Tesla Owner In China Blames Autopilot For Crash (usatoday.com) 277
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The owner of a Tesla Motors Model S sedan in China reportedly said his vehicle crashed into a car on the side of the road while the vehicle's Autopilot system was engaged, but the automaker said the driver was using the system improperly. Luo Zhen, 33, of Beijing told Reuters that his vehicle collided with a parked car on the left side of a highway, damaging both vehicles but injuring no one. He criticized Tesla sales people for allegedly describing the vehicle as "self-driving." "The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn't assisted driving," he told Reuters. In the new case in China, Tesla said the Model S was "following closely behind the car in front of it when the lead car moved to the right to avoid hitting the parked car." "The driver of the Tesla, whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel, did not steer to avoid the parked car and instead scraped against its side," Tesla said Wednesday in a statement. "As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:5, Interesting)
I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream. Autopilot, as it stands, is a smarter form of cruise control (it basically helps you maintain the speed without your foot on the pedal but it's a bit fancier than a fixed speed)
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I think my friend had some sort of automatic Control, like keeping phase with the car in front of him or whatever it was. Anyway he also hit another car if I remember correctly and I would assume he blame the system which didn't do what it's supposed to do.
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Wait until the technology has matured before beginning to depend on it. So far, in the mainstream car industry, it could be fair to say that people using said technologies as if they were mature are merely beta testers.
Re:Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like saying you don't need a childproof medicine lid as long as you have the warning **Keep out of reach of children**.
I have no children, no children ever come into my home, but I do have rheumatism and childproof lids are also arth1proof. When the local pharmacy no longer provided easy-open lids, I switched pharmacies.
I shouldn't have to pay a price in pain because other people can't keep meds and spawn apart.
Options are good. Individual responsibility too.
Re:Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:4, Funny)
When I was little my parents always asked me to open the childproof lids for them...
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Rather, its like saying you don't need to keep out of reach of children anymore as long as you have a childproof lid.
Dictionary Definition of Autopilot (Score:3, Interesting)
"a device that steers a ship, aircraft, or spacecraft in place of a person" -- Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com]
Gee, how could anyone be confused about that?
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Name one autopilot & vehicle that totally the vehicle's operator of all responsibility and need to be attentive.
You won't be able to, because none exist. An autopilot is a (useful) tool to reduce your workload. But it's not Knight Rider. You can't just get in, say "KITT, take me to KSMO", and sit back and go to sleep / read a book / get drunk. Autopilots have never worked that way. And no one, not even Tesla, has advertised them as such.
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I can do exactly that in my car. I can say "KITT, take me to KSMO" and go to sleep.
I won't get anywhere, of course, but I CAN DO THAT!
Re:Dictionary Definition of Autopilot (Score:4, Insightful)
Auto-pilot is Musk's "you're driving it wrong" moment.
In theory you should sit there, fully attentive, hands on the wheel, ready to jump in with a fraction of a second's warning to avert a crash. In reality, human beings don't work that way.
There are videos on YouTube of people asleep at the wheel with AP on. One hand resting on the wheel to keep the AP active. You can call them reckless, but as an engineer you have to take human nature and our inability to concentrate for long periods when here is little to do into account.
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Auto Pilot:
I used to have to do a 60 mile drive to get to work for 6 months. Just about every day, around the same highway exits, I would slowly pass a guy driving an econoline while reading his full size newspaper, widely spread across the steering wheel and windshield.
I would sometime slow down while passing him to have a good look at him and he wouldn't even react. He would just keep reading his newspaper.
Maybe that's the kind of concentration needed to drive a Tesla car. I should go hang around those h
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I see a guy on my commute once in awhile in his BMW doing the same thing with a newspaper. When I see him I pull up next to him and honk. He's going to kill someone one of these days. I think the next time I see him I may actually call 911 and report his license plate.
Re:Dictionary Definition of Autopilot (Score:5, Insightful)
The tricky problem about this technology is that it is aimed at taking the burden away from what is required to be able to take over. At least, most people perceive it that way at first. Proper training is required and you know what? In the end, it requires more concentration to watch on standby ready to take over than manually driving the car yourself.
Re:Dictionary Definition of Autopilot (Score:4, Insightful)
" In the end, it requires more concentration to watch on standby ready to take over than manually driving the car yourself."
Exactly, Telsa is being disingenuous (and reckless).
