Sleeping Tesla driver caught on Swedish highway – after 25 miles
vibilagare.se
vibilagare.se
TBH, the whole "what to do when the driver is unresponsive" problem is being solved in a lot of different ways right now. A Tesla will usually (eventually) recognize it and stop in the middle of the road.
Some other systems turn off lane centering completely when they realize this.
Having the car make more and more insistent annoying noises when there’s no response, and then signal the police sounds like a better one.
Now, how that applies to cruise control or lane centering, damned if I know.
It must go behind the highway border line if it's going to stop (and keep going if it's not possible!), but it'd be much better to pull out of the highway at the first opportunity. Definitely never just stop in the middle of a highway.
Not sure if this is some kind of a US thing but here in Europe people don't expect you will stop in the middle of a highway. That's really extremely dangerous.
It would be great if it tried to pull to a gas station/rest point or, after a long time of very loud sound and vibration of the driver seat etc, and only if no other option is available, turn to the emergency stop lane and slowly come to stop there - but if these are not an option (the emergency lane is not wide enough, for example), it should just keep driving straight ahead at 80 km/h (minimal allowed highway speed in EU).
If my car doesn't have autopilot and can't keep driving straight, I'd prefer a light crash to the right side to just stopping in the middle of a highway lane which is a nearly sure death sentence - and not just for myself.
Self-driving cars should either off-ramp and find parking space, or at the very worst park in an emergency lane with hazard lights on. Stopping in the middle of the highway is insanity.
I hope that means safely pull over to the side of the road and stop.
Here is a non-paywall version of the same event that says "4 mil" (40km): https://nyheter24.se/motor/1273809-tesla-forare-sov-pa-e4-me...
That is surely a apt comparison.
If you look at additional options of a car and one of them is "autopilot" and the other one is "full self driving", which one is going to give you full self driving?
I am begoggled at the scolds who think the "deceptive" branding is sufficient to override the lived experience of driving with this fantastic (if flawed?) tool.
If I were a runaway autonomous vehicle, I wouldn't stop for the police either!
I feel like this distracts from the fact that the self-driving feature was probably safer than falling asleep at a manual car for everyone involved.
In monotonous structures (e.g. long alleyways, long straight roads through nowhere) humans already have that problem - boredom tires them out.
It's possible that the only reason I never crashed was pure luck.
I only bring this up to say that needing to focus on the road might not be enough to keep a driver alert.
"Officer, it was for the best!"
So self driving cars need to not only be safer than human drivers for acceptance, but significantly safer. They might be, and especially further into the future when the number of human drivers is smaller and there are good protocols for collaborating among self driving vehicles. But while they are the novelty the stories will look like this, and for good reason.
FWIW, as an individual I don't accept those things. If I had my way, we'd have more effective solutions to those problems.
But my views on the issue are apparently not widespread enough to change the status quo.
The iPhone 6 was released almost ten years ago...
Cars last 25+ years, so ~20% of people will be driving at least 20 years after self driving gets perfected and then standardized.
Insurance companies raise and lower their premiums in response to risk. You might get a discount for self driving car eventually, but people who keep driving will just keep paying the same reasonably affordable rates as they do now.
That's a bit of a leap. If and when FSD becomes sufficiently reliable to enable you to legally relinquish control to it, including have it take you anywhere even when you're intoxicated, without any personal liability, I expect adoption to ramp up very quickly.
Also, depending on what technical solution ends up winning this race, it might be possible to convert existing old cars to FSD.
People get arrested for sleeping in their cars while drunk. It’s going to be a long time before a legal self driving exception exists for drunk people.
People who have 20 year old cars generally can’t afford a new one and installing a self driving kit isn’t going to be cheap or worth it on a car that old.
There's basically zero chance of that. Working people are not going to be buying very expensive new cars just because it has a working FSD feature. A handful (relative to population) rich people will but that's it.
For FSD to be everywhere first it needs to become reliable, then it needs to trickly down into every Toyota Corolla and then it needs to trickle down into the used market of people who won't buy anything newer than 10+ years old.
> take you anywhere even when you're intoxicated, without any personal liability
That probably won't happen in the next 50 years, regardless of technical advances. The law will refuse to catch up.
So we're saying the same thing
Self driving cars can’t impact the risk of a someone bashing the windshield to get stuff out, hail or a tree falling on your car, it getting stolen, an uninsured motorist rear ending you at a stoplight etc. But it will mean replacing your car is more expensive should it get stolen etc.
Further if you assume more ultra self driving cars are on the road the human drivers risks also drop.
In terms of individual drivers, an antique show car driven very limited miles per year the policy’s costs have little to do with the driver’s accident history. Meanwhile someone with multiple DUI’s is paying for the risks associated with their behavior.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/50774/attachments/2/... [pdf]
The three-point seatbelt was invented in 1959 and became mandatory in the United States in 1966.
And that was only required as part of the standard equipment. People were not required to use them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_laws_in_the_United_S... says "Seat belt use was voluntary until New York became the first state to require vehicle occupants to wear seat belts, as of December 1, 1984."
Nor were all passengers required to use three-point seat belts. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/anatomy-of-the-mo... says it wasn't until 1989 that "Cars are required to have three-point lap-and-shoulder belts in the outboard rear seats."
From 1959 to 1989 is 30 years.
FWIW, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt notes:
> The first modern three-point seat belt (the so-called CIR-Griswold restraint) commonly used in consumer vehicles was patented in 1955 U.S. patent 2,710,649 by the Americans Roger W. Griswold and Hugh DeHaven.
before later saying:
> The three-point seat belt was developed to its modern form by Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin for Volvo, which introduced it in 1959 as standard equipment.
The 1955 US patent can be seen at https://patents.google.com/patent/US2710649A/en .
I find adaptive cruise and reversing cameras really useful, whereas I find lane assistance features quite dangerous. It's exactly what you want while going around a corner - the steering wheel jumping under your hands, and making you jump/panic.
Although - on the other hand, there's nothing quite like having to fight the car for control of the steering wheel to solve drowsiness...
Emergency braking is another one that I tend to find is almost entirely false positives. Overtaking a wagon on the motorway, lets trigger the emergency brake! Steep angle in the multi-story car park, lets trigger the emergency brake!