7 ms·
Man accused of dangerous driving for sleeping in self-driving, speeding Tesla
- webmobdev 6y ago> “They are not self-driving systems,” said Supt. Gary Graham of Alberta RCMP Traffic Services. > “These technologies assist drivers, but do not replace them,” said the statement from the federal institution responsible for transportation policies and programs ... > Tesla’s website states, “All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future.” ... full self-driving capabilities in the FUTURE ... So it is a DISHONEST marketing issue that creates a wrong perception in the consumer, and that's what the government should address. Create regulation that do not allow such vehicles to be marketed as "self-driving". Create some kind of certification to earn the right to advertise a vehicle as "self-driving". And define and standardize better labels for the current technologies used, and publicize it well.
- tehlike 6y agoYou think it's regulation issue. I say it's because it's overtrust for an almost working system. If something gets good enough you will rely on it more and more. It will work, until it doesn't.
- camjohnson26 6y agoAnd the systems fail in ways that a human wouldn’t which makes it more dangerous. Teslas often “shadow brake” when driving under overpasses or overhead signs because the radar system gets confused.
- alexanderdmitri 6y agoThis is what gets me. A big part driving safety is defensive, ie monitoring the other drivers around you. It's relatively easy to pick out distracted, erratic or risk-taking drivers from a handful of simple queues. Very much not the case with software driven autopilot routines from an increasing number of vendors. So accidents may go down where humans are at fault, but I find it more unsettling overall, as I have less control to take acceptable safety precautions.
- webmobdev 6y agoYes, defensive driving is the norm because we humans are fallible. If all the cars on the road were self-driven, then it would be a different story.
- camjohnson26 6y agoAssuming self driving cars will be infallible.
- belltaco 6y ago>And the systems fail in ways that a human wouldn’t which makes it more dangerous Not necessarily, because humans fail in ways that Tesla autopilot wouldn't. 1.5 million people are killed in road accidents every year. 54 million people are injured.
- foepys 6y ago> So it is a dishonest marketing issue that creates a wrong perception in the consumer German courts share this opinion and Tesla is prohibited from naming their product Autopilot or referencing any FSD.
- phaemon 6y agoSo people keep claiming, but I've yet to see a single example of an actual Tesla owner who was confused about this. The person in this story wasn't confused and didn't even attempt a defense that Tesla had mislead them.
- orange_tee 6y agoSo he and his passenger went to sleep fully knowing that Tesla's driving assist could fail at any moment? You mean, they were both suicidal? Much more plausible is that he is scared to implicate Tesla into this.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoTesla marks all these features as beta on the menu where you activate them, and pops up a long warning text explicitly stating the limitations. I don’t think Tesla could do much more than they already do.
- orange_tee 6y agoDescribing driving assist as "beta FSD" is already grossly misleading, and still my point stands, either they were mislead or they were suicidal.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoI was highly skeptical of these systems too: for normal freeway driving, Tesla’s systems are much better than I expected them to be. There’s no way I would be comfortable enough to sleep in my car, as a programmer, but I could imagine someone getting overconfident. This has always been a major risk with semi-automated systems: I believe airplanes dialed back the functionality of autopilots to prevent pilot complacency.
- orange_tee 6y agoOK that is a good point. So you are saying, maybe the marketing wasn't what misled the driver, but the abilities of the system. A system that fails 1% of the time will give a the user overconfidence up until the first time it fails.
- tintor 6y agoEven with certification, person behind the wheel will still be responsible (as long as he / she has control over vehicle). Once vehicles ship without steering wheels / pedals, that will not be the case anymore.
- webmobdev 6y agoAs someone else suggested, manufacturer should be made liable in case of an accident for "self-driving" vehicles.
- janaagaard 6y agoCurious: Why would the Tesla be speeding, since it was in “autopilot” mode? Wouldn’t it know about the speed limits? Or dis the driver set on cruise control first?
- SEJeff 6y agoYou can happily set the autopilot speed to above the speed limit. There are a few gotchas and it won’t always let you, but in general, it is fine. I normally set it to 10% higher than the posted speed limit as an example.
- everyone 6y agoYou intentionally wish to drive 10% higher than the speed limit.. So, you desire to be in car crash? Also one at faster speeds and therefore exponentially more deadly? Everyone has to use public roads, not just you. You are endangering all other diligent road users with your behavior, not just yourself.