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And the autopilot of an aircraft will happily fly you into the side of a mountain, or another aircraft, as long as it maintains on the altitude and heading you set...
Yes, but the TAWS will yell at you "TERRAIN" and "PULL UP" long before its to late for you to do so even if you are fucking the stewardess.
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I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream
Cruise control doesn't require a disclaimer when you engage it. People switch to stupid mode when they see a disclaimer and then blame the entire world for not reading the manual.
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I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream.
It isn't limited to car drivers. Same thing happened is the airline industry. People naturally tend to rely too much on such technologies. It's amazing that they deploy it without proper training of people using it.
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> I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream.
Look into discussions, and analyses, of "highway hypnosis". Cruise control is often cited as a big contributor to accident rates.
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CALLING it "autopilot" may be feeding into that, t
From the summary, they're calling it "autosteer". Looks like the penny finally dropped.
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From the summary, they're calling it "autosteer". Looks like the penny finally dropped.
Even so it is still the same inherent misplaced trust and/or inherently flawed concept. "Be lazy, but also be required to be instantly attentive at all times, ready to 'jump in' to control."
This is not a viable technology yet at design stages!
That penny will drop later.
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So what you're saying is it shouldn't be called an autopilot until it's as perfect as those found on ship and aircraft? The autopilots that will happily sail/fly you into the ground if commanded to - those autopilots?
Re:Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:5, Insightful)
"Buy our new car with DrivesItself* technology"
And then in small-print:
*car does not actually drive itself.
See the problem? Just change the fecking name.
And promotional material is skimmed by the very first owner only. You can put all the crap you like in there, it's still misleading to name it Autopilot.
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"Buy our new car with DrivesItself* technology"
That would be OK if Autopilot meant drives itself. But it doesn't. It doesn't mean anything close to that. The only time it gets vaguely close is when you're talking about a boat, but that's true only when the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, not when the weather is going sideways. In planes, the pilot is explicitly required to remain at the controls and alert while the autopilot is in use, and is responsible for control if the autopilot should fail or otherwise perform in an unsatisfactory manner
Re:Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:5, Informative)
An autopilot landing is actually more work and is more stressful than a normal, manual landing. There's a checklist of things to verify before you can even start the approach, and we have to be extremely attentive to any errors the autopilot could make. We regularly practice these approaches in the simulator: ground equipment failures, autopilot failures, instrument failures, engine failures, you name it. Some of these are quite subtle, like the one that crashed a Turkish Airlines flight in Amsterdam in 2009. The radio altimeter malfunctioned, so the autopilot thought it was close to the ground and pulled the throttles back to idle. In reality, the plane was still 500 ft above the ground and stalled.
Interestingly, the accident was classified as "pilot error" because the pilots should have intervened when the speed dropped below approach speed.
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The radio altimeter malfunctioned, so the autopilot thought it was close to the ground and pulled the throttles back to idle. In reality, the plane was still 500 ft above the ground and stalled.
This is what drives me nuts about planes. How can a radio altimeter ever be trusted? That is completely fucking batshit. If you don't have at least two sensors which agree, you can't possibly trust people's lives to such a system. Even on a toy drone made out of Arduino bits and bobs I can mount an ultrasonic sensor to back up the barometer, and there are also such things as laser rangefinders. I understand why you wouldn't let people tape a $15 sensor to the bottom of their plane and count on it either, th
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So according to Tesla it requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel... which is clearly false because it was functioning when his hands were not on the wheel.
They require it; they don't enforce it. You're also required to have a license, wear a seat belt while driving, not stick your head out windows, and change the tires and break pads when worn.
Re:Autopilot is a glorified cruise control (Score:4, Informative)
the damning thing is really that tesla doesn't disengage the autopilot or stop the car if the driver isn't holding the wheel for extended periods of time.
They do, but the timer for the dead man switch is 4 minutes. One might argue that this is a too extended period of time.
Still, it's nice to know that if you have a cardiac arrest, they can pick up your corpse near where it happened, and the Tesla won't drive you to the next state.
It needs LIDAR (Score:2, Insightful)
That really needs LIDAR.
We get it, Musk will blame the driver for not avoiding the collision, yeh yeh EULAs etc. But that doesn't fix the problem. That visual system does not work faultlessly, it is just diffing the two scenes to try to determine a 3D world view, and it clearly does not 'see' the world, it sees the deltas as the car moves. So they need to add LIDAR so it can see objects distances without trying to determine them with time deltas.
