Government investigation finds Tesla FSD engaged during the Bay Bridge pileup
notebookcheck.net
notebookcheck.net
This is almost certainly false. This kind of highway uses Autopilot, not FSD beta. In fact in the tweet that they show that simulates that same drive you can see on the screen that it's using Autopilot, not FSD beta.
I actually was there at this accident and swerved just in time to miss the cars piling up (you can see my car in both videos of the accident just getting out). It was a truly scary thing.
Tesla has been promising FSD v11 which will support highways for a very long time already, but it isn't out yet.
So it's kind of expected that its users are a bit more aware of it's intricacies.
Also, even though it switches and the UI is different, I don't think it makes much of difference as a driver. Both systems are Level 2 and require constant driver supervision.
Autopilot although much simpler, is more tried and true. The delays of FSD v11 are most likely because they are having trouble achieving equal performance to Autopilot on highways.
https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/878/tesla-fsd-b...
This is almost 100% the driver just confusing the name or a slip of the tongue, which is understandable. He bought FSD, he probably has it enabled and uses it, and knows that on highways the UI changes. Just doesn't know that when the UI changes it's the old autopilot.
[1] Technically you can disable FSD beta, thus it will always use autopilot
https://twitter.com/TeslaOwnersEBay/status/16140836244581253...
All these names are confusing to be honest, so it's understandable that people mix them up.
Twist the steering wheel against the direction the car is turning it
Tap the brakes
These all immediately drop out of AP.
The driver also has the option of pressing down on the accelerator to make the car go faster and cancel AP’s anomalous braking.
One situation I can think of is using Navigate on Autopilot and the car thinks the exit is much further along than it is, tries to take the “exit” which is actually a concrete wall, AEB kicks in due to imminent collision.
But then why haven’t other Teslas had the same issue there?
As a consumer you probably would want to know if this is caused by the autopilot that you are using and have been using for years, or if it's the beta FSD that you have to opt in.
But this is hacker news so for us, here, the distinction is important.
Which is what this whole absurd subthread is about. Redox pointed out that the article attributes the issue to the wrong product and you all are saying that it doesn't matter.
Well perhaps you are not interested in the topic and it doesn't matter for you. For me it matters.
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Imagine an article about a Google Chat issue was posted on hacker news. Redox99 points out that the issue is actually in Google Meet. And then you, bob and boucher appear and you reply that it doesn't matter which one it is, both are google chat apps. Well I believe it matters a lot.
FWIW: the original Klippenstein story was sourced only from 2-3 sentences in the police report too (a report that was explicit about its inability to verify the claim, no less). The fact that an eyeball-driving story like this has gone this long with so much as an on the record quote from the driver...
My original intuition looking at this was "Autopilot doesn't have this behavior", and the longer this goes the more convinced I am that the driver just fibbed to the cops. This absolutely looks like a classic distracted driving accident, and if it were any other vehicle, even ones with assistive technology, no one would think otherwise.
The tech itself is impressive but not really a leap forward for humanity or transportation. More sideways meamdering than anything.
Criticism is fine. Mistrusths are not. You agree with that much, right?
You type that, which is easy. Can you address the story on its merits?
The story says the NHTSA report confirms FSD was on, but the story cites as its source and appears to have just cribbed their story from the CNN story.
The CNN story just says that the NHTSA confirms that Tesla's "controversial driver-assist software" was engaged and later says that the NHTSA has been investigating both Autopilot and Full Self Driving. There's nothing in the CNN story that tells if "controversial driver-assist software" is Autopilot or FSD.
CNN does not link to the actual NHTSA report. I could not find it with a brief search, and found on Reddit people who are much more familiar with NHTSA report procedures also failing to find out.
I wouldn't call the submitted article a "fake story" like he did. It's more a pointless story that has no good reason to exist and should be replaced with the CNN story and the CNN story's title.
Umm, this is from the CNN article linked to as a source at the bottom...
>The Tesla’s driver told authorities that the vehicle’s “full self-driving” software braked unexpectedly and triggered the pileup on Thanksgiving day. CNN Business was first to report last month the driver’s claim that “full self-driving” was active.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/17/business/tesla-8-car-cras...
