SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the keep-your-eyes-on-the-road-and-your-hands-on-the-wheel dept.
Tesla's advanced driver assist system, Autopilot, was active when a Model 3 driven by a 50-year-old Florida man crashed into the side of a tractor-trailer truck on March 1st, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) states in a report released on Thursday. Investigators reviewed video and preliminary data from the vehicle and found that neither the driver nor Autopilot "executed evasive maneuvers" before striking the truck.
[...] The driver, Jeremy Beren Banner, was killed in the crash. It is at least the fourth fatal crash of a Tesla vehicle involving Autopilot.
This crash is eerily similar to another one involving a Tesla in 2016 near Gainesville, Florida. In that incident, Joshua Brown was killed when his Model S sedan collided with a semitrailer truck on a Florida highway in May 2016, making him the first known fatality in a semi-autonomous car.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determined that a "lack of safeguards" contributed to Brown's death. Meanwhile, today's report is just preliminary, and the NTSB declined to place blame on anyone.
Source: The Verge
Also at Ars Technica.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday May 17 2019, @10:20PM
Ten seconds doesn't initially sound like very long, but if you actually try counting it out, it turns out to be a pretty substantial amount of time. It would certainly be long enough to slow down and swerve, both of which would greatly increase the chances of survival. Ideally, the driver would react and the Tesla's software would readjust things (e.g. as anti-lock brakes do) to be safer; even if the driver doesn't (or can't) react, however, the software should recognize the hazard and take action of some kind.
68mph in a 55mph zone isn't particularly fast, either. The posted speed limit for the main highway near my home is 65mph, but there's so many cars going 80+mph that I have to frequently check my speedometer to avoid letting my own speed creep up from 75 to match theirs.