time you took one hand off the wheel would drive most people crazy in a couple of miles. If it needs to be automated I’m sure eye tracking technology already exists.
> I can think of lots of times when you only have one hand on the steering wheel.
Adjusting the lights: No, if you rely on Tesla's Autopilot at night, you're asking for it.
Changing gear: While driving on the highway at 85mph on Autopilot?
Changing the heating / ventilation: Thermostat?
Changing the radio settings: You can switch the Autopilot off for a minute or two, change your radio settings, and then switch it back on, you know?
Opening a window: At 85mph on the highway? Why?
Putting sunglasses on or off, especially when approaching a tunnel: Aren't you required to slow down before entering the tunnel, which would disable the Autopilot anyway?
Reversing: How exactly do you get to reverse while driving on the highway at 85mph?
Gesticulating at other drivers: Really? That's a feature you can't live without?
Here's my conclusion: if you aren't willing to endure the annoyance of a minor inconvenience that could save your life, or prevent you from ending up in a wheelchair, let evolution take its course. Switch on the Tesla Autopilot at night, on a highway that goes through 5 tunnels. And then start a very intense argument with someone sitting in the backseat, while texting on your smartphone. Pay no attention to the road ahead of you.
A simple delay counter would solve all of those issues.
Take one hand off the wheel for more than 10 seconds then sound an alarm. That should give enough time to cover all cases of adjustments that a driver might make whilst driving (adjusting radio, heating, sunglasses etc.)
I do think the OP has made a good suggestion, and with a little tweaking it could be a viable solution.
Tesla haven't made it easy to perform tasks like that (radio, A/C) blind (i.e. without having to give the task in hand your full attention) because they have that bloody huge touch screen in the car. With no tactile feedback, you can't simply shift your gaze for a second to put your hand on the correct controls and then adjust by feel as you would in an older car. You need to keep your focus on the screen to watch what you're actually pressing, and in those instances I guess that "Autopilot" is actually a benefit as it's an extra set of eyes on the road.
The Tesla ergonomics are truly awful.
In my cars I don't need to look to reach any of the controls. The one that still has an ignition key, I can't see the lock from the driver's seat but I rarely miss it first time.
Muscle memory has been evolving for a long time, it's far from obsolete.
Tesla haven't made it easy to perform tasks like that (radio, A/C) blind (i.e. without having to give the task in hand your full attention) because they have that bloody huge touch screen in the car.
Yup. I think in every case where a tesla (or similar design of car) is involved in an accident the car manufacturer should be paying at least 50% of the costs regardless of what happened. Good situational awareness has saved me from being involved in crashes more than once, and seeing things happening before the first contact probably saved my life at least once. If I'd taken my eyes off for a moment to change volume or station or heater controls or... I might not have seen what was about to be an accident (with the other driver mostly at fault) and avoid it. Sometimes all it takes is backing off when someone is changing lanes and clearly not seen you're occupying the space they want (and a blast on the horn is often a bad idea!).
So where the cars have twat screens for all controls and nothing tactile, at least 50% culpability on the makers by law in any accident regardless of the other circumstances.
"Luckily nobody was injured and the only damage was to Richard's pride (and those barrels)."
Nope. If you watch the left-side camera (which Richard FS helpfully posted a link to in the description of the front camera video), you'll see the left-side mirror getting wiped off the car by one of the first barrels he hit. That's gonna cost a few bucks to replace! And if a plastic barrel could do that kind of damage, I wonder what hitting a bunch of them did to the front of the car? I suspect he's a few thousand dollars down now -- and that's before any fines that get levied.
But he was indeed lucky. Another 30 m and he would have plowed into a trailer-mounted electronic sign and done a whole lot more damage to the car (and possibly himself).
I think he needs to re-evaluate his stance on the use of LIDAR. Plastic cones, who would have predicted those?
The camera based system should have also recognized the obstructions. Those weren't pansy little cones, those were the full monty. If they'd been painted concrete or filled crash barriers at a gore point, the car would have happily continued full speed into those too.
"Well the car has plowed at full speed into at least two semi trailers crossing the road, plus a parked firetruck, so it doesn't recognize big metal objects either."
The count is at least 3 fire trucks and a stopped police cruiser along with the lorries (lorry's?), a bunch of guard rails ...... Punch up "tesla fail" on YouTube for the greatest "hits".