- staticfloat 6y agoHere in Seattle, in the absence of traffic forcing slower speeds, most people are going ~10mph over the speed limit. On the freeway, although the speed limit is 60mph most people will be going about 70mph. If you use Tesla's autopilot it will match the speed of the car in front of you, up to the maximum specified by the "speed limit". So I usually set the speed limit to something like 75mph so that the car follows the flow of the traffic around it, instead of forcing other drivers to swerve around me because I am going 10mph slower than everyone else.
- jedberg 6y agoI wonder, do you drive on highways? Because I suspect you don't often. I can't think of a time, sans traffic, that I was cruising under 72 on our local highways (speed limit 65). And I'm usually being passed.
- mellosouls 6y agoWhile I don't condone speeding (and acknowledge the relatively greater damage when accidents happen), I think you need to distinguish between that and unsafe driving which are two very different things. You can be driving below speed limits very unsafely (and above them safely) and the constant focus on speeding, especially via automated mechanisms like cameras at the expense of traffic officers means we risk a much lower standard of driving and much less safe roads. Note though my concern is not the crackdown on those who flout the law and/or break speed limits; but the misunderstanding of what unsafe driving is (as implied by your comment), and headline anti-speeding measures that are used to reduce costs and increase risk.
- supernova87a 6y ago"Witnesses claim the man behind the wheel and his passenger were asleep with their seats fully reclined, as their Tesla travelled up to 150 km/h on the freeway near Ponoka..." Given this and the man's other past incidents, the Tesla was only a minor contributing factor in the guy's global stupidity and danger that he inflicts on the world daily? Edit: Btw, what would be the end accident scenario here? Presuming that the car wouldn't hit any other car on the road, would it lose control on a curve that was too tight for the speed, or fail at the end of the freeway or something? Would it alarm and then come to a gradual stop? Not a Tesla owner here.
- vmception 6y agoTesla's have crashed and obliterated their owners, even right here in California on major highways on the way to their Silicon Valley office park. Alarmed engineers taking the exact same route to reproduce the bug successfully.
- gambiting 6y ago"Presuming that the car wouldn't hit any other car on the road" - it absolutely would though. The tech is good enough to avoid hitting another car that slows down in front of you, but if someone was broken down(and fully stopped) in your lane, the car will hit them at full speed. It might start breaking just before impact, but not fast enough to slow you down from 150km/h. No self driving or adaptive cruise tech can save you from this situation, because they are all trained to ignore fully stationary objects. I've also seen situations where road markings disappear on the road for whatever reason and Tesla goes from being 100% confident and in control to "take over the wheel NOW" in about 1 second flat. Best case scenario here is that the car would eventually realize that you aren't in control and come to a gradual stop - the problem there is that now he is fully stopped on an active highway and chances of getting plowed from the rear are astronomical. I think the biggest problem with all of these self driving systems is that in cars they can require you to be fully 100% aware of your surroundings and take over in a split second. People compare it to plane autopilot, but I don't think that's quite right - in a plane, you will have at least a minute or two before you hit the ground, even if the plane takes a straight nose dive. In a car, you go from being fine to being headed for a head-on collision in no time at all.
- underseacables 6y agoI’m a huge fan of Elon Musk so take this with a grain of salt, but the company has totally misled and overhyped the self driving feature. It’s almost like a wink and a nod, giving people a false perception, and that’s wrong.
- jocker12 6y agoUnder a new proposal from the UK‘s Law Commission, the “user in charge” of the vehicle would not be prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving, speeding, or breaking red lights when the car was in self-driving mode, the Telegraph reports. The Law Commission instead suggests that responsibility should fall on the developer or manufacturer of the hardware that enables self-driving functions on the vehicle. see https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/12/18/autonomous-vehicle-makers-should-be-held-responsible-for-accidents-says-law-commission/ https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/12/18/autonomous-vehicle-m...
- tjoff 6y agoTesla doesn't have self-driving though..
