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posted by martyb on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the drive-to-make-drivers-drive dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The driver of this Model S was found to have only had his hands on the wheel for 51 seconds of the last 13 minutes 48 seconds of his trip.

One of the more highly publicized Tesla crashes in recent memory involved a man in Los Angeles plowing his Tesla Model S into the back of a fire truck. The car wasn't going all that fast and thankfully nobody was hurt, but it was a fairly gnarly crash nonetheless.

Part of the government's investigation into the crash involved finding out whether or not Tesla's Autopilot system had been engaged at the time of the collision and if so, determining whether or not the driver was paying attention to what was going on around them.

Well, it's been a while, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released part of the findings of its inquiry according to a Tweet published by the agency on Tuesday and hey, guess what? The driver of the vehicle was found only to have had his hands on the wheel as prescribed by Tesla (and good sense) for 51 seconds of the final 13 minutes and 48 seconds of the drive. Even worse, his hands weren't on the wheel at all for the last 3 minutes and 41 seconds before the crash.

When questioned by the NTSB as to what he was doing at the time of the crash, the driver stated, "I was having a coffee and a bagel. And all I remember, that truck, and then I just saw the boom in my face and that was it."

Clearly, there was a breakdown in the system here, and while Autopilot isn't a perfect system and while we've criticized its name as being somewhat misleading, the fault here doesn't seem to lie solely with Tesla.

The moral of the story here is that the advanced driver assistance systems, like Autopilot, that are found in many of the vehicles being sold today are not a form of self-driving. There is no "self-driving" car on sale today, and it's the responsibility of the driver to pay attention to the world around them as they drive.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to Roadshow's request for comment.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:33PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:33PM (#890979)

    You would hope also that a competent driving instructor would be even better at it.

    ...and those are the only people who, at the moment, should be testing any "driver assistance" device capable of being (ab)used as "self-driving" (other than, may be, emergency braking or warning systems). After taking some sort of test to ensure the "competent" bit. While wired with a mike and required to make a commentary on the vehicle's progress (which might help to keep them focussed).

    Unfortunately, its much cheaper - maybe actually profitable - to "crowdsource" crucial safety testing to anybody who can afford (a loan for) a luxury car.

    Self-driving isn't ready until it is ready - and it will be ready when it is safe and legal to use while drunk, falling asleep or in iPhone Zombie mode - because idiots will use it like that.

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