
NTSB sending investigators to fatal Tesla-semitrailer crash - newnewpdro
https://www.woodtv.com/news/national/ntsb-sending-investigators-to-fatal-tesla-semitrailer-crash/1822092688
======
Animats
Again?

So far, Teslas have crashed into two semitrailers, a street sweeper [1], a
stalled car partially in the left lane, a stalled truck partially in the left
lane, a fire truck, and two road barriers. We don't know about the latest one
yet, but in all the other cases, the crash was _not_ preceded by automatic
emergency braking.

 _Tesla lacks basic obstacle detection._ The original Mobileye system had
"recognize car" as the first step. If it didn't look like a car, it wasn't an
obstacle. Tesla claims to have replaced that with their own system, but we're
still seeing full-speed collisions with obvious obstacles.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmdvSXkTAxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmdvSXkTAxE)

~~~
sp332
We don't even know if the autopilot was on in this case. And lots of self-
driving systems are designed to ignore stationary objects at highway speeds,
because they get too many false positives and would be coming to a stop on the
highway too often.

~~~
tyingq
Your first sentence is an important point.

I don't understand the rest of the comment though. Hard to reconcile "self-
driving" with "ignore stationary objects".

~~~
glennpratt
There are many other systems like this on other cars, like the Subaru I just
rented. There is no way I would trust them to not kill me unmonitored.

I don't think of anything available to end users today as "self-driving". Auto
pilot is a better analogy, even if people don't seem to understand that.

~~~
darkpuma
It doesn't help that Elon misleads the public. Tesla's "autopilot" is a Level
2 system; you're meant to keep your hands on the wheel. And indeed that's
exactly what the owners manual tells you: keep your hands on the wheel. But
then Elon goes on national television and takes his hands off the wheel. What
kind of message does that send to consumers?

Then there is the matter of autopilot being a bad analogy, even if it were
technically accurate _(I dispute that because AFAIK airplane autopilots
officially allow pilots to take their hands off the controls, unlike Tesla 's
system)_, because the general public has serious misconceptions about what
airplane autopilots actually do. Aircraft pilots receive serious training, so
they don't have those same misconceptions, which is why aircraft autopilots
aren't a problem. But much of the general public is under the mistaken
impression that pilots of modern airliners simply _" push a button then take a
nap"_ as the airplane takes off, flies and lands itself. That's not reality as
you and I both know, but many in the general public have that misconception,
making Tesla's use of the term likely to mislead and therefore irresponsible.

See page 73-74 of the Model 3 owners manual:
[https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla/Ownership/Own/Model%...](https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla/Ownership/Own/Model%203%20Owners%20Manual.pdf)

    
    
        Warning: Autosteer is a hands-on feature.
                 You must keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times.
    
        Warning: Autosteer is intended for use only on highways and limited-
                 access roads with a fully attentive driver. When using
                 Autosteer, hold the steering wheel and be mindful of road
                 conditions and surrounding traffic.*
    
        Warning: Autosteer is not designed to, and will not, steer Model 3
                 around objects partially or completely in the driving
                 lane. Always watch the road in front of you and stay prepared
                 to take appropriate action. It is the driver's responsibility
                 to be in control of Model 3 at all times.

~~~
zaroth
Every other other Level 2 system advertisement I could find shows the driver
with their hands off the wheel, at least to some extent;

[1] - Nissan - [https://youtu.be/HkL67DgleQY](https://youtu.be/HkL67DgleQY)

[2] - Ford - [https://youtu.be/Z_9218dTXXY](https://youtu.be/Z_9218dTXXY)

[3] - Audi - [https://youtu.be/nUlK6fpveXg](https://youtu.be/nUlK6fpveXg)

[4] - BMW - [https://youtu.be/xsQvq4WlUYU](https://youtu.be/xsQvq4WlUYU)

------
tyingq
I don't know there's any great solution here. Something that works well most
of the time is going to lull drivers into not paying attention. Calling it
autopilot probably doesn't help.

Tesla is either going to have to hobble it enough that drivers pay attention,
or significantly improve it, if that's possible.

~~~
sverige
It seems obvious that there's room for improving a system that can't detect an
object that's 75 feet long and 13 1/2 feet high directly in front of it.

