Technology

In fact, by the time the crash happens, it’s alerted the driver to pay more attention no less than 150 times over the course of about 45 minutes. Nevertheless, the system didn’t recognize a lack of engagement to the point that it shut down Autopilot

I blame the driver, but if the above is true there was a problem with the Tesla as well. The Tesla is intended to disengage and disable autopilot for the remainder of the drive after a small number of ignored alerts. If the car didn’t do that, there’s a bug in the Tesla software.

I think it’s more likely the driver used a trick to make the car think he was engaged when he was not. You can do things like put a water bottle wedged in the steering wheel to make the car think you have tugged on the steering wheel to prove you are engaged. (Don’t ask me how I know)

I have a lot of trouble understanding how the NTSB (or whoever's ostensibly in charge of vetting tech like this) is allowing these not-quite self driving cars on the road. The technology doesn't seem mature enough to be safe yet, and as far as I can tell, nobody seems to have the authority or be willing to use that authority to make manufacturers step back until they can prove their systems can be integrated safely into traffic.

150 more warnings than a regular car would give, ultimately it's the driver's fault.

This is stupid. Teslas can park themselves, they're not just on rails. It should be pulling over and putting the flashers on if a driver is unresponsive.

That being said, the driver knew this behavior, acted with wanton disregard for safe driving practices, and so the incident is the driver's fault and they should be held responsible for their actions. It's not the courts job to legislate.

It's actually the NTSB's job to regulate car safety so if they don't already have it congress needs to grant them the authority to regulate what AI behavior is acceptable/define safeguards against misbehaving AI.

So if the guy behind the wheel died and couldn't react to the alerts then the car can't do a decision to just stop instead of crashing into a police car?

Driver is definitely the one ultimately at fault here, but how is it that Tesla doesn’t perform an emergency stop in this situation - but just barrels into an obstacle?

Even my relatively ‘dumb’ car with adaptive cruise control handles this type of situation better than Tesla?!

Setting aside the driver issue, isn't this another case that could've been prevented with LIDAR?

You know what might work, program the car so that after the second unanswered "alert" the autopilot pulls the car over, or reduces speed and turns on the hazards. The third violation of this auto pilot is disabled for that car for a period of time.

Poor ~~drunk~~ impaired driver falling victim to autonomous driving... Hopefully that driver lost their license.

Don't see how that's a Tesla problem... Drunk/high driver operating their car incorrectly.

Data from the Autopilot system shows that it recognized the stopped car 37 yards or 2.5 seconds before the crash.

Is the video slowed down? In the video, if you pause 2.5s before the crash, the stopped police car seems to be very close already. A (awake) human driver would've recognized the stopped police car from way more distance than that.

This source keeps pushing tesla propaganda. There's always an angle trying to sell that it wasn't the tesla's fault

Officers injured at the scene are blaming and suing Tesla over the incident.

...

And the reality is that any vehicle on cruise control with an impaired driver behind the wheel would’ve likely hit the police car at a higher speed. Autopilot might be maligned for its name but drivers are ultimately responsible for the way they choose to pilot any car, including a Tesla.

I hope those officers got one of those "you don't pay if we don't win" lawyers. The responsibility ultimately resides with the driver and I'm not seeing them getting any money from Tesla.

I'm not so sure disengaging autopilot because the driver's hands were not on the wheel while on a highway, is the best option. Engage hazard lights, remain in lane (or if able move to the slowest lane) and come to a stop. Surely that's the better way?

Just disengaging the autopilot seems like such a copout to me. Also the fact it disengaged right at the end "The driver was in control at the moment of the crash" just again feels like bad "self" driving. Especially when the so-called self-driving is able to come to a stop as part of its software in other situations.

Also if you cannot recognize an emergency vehicle (I wonder if this was a combination of the haze and the usually bright emergency lights saturating the image it was trying to analyse) it's again a sign you shouldn't be releasing this to the public. It's clearly just not ready.

Not taking any responsibility away from the human driver here. I just don't think the behaviour was good enough for software controlling a car used by the public.

Not to mention, of course, the reason for suing Tesla isn't because they think they're more liable. It's because they can actually get some money from them.

Hard to argue Tesla at fault when clearly the driver was impaired and at fault here.

It's also so misleading that Tesla use the word Autopilot for what is basically adaptive cruise control and lane assist