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Another Tesla with Autopilot crashed into a stationary object—the driver is suing
Earlier this month, Shawn Hudson's Tesla Model S crashed into a stalled car while moving at about 80 miles per hour on a Florida freeway. Tesla's Autopilot technology was engaged at the time, and Hudson has now filed a lawsuit against Tesla in state courts.
"Through a pervasive national marketing campaign and a purposefully manipulative sales pitch, Tesla has duped consumers" into believing that Autpilot can "transport passengers at highway speeds with minimal input and oversight," the lawsuit says.
Hudson had a two-hour commute to his job at an auto dealership. He says that he heard about Tesla's Autopilot technology last year and went to a Tesla dealership to learn more.
"Tesla's sales representative reassured Hudson that all he needed to do as the driver of the vehicle is to occasionally place his hand on the steering wheel and that the vehicle would 'do everything else,'" the lawsuit claims.
Tesla blames driver in last month's fatal crash with Autopilot engaged
But that description of Tesla's Autopilot system is not true. While the system can handle a range of driving conditions, it's not designed to stop for parked cars or other stationary objects when traveling at highway speeds. This year, at least two other Tesla drivers have plowed into parked vehicles while their cars were in Autopilot mode (one of them sued Tesla last month). Another Tesla customer, Californian Walter Huang, was killed when his Tesla vehicle ran into a concrete lane divider at full speed.
"It is the driver's responsibility to remain attentive to their surroundings and in control of the vehicle at all times," a Tesla spokesman told Ars by email. "Tesla goes to great lengths to provide clear instructions about what Autopilot is and is not, including by offering driver instructions when owners test drive and take delivery of their car, before drivers enable Autopilot and every single time they use Autopilot, as well as through the Owner's Manual and Release Notes for software updates." (I've reproduced Tesla's full emailed statement at the end of the story.)
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday November 04 2018, @10:44AM (7 children)
SD Car fans will keep saying that computers make safer drivers than average humans. That ignores two things :-
1) It assumes an average and most of those fans are are in the USA so assume USA averages. But the USA (mainly human) accident statistics are appalling compared with UK ones (about 5 times more per journey-mile despite far less crowded roads). Then even by UK statistics I am a safer driver than average, having had zero crashes while the average rate is > zero.
2) If I die in a crash I'd rather it be my fault (or at least have been in a position to do something about it) than it be the fault of some programmer somewhere who failed to take into account the situation that killed me.
(Score: 5, Funny) by G-forze on Sunday November 04 2018, @10:51AM
If you died in a crash, you wouldn't really care who's fault it was, since you'd be, you know, dead. :P
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Sunday November 04 2018, @10:51AM
Everyone’s a safer driver than average until they have one crash.
Every SD car is safer than average until it crashes
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Sunday November 04 2018, @02:17PM (2 children)
3) there's a lot of personal decision about risk taking thats asymmetric. So accident rates in the USA are high because of 2am drunks and illegal alien unlicensed driver areas and so forth, so the average risk in the USA means something, but my chosen lifestyle results in a much lower risk. With self crashing cars (don't do the PR thing and call them self driving... they're self crashing cars...) the risk is mysterious and maybe around the USA average but I'm not USA average so its WAY riskier for me.
Its kinda like deciding to legalize asbestos because the lung cancer risk is lower than the USA average of a mixed multicultural population of 4-pack-a-day boomers and non-smokers. Sure, maybe the asbestos lung cancer risk is lower than the risk for a hypothetical average 2-pack a day smoker who doesn't exist, but that means the non-smokers should be up in arms and marching with pitchforks.
If you don't drink and drive, under the limit or not, and if you don't use drugs, if you're not half blind, etc etc in other words if you're an average "safe" driver, then don't accept the safety stats being merely as good as the average known to be shitty driver.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:03PM
If we're going to claim that these AI cars are safer than ones driven by people, we really should be excluding those sorts of things from the statistics. It's not hard to make a car that's safer than a drunk, high, asleep or somebody who spends half their time looking at a cellphone while driving.
We also need to consider the fact that these cars are still only acceptable-ish when driven in good conditions and as the article notes, Teslas can't handle stationary objects next to the roadway. Which is something that pretty much anybody who drives a car and isn't in one of the aforementioned groups handles routinely without any drama.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday November 04 2018, @04:25PM
I think a better analogy to making us use SD cars is making everyone smoke a cigarette every day because it is safer than the national average (across smokers and non-smokers) of two per day (or whatever the figure is).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stretch611 on Sunday November 04 2018, @02:42PM
It is very hard to make comparisons like this. Even comparisons from one part of the US to another are hard to make. Yes, the US has miles and miles of interstates that are not crowded... However, that is not were the majority of people drive. (obviously)
In Atlanta, you have 3 major interstates going through the city... I-85, I-75, and I-20. I-85 starts NE of the city and goes SW, I-75 starts NW of the City and goes South crossing over 85 like an elongated X with both of them merged in the middle. I-20 goes East and West of the City crossing over the merged part of I-75/85. (also we have I-285 which literally is a odd shaped circle around the whole city.
In the Heart of Atlanta, where I-75 and I-85 are merged, we have 16 lanes of traffic... 8 in each direction. Traffic is so bad, it literally crawls to a stop during rush hour. Even off hours and weekends can see traffic come to a virtual stop. If you think you have seen traffic before, it takes on a different meaning when you have 8 lanes of interstate (which is controlled access of course) and you are not moving along with people in the other 7 lanes, and then you take a peek at the other side and see that those 8 lanes aren't moving either so it doesn't matter if you are coming or going. And the kicker is that it is only cars in all 16 lanes... trucks are not allowed inside the city on the interstate unless they specifically have a drop off there(even then they are usually avoiding rush hour and deliver at night), they are forced to use I-285 and circumnavigate around the city and even that can be just as slow despite 6 or 8 lanes in both directions.
That is a crap-ton of traffic... especially if you consider that Atlanta is pretty much land locked and there are plenty of surface streets other than the interstates including roads like Highway 41 and Route 400 (which are traffic nightmares in their own right.)
Then you can look at New York City... An island. Where Atlanta has hundreds of roads going in and out of it, you have no choice but to use a bridge or tunnel to get into NYC. While the George Washington Bridge has 14 lanes of traffic (only 2 fewer than I-85/75 in Atlanta) It gets hammered because there are only 3 ways to/from NYC from New Jersey. The Lincoln Tunnel only has a total of 6 lanes, and the Holland Tunnel only has 4 lanes of traffic. So for all the cars going back and forth from NJ to NYC, a total of 24 lanes carries every single car. It is no wonder that this is one of the worse commutes due to traffic in the world. And even politics has made the traffic worse [wikipedia.org] at times.
Another thing to consider is that all 3 bridges and tunnels from NJ to NYC are toll roads... there are few things that make traffic worse than forcing everyone to slow down and stop to pay a toll.
As bad as these two areas are for high traffic, both are generally accepted to be easier commutes than Boston and Los Angeles. (which I have never experienced)
Please do not tell me that our driving is worse here in the US because are roads are less crowded... We have a lot of roads, and built plenty of interstates to criss-cross the country, but the ones that we overwhelmingly use are the ones by the big cities, not by the cornfields in the midwest.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Monday November 05 2018, @07:36PM
Part of the U.K.'s superior automobile safety record is due to the fact that the drivers' test required to get a license in the U.K. is rigorous. You have to know the rules and be able to abide by them flawlessly.
People in England are more polite on average, and that helps a lot.