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The first death resulting from a crash involving a self-driving car!!

23K views 377 replies 80 participants last post by  LAuberX 
#1 ·
And so it begins.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/30/12072408/tesla-autopilot-car-crash-death-autonomous-model-s

https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tragic-loss

Clearly Tesla's QA dept. isn't up to the challenge of insuring the safety of driverless vehicles. Why would it not occur to someone at Tesla that scanning the roadway over 3 feet off the ground would be a vital safety requirement?

THe first death in a series to come. I'd expect a recall soon. and I'm sticking to my guns on the advent of truly autonomous vehicles being about 40 years out.

Fear not drivers they will need us for quite sometime to come.
 
#77 ·
I didnt want to like your post because of someone dying. But I do agree with you that self driving cars is a major concern. It's not like releasing an OS filled with security risks that must be patched up frequently. Its technology that has serious and now deadly consequences. I've never really supported the autonomous driving thing. Computers do what we tell them them to do. AI is still in infancy. Humans are humans. The only predictable thing about us is we are unpredictable. Unless all vehicles become autonomous I can't see how they can program a car to respond to a human driver.
 
#80 ·
Technically it's not a self driving car.
Cruise control with lane departure warning and crash avoidance warning. The driver still has to be involved.

Which is why I'm curious if the auto insurance even mentions auto pilot. And what legal paperwork they signed for that software update.
If there is no extra paperwork then all parties (including the deceased) are/were stupid in a life/death situation.

Every vehicle has warnings!
 
#83 ·
Well if both units had been 'auto' then the crash wouldn't have happened either..... as the truck would have seen the car coming and not crossed in front of it.

In this case the human truck driver was at fault, and yes the car failed to see the issue and react in time due to sensor setup on the Tesla.

The same would have happened with bog standard cruise control, had the driver failed to react and brake in time.

That said, there is always room for improvement on the auto pilot side of things!!!
 
#88 ·
Our State Government here in NSW is softening us up for the advent of robot cars. There has been a terrible upwards spike in fatalities here on our roads over the past 12 months. This has come about because Sydney's population is growing by about 80 to 90,000 people per annum, with no new roads built in the last 10 years to accommodate that increase.

They've started to run ads stating "towards zero deaths on New South Wales roads."

Now everybody knows that is impossible, fairy land stuff with what occurs on our roads today with humans behind the wheel. But with the increase of the sharing economy, fewer cars on the road, that are utilised more, and driven by robots, that is the Nirvana that Uber is selling to governments around the world
 
#94 · (Edited)
Everything we do in life has some element of risk. The first cars that were made weren't perfect and even today, we are safer in our vehicles than ever before, but once in awhile one will burst into flames from electrical issues, have a ruptured gas tank (remember the Pinto!) or the technology will just flat out fail (we all are supposed to be wearing seat belts which have been required since 1968, but there have been injuries from using those, too). Maybe the driverless conveyance needs to change and become even more safe for human transportation and not just have it be some converted old car humans drive around today.
 
#100 · (Edited)
You're right. 1-2 accidents means nothing right now. So improve things but you don't stop them. The technology is ready to be tried and learned from on what the Autopilot does. Experience and miles has to come from somewhere, right?
And I wouldn't say 130 million miles does not have any significant value. That it a lot of mileage and it does have value. Needs more, but don't stop it.

And again, we lost one life. Okay, tragic, but without even searching I know it saved at least 2 others in Seattle with Uber Select. I posted a link. So I'm sure if I did research on the internet I could find many more cases where driver would not have had time to react but Tesla did.

So what does this prove? It proves the Tesla Autopilot is safer today having it, than not having it. With the programmers learning from their mistakes it's going to be even safer.

People don't tend to understand you don't get these real life learning experiences just on test tracks. They have to be used by the masses.

