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> Even normal collision avoidance systems cannot detect a semi truck sideways because semi trucks and trailers in NA aren't required to have side skirts and protection bars.

You know what can detect a semi truck sideways? Human eyes.

Collision detection systems are meant to trigger far later anyway, potentially after it's already too late. Side skirts would be helpful for sure in reducing fatalities in the event of a collision, but better still is avoiding the collision in the first place.

This kind of response is extremely condescending: "this is a poorly researched article because it didn't focus on the aspect of the story that I find most important." It's a perfectly valid approach to focus on the fact that Tesla's marketing of their "fancy cruise control" (their lawyer's words) causes people to trust it with their lives in unsafe ways, even when it's apparently incapable of something as simple as seeing the broad side of a semi truck. If you think the lack of side skirts is such an important issue, write your own article on it, don't cast aspersions on someone else's article.

The lack of side skirt is an important issue, though human eyes are certainly more important.

We do not just rely on just one system to keep us safe on the road, but multiple systems. Road design, trucking regulations, the software or lack thereof, human elements, all contribute to our safety.

Right, but it's completely unfair of OP to say that the article is poorly researched because it doesn't touch on something tangential. Tesla has marketing materials that say "the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons", while their lawyers in court say it's "basically just fancy cruise control". That's the story wapo chose to tell, and it's a perfectly legitimate story.

I'm sure there are plenty of other things we can learn from this incident, but they're not lazy for not focusing on them in this piece.

Legal reasons include a big popup gating access to the autosteer feature, as well as active driver monitoring to ensure you're watching the road. It's not "only there for legal reasons" and I don't see any marketing material that implies as such [0].

0: https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

I disagree about this being tangential. This article focuses in-depth on a single fatal accident with fancy animations. It's the job of the reporter to explore how other vehicles protect against this and how other regions like EU mitigate loss of life. This is what you call "fact-based" and "unbiased" reporting, that WaPo claims. Otherwise all they would be doing here is exploiting someone's tragedy to drive a pre-ordained conclusion, also known as "opinion".

If the article is really about marketing issues with autopilot, they are many more avenues to explore, like how they're actually not allowed to call it "Autopilot" in Germany (try to find the word "Germany" in this article).

> Otherwise all they would be doing here is exploiting someone's tragedy to drive a pre-ordained conclusion, also known as "opinion".

They're emphasizing the point that the man's family is trying to make in court. That's hardly exploiting someone else's tragedy, it's telling their story.

It does not focus on the wrong thing. The relevant fact here is that the system failed in a very straightforward and important obstacle-detection-and-avoidance case, and this fact cannot be waved away by supposing that the driver would have survived if the truck had been better designed (and neither can it be waved away by blaming either diver.)

The article also focuses on the irresponsible mixed messaging coming from Tesla.

Adding those rules in the US has been tired more than once.

https://www.truckinginfo.com/10138132/underride-legislation-...

It seems to have gone nowhere, I suspect due to lobbying.

You seem to be conflating impact mitigation with obstacle detection

I'm focusing on neither. I'm saying there should be regulations to prevent loss of life even when impact happens, especially when other regions have implemented known solutions.

I see. I missed that because it's quite tangential. WashPo didn't miss the point by not talking about it.

> Even normal collision avoidance systems cannot easily detect a semi truck sideways, because semi trucks and trailers in NA aren't required to have side skirts and protection bars.

This sentence seems to be saying that skirts and protection bars are the reason that self driving cars cannot see these vehicles. Is that really true? Is it a conclusion you've come to on your own, or is it some kind of research or something? It seems like the crux of your whole post, but is absent.

So by "normal", I meant the radar-based systems in normal cars, also known as AEB. They are usually mounted low on the front fenders or grille. Semi truck trailers are tall, have a huge empty gap between them and the road, and just high enough to not be seen by the radar. From the radars POV it appears like the road is unobstructed.

Obviously this isn't hard to detect with full LIDAR systems in self driving cars because they are on the roof and you have full depth information. This is why I do not mention "self driving cars" in my parent comment.

Do you have a source for this? There’s a gap between semi wheels, sure, but the deck height of a semi trailer in North America is about 48”. If automotive radars weren’t able to detect objects above this height, they would miss a lot of obstacles…

One automotive radar I’m familiar with, the Bosch MRR [1], lists a vertical FOV of ±15 degrees, and a 300 m maximum detection range. Assuming the sensor is mounted perpendicular to the ground at 0.5 m high, it should be able to see the top of a 13’6” semi trailer from ~15m away all the way up to its full range.

