Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

Their statement blames:

-The driver

-The crushed barrier

-Statistics

But they do not take responsibility themselves. It's apparent and in my opinion shameful.

If Tesla's goal of this is to just share the facts, why didn't they state what AutoPilot did? In addition to statements like "...the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision.", wouldn't it make sense to have a statement like "AutoPilot seems to have made a grave error here, and steered the car into the barrier."

They never admit that their car didn't perform properly. This reads like a carefully crafted, legal approved statement - not the more human statements that we see many times after tragedies. This absolutely lowers my opinion of Tesla by a decent amount.

"We feel very bad about what happened... and want to take responsibility and do what's right" - A quote from the Walmart CEO after a Walmart truck accident injured Tracy Morgan and killed another man. I wish Tesla could stand up and say the same in this case (if the evidence points that way, which it appears to).

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/walmart-ceo-on-tracy-morgan-ca...

It was a median in the middle of the highway. The car probably continued in a straight line instead of "steering into" a barrier. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x

Why the car was not able to detect and avoid the collision in such a simple situation (from a human POV)? We have seen Tesla's autopilot performing very well in a much more complex scenario than this. Ref:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FadR7ETT_1k

Stationary obstacles are a harder problem, because there are so many stationary objects and features around a road that have to be ignored.

This autopilot incident is similar to the one with the tractor-trailer[1] in that regard.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-aut...

Or the one in China with the street sweeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo

Or the one with the fire truck: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16923800/tesla-firetruck-...

No it's autopilot steered into the median lane in the first place where it diverges from the HOV lane.

Note: Both left lanes are HOV lanes. #1 leads onto Hwy 85, #2 onto Hwy 101. Do they say which lane he was in before entering the median?

Just curious why autopilot would be in lane #1 if he intended to stay on Hwy 101. Or vice versa. Maybe it couldn't make a safe lane change sooner? (Pure speculation)

Fair. Could be rewritten as "AutoPilot seems to have made a grave error here, and drove the car into the barrier. AutoPilot should have either avoided the barrier or disengaged."

Not excusing tesla but how on earth can there be a piece of flat concrete instead of a v shaped bendable deflector ? Was there one but had to be replaced ?

There is a crushable barrier there. It was broken that day, because someone had recently crashed into it. Drove past there yesterday, it has been replaced.

I see, sad timing u_u

Indeed.

But maybe this is just a variant on https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ That is, maybe Mr. Huang was following another vehicle, which merged out of the way, and his Tesla ignored the stationary object.

If that's so, Tesla ought to emphasize the failure mode.

It is pre-mature to say this. Why would they say "AutoPilot seems to have made a grave error here, and steered the car into the barrier." if it is possibly not their fault ?

If indeed it was auto-pilot's fault, they will likely put the statement out later.

What you are asking them to do is legal suicide. If they were to claim this was their fault, they would be immediately slapped with multi-million dollar lawsuits from everybody who ever had a problem with auto pilot. It would end the company.

Really? I don't think so. It's not like a "confession".

Can't people sue them even without their admission of any responsibility whatsoever? I think so.

And that they simply say: "We are sorry, we take full responsibility." does not open them up to lawsuits -- the courts still have to hear the arguments to back up "actual legal liability" and then adjudicate / elaborate a verdict / judgement, right?

Comments from lawyers, please. Very interesting.

To be fair, a famous person wasn't involved in this crash.

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