Tesla driver killed while in autopilot mode [Archive]

pritch

2nd July 2016, 13:50

Apparently Youtube is a rich source of people with auto drive cars doing all manner of non-driving related things including sleeping. It's easy to believe that AI can do a better job of driving than many humans though.

It has now been confirmed that a Tesla driver has been killed while in autopilot mode and watching a Harry Potter movie. A truck and trailer unit pulled out in front of him and the car didn't brake.

It would be rash to expect these optimistic lemmings to change their ways so we may yet read of more such incidents. Let's hope we're not involved in any.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-driver-killed-autopilot-self-driving-car-harry-potter#img-1

nzspokes

2nd July 2016, 14:08

Harry Potter?

Not surprised the car committed suicide.

FlangMasterJ

2nd July 2016, 14:28

Behold the Darwinmobile...

http://i.imgur.com/qOi4Nrx.gif

R650R

2nd July 2016, 15:03

I just read that story too, classic Darwinism.... Wonder where the law stands where driverless cars are allowed, is the user expected to still monitor for dangerous situations ahead?
In this case it seems the sensor couldn't differentitate between the white trailer and blue sky that the roadway was obstructed. What is the failsafe if the vehicle loses connection to its vital sensors, does it brake toi a stop in busy roadway????

Years ago for legal studies at school we attended court. A truck driver had forced is way out into traffic from a busy junction. A cyclist with no brakes on her bike went under his trailer and died later from injuries, part of that was due to her religion/culture forbidding blood transfusions. Anyway the judge ruled that such practice was common and expectable at busy times of the day and all he got done for was failing to give way/careless use I think. Poor bugger was visibly upset and remorseful over whole thing.
Road safety is always a two part package though and this tesla incident highlights a major issue of autonomous vehicles....

50Shades

2nd July 2016, 15:24

Should read; Tesla passenger dies
The insurance industry is going to love this

Akzle

2nd July 2016, 16:36

I bet if that car company gets sued it will be for a bigger amount than the VW emissions claim con or at least it should be. Maybe the cars need to be sold as a safety backup and not a replacement for a human driver. I did read some months back the the NZ govt was keen to invite manufacturers of such cars to test them in NZ which will be something to be wary of if it goes ahead eg the test cars should have warning lights or sirens so that other traffic can get out of the way if they are around.

:tugger:
... maybe the car was just feeling pressured to keep up

next car i see with lights and sirens i'll do my damndest to keep away from. and tell them you sent me.

Gremlin

2nd July 2016, 18:08

But it was a very unique set of factors... where the car drove straight into the side of a truck and trailer unit...

Uh...ok :crazy:

george formby

2nd July 2016, 18:58

Teething troubles.
And Darwinism.

Apparently the cars try to maintain the "drivers" attention which it seems is easily ignored. When the car went under the truck it was said to be a white truck and trailer with a white sky at twilight, well, change of light. Could have been AM. So it's not using radar. I doubt this tragic accident was unexpected. Time will tell.

The first news worthy casualty of the new electric age?

Development and technology is blazing forward in all sorts of different directions. We are at the beginning of another transport revolution, a progression from the age of steam. I think it's great, but unlike our bright young people, shining the light for the future, it will take me decades to get used to. It will take decades to become usual worldwide, anyway.

TheDemonLord

2nd July 2016, 19:55

Should read; Tesla passenger dies
The insurance industry is going to love this

And the Lawyers....

Will be interesting to see what happens - either way I feel some important and possibly dangerous legal precedents are about to be set

nerrrd

2nd July 2016, 20:05

Teething troubles...It will take decades to become usual worldwide, anyway.

You (and I) wish; driverless cars running into teething troubles? How's about driverless buses then!

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/307435/driverless-buses-'it-is-going-to-be-big'

So in four years they're going to solve congestion apparently. Admittedly I'm a luddite but how the hell is a driverless bus going to deal with mad Auckland drivers in rush hour?? Get ready for blocked bus lanes while they run a driver out to get the 'crashed' (in IT terms) bus underway again. At least if it really crashes those on board will be safer than the rest of us.

