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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 25 2018, @02:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the stay-alert-stay-alive dept.

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.

Previous: Tesla's Semiautonomous System Contributed to Fatal Crash


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @09:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @09:48PM (#627883)

    > If safety stats are better than human, the technology should be allowed.

    Which humans are you doing stats on?

    I claim that I'm about 10x less likely to get into a serious accident than the lumped total of the USA driving population. I don't drink or otherwise drive impaired or sleepy. My car is well maintained, I keep the windows clear (of snow, etc), use seat belts all the time, and the lights are all working. I'm well past the hormone-infused youth stage, but not yet old enough that my senses are going bad. And I've attended several advanced driver training classes, starting when I was a teen and including some race track training (go fast on the track, not on the road).

    That's not to tempt fate and say that I'm not going to have a bad accident, but I believe my chances of a safe trip are much higher than the average.