The driver told the car to maintain a speed and it did, there’s nothing particularly “autopilot-centric” about this case; any other cruise control (adaptive or not) would operate the same way.
This is false advertising, and apparently it may be involved in turning Tesla drivers who believe it into negligent killers. The driver may be able to argue that Tesla told him the car would stop, and so there is no negligence on his part.
In Germany, a court ruled that they misled customers on the capabilities of autopilot and banned advertising it: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/tesla-autopilot-self-driving...
And it is "statistically" which is how all safety measures are evaluated.
It turns out it's a lot easier to not crash on a highway than to do it on surface roads with many stops and starts.
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
And note that this is the current marketing material.
Edit: It's not mentioned in the article, as far as I see, but it's likely the driver was on the cell phone. It mentions the data shows the driver had their hands on the steering wheel, but that can be easily thwarted, to my understanding. The fact that they didn't brake at all implies they weren't actually holding the steering wheel, at least in a way where they were paying attention. In my opinion, both the driver and Tesla bear responsibility.
/s
Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.> Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction.
And the rest is marketing copy explicitly written to make it sound more fully-featured than it actually is.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180211121851/https://www.tesla...
> It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval.
So while you can argue that the marketing is deceptive, that can't really be read as saying that you could let the car drive itself at that time.
Well I suppose it'll be up to the judge to determine if a relatively recently added disclaimer on the website trumps years worth of bold claims and tech demonstrations.
Tesla can’t have it both ways. Tell everyone that they have autopilot/self driving to sell car and build hype, but then claim that the website says the opposite so there’s no problem.
The general public is extremely stupid and believe everything they see in movies/TV. In fact a large part of the population believe that Fentanyl can kill you just by touching it which is the most ridiculous thing ever. Yet people are so paranoid about it that police officers have collapsed in hysteria after touching Fentanyl. [1]
Candy wrappers say "Do no eat!" on them in the Unites States so you can not assume people know how an actual Autopilot works. Now you may say this is because companies are getting sued but that proves the point that you can actually sue someone for being this stupid and win.
[1] https://healthandjusticejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/1...
Bendix/King autopilot has a feature called Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System which would be hard to ignore. Some models have "terrain avoidance maneuvering" which would actually prevent it.
Autopilot and FSD are two different things ... I'm sure the consumer is fully aware of that /s
The car doesn't ship with autopilot or FSD turned on.
“Terrain, Terrain, PULL UP, PULL UP”
Hopefully you were not sleeping. ;)
On a related note, although they usually mean something's going wrong, which isn't cool, I've always been impressed by the way those warnings are delivered in airplanes. The tone and cadence of the warnings really communicate that this is something serious and you should respond to it and also communicates what exactly you should do.
Here's a video of the exact scenario being discussed in a Boeing 747-400:
That said, the selling of FSD has, to my knowledge, always been positioned as the selling of hardware that is expected to be capable in the future of FSD. Sometimes you have to read all of the words in a paragraph to get that meaning, but that is the clear reading I get from that same autopilot page:
Full Self-Driving
All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.
The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.By the same logic an Hello World Python script has the capability for general AI, i just need to wait enough years then add later add the missing part that accidental is the essential thing.
Nobody disputes the terms of service language, but the advertising language, the intentional misleading names and stats greedy companies use. We are sure lawyers checked those terms of service very well and worked fine for US, seems German judges are not tricked by this trickery though, would be nice if more countries punish missleading advertising.
I imagining new Elon product "Clean Drinking Water" and ads showing people drinking it, BUT with small text that mentions that the "safe for drinking will happen in 10 years after we fix our shit" and fanboys defending the naming because you should already know that Elon is always doing this and you should read ignore the advertising and go to the legal documents about the product to figureut all the real details.
Fighters with FBW like the raptor can't be over G'd because FBW takes precedence over pilot input.
I don't fly but have an autopilot on a boat, same thing. It'll happily hold a heading onto the rocks if I set it. But everyone knows that's what it does, the company doesn't make any claims or insinuations otherwise.
However, we've made getting licensed to operate a vehicle way too easy. We should also make drivers get training on equipment type so switching from a mid-sized sedan to a gianormous SUV requires more than just being handed new keys.
The extent of training increases the investment a person has around the regulated activity. The person is more likely to abide by the rules because (a) they have a deeper knowledge, and (b) they don’t want to lose the privilege of being able to carry it out.
Increasing the strictness of license requirements could be a small nudge towards decarbonization to slow the growth of personal vehicles on the road.
Sadly, I'd have to disagree. I think all this would do would be to increase the number of drivers operating illegally. Increase the friction, and people will just find a way to avoid it all together. The only real way to stop it would to have mandatory checkpoints. The push back from the masses for any kind of change like this would be enormous that you'd be asking Roe v Who? in comparison.
