Death by Tesla

Quote :

A popular video posted online appeared to show a man taking a nap as his car navigated busy traffic. One member of a Tesla owner message board recently quipped that he uses his free hands to play air guitar to Billy Idol songs. Another claimed that during a road trip, he noticed Tesla’s autopilot camera struggling to pick out lines during bright sunlight in the morning or at dusk.

Autopilot isn't designed to replace the driver. Merely augment him.

Stupid drivers. Dead stupid driver. Lucky that 134 million miles elapsed before one of these morons caught up with reality.

One of the problems that cars of this type will always face is the over-confidence and lack of understanding of the drivers.

Another, of course, is that software should not be controlling the car. Ever.

Aren't there laws against this kind of foolishness?  YouTube videos ought to be easy enough to trace.

Barring that, how about a deadman switch on the steering wheel?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Aren't there laws against this kind of foolishness?

I believe it's called Darwinian selection.

The truck driver was at fault, but he didn't die.

The Tesla driver was stupid, but not "at fault."

You continue to ignore the fact that the car's self-control system failed in a most basic and dramatic way.

Wrong. The self-driving mechanism performed exactly as designed.

The trailer of the truck was 2-1/2 feet off the ground, at windshield level. The "collision avoidance" system looks for ground-level obstacles. The side of the trailer was white, against a bright sky. It did not register as an object of value.

Now, one could argue, fairly successfully, that the design of the collision-avoidance system was flawed in the obstacles it looked for.... But it's equally the fault of the driver. Lesson learned.

As you said, somebody had to be the first.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Wrong.  The self-driving mechanism performed exactly as designed.

You really think so? You think the system was designed to drive into a truck?

Call me naive, but I would assume that avoiding a collision with a BFT would be an important part of any collision-avoidance system.

You go to great lengths to avoid criticizing the car's computer. What if the operating system was from Microsoft? Would you criticize it then?  

No connection there at all.

Name me a technological system that guarantees zero malfunctions.

Name me one that delivered 134 million miles before a failure.

Name me one that can't be defeated by stupidity.

What has that got to do with the subject at hand? The system fucked up big time, whether you like it or not.

And the 134 million miles is meaningless.

The same guy that died posted this video. Watch it carefully.

I've seen it. So what?

_Howard wrote:

The system fucked up big time, whether you like it or not.

The driver fucked up big time. His CAS was not foolproof.

As he proved.

Yes, the driver fucked up. No doubt about it.

But the car's system also fucked up. Do you deny that?

Self-driving cars will reduce the number of accidents significantly.

They will not eliminate them. That was the point of the other thread -- and a point you need to take to heart. No system is foolproof -- especially with a fool behind the wheel.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Self-driving cars will reduce the number of accidents significantly.

Maybe. Maybe not. That depends on the system and the humans.


So I guess the answer to my last question is no, you won't admit that the car's system fucked up.

Watch this video. It answers all your questions.

No. It won't. My question was do you admit that the car's system fucked up.

The event that happened was outside the system's design parameters.

Yes, it was fatal. Yes, it should have been designed to anticipate a stupid truck driver taking a left-hand turn from the right-hand lane. But no system is foolproof, and the driver relied too heavily on a system that wasn't foolproof.

That's as far as I'm willing to go.

Regardless of how stupid the driver was - and we are only assuming his actions - a system that was so poorly engineered as to allow such a collision is completely worthless. We're not talking about scraping the paint at night; we're talking about a sunny day and great big god damned truck. If that was outside the system's design parameters (and I only have your word on that), then the entire system is one-hundred percent shit and should be scrapped immediately. My opinion of Tesla Motors has dropped significantly.

If you watched the video I asked you to watch, you heard that the self-driving option is only for freeway driving, or for stop-and-go driving.

Not for in-city, trucks-turning-left-in-front-of-you driving.

Yes, the Tesla system failed the driver. But he was apparently operating it outside its design parameters, so the fault was his, not Tesla's.

A chainsaw is dangerous if you use a running one as a chair. Does that mean all chainsaws should be "scrapped immediately"? No of course not.

Elon Musk on Twitter.
"Radar tunes out what looks like an overhead road sign to avoid false braking events"