These accidents are not people mistaking the purpose of autopilot, they are people slipping into false confidence that the car will handle the driving for them because it has in the past.
This crash is unfortunate and should be investigated. But autopilot naming is something I don't think is the problem.
To be fair, an autopilot, in the traditional sense, just maintains a heading and an altitude.
Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft.
This thread happens with every Tesla crash, by the way:
1. Tesla crashes
2. Driver says autopilot was engaged
3. Long debate on HN about exact meaning of word "autopilot"
4. 9 times out of 10, Tesla log says autopilot wasn't on before the crash, or that obstacle was visibly in the path for more than enough time for the driver to take action (usually half in the lane and half out)
The other one time out of 10 the driver says the Tesla suddenly accelerated and drove through most of a strip mall.
The really scary ones are the ones that own it, know about the limitations, and intentionally bypass the safeguards.
It's really difficult to stay focus and (mostly) do nothing at the same time. Monitoring automation is boring. Also switching from a passive mode to an active mode in few seconds in case of an emergency might be really hard.
I'm not sure the Tesla "autopilot" is designed in a way that really keeps the driver in the loop and active enough.
Have you ever driven a Tesla?
And what are stats of accidents on Auto-pilot vs without? If less, I'd say it's a success.
If I made rat poison that looked like candy and named it “Yummy Candy Rat Poison” and some kid died coz they ate it, I’d deserve some blame regardless of parents keeping poison away from kids.
Tesla wants autopilot
Emergency services want autonomy in being able to shut the freeway down.
How about PUT THE FUCKING AUTOPILOT SYSTEM IN THE EMERGENCY vehicles -- such that THEY can report to ANY auto driving car "SLOW DOWN we are doing emergency services [HERE]"
And then you get both -- The emergency services vehicles should be freaking beacons to any self/auto driving car.
To assume that this was short-sighted on either side is correct. Tesla should have been thinking about this, emergency services should have been thinking about this.
Why doesnt Tesla take their Semi model and make a Fire-Engine model????
Difficult to blame the emergency vehicles when the semi-autonomous car fails to detect something that stands out so much.
The automation in Tesla's vehicles is, and should be, designed around modern conditions, not a utopia. Otherwise disable all those features until that utopia arrives.
Or would we say collisions with pedestrians are okay until such pedestrians all have autonomous human beacons (made by Tesla, of course)?
Tesla I think has done a fantastic job at striking a balance between getting something into the market the generate real-world data and mitigating the risks that come with it. If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe.
I think I would be hard pressed to find any technological or mechanical innovation that did not initially involve risk or have an accident associated with it. I've seen more examples where a Autopilot has done the right thing and avoided an accident than I have read stories of it making a mistake and causing an accident.
I don't see any evidence that Tesla has more, or less for that matter, of the necessary high-quality data that is needed for self-driving cars. The fact that real people are driving those cars continuously, potentially generating reams of data, is pretty immaterial, since the majority of that data is going to be useless (let's face it, 10 million hours of driving in the same conditions isn't better than 1 million hours of driving).
I believe your definition of keeping everyone safe differs from the common usage.
In my view, driving is already boring enough that it's insufficiently attention-grabbing for safety's sake. That's why, e.g., the "naked streets" model is removing lane marking. Decreasing (false) certainty forces more cognitive engagement, making things safer: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
If anything, for the decades [1] while we're waiting for full automation, I'd like to see the equivalent of Threat Image Projection. It's the technology for luggage scanning where they put images of fake guns, bombs, etc in the images of real luggage. If the operator doesn't press the "threat" button they are alerted that they slipped up. It brings the frequency of important events up into the range where humans can pay attention. It'd be great to have the same thing for cars, so that AR images of deer, cyclists, children, and fire trucks appear; if you don't attempt to take evasive action, you lose points. [2]
[1] E.g., iRobot founder Rodney Brooks says not before mid 2030s: http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/
[2] I am, of course, kidding.
I suspect the primary problem is not the partial autonomous technology, but the marketing which is convincing people they can trust it. Nobody ever told you your cruise control means you don't have to pay attention, so very few[1] incidents happen due to misuse of it.
First and foremost, Tesla should never have been allowed to release "Autopilot" being called that. From the very name it provides a false impression of what it can do.
[1]I know you can find one. Humans are remarkably stupid.
More than half a century in mass-market automobiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control#History
It's true that people may be in particular need of a refresher, since such features could be perceived as more than advanced cruise control. It should be strongly emphasized to all drivers that we need to take full control whenever we see any exceptional conditions, from hazards, obstructions, pedestrians or wildlife in or entering the road, to poor visibility, and even when passing or being passed by small vehicles.
If the roads had sensors in the "bots dotts" and would track and steer all the volume of traffic - isnt that better than all the infantile-AI-cars doing it?
Engineers are required to to make some kind of input to verify that they're still alert, or the train stops[1] if they haven't done anything in X seconds.
Obviously you wouldn't want the car to just stop in the middle of the road, but there could be something like that designed.
[1] https://www.quora.com/If-a-train-driver-falls-asleep-what-ha...
I'd imagine Tesla wasn't thinking about how the driver alertness feature could be countered unfortunately. Perhaps we'll see Tesla adapting the eye tracking tech that Cadillac Hypercruise is using.
Airbags also kill babies if used incorrectly.
There are warning placards in several places in your car saying such.
Sometimes an airbag can cause more injury than the accident.
A seatbelt may trap you in a sinking car.
But overall, airbags and seatbelts have significantly reduced traffic injuries and fatalities.
Autopilot saves lives. Autopilot used incorrectly can kill people. But overall, Autopilot has significantly reduced the number of accidents involving Teslas.
So do we take airbags away because using them incorrectly might hurt a child? Are they a safety feature or marketing value?
It sounds like it's not 100% confirmed that Autopilot was at fault. The first sentence of the article also reads "reportedly on 'Autopilot'"
By the way, one can speculate there are interesting ways to trigger beeps inside these Teslas coasting on the left lane.
Isn't that usually because the owner lied about using Autopilot?
Why am I not already driving a Tesla?
The Tesla isn't magical, made of adamantium, or such.
Not to sound overly snarky, but as someone who has been a firefighter / paramedic for the best part of a decade, I've certainly seen my fair share of MVAs up close.
I wonder how Tesla's AEB stacks up against similar systems on other vehicles? There are a lot of vehicles on the road now with automatic braking, but we don't see every single frontal collision on such cars reported as some kind of systemic failure.
Will this turn out to be another "brightly lit sky" autopilot bug, like the 2016 semi truck incident?
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tragic-loss "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied"
> Because of the force of the impact, firefighters advised the Tesla driver that he should be taken for a medical evaluation, but he showed no significant injuries and refused treatment,
"Autopilot was not active at the time of collision, according to logs"... because it was deactivated by hard manual braking a moment before, because Autopilot was about to cause a hard collision...
*Big Red Truck
It is not allowed in Japan (where I live) because of the draconian vehicle inspection program, but I guess in some US states it is more liberal.
Pilot training covers techniques for avoiding automation dependency (aka letting autopilot kill you and all tour passengers). Perhaps we need the same for car drivers: if the car was as good a driver as you, it wouldn’t give you the option to drive.
I've heard of people not turning off their cruise control when going through an accident area. Boneheads. This is no different - just involving the thing after cruise control.
So was it on autopilot or not.