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Elon is against lidar because it can't see through fog. They are working on updating the radar so that, instead of a single distance value, it can use multiple measurements in different directions to create a point cloud, much like the lidar systems that Google is using but using radar instead of light. Rumor has it that this might even be possible with the current hardware, only requiring a software update. I must say I have some doubts there.
There have also been rumors about stereoscopic cameras in Tesla
Not suitable for all driving conditions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not suitable for all driving conditions (Score:4, Interesting)
From my understanding of driving conditions in China [youtube.com], it would take a pretty miraculous AI to prevent accidents there.
Not really. The rules in China are different, but probably simpler. Just slow down as you approach an intersection, ease into it, and slow down some more if you are going to collide with someone, turning a little to the left or right as you do so. If you watch the video you linked to, all the vehicles are using this simple algorithm. I lived in China for several years, and found it quite easy to adapt to their driving style. I had more difficulty adapting back to American style driving when I returned home. Americans go so fast.
It seems as though these driving assists and self-driving cars are going to have to be region-specific.
Definitely.
Re:Not suitable for all driving conditions (Score:5, Funny)
There are two sets of rules in China, the simple and the complicated.
The simple:
1. There are no rules.
The complicated:
1. Lane markings are just to keep painters employed and can be ignored.
2. Traffic police are to keep traffic police employed and can be ignored.
3. Indicators are just to boost the lightbulb industry and don't serve any purpose.
4. Horns are to communicate with drivers in all circumstances even if you have absolutely nothing to say.
5. You always have right of way if you're bigger, infront, or more cars are queued up behind you than queued up behind the person you're cutting off.
6. It is always the other person's fault.
7. No the red light it meaningless it is always the other person's fault.
In many ways the auto-pilot did the right thing and just ran into the person who dared to let you run into him.
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Getting a driving license in China is also rather simple. You get a form with two questions, and if you answer both satisfactory (the correct answer being "Yes"), you get your license and you're good to go. The questions:
1) Do you know how to drive?
2) Are you sure?
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Yes exactly, and that's why there are suprisingly few accidents. The other extreme for me is Russia, where I see accidents every day on the way from hotel to office.
I had some meetings in California a few years ago, and let one of my Shanghai colleagues drive my rental car. He was slowing down on the ramp on to the Interstate because he didn't feel safe with all the traffic flying by making no space. This scared the shit out of me because expect you to do quite the opposite: floor and go as fast as possi
bad driving (Score:2)
Hands On (re:bad driving) (Score:2)
Keeping your hands on the wheel doesn't mean much. The manufacturers that require this may want us to think it is a proxy for paying attention, but it is not.
Re:bad driving (Score:5, Insightful)
You are a perfect illustration of the problem Tesla faces. You think you know what an airplane's autopilot does, based solely on the name, but you have no real clue.
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Commercial airline pilots have their hands on the controls during takeoff and landing. That's it. Yes, they're looking at the instruments now and then, but not continually. I know this because I have asked a guy who flies for American for 18 years.
Why don't you demonstrate the clue that you apparently have about autopilot? Light a fucking can
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> And why doesn't Tesla simply call it, "Cruise Control
> Plus" or something catchy like that instead of giving
> people the wrong idea?
Because you and the GP poster are making up capabilities out of whole cloth and episodes of Knight Rider, and unjustifiably assigning them to a technology that, in the Tesla, does in fact exceed the capabilities of many aviation autopilots. It's a tool to reduce your workload. And it's useful. But there's not a Boeing or Airbus in the world on which you can step i
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Airplanes fly through this thing called air. Cars drive on winding, non-level roads with potholes and other deformations. Air is relatively empty, and you don't need to worry much about oncoming traffic. If drivers can't tell the difference between the conditions in which an airplane flies and an automobile drives, they are not mentally capable of driving safely, and shouldn't be allowed to do so.
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Commercial airline pilots have their hands on the controls during takeoff and landing.
Actually there's a few more scenarios where airline pilots have to interviene. A non-exhaustive list:
1. Altitude change.
2. Direction change.
3. System failure.
4. External abnormality (e.g. wind sheer).
5. Emergency.
You know, all the things we criticise Tesla for being unable to handle.