Edit: This is not me taking a position in this discussion, just clarifying that the article does, in fact, say that.
The driver said it was engaged but drivers are not always correct. They can confuse Autopilot with FSD (especially given Tesla's misleading naming of "Autopilot"). Drivers even occasionally will lie after an accident if they think it might in any way be their fault.
I had a someone hit me once and it was amazing how blatantly they lied to the police about it.
A friend of mine had recently moved to someplace in the hills near Los Gatos, and I was trying to drive from Cupertino to their place for the third time.
The first two times I had missed a left turn to the road they were on, and there was no place to turn around for a mile or two so missing that left turn was quite annoying. On this third visit I was being very careful to memorize the names of the crossroads and the landmarks that I would see as I neared their road so I would not miss it (this was before consumer GPS was common).
On this third trip, my trip ended with me waking up in my car stopped beside the road a little ways before the left turn, with someone standing beside my car asking me if I was alright. I apparently then lost consciousness again.
My next memory is me still in the car, and I could see another car on the other side of the road that had evidently been in an accident, and was being tended to by police and an ambulance crew. I passed out again.
Next memory is the ambulance crew putting me in the ambulance.
According to what the other driver told police they had been going the opposite way as me approaching while I waited to make my left turn. Then at the last second I suddenly started my turn and they didn't even have time to react, hitting me at 55 mph (the speed limit there), which knocked my car back the way I'd come.
I found that story totally believable. It was pretty much the only way I could imagine our cars ending up where they did, given my planned route and the utter impossibility that I could miss the left turn a third time.
However, all the witnesses told a different story. Apparently, and I still cannot believe this even though dozens of witnesses and a bunch of physical evidence say otherwise, I missed the freaking left turn again! I drove the mile or two to the first place I could turn around, came back, and was in the right lane slowing down to start my right turn when the other car came from behind, going around 75 mph, and slammed into me.
That knocked my car across both lanes in that direction, across both lanes of heavy oncoming traffic miraculously missing everyone, where it came to rest as described above.
The driver of the other car then leapt out, not checking on his passengers (one of whom was seriously injured apparently having come out of his seat and slammed into the windshield cutting up his face quite badly) or me but instead trying to hide the open bottles of beer they had been drinking behind some bushes.
The physical evidence also backed this up. When I got hit I locked the breaks (I don't know if I actually was able to consciously do that or it just happened somehow) and the police found skid marks from my car from the point of collision all the way to where my car ended up. Also, my rear window popped out at the point of collision, without shattering, and fell to the street where it then shattered leaving a nice indicator of where the collision actually happened.
I spent a night in the hospital for observation for a concussion, and spent the next week or so kind of in a fog. A couple days after I got home I got a pamphlet in the mail from the hospital called something like "What To Expect After a Minor Concussion" that among other things warned me I might get some strong feelings of déjà vu.
Someone screwed up at the hospital (or someone there has a twisted sense of humor) and they mailed me another copy of that pamphlet the next day. Reading again that I might get strong feelings of déjà vu invoked strong feelings of déjà vu.
After a week or so the mental fog cleared up, and my only other apparent injuries from the accident (a sprained wrist and a bruised leg) had cleared up and I was back to normal.
The other driver got fined and I think maybe a license suspension. I don't remember if he got any jail time. If he did it was only a small amount.
Around 20 years later I was going through some old files and saw my old copy of the police's accident report. I Googled the other driver curious to see if he'd gotten into any more drunk driving incidents.
His name did come up in a recent drunk driving story, but he was not the driver. A few years after hitting me he evidently got married and had a son. That son had grown up to be a high school student, excelling academically and in extracurriculars like sports and music. In his junior year he went to a big graduation party some seniors threw which of course had a lot of underage drinking.
He stayed sober but the friends did not. Unfortunately one of his friends was his ride home and that friend was drunk. The friend still drove, the son made the mistake of still going with his friends and they had an accident. The friend was OK, but the son (and I think another passenger) died.
If there's ever a fake source, this is it. If there was an NHTSA report corroborating this, then the direct link would be everywhere.
