The deficiency of Tesla AP has been abundantly clear to anyone with eyes, for a long time. Only fingers-in-ears Musk fans cannot see that.
Autopilot doesn't need to be perfect, just better than humans.
In this case, it very clearly was.
I don't think it's acceptible that a vehicle with adaptive cruise, lane keeping, and emergency braking would hit this barrier without any mitigating braking or action, but the actual state of drivers on the roads and human traffic fatalities is pretty grim as-is.
1) _aimed directly at it_ rather than glancing blows/swerving at the last moment, etc., and
2) _accelerated beyond the speed limit as they did_, rather than applying any form of braking, let alone AEB.
So implausible that the barrier was destroyed just weeks earlier by a human driver?
Yes, human drivers crash into crash barriers, as noted.
Now, how many of those human drivers "actively aimed at the barrier", as the NTSB stated? And how many of those human drivers, having aimed at the barrier, "then accelerated in excess of the speed limit" as they did so?
And if you do reply, try not to take sentence fragments as an excuse to change quotes to misrepresent someone's statements.
I'd argue that a Reasonable Person [1] wouldn't crash here.
However I also think that the roads are currently occupied by many people who fall below that standard.
Should a car with assistive technologies only be a success if it is as good as a reasonable person, or if it is better than a typical person?
Obviously the former is prefereable to the latter, but people seem much more content with the idea of driving themselves into walls (or another typical person on the road might crash into them and cause that outcome) than with the idea that a computer might do that same.
See also fear of flying vs driving even though flying is demonstrably safer, but feels much more out of the hands of the flyer.
I think there's no excuse for shipping an "autopilot" system that can't detect massive, stationary objects in broad daylight, but humans also do crash in those exact circumstances all the time.
Even if a car crashed into that barrier once a week (it's way less than that), a single Tesla crash in all of Tesla's history so far is an order of magnitude worse.
My reply to the post though:
Obviously someone shaping stats to their own biases. They want to compare Tesla and Mercedes Benz crash rates because they are in a similar price range?
Mind you he has no data on automated driving crashes.
Ridiculous and short-sighted, the goal (IMO) is for all cars to be automated. And he assumes that just because lidar is expensive now, that it will be in the future, which is just naive.
Ultimately, we cannot rely on mere anecdotes. We need statistics that show it is worse. If it's as bad as the media coverage claims it is, it should be easy to demonstrate such statistics.
Speak of the devil...
It’s amazing that given the slander Tesla has been passing off as PR in this case, that anyone could defend them in this, yet here we go.