Aside from Autopilot issues, the Teslas can accelerate so hard that it's easy to wind up through shop window if you push the pedal a bit too hard leaving your parking spot. Driver error, certainly, but it demonstrates that 0-60mph times under 5 secs aren't always a good thing.
People keep harping on LIDAR just because the Teslas don't have it, not because it is a magic bullet. It has it's own problems, and does not to date work any better out in the real world. Just piling on more sensors won't make these things more reliable. If you overlay an extra sensory layer, you have to de-conflict all the sensor inputs, and attempt to correlate all of their results, while removing artifacts, and determining which objects in each sensor layer are part of the same set. These problems have stalled the F-35 AR system, with billions spent on r&d.
Tesla moved away from Mobile-Eye partly due to the issues integrating all the radar contacts with the camera systems. Adding LIDAR would make that harder. Also, de-conflicting LIDAR from dozens of vehicles at a time, all traveling at different speeds and possibly directions is an unsolved and HARD problem. I'd expect them to add IR/thermal cameras before lasers or other "always active" transmit systems.
That said it clearly should have braked and probably stopped in it's lane. It's tricky because of all of the conflicting decisions the machine learning algorithm had to make. The car would have been fine if it hadn't sandwiched between the center divider and that truck. That situation was asking the system to identify and prioritize a lot of conflicting threats, and its possible it actually recognized the cones were non lethal and the weighted result was that crushing the cones scored as the path of least threat.
Keep in mind that piling the brakes on a panic stop in the fast lane is a GREAT way to get rear ended, as the cars behind you may not see the cones, or be paying attention at all themselves. I know the system in my KIA would assuredly ended the same situation in an accident, probably a messy one involving going under the truck.
Tesla is 95% hype and promises.
The only thing going for it is the high acceleration possible with an electric motor, but you have to be a bigger fool, and pay even more money, to get the highest acceleration.
Its promoted as a luxury car, but in reality, it is an extremely basic car (on par with the 1960's mini) that goes fast. Perhaps they would be better promoting it as a race car.
Ludicrous performance, Ludicrous driver.
A few weeks ago, during a torrential downpour, I was behind a Model X in a slip road/on-ramp to enter a dual-carriageway. No surprises that the Model X accelerated quickly to join the traffic - and then continued too close to other traffic for the conditions.
"Perhaps they would be better promoting it as a race car."
Many of them don't do so well on the track due to heating issues.
There was a video on YouTube from guy that took his Model 3 out to the track for a day and wore out the brakes. I'd have to find the video again, but I think it cost north of $2k to repair them. I'm guessing he might be the first person to order brake replacement parts from Tesla. It's not like there will be any 3rd party parts for the stock brakes yet. The friction brakes are going to last a long time on an EV in normal circumstances. I wonder if they are specc'd a bit lower than if they were installed on a petrol car.
Only early versions had significant overheating issues.
Of course you can wear out your brakes in a day on a track that can and will happen to plenty of cars. I've seen cars from some 'premium' brands get through a rotor/disc a day when used on the track. You don't state whether it was the performance version with the upgraded brakes. so unsure what the actual issue was, but it would be easy to wear down a set of pads enough that you grove the rotors/discs and boil the fluid.
I used to work at a racetrack, brakes would pop quite often.
but it would be easy to wear down a set of pads enough that you grove the rotors/discs and boil the fluid.
I've often debated/wondered on this. Surely, when you have a matching set of grooves in pads and disks (or drums for those of us with ancient machinery), assuming the surfaces aren't glazed, surely there'd be more contact area thus more braking force available?
Has this ever been decently measured? I'd love to know coz I have a car that can barely outbreak a fully laden supertanker, and aftermarket bits aren't exactly dime-a-dozen.
You aren't grooving them due to the brake pads (the pads are softer than the disks). It is either because you have remove the pad material and are now metal against metal or you have a small stone/metal filing or other debris caught in the pad.
If your brakes are spongy, then you either have previously boiled fluid/low fluid, your lines are shot, your cylinders have a leak, your brakes aren't balanced or you have pads/disk issues. Generally.
You aren't grooving them due to the brake pads (the pads are softer than the disks).
Sorry, I meant once they are grooved :) So, fairly new pads on grooved disks, where the pads have matching grooves in them to nicely mesh with the disk. Is there enough of a contact area increase, or will independant movement between the two mean it's probable the grooves in the pad are slightly wider/narrower than those on the disk, and the resulting gaps meaning there's actually less contact area? Guess I'll have to take the micrometer next time I'm at the wreckers and have a look for a groovy set of brakes...