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Turkish Airlines 1951, Amsterdam 25 february 2009.
Automatic approach, radio altimeter failure let the autopilot think it was just above the runway while it was in fact still at 2000 ft above the ground. Autopilot commanded throttles to idle, airspeed dropped to stall speed, plane crashed.
The verdict: pilot error. They should have reacted to the dropping airspeed by taking control, pushing the throttles forward and initiating a go-around.
There are plenty of other examples where autopilots have flown aircraft
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But, but, but, that's different, for um... Let me get back you on the reason.
I get the idea that people actaully believe that aircraft pilots are magical pieces of equipment that will fly, land and taxi the aircraft while the pilot shags the stewardess. It's not just that pilots *need* to monitor the aircraft even with the AP on, it's also completely possible to tell the autopilot to descend right into a mountain. As you say, in those case it's called pilot error, however if these muppets were in charge it
Re:bad driving (Score:5, Interesting)
And why doesn't Tesla simply call it, "Cruise Control Plus" or something catchy like that instead of giving people the wrong idea?
What the actual fuck? Cruise control does not steer. Distance-sensitive cruise control is cruise control plus. This is something else entirely. Something which controls heading and speed but which does not take complete responsibility for the vehicle. And do you know what we call a device like that? We call it an autopilot. You want Tesla to use a shit name that is less descriptive than what they are using now, and you'd call it an improvement. That's stupid bullshit. Don't be stupid, or bullshit.
Every single suggestion from a slashdotter as to what to call this feature is actually more confusing than autopilot, including yours. Buy a fucking dictionary, and spend some time with it.
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You are a perfect illustration of the problem Tesla faces. You think you know what an airplane's autopilot does, based solely on the name, but you have no real clue.
All I know is that an airplane's autopilot does not require the pilot to keep their hands on the controls and be ready to take over with millisecond reaction times. The Tesla does. Big difference.
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I think you'll find that in cases where reaction times are important - such as approaches and landings - the pilots will have hands on the throttle and the yoke (or stick), even when the autopilot and/or autothrottles are engaged. During cruise you have far more time to react so hands off is fine.
There are two reasons for this - one is so that they are ready to react. The second is - certainly with Boeing's design philosophy - that the pilot will have tactile feedback from the automation systems. If for exa
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You can't expect people to know more about autopilots. The person you replied to is marked as a troll bit she is just saying waht every non-nerd would say. Therefore I wonder how long Tesla will still get away with their 'but in the fine print it says...' rethoric.
Re:bad driving (Score:4, Informative)
You are a perfect illustration of the problem Tesla faces. You think you know what an airplane's autopilot does, based solely on the name, but you have no real clue.
To do something on autopilot [thefreedictionary.com] to mean "without thinking" has been an idiom much longer than Tesla has used it. This is not some kind of unexpected misunderstanding.
Etymology: based on the literal meaning of automatic pilot (a system that flies a plane without human effort)
There are many less boasting terms like adaptive cruise control, lane assist etc. that could have been used and have been used by other car companies. They picked autopilot because it sounds new and revolutionary. He's a perfect illustration of the impression Tesla's marketing division wanted to give, while the execs call it beta (as in, will be self-driving soon we're just knocking out a few bugs) and their legal department provides the disclaimers. And disclaimer are everywhere for legal CYA, like if you read your average EULA the software is not usable for anything. That's not what people really expect, even if that's what it says.
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To do something on autopilot to mean "without thinking" has been an idiom much longer than Tesla has used it. This is not some kind of unexpected misunderstanding.
No, that illustrates what a perfect term "autopilot" is. The general meaning of the phrase "on autopilot" is that you're doing something badly, automatically and without thinking. Only a few idiots think that an autopilot won't fly a plane straight into a mountain if you ask it to do that. And most of those idiots seem to be here on Slashdot, suggesting alternate names for Tesla's feature.
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I think it's commendable to let idiots kill themselves. Now, if we could just make sure that only the drivers were killed, we'd have a killer feature! /ba-dum-tish!
Re:bad driving (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet whenever an airplane - be it a small private plane or a passenger jet - crashes when on autopilot, no one is suggesting the pilot is free of blame...
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You have no idea what an autopilot's function and limitations are, so quit pretending that you do. FYI, an autopilot will merrily fly your plane into a brick wall if there is a brick wall at your altitude on the course you tell it to steer.
