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Transportation

Elon Musk Denies Autopilot Use In Fatal Tesla Crash Where Police Claim 'No One Was Driving' (thedrive.com) 287

Posted by BeauHD from the ongoing-investigations dept.
Rei writes: After a Tesla crash in The Woodlands killed two people last Saturday night, news reports were quick to jump to the conclusion that Autopilot (or even FSD) was being used and led to the strange crash, in which investigators reported nobody in the driver's seat, one victim buckled in in the front passenger seat, and the other buckled in behind them. On Twitter, however, Autopilot users were quick to question this account, noting that Autopilot can't be enabled on a road lacking lane lines; the speed and acceleration were far higher than Autopilot allows; and numerous other problems. Now Elon Musk has weighed in with the first official statement since the crash. Responding to a user questioning the reporting, Musk said: "Your research as a private individual is better than professionals @WSJ! Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have." What actually caused the crash and why nobody was found in the driver's seat remains unclear at this point; analysis of the logs and investigation of the crash site remains ongoing.
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Elon Musk Denies Autopilot Use In Fatal Tesla Crash Where Police Claim 'No One Was Driving' More

Elon Musk Denies Autopilot Use In Fatal Tesla Crash Where Police Claim 'No One Was Driving'

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  • Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @03:04AM (#61292970) Homepage

    The public has already moved on. The public will only ever remember the "It was on autopilot!" stories, not the truth.

    • Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @03:53AM (#61293062)

      The public has already moved on. The public will only ever remember the "It was on autopilot!" stories, not the truth.

      With two billion humans on the platform representing one of the worlds largest products, why am I not surprised that many others in media have adopted the Zuckerberg "Dumb Fucks" model of success, pimping lies for profit. Perhaps there should be a law against reporting the cause of a crash until the facts have been gathered. Immediately pointing the finger at autopilot to create a viral clickbait reaction is akin to the reporter calling the innocent-until-proven-guilty suspect a "murderer" with nothing more than an anonymous tip as evidence.

      The MSM is starting to show their short position more and more being the perpetual perpetrators of death when it comes to Tesla. Yet more evidence if how "unsafe" they are:

      "From 2012 – 2020, there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 205 million miles traveled. By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation shows that in the United States there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled"

      The CEOs of other auto companies would be holding a daily media event by comparison.

      Oh, and serious question for Tesla; you're telling me that most cars won't activate a damn air bag when the weight sensor in the seat isn't triggered, but for some reason a Tesla will activate autopilot with no one in the drivers seat, and travel faster than parking lot speed?

      I would have figured a weight sensor would have been the first thing that would have pegged Elons bullshit meter. Guess not.

      • Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)

        by polar red ( 215081 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:14AM (#61293092)

        The CEOs of other auto companies would be holding a daily media event by comparison.

        Tesla doesn't give a penny in advertising. Media(there is apparently no journalism in the US) will spin it negatively.

        • Re: Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)

          by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @05:47AM (#61293188) Homepage

          The "four hour fire" thing turned out to be BS as well [houstonchronicle.com]. The fire chief says that it was under control in 2-3 minutes after first responders arrived; only the occasional pop after 5-10 minutes; and while they were on the s ene for four hours, there was no fire, they were just using "a little bit of water" to make sure the pack was cold. They also did not need to call Tesla to learn how to fight it.

          • Re: Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)

            by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @07:45AM (#61293400) Homepage

            To quote the fire chief:

            “(It) was heavily involved in flames. When the fire was put out, it was noticed there were two bodies (inside) and they were deceased,” Buck added. “They continued extinguishment of the woods around (the car), putting out the trees and pine needles and what have you. I was there probably five to 10 minutes after that and at that point, every once in a while, the (battery) reaction would flame and it was mainly keeping water pouring on the battery.”

            “With respect to the fire fight, unfortunately, those rumors grew out way of control. It did not take us four hours to put out the blaze. Our guys got there and put down the fire within two to three minutes, enough to see the vehicle had occupants,” Buck said of inaccurate claims the vehicle burned for hours. “After that, it was simply cooling the car as the batteries continued to have a chain reaction due to damage.”

            Buck said what is termed in the firefighting profession as “final extinguishment” of the vehicle — a 2019 Tesla — took several hours, but that classification does not mean the vehicle was out-of-control or had live flames. The term is mostly used in relation to structure or wild land forest fires where hot ash that seems extinguished or is buried can later reignite other material and begin burning again.

