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