Another poster talked about Autopilot on aircraft. You think it was always perfectly save? No, but they learned and make adjustments.
Yes I understand that this is not fully automated autonomous automobile,
this is driver assist breaking, keeping the car within the lanes, maintaining a safe distance from the car in front of you when the cruise control is engaged,
yes I understand that,

But that is not the way many people are going to use this technology, they're going to use it so they can check Facebook, so they can take selfies, so they can check email, so they can concentrate more on phone conversations, putting on makeup and discipline their kids in the backseat, instead of concentrating on the road..

Its6 our responsibility to concentrate on the road, to concentrate on driving not look for a way so we don't have to.

And speaking of concentrate on the road, why is Uber making us look more and more unprofessional with these non-stop stacked trips is making us have to devote our eyes from the road and look over for a few seconds at our app and press a few buttons, this is stupid it needs to stop,

there is no reason why uber can't hold that call and give it to us after we actually end our trip,

but no uber has no intentions of doing that because that would make uber look bad, because that means the customer will be looking at app with massage saying a "car will be available soon" but no actual driver or license plate to show a uber is actually coming,

better to make us look unprofessional like a bunch of idiots playing around with our cell phone looking for the next Dollar.
 
#102 ·
I wouldn't be so sure.
Demographics.
America has an aging population.
Industry wants shipping by truck without drivers.
Shipping with ships want crewless ships.
It will advance.
Yea people want things done fast but also want efficaint. Uber is for just that. I laugh at people who want privacy cuz that died out once smart phones came out. U want more tech well u gonna have no privacy.
 
#104 ·
No matter to what technical accuracy they will be able to fine tune these driverless cars there is one thing they still will never have and that's INTUITION not just reacting to what's happening but what is about to happen. How many times have you been on the highway when you're sure the car a little bit ahead of you is about to change lanes into yours which would cause an accident...intuition tells you to slow. Driverless cars will never have that. In a vacuum they would preform just fine. In a utopian society where every car is driverless most likely fine. But mixing these in with human drivers in hundreds of variable driving conditions and you have potential disaster.
 
#109 ·
I'm not too sure the 3 foot height had anything to do with this accident.

The car may not "see" the trailer from a few feet away but it definitely should have seen it from 100, 200, 500 feet away where the three foot height should not have been a factor.

Apparently the Tesla comes with 12 sensors that "see" objects for sixteen feet around the vehicle. It also has forward facing cameras and radar units.

Even if the cameras couldn't see "The white trailer and brightly lit sky", the radar units didn't detect it.
Why would you say the height didn't have anything to do with it? The car never applied brakes, either by the driver or the autopilot. So one can assume the autopilot detected nothing in the way so no brakes were applied right? Well there was a HUGE object in the way. One of the sensors should have seen an obstruction in the road, and SURELY a human being could see it coming. These auto cars have to be able to do what humans can and better. Like for me, I probably would have seen it far down the road, and maybe slowed early because I saw teh truck creeping(I mean its a big truck, and can't really just dart out in the road). A true autonomous vehicle should be able to "sense" danger just like a human would. Telsa failed miserably in this incident

From article,

It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled.
clearly to ward off lawsuits. lets see if it works

I don't think Tesla believes this needed to be passed by regulators.

Since they require drivers to keep hands on steering wheel and in control. It's kind of an enhanced cruise control.
stupidest name in the world: autopilot. but they require you to have your hands on the wheel. might as well just call it super cruise control instead of autopilot

The news didn't say who at fault for the accident they are still investigating
I can't really think of any way the truck could have been in the right, if they say the car was on a highway. Unless there's a red light/stop sign, in the middle of a "highway"
 
#110 ·
I can't really think of any way the truck could have been in the right, if they say the car was on a highway. Unless there's a red light/stop sign, in the middle of a "highway"
Sure, the unproven technology with the inattentive driver at the controls must have been totally in the right. Professional driver with years of experience driving commercial vehicles should have been watching out for him probably driving in one of his blind spots. Unfortunately it takes a death to bring this kind of flaw to light. They really couldn't have tested for this situation in 130+ MILLION miles they supposedly drove this system?
 
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