            “We could not tear it apart or move it around to get ‘final extinguishment’ because the fact that we had two bodies in there and it was then an investigation-slash-crime scene,” Buck explained. “We had to keep it cool, were on scene for four hours, but we were simply pouring a little bit of water on it. It was not because flames were coming out. It was a reaction in the battery pan. It was not an active fire.”

            He also noted:

            “It is our job to keep up with the newest technologies, whether it is electric cars or other newer vehicles. The have strengthened uni-bodies, some of the framework they use is (high-tech) steel. The old ‘jaws of life’ will not cut through that. The ‘jaws of life’ would not have even made a dent in this car,” Buck said of the Tesla. “We have had to upgrade tools and upgrade our training and processes

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

              It was only not an active fire because they kept cooling it. As the chief said, It was a reaction in the battery pan. I note that you bolded the text right next to that text in an apparent attempt to distract attention away from it, though.

              • You need a large energy source to power anything that uses large amounts of power, it’s grade school physics. Most all of the pearl clutching seems to be fear of what they don’t know, trolls, and shilling against Tesla. Personally I’d rather be in a car battery fire than a ruptured gas tank, at least the batteries take forever to burn and don’t coat you like a human torch, the gas could burn in only a few minutes and gas tanks tend to carry more energy.

                • When was the last time you heard of someone in an accident being covered in gasoline? For there to be fuel inside the vehicle you usually have to have sufficient crash intensity that you're not going to survive the experience anyway.

                  I wasn't trying to make a judgement between the two, what I'm saying is that claiming there wasn't an ongoing fire is disingenuous.

        • Democracy depends on informed electorate

          Information for the electorate comes from the press, and freedom of the press is critical

          And we fund this critical piece of democracy using advertisement dollars.

          Internet has cherry-picked the profitable classified ad sections off and left it with high cost news gathering without any serious means of monetizing it.

          Please subscribe to your local newspaper and a few national news papers, donate to pbs and other news gatherers. Do it even if you dont agree with the

          • Please subscribe to your local newspaper and a few national news papers, donate to pbs and other news gatherers. Do it even if you dont agree with the political leaning of them.

            But should I help fund the fraudulent NYT, who as you point out paid a guy to falsify a Tesla test and then rewarded him by promoting him to editor? That seems like a good way to reward a news organization for lying to you.

            In fact, since the NYT paywalls, I mostly don't even read them and I never, ever cite them.

            We're going to have to find a new way to get news, because the world is changing.

      • Perhaps there should be a law against reporting the cause of a crash until the facts have been gathered.

        The media has for a long time used a loophole around this. Instead of stating facts, they ask questions. Because questions aren't libel (or some other bullshit).

        Expect to see headlines akin to 'Did Tesla autopilot cause a fatal crash?'

      • Re: Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @06:56AM (#61293292)
        Driver seats do not have a airbag weight sensor to my knowledge. It is assumed that there is always a driver in the seat and they are a full grown adult. So no need for a sensor to determine if full or partial inflation is required. However the lack of person in the driver seat is hard to explain. Either the driver left the vehicle and fled on foot or it was on autopilot. I can imagine no scenario where a person would consciously strap themselves into a seat of a car that is on fire; then burn themselves to death.

        • I do not know if there are weight sensors in the driver’s seat of a Tesla. The Tesla does know if the seatbelt is fastened, and it will not engage cruise control or auto-steer (aka autopilot) if the driver’s seat belt is not fastened.

          Cruise control can be engaged without lane lines and in some cases it can be engaged from a standstill. There is no limit on cruise control speed if auto-steer in not used.

          • Cruise control can be engaged without lane lines

            Autosteer can also be used without lane lines. It usually can't be engaged on a road without lane lines (though my car occasionally lets me engage it on the line-less road near my house -- there's one section where it's usually willing to engage, briefly) but if it's already engaged and the car drives into an area without lane lines it will continue operating -- and does a good job. When approaching my house from one direction there are no lane lines and I can sometimes engage it in one small section, but w

        • Either the driver left the vehicle and fled on foot or it was on autopilot.

          Or the cruise control was engaged. The person in the passenger seat could have been steering.

        • Re: The answer is in TV Police documentaries (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CaptainOfSpray ( 1229754 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @11:49AM (#61294186)
          We have two such documentaries here (Traffic Cops; Poilice Interceptors). Anyone who watches them knows that the cops regularly encounter drunk drivers who hop out after the crash and go sit in the back. Human cheating; a simple and obvious explanation.
      • I too thought weight sensor should be in the "enable" loop of the auto pilot. It is there, people tried to engage auto pilot on a parking lot standing outside reaching through the window. It would not engage. But once enabled, it does not continuously check. I am sure the next update will have if (!AirbagsEnabled()){ break;} added to the software.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        Perhaps there should be a law against reporting the cause of a crash until the facts have been gathered.

