So what happens is
1. Speed straight towards your doom.
2. Give back control a moment before collision, when it realizes it fucked up.
3. "It was the driver's fault"
1. Speed straight towards your doom.
2. Give back control a moment before collision, when it realizes it fucked up.
3. "It was the driver's fault"
So if those 8 seconds of "autopilot ain't too sure" actually exist, then the car needs to signal that to the driver so the driver can be ready to take over.
The fact it still doesn't do that, speaks volumes about the kind of "progress" Tesla seems to be making, none of it good.
Isn't that what the name implies? An autopilot keeps heading and speed.
We could just ban personal vehicles to improve overall safety.
I use autopilot every now and then, and when I do, I literally keep my hands on the wheel in a driving position, and my foot resting lightly on the pedal.
Seems a tiny gain compared to the dangers of the system.
I think that I can better observe the conditions if I'm not providing those controls, even though I need to keep a model of autopilot and its abilities running in my head. Having said that, that model is simple - dump out of autopilot as soon as there is any kind of complexity added to the environment.
Yes, that's precisely what the manual said last time I checked. But it's not how Elon Musk has presented it, nor how innumerable Tesla drivers treat it.
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
This video was from 2018 or so I think and they pretended the driver wasn't needed.
We cannot expect humans to be able to pay attention and be able to take over at a moment's notice at all times, simply because that's not how our brains work.
Autopilot is in the danger zone, where it's good enough to make your brain relax, but it's bad enough to require your brain to not do that. So it's fundamentally unsafe.
Cruise control in contrast isn't good enough so your brain will have to pay attention, otherwise you'll crash very quickly.
And this is all made much, much worse by Elon's and Tesla's irresponsible marketing, and the believers who dismiss this as a "worthless discussion".
And yet, this is what ordinary driving requires already. It's not a new requirement. The whole point of this investigation is to figure out the matter of whether a SAE Level 2 ADAS really makes distracted driving more likely. The jury is still out on that, and even if it does it would be reasonably easy to cope with the problem by tuning the system to alert the driver more frequently, especially ahead of impending danger (such as in low visibility conditions, which are expressly mentioned as a key factor in these crashes).
No, it's not. Not at all.
What? No it isn't. Ordinary driving has the driver controlling the vehicle at all times.
Plus, it will always give you the control back in the most difficult situation you can ever encounter as a driver. It's already an emergency, the computer threw a fit and doesn't want to deal with it.
You're on your own, you have 10 seconds, all the best! Better get it right the first time.
But this is exactly the position of NHTSA in the report. They say that if Tesla can reasonably do something to mitigate misuse, then they should. That’s what this is about.
1) This is currently limited to a pretty restricted market (people who drive Teslas, which is a small subset of car drivers). When used more widely by a wider set of people, it may have a worse track record.
2) It isn't clear that such misuse has reasonable mitigations that will continue to make it attractive to use.
But it's all speculation at this point.
Where does it say that in the report?
> and they agree that crashes are due to misuse of the software
I also do not see this in the report other than acknowledging that is Tesla's stance. In fact, they explicitly reject that as a defense, to quote:
"A driver’s use or misuse of vehicle components, or operation of a vehicle in an unintended manner does not necessarily preclude a system defect. This is particularly the case if the driver behavior in question is foreseeable in light of the system’s design or operation."
> They highlight that on average, when there was a crash, the driver should have been able to recognize the hazard ~8 seconds in advance
That's simply not what the report says. Here's the passage you're referencing:
"Where incident video was available, the approach to the first responder scene would have been visible to the driver an average of 8 seconds leading up to impact."
_Except_ you're leaving out some extremely important context.
1. This sentence is part of the expository section of the report, it's in no way "highlighted".
2. This is referring only to 11 specific collisions in which Teslas struck first responders, not the other 191 collisions they examined.
I've seen some other things you've said in this thread so I feel like I should address those as well.
> this is only autopilot not FSD.
To quote the report:
"Each of these crashes involved a report of a Tesla vehicle operating one of its Autopilot versions (Autopilot or Full-Self Driving, or associated Tesla features such as Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot, and Auto Lane Change)."
> this will be fixed by an over the airwaves update.
I see nowhere in the report that says this. In fact as far as I can tell from reading it the report says they're upgrading and escalating their investigation because of the seriousness of the concerns.
Here's the report's conclusion in its entirety:
"Accordingly, PE21-020 is upgraded to an Engineering Analysis to extend the existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets, perform vehicle evaluations, and to explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision. In doing so, NHTSA plans to continue its assessment of vehicle control authority, driver engagement technologies, and related human factors considerations."
Actual report here for those curious: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INOA-EA22002-3184.PDF
And for those who don't here's the best summary I can provide.
* The government received 11 reports of Teslas striking first responders with autopilot engaged.
* After an initial investigation of these reports they deemed them serious enough to open a broader investigation into the technology.
* They found 191 cases where vehicles using the technology crashed unexpectedly.
* Of those 85 were dismissed because of external factors or lack of data (leaving 106).
* Of those "approximately half" could be attributed to drivers not paying attention, not having their hands on the wheel, or not responding to vehicle attention prompts.
* Of the 106 "approximately a quarter" could be attributed to operating the system in environments where it's not fully supported, such as rain, snow, or ice.
* That leaves 37 cases where it appears the cars malfunctioned, both not prompting the driver and not taking preventative action like braking until it was too late to avoid the crash or not at all.
* As a result, the NHTSA is escalating their investigation to do an engineering analysis of these systems looking to better understand the defects.