Self-driving cars are decades away from reality, and self-driving trucks are
even further away.

~~~
imglorp
I disagree on the grounds that it already happened. Perhaps survivor bias is
obscuring the fact that Teslas alone have already driven roughly billion miles
on autopilot. Perhaps we don't hear about those because they are uneventful.

[https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-miles](https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-
autopilot-miles)

Yes there will be bugs--all software will have bugs--and they will decline
over time. Meanwhile, the accident rate of autopilot is probably better than
human drivers.

[https://electrek.co/2018/10/04/tesla-first-vehicle-safety-
re...](https://electrek.co/2018/10/04/tesla-first-vehicle-safety-report-media-
coverage-crashes/)

~~~
sverige
Fair enough, though I'm more concerned about the claims for fully autonomous
vehicles without driver controls. How many times in those billion miles did a
human driver intervene? Or rather, would it have been two billion miles on
autopilot if the human driver had not had to take control?

~~~
CamperBob2
Key point is that the autopilot will get better over time, while the humans
will not. This is one of those questions that is best answered by looking at
the first derivative rather than the quantity in question.

------
semi-extrinsic
Link that works in Europe:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-crash/u-s-safety-
ag...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-crash/u-s-safety-agencies-to-
investigate-fatal-tesla-crash-in-florida-idUSKCN1QJ031)

------
xvf22
Hopefully Tesla doesn't feel the need to repeat mistakes of the past by
releasing info outside of the NTSB process[0].

[0] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/04/13/602081183...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/04/13/602081183/ntsb-tesla-booted-from-crash-investigation-for-not-
following-rules)

------
colordrops
How does the rate of accidents while using autopilot compare to manual
driving? It seems to be an important question as it can't be expected that
automated systems will _never_ get in accidents.

~~~
loteck
The rate of mere accidents isn't the metric you're necessarily looking for.
What's relevant is the rate of accidents compared to the rate of _fatal
accidents_ , for manual driving.

And then the same for autopilot.

Tesla's stingy with their mileage data though, so you have to get academic.

 _Combining our crash data with the MIT numbers, we arrive at the following
fatal Tesla accident rates:

\- Autopilot: 0.25 per 100 million miles

\- Human Pilot: 0.20 per 100 million miles.

(Put another way, one Autopilot fatal crash every 400 million miles, one human
pilot crash every 500 million miles.)_

[https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119936_tesla-fatal-
cra...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119936_tesla-fatal-crash-rate-
with-autopilot-still-no-better-than-with-human-drivers)

~~~
Xylakant
To add to that some more differences need to be taken into account:

* autopilot is used mostly in favorable road conditions, highways, clear weather, while humans drive in any condition, for example snow or fog

* Teslas are on average newer than the average car on the road, increasing the likelihood to survive a crash

* Teslas are upper class vehicles, further increasing the likelihood to survive a crash

All in all, the cards are stacked in favor of Tesla in a mere (fatal) accident
per mile comparison.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
With this latest death, it seems Tesla’s death rate would be significantly
higher than the 40K+ luxury segment. Tesla usually does the comparison using
all vehicles which include a lot of older vehicles that don’t have advanced
sensors and such things as automatic advanced braking and side curtain
airbags. In the 40K+ luxury segment, vehicles in general have these safety
features.

~~~
ricardobeat
According to another comment above, no other cars with driving assistant
features would have avoided this crash either. It’s a matter of human
attention (or lack of).

------
newnewpdro
This happened at very inopportune time with Tesla desperate to attract buyers
of the newly available $35k Model 3.

They did it to themselves though; bringing a glorified cruise control to
market while touting it as the safest way to travel by car and calling it
Autopilot.

------
Shivetya
Traffic reporter video of crash scene, no gore, but gives clearest picture of
crash area and distance car traveled after collision.[1]

I own a TM3, I do not have FSD features but those were not involved in this
crash. I do know enhanced autopilot doesn't seem to do a good job with
tracking certain objects, especially stationary objects in the path of travel.
While a truck would not be stationary I really do not see any excuse for not
seeing one. At minimum two cameras had eyes on it. One of my favorite, what
does it see videos [2]

[1] [https://youtu.be/X8HSsQ_KJFI](https://youtu.be/X8HSsQ_KJFI)

[2] [https://youtu.be/bImNNpB35eE](https://youtu.be/bImNNpB35eE)