        While not exactly a law, press standards used to work exactly like that.

        Then, of course, the press had to compete with online bloggers and "influencers" who were under no such rules, clickbait began to replace headlines and staff at newspapers was cut to save costs.

        So yeah, you get what you (don't) pay for.

    • It is not like Elon has claimed Autopilot wasn't involved in other crashes, and it turned out, it had disabled itself a second before the crash but did cause the crash..

      Oh wait. It is exactly like that.. Twice already. This would make a third.

  • Don't forget to trigger the autopilot, guys!

  • A Locked Room Mystery (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SST-206 ( 699646 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @03:10AM (#61292986) Homepage
    So could there have been a third person driving, who somehow ran away after the crash? The plot thickens...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Sounds the most likely scenario. Probably bailed out before the crash and luckily for him didn't have any severe injuries then for some reason the car speeded up once he'd done so. Either way I suspect it'll be found these guys were in toxicated in some way.

    • Re:A Locked Room Mystery (Score:5, Funny)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @03:56AM (#61293070)

      So could there have been a third person driving, who somehow ran away after the crash? The plot thickens...

      Scotty picked a bad time to beam him up.

    • A classic answer to the "Two dead bodies in a locked bedroom" mystery is "The murderer is hiding under the bed".

    • Ghost in the machine? Differing accounts. The driver might have panicked after accidentally accelerating instead of braking then dove into backseat just as hitting tree. Curious car melted so will be hard to piece together. Suicide or even sabotage also need to be considered. Wait n see.

      • Wait and see indeed. The story doesn't add up as is, and we've seen early fog of war reports that are wrong already.

        The simplest theory so far is driver went around the corner and crashed and then bailed so as to not go to jail for killing his friends.

      • You don't just unbuckle your belt and "dive into the back seat" after "accidentally accelerating". By the time you get into the back seat you'll have traveled several hundred feet.

  • There Was A Third Person Driving (Score:3)

    by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @03:12AM (#61292990)

    They will find him/her/it.

    • My only question is this: Does autopilot function while the driver's seat is empty? If it does, then it's possible the car did have autopilot and the records and datalogs are wrong or tampered with. If it doesn't, then there indeed was a third person.

      In all honesty a car should not be moving at all if nobody is in direct control, automatically or not.

      • My only question is this: Does autopilot function while the driver's seat is empty?

        No, of course it doesn't.

        That would be ridiculous and your bullshit alarm should have triggered right there.

        • Which is why I asked, I've never worked on a Tesla before or even been in one, but I know dead man's switch is a standard for most field machinery. This means someone is fucking lying, someone fled the scene, or the car was tampered. I'm leaning mostly towards tampering.

          Hell, who says the passengers were alive before the car crashed?

      • Re:There Was A Third Person Driving (Score:5, Informative)

        by Phydeaux314 ( 866996 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @06:51AM (#61293280)

        No, it does not. You need to be in the driver's seat (or there needs to be enough weight to make the car think you are), you need to apply torque to the steering wheel on a semi-regular basis (not much, and there are ways to get around it) or it shuts off and the car coasts to a stop, and it turns off on its own if it encounters something it's unsure about.

        It's a neat feature for making trips on well-lit uncrowded highways less tiring, but it's not magic, and you need to do a fair bit of fuckery to get it to act out of spec.

        • No, it does not. You need to be in the driver's seat (or there needs to be enough weight to make the car think you are), you need to apply torque to the steering wheel on a semi-regular basis (not much, and there are ways to get around it) or it shuts off and the car coasts to a stop, and it turns off on its own if it encounters something it's unsure about.

          It's a neat feature for making trips on well-lit uncrowded highways less tiring, but it's not magic, and you need to do a fair bit of fuckery to get it to act out of spec.

          Really? [youtube.com]

          I have no idea if they did some kind of mod, but that's not the only video of Tesla's driving without a driver [youtube.com].

    • If the crash was bad enough to kill the remaining occupants then how did the driver escape?

  • Beta testing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SST-206 ( 699646 )
    It's amazing (and scary) that they allow beta testing on real roads.

    • Set the cruise control on your car. Let go of the wheel. See how long before you run into something.

  • Clearly it can. Here is a video from a UK Telsa owner enabling Autopilot on road with no markings. see https://youtu.be/QqlVbFM8E5w?t... [youtu.be]

    Scarily it then drifts over to the right edge. i.e. the wrong side of the road in the UK.