God help us from people who make up their own conception of what terms mean. It;s no crime to be ignorant, but pretending you know it all when you know nothing about the subject is just presumptuous and silly.
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Yeah, the AP on an aircraft has never flow the aircraft into the side of a mountain in thick cloud. giving the flight crew no time to react...
As for reactions times, it depends on the flight regime - during a CAT III approach [wikipedia.org], do you really believe that the PF wouldn't have hands on controls?
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> It's called "autopilot". An autopilot flies the plane by
> itself and can even land the plane automatically.
Wrong.
Only the most advanced autopilot systems are capable of autoland. And then only under certain circumstances, at certain airports, and often only on certain runways at said airport. And to the extent that autoland is used, it requires more than a small bit of manual setup. beforehand. Even an autopilot used during high-altitude cruising requires a lot of setup and pre-programming. And
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I think you severely underestimate what constitutes a commercial aircraft.
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If Musk wants to redefine a word to serve his own purposes then that is some serious 1984-level shit right there.
No one bitched when Apple hijacked "device" to mean phone instead of it's established, ancient definition of 'thingy/doohickey'.
(Every time someone says "mobile device" (4 syllables) instead of "phone" (1 syllable) I want to slap them.)
"Device" is a much more accurate name as the "phone" part of mobile devices is becoming less used. I changed carriers and porting my number over was unsuccessful so my phone can make outbound calls but can't accept inbound calls. This was nearly a month ago and I haven't bothered asking the carrier to fix it because it turns out that I just don't care. If someone calls me they can leave me a message and I'll get a notification, which is all i really need.
Driver was on the phone at the time... (Score:2)
http://www.thecountrycaller.co... [thecountrycaller.com]
The have a sensor... (Score:4, Insightful)
The have a sensor tha detects if hands are on the wheel.
They say auto pilot should always be used with hands on wheel.
Why don't they just disable it if you take you hands from the wheel?
Re:The have a sensor... (Score:4, Insightful)
Disabling the auto-steering feature when the driver's hands aren't on the wheel doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
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"This is your Tesla speaking. Thank you for taking your hands off the steering wheel. I know this great game: Hit the Granny! Look, there's one! Weee!"
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They are certainly not shy to buzz you incessantly if you have your seat-belt off!
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Why don't they just disable it if you take you hands from the wheel?
People pick their noses. Unless they are extremely bendy, this generally does not involve use of feet or genitalia.
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I've driven with my dick before. And let me tell you, the gas and brake aren't so bad, but that clutch can be a real bitch.
Re:The have a sensor... (Score:5, Informative)
The sensor does stop the car after a couple of minutes of not touching the wheel or responding to prompts.
I don't think forcing the user to keep their hands on the wheel at all times will help much. Take a look at this video of a guy sleeping with autopilot on [youtu.be], presumably with one hand on the wheel so that it thinks he is paying attention.
The real issue here is that if the car does 99.9% of the work for hours on end you can't really expect human beings to remain attentive and ready to take over in a fraction of a second. Tesla have found the danger zone of inattentiveness between a high level of automation and full autonomy.
Driver may be foolish, but (Score:3)
This seems like exactly the sort of situation lane assist should handle. And if "auto pilot" was engaged, shouldn't it have prevented the driver from following too closely, as Musk is implying was the case?
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This seems like exactly the sort of situation lane assist should handle. And if "auto pilot" was engaged, shouldn't it have prevented the driver from following too closely, as Musk is implying was the case?
In China, "in the same prefecture as another vehicle" is synonymous with "following too closely".
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Partially autonomous doesn't work (Score:2)
No matter how many times you warn them, teach them, educate them - drivers will ALWAYS assume these system are more capable than they are. Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves. I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.
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Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves.
They seemingly take after Elon in this regard.
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Oh, you are SO clever. The fact is, Tesla blames identifiably STUPID and RECKLESS driver behavior. The drivers are PRETENDING there is blame on Tesla's part. Do you see the difference there, or is the difference too hard to grasp?
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I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.
Drive a car with antilock brakes in slippery conditions.
When it kicks the bottom of your foot to indicate it's working, you will be able to visualize the intermediate step.
Surprised? (Score:2)
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I live in Canada.