It is impossible to get insurance, plates, tabs, park your car in your apartments lot without proper licensing.
Everyone eventually messes up and gets pulled over or gets in an accident and then you are basically going to jail.
In theory your cousin can buy and register your car but if you kill someone he will be legally and monetarily responsible.
Logically it would have to be fantastically burdensome to convince many people to drive without licenses.
It is silly to both pretend we absolutely must impliment a law either without the slightest bit of sense or not at all and presuppose that everyone is going to ignore the law when clearly this is actually fairly hard to do.
If you are operating a car in someone else's name does not mean they are ultimately on the hook. Yes, they will probably be main suspect, but they will/could be able to prove not involved. Easiest would be to say you were using the car without permission.
>Logically it would have to be fantastically burdensome to convince many people to drive without licenses.
WAT! this happens every. single. day.
*I know direct 2nd hand is counter-intuitive, but I mean I personally know people with cars like this.
Based on experience (admittedly biased), plenty of people are driving without a valid license or insurance right now.
That’s not an argument not to increase proficiency standards, but I think people who naturally follow rules (like my spouse) have a hard time comprehending people who would see a rule and then evaluate whether or not to follow it.
But honestly I think demands to make a driver's license harder to get largely miss the point. From my own experience, time on the road makes far more difference than training or harder tests. As does, general maturity and attitude which isn't going to be taught by a class.
What does this have to do with anything? Advocating that people that can't afford to take training shouldn't be restricted from getting licensed? With that logic, let's all become pilots for free too!
>time on the road
The rest of this I can almost agree with, but you're glossing over that bad habits become entreanched. Distracted driving from today's smartphone use to the classic putting on makeup while driving, constant changing of the radio/spotify/etc, or just shoving fries/chips down your gullet while driving is never going away no matter how many years you've drive. In fact, the longer one goes with out having a wreck with these bad habits, the more one is emboldened that they are safe.
It's not just teenagers with low hours behind the wheel that do any of the things listed above.
So, you must be the change you wish to see in the world. So in today's view, we're all screwed!!
I think we're in general agreement. My original point was that making getting a driver's license a leetcode interview-level requirement puts more barriers in place but probably doesn't (by itself) mean you have a lot better drivers on the roads.
To be clear, if you can afford it, a high-end driving course is probably both useful and a lot of fun. Though I wonder if it's more useful for someone who has some experience. (I've never take a course though I have done some driving on BMW's track in SC which was a great experience.)
There was a post here a while back where someone built a keyboard that would deliver shocks when it detected improper typing techniques. It wasn't enough to do anything other than make you really want to type well. It was funny that they went through with it, but that's the level of schtick I'm intending by gentle shock.
I don’t like this argument, on the grounds that the average driver has no reason to know what actual autopilots do — I certainly don’t — and therefore naturally go by what it sounds like it does.
Even a cheaper autopilot in a Cessna can take you from the airspace above your starting airport to the airspace of your destination, including lining up final approach maneuvers, with zero input from the pilot. Modern planes absolutely can fly and navigate themselves, but for safety, operational, and policy reasons pilots often don't use the full capability of these autopilots.
How is it advertised?
The marketing is weird. They mix up current capabilities and future aspirations deliberately.
For instance, here:
> The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.
They actually mean that the system is designed such that "in the future" it will be able to do this. The previous sentence is "All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances", and you're supposed to carry that context forward into the following sentence.
Another aspiration, which if you weren't reading carefully you might assume was a present capability:
> All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, your car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigating urban streets, complex intersections and freeways.
It's intentionally misleading.
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/autopilot
---
PS. Yes, there are caveats: "Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous". That doesn't make the rest of the marketing copy clear.
"Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
Now, I can see how in a court of law you can make various arguments about what that promises, but I can see how someone would interpret that as it can drive better than they do.
There are plenty of laws. Most products come with more pages of safety warnings than are in the rest of the user's manual. And, in California, you're informed that pretty much every building you enter or product you use causes cancer.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/79991021385159065...
That it's far safer than the average human driver?
If anyone would read that as the car driving autonomy being far safer we would have fatal crashes every day.
This is in direct contradiction to Google/Waymo's research on the matter.
Does Tesla have research to back up this claim? Of course they do not.
Musk is in Brazil as we speak claiming the cars will be driverless within the year.
"An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems)."
Can my neighbor below sue my washer manufacturer if they got flooded?
To sue someone, you need to have incurred damages of some sort and file a complaint alleging that who you're suing is responsible. At a high level, you can sue anyone for anything.