    • I mean, it's good to have the confirmation, but people really shouldn't be fucking testing their car features on the road if they know, or have an inkling, that it doesn't work.

      We don't need more people like that stupid Apple engineer who got killed trying to prove a point instead of just stop using it and report the failure.
    • AI is currently not at a level that would allow "it" to drive anywhere, like a human does.

    • That's FSB, not standard autopilot (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:44AM (#61293124) Homepage

      Even the summary says that standard autopilot is the one that cannot be used on roads without marking and that the car has not purchased Full Self Driving (implying that FSB is the one that would work). And just the title of your linked video clearly says it is about FSB (and watching the video, it's clear that with FSB the car doesn't really want to drive on that tiny road...). I assume you can read English, why the hate?
      I mean, I wouldn't trust FSB personally (probably because I am a software engineer), but I don't like blatant misinformation.

      • Even the summary says that standard autopilot is the one that cannot be used on roads without marking and that the car has not purchased Full Self Driving (implying that FSB is the one that would work). And just the title of your linked video clearly says it is about FSB (and watching the video, it's clear that with FSB the car doesn't really want to drive on that tiny road...). I assume you can read English, why the hate?
        I mean, I wouldn't trust FSB personally (probably because I am a software engineer), but I don't like blatant misinformation.

        If by FSB you mean Full Self-Drive Beta then you are wrong the guy is using Autopilot. The title is click-baity, but he is testing improvements to Autopilot in the UK since the release of FSD beta in the USA.
        We don't have FSD in the UK probably due to the fact we drive on the 'wrong' side of the road.

    • Can you use it if you haven’t purchased it, though? Is there a hack to enable it without paying for it?

  • You're not seeing the Big Picture here, dude. In the Age of Covid, three and a half little words:

    MOBILE. DRIVE-IN. THEATRES.

    Thank you, thank you. I'll take my commission in Telsacoin.

  • Tell me it aint so... I will forgive him the first 999 times, im not so sure on 1000.

  • Software (Score:3, Funny)

    by kopecn ( 1962014 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:09AM (#61293086)
    Perhaps there is a bug in the logHandler and only writes favorable Elon logs to file. If accelerometer is greater than xxx, rewrite last 30 seconds of log to indicate no fault of autopilot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by igny ( 716218 )
      Re:Perhaps there is a bug in the logHandler and only writes favorable Elon logs to file. If accelerometer is greater than xxx, rewrite last 30 seconds of log to indicate no fault of autopilot.

      Also find a road without lane lines to hide.

  • What privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dromgodis ( 4533247 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:39AM (#61293116)

    Am I the only one that is concerned that Musk tweets openly about what was logged about the operation of the car when it was used, and purchase choices made by the buyer? In my book that is a severe privacy invasion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chx496 ( 6973044 )

      You're not the only one.

      From the article it's not clear to me whether real-time data is logged within the car itself, or the data is also available in the cloud. Logging stuff within the car itself is completely fine (and may be useful when reconstructing accidents), but if real-time data is transmitted to the cloud that will be a huge issue. (And a very good reason for me to not buy a Tesla as long as that's a concern.) Not because that information wouldn't be useful in this specific case, but because I do

    • This has been common knowledge for almost a decade: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/02/14/teslas-gotcha-blog-catches-new-york-times-reporter-driving-in-circles/?sh=4b71d58dfe73

      Top Gear learned the hard way too even earlier. I imagine it's in the TOS when you first take possession of your new Tesla and I imagine that most Tesla owners don't care as this data likely aids in future improvements and features much like the OS on your Apple or Android phones do.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by The Cynical Critic ( 1294574 )
      It's not like other auto manufacturers don't collect and warehouse this kind of data and probably would be making these kinds of statements if they had a CEO as involved in day-to-day operations as Musk is. They're just too corporate to be making statements like this on twitter.

      There's also the fact that Musk has learned the necessity of this kind of aggressive setting-the-record-straight behavior the hard way. Back in the day Top Gear decided to downright fictionalize their review of the original Roadst
    • So many Tesla owners report getting a phone call from Tesla when their car is involved in an accident even before the police arrive on the scene. Tesla would transmit and alert tech support if air bags are deployed or crash sensors have been triggered. Its also possible it will upload the event log to the Tesla computers at that point.

      It is 7 years since John Mendacity Broder drove a Tesla around the super charger waiting for the battery to die so that he can report Tesla runs out of battery. He did not k

      • it is common knowledge Tesla can pull the car even log remotely. It probably does not have the bandwidth to collect it from all the cars all the time.

