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posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 26 2020, @09:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the problems-with-his-connection dept.

Tesla Autopilot Crash Driver 'Was Playing Video Game'

BBC:

An Apple employee who died after his Tesla car hit a concrete barrier was playing a video game at the time of the crash, investigators believe.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the car had been driving semi-autonomously using Tesla's Autopilot software.

Tesla instructs drivers to keep their hands on the wheel in Autopilot mode.
...
But critics say the "Autopilot" branding makes some drivers think the car is driving fully autonomously.

The NTSB said the driver had been "over-reliant" on the software.

Tesla does instruct drivers to keep their hands on the wheel when using Autopilot, and an audible warning sounds if they fail to do so.

Does the Tesla branding of "autopilot" lure drivers into driving dangerously?

Tesla Crash Likely Caused by Video Game Distraction

The NTSB has published a review of a fatal crash involving a Tesla in March 2018 that includes a set of safety recommendations.

In the NTSB press release(2/25/2020) regarding the causes for the crash, they made the following observations:

The NTSB determined the Tesla "Autopilot" system's limitations, the driver's overreliance on the "Autopilot" and the driver's distraction – likely from a cell phone game application – caused the crash. The Tesla vehicle's ineffective monitoring of driver engagement was determined to have contributed to the crash. Systemic problems with the California Department of Transportation's repair of traffic safety hardware and the California Highway Patrol's failure to "report damage to a crash attenuator led to the Tesla striking a damaged and nonoperational crash attenuator" [sic], which the NTSB said contributed to the severity of the driver's injuries.

"This tragic crash clearly demonstrates the limitations of advanced driver assistance systems available to consumers today," said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. "There is not a vehicle currently available to US consumers that is self-driving. Period. Every vehicle sold to US consumers still requires the driver to be actively engaged in the driving task, even when advanced driver assistance systems are activated. If you are selling a car with an advanced driver assistance system, you're not selling a self-driving car. If you are driving a car with an advanced driver assistance system, you don't own a self-driving car," said Sumwalt.

"In this crash we saw an over-reliance on technology, we saw distraction, we saw a lack of policy prohibiting cell phone use while driving, and we saw infrastructure failures that, when combined, led to this tragic loss. The lessons learned from this investigation are as much about people as they are about the limitations of emerging technologies," said Sumwalt. "Crashes like this one, and thousands more that happen every year due to distraction, are why "Eliminate Distractions" remains on the NTSB's Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements," he said.

[...] the board also excoriated the National Highway Transportation Agency for providing utterly ineffectual oversight when it comes to so-called "level 2" driver assists, as well as California's highway agency CalTrans, which failed to replace a damaged crash attenuator in front of the concrete gore, which would in most likelihood have saved Huang's life.

Previously:
NTSB Releases Preliminary Report on Tesla Autopilot Crash
Tesla Crash: Model X Was In Autopilot Mode, Firm Says


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @10:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @10:23PM (#963170)

    You mean like this guy [cnet.com]?