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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
(Score: 5, Interesting) by darkfeline on Wednesday February 26 2020, @11:27PM (10 children)
It's quite interesting where this misconception about autopilot could have come from.
Do passengers expect that airplane autopilot means that their human pilot gets to take a nap or play hanky panky? Why then do they expect to be able to do the same with car autopilot?
Maybe it's because of the marketing, but I don't know anything about that since I've never seen a Tesla ad.
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(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:50AM (5 children)
Apparently, your English isn't very good. Autopilot literally means selfpilot. The fact that the aviation industry has a different definition doesn't change the meaning of the components of the word. That's what normal people expect out of an autopilot, the ability to drive a segment without intervention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:04AM (2 children)
So does that mean automobiles will normally just start moving by themselves? ;)
Without intervention does not mean you can safely play a video game or go to sleep or leave the pilot seat while it's doing so.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot#First_autopilots [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:08PM
Automobiles move themselves (before, you had to have a horse doing the moving). There is no "starting" in "automobile" (sorry, I'm too lazy to find out what "starting" is in Latin).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:34PM
As the other poster said, automobiles move themselves once started and put into gear. The steering and specific speed are controlled by the driver. Auto means self, mobile means move, so they are self moving.
If you have to count on overriding the common use of a word in reference to a mass market product, bad things are likely to happen. It's one of the reasons for weird invented terms for features.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:52PM
Autopilot does have the ability to drive a segment without intervention, right into the concrete barrier.
Human pilots make mistakes too, I don't see why selfpilots are exempt from that.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 28 2020, @08:07PM
And hot water heater means a device that further heats already hot water but people routinely supply it with cold water because they know what is actually meant.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 27 2020, @01:43PM (2 children)
Yes. Well, not exactly, they expect the pilots to still handle things like communications with towers, but they definitely wouldn't expect that the pilot has to care much about what the plane does.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)
You have the advantage in the air that everyone else is following a track as well, and there aren't any trees, gas stations, or pedestrians up at 40,000 feet. You tend to just hit air, which is kind of soft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:36PM
Then, don't call it autopilot until it can self pilot reliably. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 28 2020, @08:22PM
The Tesla autopilot actually does more than a jumbo jet's autopilot does. The aircraft version doesn't include collision avoidance, that's the pilot's job.