        There's only half a million cars. A basic update with position and a little bit of information on current state is pretty small. Think coordinates and a flag field. Further, vehicles behaving in an interesting manner could report more often, so e.g. when your speed goes up your reporting rate goes up. Or, you know, when a collision is detected, obviously.

        I would not be surprised to learn that every Tesla is reporting continually, say once per five minutes when parked, once per minute when in motion, and the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Teslas are spyware on wheels.

      What's really fascinating is that if he isn't lying then apparently the car sent this telemetry to Tesla before it was destroyed by fire. Maybe they have some code that sends telemetry when an accident is detected.

  • Corporate talk (Score:3)

    by kbg ( 241421 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:56AM (#61293140)

    Let me translate this corporate talk:

    "Data logs recovered so far"
    -> We have very little data recovered

    "don't show that the company's Autopilot driver-assist software was enabled"
    -> The autopilot was disengaged seconds before the crash so technically it wasn't active in the crash.

    • Let me translate this corporate talk:

      "Data logs recovered so far"
      -> We have very little data recovered

      "don't show that the company's Autopilot driver-assist software was enabled"
      -> The autopilot was disengaged seconds before the crash so technically it wasn't active in the crash.

      You missed one:

      "There was nobody in the drivers seat."
      -> Somebody was obviously fucking around yet somehow the car is to blame?

      • In any other car, if no human remains were found on the driver seat of a burnt car, you assume the driver was thrown about or tried to get out by climbing into to rear seat trying to open the rear doors because front doors were jammed. But in a Tesla that never bought FSD, it is somehow Tesla's fault.

  • Who Started the Lies? (Score:3)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @06:57AM (#61293296) Homepage Journal

    Can the chain of reporting be reverse engineered to determine who started this large cluster of lies?

    Even if you don't believe Elon, the fire chief ought to be more credible than the average reporter. Did the WSJ get punked by shorts? Is the staff writer a short? Somebody got punked or engaged in fantasy rather than journalism - who and when are important.

    • Can the chain of reporting be reverse engineered to determine who started this large cluster of lies?

      which cluster of lies?

      If autopilot was on before the crash, but shut off between getting in the back seat and the collision, then musk is technically accurate while also being misleading. We don't know the full details yet. Who's the liar here? Nobody knows yet.

      The battery pack had to be continuously cooled or it would have re-ignited; the fire chief said there was a reaction in the battery pan and not a fire, which means there was a reaction in the battery pan which was controlled by their continual applic

  • Occams razor (Score:3, Insightful)

    by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @07:57AM (#61293420)

    One of only three possible explanations:

    1) The vehicle was on autopilot with no backup driver when it ran off the road and struck a tree. Both passengers were killed on impact and/or were trapped in the vehicle and burned alive. Considering the restraints were in place, dead on impact the likeliest of the two.

    2) This was a double homicide, and the crash and fire were forensic countermeasures to cover up two already dead suspects. A non guilty third party driver makes less sense as no one had appeared at a hospital with burns nor made any attempt to remove the two victims from a burning vehicle before fleeing the scene

    3) the driver crashes the car and then positioned himself into the passenger seat before buckling himself back into the passenger seat before succumbing to the most painful method of death imaginable.

    In gonna stick with #1 and investigate the chance of #2. Musks suggestion that 3 is even a remote possibility is by far the most absurd to date.

    • One of only three possible explanations:

      Those are not the only three.

      4) The vehicle was on cruise control and the front passenger seat was steering and lost control going around a curve and struck a tree. Both passengers were killed on impact and/or were trapped in the vehicle and burned alive. Considering the restraints were in place, dead on impact the likeliest of the two.

      This is also consistent with Musk's statement that Autopilot was not engaged.

  • If autopilot wasn't in the mix, this would be a clear cut case. Sadly, someone decided to put a half-assed self driving in the mix, so we will forever be seeing confusing circumstances like this.

  • Hold my beer? (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @08:54AM (#61293550) Homepage
    I read elsewhere from a Tesla owner that you also cannot have autopilot run without someone sitting in the driver's seat. According to him: lift your bum from the seat, and autopilot disengages. Which presumably would cause the car to drift to a stop, if you don't intervene. So: If neither autopilot nor full-self-driving were engaged, what do we have? Maybe they figured that the Tesla would have some sort of emergency rescue program, if they just wedged the gas pedal down and let it go? We may never know, but it sure sounds like a "hold my beer" kind of event.

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