Teslas don’t have radar anyway, so of course this wouldn’t have helped, but an AEB radar that can’t see the top of a semi truck isn’t very useful.

[1] https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/solutions/sensors/front-ra...

Radars are usually tuned to ignore them because they don't have the fidelity to differentiate between a trailer on it's side and a tunnel and it leads to phantom braking.

Sure, but that’s a lot different from not being able to see them at all.

While not what you're addressing, yes skirts and underride bars save lives:

2011: https://youtu.be/bT3G-kcKN70

2013: https://youtu.be/C3MPKLy9qHU

2018: https://youtu.be/WamlGVhGUYs

Normal collision detection systems don’t try to use cameras. Radar will have no issues in an instance like this if the detection zone is vertical enough

This particular Tesla was pre 2021 so it should have both radar and cameras.

So after 2021 Tesla got even more irresponsible?

The detection zone is not vertical enough. Radar is tuned to mostly ignore overhead objects otherwise you’d have phantom emergency braking whenever entering a tunnel, parking garage or going through a pedestrian crossing. It wouldn’t normally have enough accuracy to distinguish between that, and the 1.5m high side of a semi truck.

Modern tech is changing that, but most collision prevention systems of today will not prevent this type of accident. Yet another reason to make guards mandatory. There are thousands of underride crashes and hundreds of deaths yearly, you only hear about the “automated driving” ones because it brings more clicks.

I tried but found nothing to verify your claim most collision avoidance systems do not sense veritable enough, nor anything discussing them plus truck guards outside Tesla failing.

Can you please provide some sources for your claims?

That was just off the top of my head, but here are some links I found:

https://www.ti.com/lit/wp/spry312/spry312.pdf shows how 24ghz radar, the most common until recently, has resolution measured in half-meter increments

https://www.kiforte.com/fca_radar-656.html Kia manual showing how the radar cone only covers a height of 1.2 meters in front of the car

These radar sensors project a very wide beam, they can't see much right in front of the car. For example, there was a car reviewer on YouTube that recently put ultrasonic parking sensors against a camera-based Tesla, and they perform about the same, with the camera slightly better in some situations because it's looking from above - the bumper-mounted radar cannot see objects in the ground right beneath it. Honda also just added a camera in their latest generation collision avoidance system, to cover a wider range of situations.

A half meter is fine, more then enough to look for 2-3m of “thing” Infront of the car

And that is not specifying the cone/detection range of the radar? It is just the work area to keep clear while performing an alignment - otherwise the horizontal range of the sensor would be near useless

Ultra sonic is not radar, and using radar cars regularly will follow things 10s of meters away. Seeing a semi with them is not a problem.

Parking is not collision avoidance- and using cameras for it is dumb. They don’t work in fog snow or adverse conditions that radar will

None of what you’re saying contradicts my earlier points. How can radar tell the difference between a 1.5m high truck undercarriage, and a 2.1m high passage if resolution is .5m? If they could detect the truck, why aren’t cars constantly triggering emergency brakes when near an underpass? Why are 10000+ collisions and 100+ deaths like this happening every year when a majority of cars have these systems installed? Why did Honda add cameras if radar is good enough? The answers seems obvious, but you can do your own research.

Maybe because the bottom of a truck trailer is far below an overpass? Lol like multiple meters?

You are making up statistics now

And because camera’s improve safety in some situations when used in conjunction with radar?

That point is meaningless in a discussion about Tesla who removed radar entirely and the point being made here “cameras alone are not as good as radar” not “radar plus camera is better then radar”

> That point is meaningless in a discussion about Tesla who removed radar entirely

How so? You're trying to say that if they've kept radar this accident could not happen, and I'm showing you this is not necessarily true. Do you have any sources to back up the idea that radar-based collision-avoidance systems can prevent this type of crash? The data says otherwise.

Here is a very extensive article on the subject, and it gives a much higher estimate (400 deaths/year): https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trucks-underride-...

That was the 'do your own research part', honestly there is a ton of data online about everything we discussed here. You cannot expect someone to provide sources for everything they say while all you're offering is opinions.