Legally the driver bears the responsibility, no?
This is a really vague question. Bears the responsibility for what, exactly? Are they solely responsible? These are things that exactly get sorted out in court...
Can my neighbor below sue my washer manufacturer if they got flooded?
Yes.
That’s the billion dollar question that will be relitigated for years as autonomous systems improve. No one knows.
Edit: I thought this is in Germany, so I'm wrong. My bad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/nyregion/sandy-hook-famil...
The NYT describes the plaintiff's argument as focused on Remington's marketing strategy:
> The families contended that Remington violated state law by promoting the weapon with an approach that appealed to so-called couch commandos and troubled young men like the gunman who committed the Sandy Hook massacre.
> Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed, said the documents included in the settlement were crucial — and “paint a picture of a company that lost its way, choosing more aggressive marketing campaigns for profit.”
In civil law jurisdictions, this works differently.
People say Teslas are safer than humans, but humans who can't see large broad stationary objects would never be granted a license. If you are a robot driver, no problem though apparently. In fact, if you have proven to be recklessly homicidal while driving, your license is taken away and you are likely put on trial. Not if you're a robot! They will clone your flawed sensors and robot brain, and ship it to thousands of people to be deployed on roads across the world.
When your web service goes down you probably find the root cause, fix it, and issue a report about how it's not going to happen again due to your fix. Not Tesla! They are aware of the problem, know exactly how to fix it, and it seems like one man's ego is getting in the way of shipping actually safe autonomous cars. Tesla cars are not safe because Tesla as a company does not value safety as a priority. They value design, whizbang technologies, branding and image, while safety is a distant concern. Elon Musk put more effort into naming the line of cars SEXY than he did to actually producing reliably and predictably safe autonomous vehicles. Musk spent far more time lamenting over the fact he was forced to name his car the Model 3 than the fact it decapitated a human being due to his poor engineering choices.
Teslas on AP are death machines (read: they are machines who have killed people) and we in the public are the unwitting beta testers for Tesla Inc.
I'm with you on this. Nobody deserves this and this software should be in a test lab or closed road course until it's done. And others will argue that you can't perfect automated driving in those situations, and that's correct.
Yeah I can't help but cringe at this. Safety is hard, and you don't get safe systems without trying very hard and deliberately to make them. That's a fact of life and engineering. Trying hard to make safe systems does not look like deploying 2 ton automobiles that are critically blind in the very arena in which they are expected to operate. That's called reckless endangerment in my book.
Which makes it all the more galling and reprehensible.
> makes it clear that your concern isn't really with the engineering limitations and safety implications of this product.
I was concerned about engineering in 2015 when the first decapitation happened. My present screed against Tesla is because they haven't fixed the problem in the intervening 7 years to the point where a second person was decapitated. That shows me the problem is not engineering but organizational. It makes no sense to talk about engineering issues when Tesla does not promote a culture of safety. Engineers are not in control there, hype men are.
The number of accidental decapitations your product gets to make is 1 and that's arguable. The second decapitation is criminal negligence.
And yes, I am incensed by this because as a roboticist, I think it's a travesty that Tesla has taken the industry in this direction.
Imagine if it were your loved one who died in a Tesla using a technology that Tesla knew or should have known to be deficient and intentionally oversold its capabilities. Would you shrug and point to industry statistics? Or would you be mad at Tesla? Be honest.
Frankly, the attitude that Tesla should be allowed to test their beta-quality products on public roads (I certainly didn't agree to participate in the beta test) is what I find to be ridiculous.
From Tesla:
"Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars"
followed by:
"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
Self-driving cars doesn't sound like fancy name for cruise control.
That's from Tesla. Who has already faced consequences for lying in marketing.
Even if they weren't trying to mislead people in their marketing materials, these points seem enough to make a case.
What are you talking about? When was the last time you saw a Tesla advertisement?
> Self-driving cars doesn't sound like fancy name for cruise control
Having the hardware or the capacity to be a self-driving car is not equal to being a self-driving car. The hardware must be enabled, which in this case wasn't. The car only had Autopilot not FSD. Please learn the difference.
But isn't one of AP's selling points is that it's sophisticated enough to mitigate if not outright prevent these kind of crashes? In previous fatal AP-involved accidents, Tesla drivers collided with stationary objects, which apparently are particularly difficult for AP to see. This case seems to involve one of the more common kind of serious head-on collisions: failing to yield to left-turning vehicle which has the right-of-way.
I know AP != FSD, and that AP doesn't necessarily promise it can handle traffic lights. But if it can't detect or react to vehicles slowly moving into the driver's lane...What are the dangerous day-to-day situations that it can confidently and reliably handle? Is it basically just lane control?