This whole driverless revolution is being so overhyped it's starting to have a whiff of 'dot.com' about it, more troubling is how keen governments are to jump in with both feet, I predict a lot of taxpayer's money being spent for very little return.

Gremlin

2nd July 2016, 20:25

So in four years they're going to solve congestion apparently. Admittedly I'm a luddite but how the hell is a driverless bus going to deal with mad Auckland drivers in rush hour?? Get ready for blocked bus lanes while they run a driver out to get the 'crashed' (in IT terms) bus underway again.
Don't be silly. Like drone pilots, they'll connect from an office to take manual control. Ever seen a spotty faced 15yo kid drive? Drivers won't be a problem as they'll stay the fuck away from the bus :lol:

nerrrd

2nd July 2016, 20:40

Don't be silly. Like drone pilots, they'll connect from an office to take manual control. Ever seen a spotty faced 15yo kid drive? Drivers won't be a problem as they'll stay the fuck away from the bus :lol:

Using a local mobile network, no doubt? :lol: alright, and yes I'll be staying well away!

Duncan74

2nd July 2016, 21:30

Lots of interesting stuff in this, albeit tragic, news story.

First off, the truck turned in front of an oncoming car. The car, maintain speed, hit the side. So the crash was a combination of truck driver error, weather and lighting, driver inattention (car), failure of safety mechanisms (video camera and auto braking.

So whilst this is being reported as the first autonomous fatality (I think) then there's no way of knowing if it would have occurred anyway, or how many fatalities have not occurred by the autonomous vehicles being better than the driver they were carrying.

I was talking to a senior in the Google autonomous cars programme a few years ago and he suggested NZ would be an early adoption/target market for them. He suggested it was due to the 'permissive legislative framework'. I asked if that meant that ACC meant they wouldn't get sued. He smiled. Earlier he'd said that they would look to get cars out on the road not when they were 100% safe, as realistically they needed to be 'in the wild' to learn everything, but when they were better than an average driver. Interestingly more than 50% of human drivers think they are better than average, so no idea how they'll decide that.

But part of the 'in the wild' was teaching the vehicle to recognise not the 99.99% of vehicles look like, but the weird ones. He showed the equivalent of the redbull mini with the giant can on the back, one of the 8 person circular pedal cycle things, and a could more oddball things that the camera and computer needed to process and react to. I get confused sometimes between an approaching car with a blown headlamp and a motorbike, so at what point do we have faith in the machines?

Oh, and as for congestion being solved by autonomous vehicles, that's an entirely separate discussion. There would need to be some significant social changes for this to be the case. A switch to car pooling in place of ownership for a start. Without social change my personal view is that autonomous vehicles would increase congestion, not reduce it.

wildman

2nd July 2016, 22:50

Shitbox vehicles they should all be crushed. The only thing that could be worse is if they were made by Germans.

TheDemonLord

2nd July 2016, 22:53

Oh, and as for congestion being solved by autonomous vehicles, that's an entirely separate discussion. There would need to be some significant social changes for this to be the case. A switch to car pooling in place of ownership for a start. Without social change my personal view is that autonomous vehicles would increase congestion, not reduce it.

In theory - Autonomous vehicles could travel both faster and closer together - increasing the throughput for a given piece of road - at the moment the 2 second rule includes a humans thinking distance/reaction time (something like 0.57 seconds) - which a computer could drop to a matter Milliseconds.

But as I say - 'In Theory'

Berries

3rd July 2016, 00:01

Oh, and as for congestion being solved by autonomous vehicles, that's an entirely separate discussion. There would need to be some significant social changes for this to be the case. A switch to car pooling in place of ownership for a start. Without social change my personal view is that autonomous vehicles would increase congestion, not reduce it.
I saw a cartoon at a presentation about the future of transport. It was of Sydney in X number of years when all the vehicles were autonomous. The one thing they never considered was pedestrian behaviour. Knowing that the vehicles were so clever they would spot the hazard ahead and not hit the twat walking across the road resulted in the obvious that all pedestrians simply started crossing the road whenever and wherever they wanted. The result was complete and total gridlock.

huff3r

3rd July 2016, 09:17

I thought the cause of this accident was obvious? Tesla's "Autopilot" system is exactly that, it is NOT a self-driving car. Autopilot systems, as in aircraft, require constant monitoring and are designed to relieve the workload of a pilot/driver by maintaining navigation and speed, however they must be continuously monitored to ensure that they are maintaining the CORRECT speed/direction/altitude etc.

