Tesla Model S driver crashes into a van while on Autopilot [video]

This was posted much earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778726

The comments on that thread reveal this is a known bug from Tesla.

This was bound to happen. Tesla's "cruise control" is not as advanced, and seemingly not sufficiently tested to autonomously trust it. And they state it that way, yet people start trusting the car which is the human thing to do. As stated by the guy involved in the accident: "when the car slows down correctly 1000 times, you trust it to do it the next time to. My bad.."

Tesla is definitely driving a risky course here. As soon as there is a fatality or serious accident anywhere involving Tesla or another self-driving car, this will be mainstream news and likely lead to draconian laws. I wouldn't be surprised if self-driving cars would need to acquire a "self-driving license" or the like, similar to how cars need to adhere to emission standards.

I'm excited about autonomous self-driving cars because I believe they have the potential to improve safety. I'm terrified by the tesla auto pilot features. We can repeat until the cows come home, that the driver should be vigilant at all times, but that just not how humans behave.

I don't want to live in a world where drivers inattention is masked by the mostly working automations, because I think that is safety net negative.

Interesting what the driver said, that he trusted the car after he'd seen the system stop 1,000 times. Self-driving systems put humans on lazy mode, where our guard is down that's why they should be fully capable. These systems should be thoroughly tested in real conditions before being released. It's incredibly irresponsible of Tesla to allow this ACKNOWLEGEDLY inadequate system to work in high speeds.

Interesting that the video of the crash has since been made private.