Tesla's autopilot, on the road

[cwerdna]

NTSB: Autopilot was in use before Tesla hit semitrailer
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ntsb-aut ... 08252.html

DETROIT (AP) — A Tesla Model S involved in a fatal crash with a semitrailer in Florida March 1 was operating on the company's semi-autonomous Autopilot system, federal investigators have determined.

The car drove beneath the trailer, killing the driver, in a crash that is strikingly similar to one that happened on the other side of Florida in 2016 that also involved use of Autopilot.

In both cases, neither the driver nor the Autopilot system stopped for the trailers, and the roofs of the cars were sheared off.

The crash, which remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration...

The article later talks about the Model 3... hmm.

[jlv]

NTSB: Autopilot was in use before Tesla hit semitrailer

Even better is the electrek article, which includes whole 2 page PDF that is the NTSB prelimary report: https://electrek.co/2019/05/16/tesla-au ... ry-report/

The NTSB wrote:

The driver engaged the Autopilot about 10 seconds before the collision. From less than 8 seconds before the crash to the time of impact, the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering wheel.

[jlv]

FWIW, an interesting comment (posted by user DML at electrek):

At 68 mph the car traveled about 330 feet in the 10 seconds that the autopilot was engaged. At 68 mph it should take about 180 feet to stop the car add another 60 feet for a human response time and you get about 240 feet to stand still. An engaged driver might have avoided the accident or at the very lease reduced its severity.

I am not a fan of any system or device that makes a driver think that they do not need to pay attention while driving.

[Oils4AsphaultOnly]

FWIW, an interesting comment (posted by user DML at electrek):

At 68 mph the car traveled about 330 feet in the 10 seconds that the autopilot was engaged. At 68 mph it should take about 180 feet to stop the car add another 60 feet for a human response time and you get about 240 feet to stand still. An engaged driver might have avoided the accident or at the very lease reduced its severity.

I am not a fan of any system or device that makes a driver think that they do not need to pay attention while driving.

Yes, and this is what GRA points to about enabling complacency. It's also what I'd point to as abuse of A/P.

Drivers who take unnecessary risks (drunk, sex, or lazy), will do so even without A/P. A/P is not meant to solve those driver issues. And note that in none of the A/P accidents has anyone else been killed other than the driver.

[Oils4AsphaultOnly]

Someone found the location of the Jeremy Banner accident: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/posts/3664370/

Note the intersection? Not the place to not pay attention!

[palmermd]

FWIW, an interesting comment (posted by user DML at electrek):

At 68 mph the car traveled about 330 feet in the 10 seconds that the autopilot was engaged. At 68 mph it should take about 180 feet to stop the car add another 60 feet for a human response time and you get about 240 feet to stand still. An engaged driver might have avoided the accident or at the very lease reduced its severity.

I am not a fan of any system or device that makes a driver think that they do not need to pay attention while driving.

if this statement is true then the driver needed to start braking less than 2 seconds after he engaged autopilot. The need to brake should have already been apparent to the driver at this point baring any visibility issues or turns or hills or something. so sad.

[GRA]

Direct link to the NTSB preliminary report is here: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acc ... eport.aspx

As expected, this crash was virtually identical to the Brown one almost 3 years previous. The NTSB Chairman's comments summing up that accident could be copied verbatim for this one:

“While automation in highway transportation has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, until that potential is fully realized, people still need to safely drive their vehicles,” said NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt III. “Smart people around the world are hard at work to automate driving, but systems available to consumers today, like Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’ system, are designed to assist drivers with specific tasks in limited environments. These systems require the driver to pay attention all the time and to be able to take over immediately when something goes wrong. System safeguards, that should have prevented the Tesla’s driver from using the car’s automation system on certain roadways, were lacking and the combined effects of human error and the lack of sufficient system safeguards resulted in a fatal collision that should not have happened,” said Sumwalt.