Even aircraft Autopilot systems require the pilot, in conjunction with ATC to maintain traffic seperation, as the Autopilot simply is not capable of doing so. Treat the Tesla the same and there will be little or no at fault accidents.

nerrrd

3rd July 2016, 11:14

I thought the cause of this accident was obvious? Tesla's "Autopilot" system is exactly that, it is NOT a self-driving car....

I bet that's not how the sales guy described it, although it probably is a legal footnote in the brochure.

Duncan74

3rd July 2016, 12:13

In theory - Autonomous vehicles could travel both faster and closer together - increasing the throughput for a given piece of road - at the moment the 2 second rule includes a humans thinking distance/reaction time (something like 0.57 seconds) - which a computer could drop to a matter Milliseconds.

But as I say - 'In Theory'

Ok, but the trick here is to get that ALL vehicles have to be autonomous, ie no human drivers allowed. And as a social change are we prepared to ban human driving/riding/cycling on public roads. And so you could get a bit more capacity out of motorways, but urban areas , then the signals aren't going to be the place to get benefits.

On the other hand, if you could work on your laptop in a driverless car, I reckon that therewould be plenty of people who chose to sit in a car driving around the coast whilst working on a sunny day. Add in that 'you don't need to pay parking', and now we double the distance driven, as people send their cars home during the day. This latter issue is huge, as in most cases the tidal demand (into cbd in a morning, out in an evening) means that you're able to prioritie those movements. If people are sending their cars back home at 8:30, there are going to be issues. Ok , some capacity as people aren't driving around looking for parks, but will be interesting to see how peaopke are able to jump out of the car at lights, outside their office or if software will forbid this. All this of course relies on cars being able to drive empty. Now if this is forbidden, we've still got the same issues as now. If not then there is a chance that we give up on car owenership and get to pure carshare clubs, but that's a social change I can't see my generation making. Perhaps today's teens, but not mine.

Autonomous vehicles may also reverse the trend for Video Conferences and virtual meetings if it's possible to work for the 2 hours you're being driven to the meeting. So more traffic..

bogan

3rd July 2016, 12:22

Ok, but the trick here is to get that ALL vehicles have to be autonomous, ie no human drivers allowed. And as a social change are we prepared to ban human driving/riding/cycling on public roads. And so you could get a bit more capacity out of motorways, but urban areas , then the signals aren't going to be the place to get benefits.

On the other hand, if you could work on your laptop in a driverless car, I reckon that therewould be plenty of people who chose to sit in a car driving around the coast whilst working on a sunny day. Add in that 'you don't need to pay parking', and now we double the distance driven, as people send their cars home during the day. This latter issue is huge, as in most cases the tidal demand (into cbd in a morning, out in an evening) means that you're able to prioritie those movements. If people are sending their cars back home at 8:30, there are going to be issues. Ok , some capacity as people aren't driving around looking for parks, but will be interesting to see how peaopke are able to jump out of the car at lights, outside their office or if software will forbid this. All this of course relies on cars being able to drive empty. Now if this is forbidden, we've still got the same issues as now. If not then there is a chance that we give up on car owenership and get to pure carshare clubs, but that's a social change I can't see my generation making. Perhaps today's teens, but not mine.

Autonomous vehicles may also reverse the trend for Video Conferences and virtual meetings if it's possible to work for the 2 hours you're being driven to the meeting. So more traffic..

Other offsetting trends would be the people who don't bother owning cars, and instead just grab them from the wider autonamous pool (those guys sending them home to park would be happy to earn some dosh having them taxi other people around instead); in addition to greater management allowing massive increases in the amount of car-pooling. And the obvious point of car park pre-allocation, complete real time trip congestion monitoring, etc etc.

Duncan74

3rd July 2016, 13:02

Other offsetting trends would be the people who don't bother owning cars, and instead just grab them from the wider autonamous pool (those guys sending them home to park would be happy to earn some dosh having them taxi other people around instead); in addition to greater management allowing massive increases in the amount of car-pooling. And the obvious point of car park pre-allocation, complete real time trip congestion monitoring, etc etc.