This Tesla autopiliot is in exactly the same class as Boeing MCAS. Faulty and potentially lethal software that's flaws have been covered up and hidden.
The only thing for it is criminal charges for those at the top.
This video was not a remotely equivalent failure. The MCAS overrides manual inputs on the controls and would be similar to the stability/traction control on a car. If the driver had tried to swerve away from the truck on manual controls, and the Tesla had steered in into the barrier that would be a meaningful comparison.
The driver was ASLEEP and deep enough that they missed both the driver alert beeps from the autopilot and the cones smacking his car. The cars only mistake was that it might have been able to break harder, but we don't know how close any cars behind it might have been. The MCAS was a poorly disclosed system that would fight a pilots active inputs in critical situatuons, the the pilots were not aware of.
This isn't a case of Tesla using "customers to find the bugs" the customer WAS THE BUG. Starting a Luddite moral panic won't make the roads safer. The Tesla probably saved that persons life by keeping the car from going wide in the turn and under the front of that truck.
Do I really need to point out here that users don't read messages?
Not really when the comment was there to address the claim that "There’s nothing to suggest it needs driver input."
Clearly there is something there to suggest it needs driver input. Whether people choose to ignore it or not was not part of the discussion.
Do I really need to point out here that users don't read messages?
Which is why when the Tesla Automotive needs to gain the attention of an inattentive Tesla "Driver", the Tesla Automotive should activate a Tesla Coil on the driver's seat as an alternative means of gaining attention.
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FSD is not £15k but £5,800. It is only FSD hardware, there is no Full Self Driving option as a feature yet, just the promise that one day it will be available.
There is no way any Tesla owner would not know the limitations of system, because not knowing how it works will mean that you'll forever be switching it off accidentally and the driver alert warnings will 'drive' you mad. It is clear everywhere that the driver needs to remain fully alert and in control unless you are outside the car summoning it out of your garage (where you just need to watch it).
As anyone who's been trained to use an autopilot knows, they will happily fly your plane into the side of a mountain - it's job is to hold the flight path you programmed in and nothing more.
Sounds to me like the Tesla autopilot is actually a bit better than that - it can change from the chosen course and speed in order to avoid issues.
And if he replies, "I need the car to get to work, buses don't run in my area, and I can't afford a taxi?" Do you tell him, "Tough luck. Game Over. Better Luck Next Life"?
Yup. Sorry, same for a drunk driver. Yes, we can all make mistakes but driving a car is a huge responsibility and once you demonstrate an inability. Too many people in this world lose loved ones or worse end up with loved ones needing life-long serious care (especially the badly brain damaged) to people who don't take the responsibility of driving seriously enough.
Tough. Get your spouse or your mate to drive you to work (surely you're not the only one on the premesis?), or find another job, or go on welfare. You're not driving for a while.
PS. I hear these stories in general district court all the time, and most of them can actually be backed up.
I've heard the same from drunk drivers, need the car for work oh please give me another chance... A couple of weeks later their remains, or those of someone else's kid, are being scraped off the road because they got away with it once and decided to try their hand at being repeat offenders.
If you don't show you can manage a vehicle you cannot drive. And yes, I apply this to myself. There are no excuses for abdicating the responsibility of driving. Better you lose you job and get poor and your kids starve than someone else loses a loved one because you're not willing to be responsible for your actions.
I guess you don't really understand what Darwin Awards er... award...
That would be for taking yourself out of the gene pool in a stupid manner.
Dying while asleep at the wheel of the car you're driving is one of the stupidest ways to go. If he lets his car lull him to sleep, well...
It would not be that expensive or difficult for Tesla and other autonomous-capable vehicle makers to geofence their products -- provide an over-the-air and regularly updated "map" of problem areas like construction zones on interstates and motorways that would alert the driver ("Wake up you dozy idiot!!!" at 110dB, I respectfully suggest) as they approached the area and then disable Autopilot or the equivalent function once the driver has taken control. If they failed to do so or refused to do so then the car would divert to the hard shoulder and stop since it's too dangerous to proceed in that case.
This is in fact the one, only and central future for automated driving. Apart from some misguided references to how 5G will make it all possible, 'beaconising' of street furniture and eventually even humans, is very rarely mentioned when documentaries come up. e.g. it barely gets a mention on this recent programme:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00073xh/click-the-selfdriving-revolution
1: Given that Teslas now require hands on every 90 seconds or less, the driver in question is probably a sufferer of Sleep Apnea without being aware of it (it's remarkably underdiagosed because many medics (wrongly) think that weight gain causes OSA - when weight gain is a SYMPTOM of OSA.