- gambiting 6y agoIf you go to Tesla's UK page and try to place an order for a brand new Model 3, it uses both "Self-Driving" and "Autopilot" on the same page. How this company hasn't been fined to oblivion yet is beyond me: https://i.postimg.cc/g0ndzbmL/image.png https://i.postimg.cc/g0ndzbmL/image.png
- emteycz 6y agoThe word 'autopilot' never meant reacting to anything happening around the vehicle, much less intelligently. Not a single autopilot can do more than keep the vehicle going in the direction you set (using a knob). Autonomous features are not called autopilot anywhere, ever. 'Full self driving capability' is a hardware capability, not a feature that you can turn on - it is there so you don't need to replace the hardware when the autopilot software can be replaced with fully autonomous driving software. Edit: Downvoters, please explain. It is not okay to redefine words for your purposes.
- speedgoose 6y agoOne solution is to put a camera inside to monitor the driver behaviour. Mazda is already selling cars with this technology.
- wayeq 6y agoTesla makes you apply force to the steering wheel occasionally, but there are hacks that to try to circumvent it.
- speedgoose 6y agoYes it's too easy to circumvent it. The camera solution is a lot safer.
- Cro_on 6y agoI find it a little concerning that the car is allowed to drive in autopilot with the seats reclined. I thought there were warnings for taking your hands off the steering wheel? I suppose they can be ignored. But full recline is a bit OTT.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoA car is not your mother. It has no obligation to prevent you from speeding or driving the wrong way down a one way street or otherwise being an idiot. And it shouldn't try, because sometimes the car has an inaccurate map or doesn't know that something unusual is happening or the sensor is broken etc.
- c22 6y agoWhen I'm driving I get to decide how loud the radio is or whether all the windows are down, not my passengers. If the car is doing the driving I have no problem with the car stipulating its own requirements to ensure a safe trip.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoNo. The car isn't a person. It has no awareness of external context. You can't change its mind using evidence or reasoning. The person in the vehicle should always be able to override the car.
- lmilcin 6y agoThe whole point is that the car is NOT doing the driving the same way cruise control is not doing the driving either. It is not fully, self driving car, yet. It can automate some portion of the driving task, just as cruise control can, but the limits of operation, as stated by the producer, do not allow it to control the car unattended.
- lmilcin 6y agoVery much appreciated. People need to understand THEY are responsible for what they are doing, not the companies for not preventing them doing stupid things. "A car is not your mother" I am definitely going to use it:)
- gz5 6y agox (40?) years from now: 12-car accident triggered by manual mode defense attorneys stated a poor decision due to fatigue, while prosecutors provided evidence that the driver had taken a 25-minute power nap, woke up and performed well in a class she was taking, and then proceeded to override the autonomous vehicle system in a manner which showed specific and malicious intent to cause the accident.
- anonymousiam 6y agoI have told my kids many times that I expect piloted cars to be a rarity in the future. Once reliable self-driving cars are common, the difficulty in obtaining a driver license will likely increase.
- robocat 6y agoIt’s entirely possible that self-driving cars could be realistic about the time we all get flying cars.
- albntomat0 6y agoAren't flying cars and self-driving ground cars different problems, and thus likely to be solved at different times? Self-driving is a sensing and intelligence problem, while flying seems like a mechanical, aero, and policy one.
- phaemon 6y agoThe reason we want self driving cars is the same reason we don't have flying cars.
- sharkjacobs 6y ago> Provincial motor vehicle acts don’t address self-driving vehicles Right now, in Canada, we have to meet certain criteria and pass multiple tests to get our drivers license without which we cannot legally drive on public roads. Until there is some kind of similar certification for self driving systems I don't understand why there would be any legal difference between doing this in a Tesla Model S and doing it in a '94 Miata.
- zaroth 6y agoThe last time this hit HN the article was a bit more informative. Two people in the car with both front seats reclined, “appearing to be asleep.” The asleep part is almost certainly sensational drivel. This is a driver with a history of reckless driving who was screwing around with his friend. But because he was screwing around in a Tesla it is therefore newsworthy. The seats were reclined, but there is no evidence that the driver and passenger were both asleep. They “appeared asleep” because the seats were reclined. This was undoubtably a stupid prank. I’ll be glad for the day when kids can’t pull stupid pranks in their cars. The trade-off is we’re unlikely to truly “own” our own cars at that time, they will operate as essentially private taxis.
- makecheck 6y agoTesla sells an upgrade literally named “Full Self-Driving Capability”. The owner/driver is clearly liable but a strong argument could be made that Tesla should not be allowed to name things the way they do.