Because no other car maker is mandated to report these numbers either. Tesla is not the only brand with adaptive cruise control or line assist.
(I think sharing the data would be the right thing to do though.)
What about FSD?
tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
In addition, those "safety reports" continue to spout misinformation that the National Transportation Safety Board is currently suing Tesla for
At this point we still don't have any actual public evidence that driving assistance technology is even safer than driving without it. If Tesla's so confident in it they should release data because all the actual academic metastudies still have the same conclusion: we don't have any data to say anything about its safety.
(Edit: if you’re going to downvote me, please explain how a literal interpretation of exactly what I wrote is technically incorrect.)
Most data we use is derived and processed data. Much of the data we use is a statistic.
And now we have data to show it :)
Plenty of analysis is based on data that isn't released. And do you have data that says otherwise? Why should we believe you?
That is appropriate in social situations, not in situations with significant consequences. If lives are at stake (or even lots of poeple's money), the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
For example, that is true in the legal system, in science, and when you give a presentation to your boss. Saying 'you should believe me by default' doesn't go over well in those situations.
See also:
- The dangerous "we're almost at full self-driving" myths Musk continues to spread (which is probably part of the reason Google didn't acquire them given that they've been ahead on the research of this and knew how BS that is)
- The battery swap lies that they made a huge announcement about in order to take advantage of a California subsidy and then simply... never actually allowed any Tesla owner to swap batteries
- Tesla lying to shareholders about warranty expense by categorizing it as "goodwill" in order to inflate their gross margin and net income (since at least Q2 2018)
- On top of the California battery swap stuff, they've been sued for subsidy fraud in multiple countries including Canada and Germany. Much of it's "profitability" has simply been selling regulatory credits to other OEMs
- Musk using Tesla to bail out his cousin's failing solar company SolarCity and not disclosing the personal connection to shareholders
NTSB did not sue Tesla.
I know that in my car, the FSD stuff ends and regular autopilot takes over on highways and other controlled access roads. I've never driven the bay bridge in my Tesla (since I live thousands of miles away), but I remember it being a controlled access highway, so I assume it was the AP logic, not the FSD logic that was in control.
(I also haven't seen any commentary from musk, but it's hard to search twitter)
What kind of idiot STOPS ON A DIME with speeding cars hot on his tail? Only a Computer... It's unfortunate that the Driver did not have the sense to Slam on the Gas -The idea of "Slow == Safe" can be disastrous...
If the stopping car had been an old Toyota and we all had the same footage... well, it probably wouldn't even make the news in the first place... but if it did, we'd all be blaming the rear-enders. But because it's a Tesla, and there is a possibility that AI was involved, suddenly we shift our blame from the rear-enders and tailgaters to the computer.
We've always had double standards for humans and machines.
Yes brakes will apply sooner and follow distance is likely to be safer/wider.
I just don’t yet trust it’s good enough.
If a tree falls on the car in front of you and you hit them because they stopped instantly, it’s hardly your fault.
Humans do it on a pretty regular basis unfortunately. I have seen people slam on the brakes at highway speed for minor road debris, small animals, and a couple of times for no apparent reason. The only thing you can do as a driver is minimize your own risk by leaving sufficient following distance.
Ironically this is one of the areas where driver assist can be helpful. Adaptive cruise control that maintains following distance though in practice I don’t think people use it much.
It's very rare. I've never seen it, IIRC.
Dolphins die on a pretty regular basis and I've never seen it. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen on a regular basis...
So we have 1 car that approaches the light, gets a red, and stops. It has to shed E kinetic energy. Then 10 cars approach the intersection on the perpendicular road. Before they reach it the light changes and they all have to stop, shedding 10 E kinetic energy. The first car resumes its journey. The light changes again and the other 10 resume.
The net result is that encountering the intersection caused this 11 car system to shed 11 E kinetic energy more and to consume 11 R idling energy more than would have been consumed if the intersection had not been there (e.g., if the crossing had been an overpass).
What he's proposing is that some sort of smart traffic light system could notice the 10 approaching cars and hold their green a little longer so that the 10 cars do not have to stop. Suppose it has to hold the light long enough that car 1 has to wait twice as long.
