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posted by takyon on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the crash-and-burn dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Tesla fatal crash: 'autopilot' mode sped up car before driver killed, report finds

A Tesla driving in "autopilot" mode crashed in March when the vehicle sped up and steered into a concrete barrier, according to a new report on the fatal collision, raising fresh concerns about Elon Musk's technology.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that four seconds before the 23 March crash on a highway in Silicon Valley, which killed Walter Huang, 38, the car stopped following the path of a vehicle in front of it. Three seconds before the impact, it sped up from 62mph to 70.8mph, and the car did not brake or steer away, the NTSB said.

[...] The NTSB report [...] has once again raised serious safety questions about the limits and performance of the autopilot technology, which is meant to assist drivers and has faced growing scrutiny from experts and regulators. Mark Fong, an attorney for Huang's family, also said the report appeared to "contradict Tesla's characterization" of the collision.

The NTSB press release includes this link to the preliminary report, for anyone inclined to read the slightly longer version of events.

The Mountain View Fire Department applied about 200 gallons of water and foam to extinguish the post-crash fire. The battery reignited five days after the crash in an impound lot and was extinguished by the San Mateo Fire Department.

Layoffs at Tesla

Tesla Lays Off 9 Percent Of Workforce

Tesla will lay off about 3,500 workers in an effort to boost profitability, CEO Elon Musk wrote in a company email.

"What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable," Musk wrote.

Musk conceded that Tesla has not made an annual profit in 15 years. The company posted its largest quarterly loss, of more than $700 million, earlier this year.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:51PM (4 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:51PM (#693045) Journal

    You make some very good observations, but I think that there is also something else to take into consideration.

    As a good driver ages, they become a less-good driver as their vision gets worse, their reaction times get slower and they're less able to handle the controls.

    Or they can do the reasonable thing and drive within their current (and entirely legal) abilities. But then they get criticised for going 1 mph less than the speed limit or they get told they shouldn't be allowed on the road at all. The majority of us are going to get older, our vision might deteriorate (of course, no-one under retirement age wears spectacles, do they?), and we know that the super sharp reflexes that we had when we were younger are not there any more. However, that doesn't mean that we should be condemned to never leaving our homes. If people are medically unfit to drive then they should have their licence revoked, but that only applies to a small minority of older drivers.

    Perhaps if we all had a little more tolerance of other road users we could still reduce the number of accidents without anything else being changed. If those who still believe that they have the fast reflexes and perfect eyesight tried thinking a little more about what other drivers might do and started using their perfect driving skills to drive defensively to avoid accidents this discussion wouldn't even be necessary.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:06PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:06PM (#693058)

    Do some get criticized for driving 1 mph under? Sure. And thats not fair in most contexts

    Most of the times I criticize the ones that stay stopped at green lights. The ones that refuse to pull onto a road unless they can directly get in the lane they want. The ones that drive through town OBVIOUSLY lost, turning their blinker on, slowing down turning it off and scooting to the next intersection. And then the ones that drive slow in the left hand lane on a highway.

    Impeding traffic, failure to properly enter a roadway, impeding traffic, and impeding traffic.

    Honestly it seems like as people retire they stop caring about making it anywhere in a timely manner, they want to dawdle through life, and good for them, they have earned a break. But they do so in a manner that has NO consideration for other drivers who are trying to get somewhere by a certain time. Nope its ok for them to sit at a green light till it turns yellow and then take off screwing everyone behind them, its ok to sit in the left hand lane and force faster traffic into the right hand lanes dangerously. Its hunky dory to take time to get up to speed and then cut off the person trying to pass you.

    This has nothing to do with being medically unfit. These drivers could always pull over and let the 15 cars behind them pass them but won't. These drivers could take the less busy surface streets and avoid highways, but they wont. These are baby boomers. The world is theirs and if anyone doesn't like it they will call them a millennial snowflake.

