El Reg reports
[January 23] a Tesla Model S slammed into a stationary firetruck at around 65mph on Interstate 405 in Culver City, California. The car was driven under the fire engine, although the driver was able to walk away from the crash uninjured and refused an offer of medical treatment.
The motorist claimed the Model S was driving with Autopilot enabled when it crammed itself under the truck. Autopilot is Tesla's super-cruise-control system. It's not a fully autonomous driving system.
[...] The fire truck was parked in the carshare lane of the road with its lights flashing. None of the fire crew were hurt, although Powell noted that if his team had been in their usual position at the back of the truck then there "probably would not have been a very good outcome."
Tesla will no doubt be going over the car's computer logs to determine exactly what happened, something the California Highway Patrol will also be interested in. If this was a case of the driver sticking on Autopilot, and forgetting their responsibility to watch the road ahead it wouldn't be the first time.
In 2016, a driver was killed after both he and the Tesla systems missed a lorry pulling across the highway. A subsequent investigation by the US National Transportation Safety Board found the driver was speeding and had been warned by the car six times to keep his hands on the wheel.
Tesla has since beefed up the alerts the car will give a driver if it feels they aren't paying full attention to the road. The safety board did note in its report that the introduction of Tesla's Autosteer software had cut collisions by 40 per cent.
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(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:44AM (1 child)
It's not that Autopilot is bad, its that we apes are actually very good at driving - when we're focussed - and emulating it is a really, really difficult challenge. Currently, they've picked the low-hanging fruit such as parallel parking or staying in lane on a highway designed for safe high-speed driving.
What we brine sacks are not so good at is understanding that we can't maintain that performance while (e.g.) drunk, asleep, texting or otherwise away with the fairies - something that law enforcement and road safety campaigners have tried and failed to drum into us.
So, given that it has proven so impossible to persuade some drivers to stay focussed and sober when they are solely responsible for driving, if you show someone a button called "Autopilot" then you might as well also hand them a bottle of vodka and some free credits on Candy Crush.
This. There's a quantum leap required between what is currently available and a system which is good enough to allow the meatbag to safely sit back and watch a movie, as meatbags will inevitably do. However, in this age of (fr)agile development, when one of the major self-driving players, Google, is also the acclaimed master of the perpetual beta, that's not what the industry wants to hear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @08:25PM
I like that.
I'll be looking for a place to re-use it. 8-)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]