The energy cost of the intersection on the 11 car system under that scenario is E shed kinetic energy and 2 R idling energy. That's going to be much less that 11 E + 11 R.
2. It's impossible to be safe if someone is (illegally!) tailgating.
It’s really easy to step on the accelerator or brake or turn the wheel which instantly makes the car human operated again.
This gap between 'sometimes needs attention' and 'never needs attention' is hard to bridge and very dangerous, obviously
This level of apologism is shocking. “Everyone knows Teslas emergency brake to a stop in the middle of highway traffic randomly, bro. Just gotta be ready for it! No biggie!”
Yikes. Ever considered rental cars? Borrowing a friend’s car that you’re not familiar? Or just 100+ years of automotive history in which random no-input braking was considered completely unacceptable and not even a thing?
Yes, it’s all anecdotal evidence from both my time as a vehicle owning adult and in my nearly 20 years picking up people from car accidents as a firefighter.
But yeah, super easy to just zone out these days.
Nothing to do with mechanical sense or athleticism, all to do with attention and surprise. Self-driving encourages people to reduce their vigilance - after all, that's what they bought it for, so they could do less driving - while at the same time it introduces a whole new category of surprises.
People are trained for normal driving. They are not trained to deal with this kind of emergency.
A self-driving system that can't be relied on and needs constant vigilance has turned the "driver" into a driving instructor who needs to do nothing except for occasionally correct the mistakes of the computer. This is a harder job than regular driving.
Not to mention as peoples skills at controlling a car atrophy, via being a passenger, we expect them to be able to immediately switch on in a high pressure high context situation and make good decisions.
I will happily use a car that drives itself. But only once I am sat facing backwards, purely a passenger.
So even if FSD made the very poor decision to slow down or stop right there (and I will point out we have good reason to think this was not FSD, but rather autopilot or human driving), the blame still goes to the rear-ender.
And even if the leading car was non-malicious and merely incompetent, it's your responsibility to not hit anything in front of you. For liability, you worry about what's in front, not what's behind.
The only way you get out of being liable for rear-ending someone is if the leading car maliciously caused you to rear-end them, or if something unpredictable happened that would have made it impossible for you to avoid hitting the other car.
This is literally what happened in this situation. If you have a dashcam and something like this happens, you won't be found at fault.
If you went to court for having rear-ended someone in a similar set of circumstances, that's basically what the judge would tell you. Would that be frustrating to hear? Yes, but it's how it works.
No, the actual research says otherwise
> If this exact same thing had happened 20 years ago, we would all agree that the people to blame are the ones behind.
No, not if someone comes to a sudden stop in a busy lane.
IIRC police has already said that at least some cars involved in the accident did not maintain such a safe distance, and their drivers thus bear their share of responsibility for the crash.
What a naive assertion. Have you read takeover studies? Driver assistance systems put drivers in a state of inattention (universally, not just ones named “Autopilot” or “Full Self-Driving”, which undoubtedly makes it worse). Regaining attention and building a model of actors and hazards around you takes time — too much time to make the necessary split second maneuver to avoid an accident at highway speeds.
So, if you constantly have to maintain full attention even with FSD engaged, what are you really buying for $15k? You don’t get to sleep. You don’t get to watch a movie. You don’t even get to relax your awareness at all. If you do, the company that you paid $15k to for “Full Self-Driving” will say YOU were the one being irresponsible.
Basically, I see Tesla’s FSD as the following proposition: “Would you like to pay $15k to allow an overly-cautious and sometimes-erratic beginner driver to drive you around everywhere? Most of the time, this driver will drive so cautiously that it will frustrate you and confuse other drivers on the road. This driver may also get confused by shadows and abnormal visual phenomena, and this may lead to inexplicable emergency braking or incorrect path selection at any time. To help this driver, we’ll install a second steering wheel and pedals at your passenger seat so that you can take over driving at any time (which you WILL be required to do regularly and immediately). If you guys get in an accident, YOU will be at fault, no matter what.” Sooner or later, people will stop buying this garbage and just opt to drive themselves.