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 15 2018, @07:08AM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @07:08AM (#693363) Journal

      Most of the times I criticize the ones that stay stopped at green lights. The ones that refuse to pull onto a road unless they can directly get in the lane they want. The ones that drive through town OBVIOUSLY lost, turning their blinker on, slowing down turning it off and scooting to the next intersection. And then the ones that drive slow in the left hand lane on a highway.

      I don't think that this has anything to do with the age of the driver, but rather the driver's abilities and consideration of other road users. I certainly haven't seen any evidence to support the age linkage. However, anyone who drives in such a manner should be penalised by the appropriate authorities. Anyone whose reflexes or medical condition means that they are unfit to drive should have their licence revoked - no matter what age they are.

  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:21PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:21PM (#693073)

    Or they can do the reasonable thing and drive within their current (and entirely legal) abilities. But then they get criticised for going 1 mph less than the speed limit or they get told they shouldn't be allowed on the road at all.

    You seem to be under the mistaken impression that slower = safer, when what really matters is deviation from the average speed. For instance, on a busy highway with a speed limit of 65 and an average speed of 75, one of the most dangerous things you can do is travel at 60. You can by that simple act create utter havoc behind you, as the cars that were going 65 in the right lane move left a lane to get around you without speeding up, thus causing the people in the next lane over to move left to get around that person, and so on all across the highway until you're in the far left lane where some speed demon has to slam on the brakes to avoid rear-ending someone. And that use of the brakes can be enough to trigger a traffic jam that goes back for miles, as the person behind the one hitting the brakes brakes even harder to account for being too close to slow down properly and overreacting, and the person behind them brakes even more than that, and so forth. Furthermore, all this lane changing creates an increased risk of an accident.

    A better approach would be to drive on slower roads as your reflexes slow down. For instance, you might not be able to handle a 75 mph freeway, but can handle a 50 mph state route that goes the same direction. And if you can't handle the 50 mph state route, you might be just fine in town going 35. And if you can't handle that, you can still prefer the side streets where 25 mph is the norm.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 15 2018, @07:00AM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @07:00AM (#693359) Journal

      I disagree - people have to learn to be more tolerant of other road users and know how to overtake safely. People driving within their comfortable limits is is the safest for them. Vehicles carrying animals might also find it safer to drive at slower speeds and leave a greater stopping distance in front of their vehicle. Heavy goods vehicles cannot stop as quickly as cars and they too will often need a longer stopping distance The real problem are the other idiots that insist on being able to do the maximum speed all the time that is, in my opinion, the cause of more accidents.

      Most roads have a maximum speed limit, but relatively few have a minimum speed limit. Where such limits exist in Europe they are usually significantly lower than the maximum limit and thus take into account each vehicles' needs and drivers' abilities. Not all vehicles are best suited to going at the maximum permissible speed, but the roads are intended for use by the maximum number of vehicles and not only by those that want to travel that fast. Here, we have a lot of tourists who simply do not wish to drive at the maximum speed but also want to enjoy the journey while arriving at their destination in a reasonable time period. Why shouldn't they benefit from a road system that is designed to get them there under just such conditions? Leaving the major arterial routes and using lesser roads means that they also have to share the road with agricultural vehicles, construction plant and other users which are all forbidden from using the 'freeways'.

      Of course, you might not agree but here, in Europe, the cost of insurance for older drivers is significantly less than that for younger people and many other groups of road users. So if the insurance companies know that older drivers are less likely to be involved in accidents why are you suggesting that they are the problem? It is the other road users who refuse to drive a little bit slower until they have safely passed the vehicle in front that are actually not as good a driver as they might believe themselves to be.

      If you are suggesting that without everyone driving at maximum speed some might be late for work then perhaps by leaving home a little bit earlier would avoid the problem? If it is a problem with traffic congestion then that is the problem, and not those who wish to drive at a slower speed than the maximum permitted. Get the roads sorted out, use less vehicles and more public transport.