Sleep clinics are seeing an uptick in referrals worded something like "This person has all the symptoms I'd attribute to OSA, but they're not overweight so it can't possibly be that" - which sure enough turn out to be OSA. Mine developed when I was 12-13 and wasn't diagnosed until I was 35(and underweight) - by which time it had already severely FUCKED up my health.
2: Tesla's autopilot manual explicitly states it won't work for stationary objects in the vehicle's path at speeds in excess of 50mph.
Very easy for someone to fall asleep & keep hands on the wheel
I have seen someone fall asleep whilst holding a cup of tea (not empty - had some liquid in!) - and the tea did not spill (I woke them up when I was releasing their grip on the cup as a precaution, woke them as was quite a tight grip)
have seen someone fall asleep whilst holding a cup of tea (not empty - had some liquid in!) - and the tea did not spill
I've done that myself, fallen asleep with a hot drink in my hands. Sometimes woken when I've tipped it, sometimes tipped it when I've woken, and sometimes woken just enough to take a sip before nodding off again, only to repeat it later. Or wonder why my coffee was hot a moment ago and is now stone cold.
I guess some autonomous systems work better than we give credit for :)
I managed to regularly microsleep whilst riding a motorbike at 60-70mph on relatively twisty roads - aged about 19-22 or so
Didn't realise it at the time and the realisation many years afterwards that the tiny "blinks" in the background noise I was peripherally aware of in my hearing had actually been 10-15 second periods of unconciousness at the wheel scared the bejeezus out of me.
As I said, once diagnosed it's easily treated..... Once diagnosed.
Some estimates are that as much as 1/3 of the population are undiagnosed sufferers.
One of the major CPAP makers surveyed as many sports teams at one australian university as they could get to cooperate and found that 40% of the 18-25year olds they tested (They tested entire groups involved in sports, initial screening is pretty easy and involves wearing a pulse oximeter overnight) had some degree of problem and whilst some simply needed nose splints, most really did need CPAP machines - to the tune of about 35% of the participants - it surprised the hell out of the company as they'd been expecting 10-12% at most and ALL the participants were active, fit & healthy individuals.
The problem appears to be so widespread - and testing so easy - that screening should be automaticaly done - treatment is about 150 dollars a year, whilst non-treatment ends up costing hundreds of thousands in heart disease, major health complications and early mortality.
I managed to regularly microsleep whilst riding a motorbike at 60-70mph on relatively twisty roads - aged about 19-22 or so
That would be scary to realise. I'm pretty sure I don't do it ever, but over 30 years of driving I have had a couple of near-misses while the other vehicle "came out of nowhere" and I'm still puzzled as to how I'd not seen them. One I think was parked and accelerated hard to try and beat me as I was coming out of a T intersection (couldn't have an old dunger car like mine in front of his brand-new audi).
I've known people who've had sleep apnoea problems, and yeah once you got them to finally see a doctor it's been off to the sleep centre for diagnosis then within a week or two treatment is completed. I think it took more time encouraging them to get to that first doc visit than the entire treatment process took!
I'm also surprised at the numbers, but don't doubt them though I do wonder if the results are somehow skewed.
Elon Musk is adding Netflix streaming to the model 3 firmware. For the time being it will only work when the car is stationary but he is promising to remove that safety restriction for "full self drive".
So we can look forward to a lot more "autonomous" cars crashing into things because the drivers attention is somewhere else.
I agree that modern cars should be able to detect and react to stationary objects in the road. Going further, why should a modern car allow you to hit anything at all? It seems like they have the tech to do this but choose to only use it in certain cases - no?
Forget self-driving, just as a safety aid it would be good. When parking, the sensor could stop the car once it thinks you are about to bump something (you could have a way to override this if needed). When driving, an obstacle could first be highlighted (beeping/lights) then trigger automatic braking.
It actually seems the 'not-an-autopilot' did quite a good job. On discovering there was a narrowing gap, it didnt stuff it into the lorry or the barrier, but rather stopped safely.
I don't know if 'running over several brightly coloured child-sized objects' is what I'd call 'stopped safely', but at least it didn't do more serious damage.
Which, given Tesla's past form, may actually indicate a fault with the software.
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