BTW, the speed limit on the road is 55 yet the Model 3 was doing 68. A/P was supposedly modified after the Brown crash to limit set speed to no more than 5 mph over* the speed limit, so how was it possible to even engage it in this case? Meanwhile, lots of current reports of safety glitches with the most recent version, 2019.12.1.2, on TMC.


*Itself a safety flaw, as one of the ways that AVs will make driving safer is that unlike humans, they'll obey all traffic regulations. Of course, many speed limits are set below the road's design speed, so once AVs have become the majority we'll likely see speed limits raised, or at least adjusted in real-time to account for changing conditions.

[GRA]

FWIW, an interesting comment (posted by user DML at electrek):

At 68 mph the car traveled about 330 feet in the 10 seconds that the autopilot was engaged. At 68 mph it should take about 180 feet to stop the car add another 60 feet for a human response time and you get about 240 feet to stand still. An engaged driver might have avoided the accident or at the very lease reduced its severity.

I am not a fan of any system or device that makes a driver think that they do not need to pay attention while driving.

Yes, and this is what GRA points to about enabling complacency. It's also what I'd point to as abuse of A/P.

Drivers who take unnecessary risks (drunk, sex, or lazy), will do so even without A/P. A/P is not meant to solve those driver issues. And note that in none of the A/P accidents has anyone else been killed other than the driver.

The lack of non-occupant injuries or fatalities to date is a matter of chance. In the Brown crash, either due to good zoning regs or luck, the gas station was on the near rather than the far corner of the intersection. If that hadn't been the case, after under-running the trailer Brown's Tesla would have passed right through the fuel pumps and/or the convenience store instead of an open field. The fact that neither of the drivers were injured in either of the semi crashes was due to the Tesla hitting the trailer pretty much dead center, and Brenner's car fortunately stopped in the median instead of crossing over into oncoming traffic.

In the Huang case, two other cars were struck by his Model X (or parts thereof), but fortunately there were no injuries in one and only minor injuries in the other car. And of course, the same behavior is still occurring almost a year later:

Dashcam video shows Tesla steering toward lane divider—again
Tesla Dashcam video highlights weakness of Tesla's testing regime.

TIMOTHY B. LEE - 3/22/2019, 6:02 AM

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/da ... der-again/

[Oils4AsphaultOnly]

FWIW, an interesting comment (posted by user DML at electrek):

Yes, and this is what GRA points to about enabling complacency. It's also what I'd point to as abuse of A/P.

Drivers who take unnecessary risks (drunk, sex, or lazy), will do so even without A/P. A/P is not meant to solve those driver issues. And note that in none of the A/P accidents has anyone else been killed other than the driver.

The lack of non-occupant injuries or fatalities to date is a matter of chance. In the Brown crash, either due to good zoning regs or luck, the gas station was on the near rather than the far corner of the intersection. If that hadn't been the case, after under-running the trailer Brown's Tesla would have passed right through the fuel pumps and/or the convenience store instead of an open field. The fact that neither of the drivers were injured in either of the semi crashes was due to the Tesla hitting the trailer pretty much dead center, and Brenner's car fortunately stopped in the median instead of crossing over into oncoming traffic.

In the Huang case, two other cars were struck by his Model X (or parts thereof), but fortunately there were no injuries in one and only minor injuries in the other car. And of course, the same behavior is still occurring almost a year later:

Dashcam video shows Tesla steering toward lane divider—again
Tesla Dashcam video highlights weakness of Tesla's testing regime.

TIMOTHY B. LEE - 3/22/2019, 6:02 AM

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/da ... der-again/

In both the Brown and Brenner case, if either the driver paid attention or the truck had a side skirt, neither would be dead.

The Timothy Lee report was for A/P, not NoA (Navigate on Autopilot) - which would've made the decision of which "lane" to stay in. It's NoA that would've saved Walter Huang's life.

[jlv]

It's NoA that would've saved Walter Huang's life.

Perhaps "would've" => "might have". I'm personally not so sure NoA would have made a difference in following the lines there.