Licenses (Score:2)
Re:LicensesLicenses (Score:2)
Just because someone can demonstrate ability to test, doesn't necessarily mean they are intelligent.
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Well, they dont need to be intelligent. As long as they can demonstrate the ability to use autopilot correctly (even in simulated crashes), they can be allowed to use autopilot in tesla.
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I think the point is that merely possessing the ability, and demonstrating it on isolated demand, does not mean they will necessarily USE IT consistently.
Elon Musk's response (Score:3)
You're driving it wrong.
Enough "autopilot" stories already... (Score:3)
What's the deal? This stopped being "news" after the first two.
All the stories are alike:
1. Driver engages "autopilot"
2. Driver takes hands off wheel / stops paying attention to the road.
3. Driver crashes; blames "autopilot" instead of own stupidity.
Completely Ridiculous User Requirement (Score:4, Insightful)
"
"As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
Now, I hesitate to say this out loud, as this is a Nerd website, but this instruction is beyond silly. There is zero chance any human with a working brain is going to adhere to this instruction, and although I understand how it comes to be, it's a testament to a lack of even basic comprehension of a User Interface that is so unfortunately common amongst the nerdy citizens of the world.
Let's imagine this instruction in use. I'm driving my so-equipped vehicle:
Situation: Nothing unusual happening. Both hands on the wheel, Mind and Body attentive to the road. Alert and ready at any moment to take over from the auto driver. Car driving itself.
Repeat every second of a 20 minute commute for a thousand days. Or three days.
Now, what human, in possession of the faculties required to actually have a paying job and a drivers' license, is not going to become bored with this scenario, and at some point do something
And, after testing the waters, so to speak, and not dying in a fiery crash, won't do it again, only for a bit longer and perhaps with hands much further from said wheel and eyes much removed from the road ahead?
There cannot be a "half-way" system, such as that installed in the Tesla S, that drives, but does not drive, the car. It simply won't work in the manner the instructions say it should work.
Re:Box (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, over a thousand people per day are dying in traffic accidents worldwide. SDCs likely could prevent most of those. You want that progress held up because, what, 3 people have died in a year? Get some sense of perspective.
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Self-driving cars would be a great improvement, but, as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
Re:Box (Score:4, Interesting)
Self-driving cars would be a great improvement, but, as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
They are a step in that direction, and full SDCs will be only a software upgrade. All the necessary hardware is already in current Teslas. The risk of rushing the technology is far, far smaller than the risk of impeding it. America needs to stop being the "can't do" country.
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The name is not the problem - if it was, it could easily be fixed. The problem is human nature - even well–intentioned people find it difficult to pay attention when, most of the time, they do not have to. This is not driven by the name, it is driven by experience.
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Meanwhile, over a thousand people per day are dying in traffic accidents worldwide. SDCs likely could prevent most of those. You want that progress held up because, what, 3 people have died in a year? Get some sense of perspective.
Self-driving cars might have prevented it, but so would riding unicorns to work and back. We don't have either.
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Thousands of people die because of stupid, careless driving.
Encouraging you to rely on a system not capable of detecting and avoiding a car that the human in front of you managed to avoid? That's encouraging stupid and careless driving.
The stats don't add up at the moment because not many people have these things, not everyone that does has this shit turned on, and not everyone who turns this shit on is an idiot. But those are all factors that change radically as it becomes mainstream.
Notice that it's alw
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Autopilot can only be used under what are normally very safe driving conditions - highways and low speed start/stop traffic. The more difficult driving situations when most of the accidents happen aren't covered by it, so a simple comparison with humans isn't really fair.
We need more data on how many accidents there have been, including non-fatal ones, and I doubt there is any source of that. It's also interesting to see how insurance is going to play out on this one. The best indication we will probably ev
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Training is not going to help. it's just not in human nature to pay attention when there's nothing to do most of the time, and it must be assumed that the driver will require at least a couple of seconds warning, and probably more, before being able to take control. It is highly irresponsible of auto manufacturers to field systems that cannot reliably give that warning, even though it is technically the driver's responsibility to pay attention. Tesla's habit of calling it beta software is a cynical attempt
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I don't have any trouble whatsoever believing it. These are the same idiots who play with food and drink, apply makeup, shave, send and receive text messages, stare at printed papers, ogle girls in bikinis, and do all manner of other reckless things while their sole attention should be on driving.