See I hear that argument of carpooling, but do I want someone else eating their potato chips in my car, sticking gum under the seats, and all the other ways people use public transport? Or the other way, do I want to sit on cheap plastic overly squishy 'taxi' seats instead of my supportive heated leather seat? We don't really need autonomous vehicles for these things, they work fine with car pooling, car clubs, taxis but we don't. We like our personal freedom. We like the extension of our home that our cars have become, our personal space, with he seat set just so, the odd collection of half eaten mints, chocolates and crumbs in the glove box, the 15 year old CD still in the stereo, etc.

But these are to social changes I mentioned earlier. There is a possible benefit, but it still comes from a change in us, not the abilities of the cars we are able to buy.

Woodman

3rd July 2016, 13:07

Lets not forget driverless cars most appealing attribute. Getting home pissed from the pub.

huff3r

3rd July 2016, 13:09

I bet that's not how the sales guy described it, although it probably is a legal footnote in the brochure.

It is very much described in the brochure, and in all Tesla media releases as an Autopilot and not a hands-off, no attention required, self-driving car. That's why it has the annoying prompts to try and maintain your attention when it has control.

Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Autosteer is enabled. Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel.

https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot

nerrrd

3rd July 2016, 13:56

It is very much described in the brochure, and in all Tesla media releases as an Autopilot and not a hands-off, no attention required, self-driving car. That's why it has the annoying prompts to try and maintain your attention when it has control.

https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot

Which this guy presumerably ignored?

Laava

3rd July 2016, 17:51

I bet that's not how the sales guy described it,

Oh, Bob? He doesn't work here anymore!

Duncan74

3rd July 2016, 17:55

Which this guy presumerably ignored?

Yeah. it's a real shame that they can invent self driving electric cars that can reach >200kph, electric windows, 18 speaker mp3 audio, Bluetooth comms, but have still got to solve the almost impossible technical challenge of detecting when a person doesn't have their hands on a steering wheel.

Perhaps in my lifetime, someone will solve that challenge.......

Akzle

3rd July 2016, 18:18

shirley a bit of radar would go a long way. the signature returned even from a motorbike wheel should be enough. (peddlies can eat a bowl of dicks and die)
... relying on the colour of a truck to determine it's trucky-ness seems vf stupid.

Even aircraft Autopilot systems require the pilot, in conjunction with ATC to maintain traffic seperation, as the Autopilot simply is not capable of doing so. Treat the Tesla the same and there will be little or no at fault accidents.
so the current cause of at-fault accidents is...

Ok, but the trick here is to get that ALL vehicles have to be autonomous, ie no human drivers allowed.
for townies, absolutely. fuck them.
for me, i'd be want the reigns when outside the municipality. wouldn't mind if, when you got to town limits i had the option of switching over to join the plebs.
any "automatic" change over system is open to abuse by tptb, l33tt h4ckz0rz, and tptb. and can consequently eat a dick.

On the other hand, if you could work on your laptop in a driverless car,
if you a) can work from your laptop and b) spend enough time in traffic for this to be relevant, then you should probably a) kill yourself.

and of course if you're punching for unpalatable beneficial societal change, surely doing away with automovehicles would be the smart maneuver

jonbuoy

3rd July 2016, 21:41

Other offsetting trends would be the people who don't bother owning cars, and instead just grab them from the wider autonamous pool (those guys sending them home to park would be happy to earn some dosh having them taxi other people around instead); in addition to greater management allowing massive increases in the amount of car-pooling. And the obvious point of car park pre-allocation, complete real time trip congestion monitoring, etc etc.

Exactly - don´t really need carparks anymore - just a holding/charging/maintenance area out of town. One system co-coordinating all cars and assigning them to the nearest person. Adjusting speeds and routes to maximize flow. Then there is the issue of sacrificing a single occupant car to save the lives of a group of pedestrians or a multi occupancy vehicle. And the thought that if someone wanted to hack the system during rush hour you could wipe out a decent amount of the population in one hit. Interesting times ahead.