
It took seven miles to pull over a Tesla with a seemingly asleep driver - okket
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/cops-pull-over-tesla-cruising-on-a-freeway-with-apparently-asleep-driver/
======
Animats
Well, the "hands on wheel, driver paying attention" detection system clearly
wasn't effective.

Fortunately he was headed north on US 101, not south. Seven miles ending in
Palo Alto means he went through the 101-85 interchange where a Tesla hit the
divider barrier and killed the driver. But that shallow-angle split is
southbound only. Northbound, you can go seven miles to Palo Alto without any
unusual offramps that would confuse Tesla's lane-follower.

Tesla's lane follower is pretty good. That's what creates the illusion that it
can self-drive. Car-ahead detection, reasonably good. Obstacle detection, not
so good. So the CHP did the right thing, boxing it in with their patrol cars
and slowing down. It would have been much worse if they'd set up a roadblock.

~~~
dogma1138
I wonder how much longer is it going to be until we get a regulatory required
pull over signal for autonomous systems and how in the hell you would secure
it considering it would need to be used by countless law enforcement agencies
world wide and would need to be implemented by multiple manufacturers.

I’m pretty sure it would be some emergency stop button in the cabbin at first
but then someone somewhere would want to pass a law that would enable the
police to remotely initiate it.

~~~
vbezhenar
It'll allow criminals to intercept and kill drivers in empty roads, not very
good solution. At least driver should be able to disable this system.

~~~
k_sh
A "law enforcement has requested that your car pull over automatically, press
here if you don't want this to happen" dialog would serve the need here while
also protecting passengers from bad actors.

~~~
bamboozled
How do you differentiate between “real” law enforcement and fake ?

~~~
dorchadas
Well, you could look to see if the cops are behind you. If it's a malicious
actor posing in cop cars already, I think there's bigger issues, since most
will stop if they see they're being followed by a cop with their lights on.

~~~
vbezhenar
In my country you could choose not to stop and instead drive to the nearest
police station, if you have doubts whether cops are legitimate. They are
supposed to escort you or something like that.

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nikofeyn
i still can't believe tesla has gotten away with putting a feature called
auto-pilot into a car which does no such thing. how does auto-pilot mean
driver must be alert at all times with hands physically at the wheel? how is
the marketing and naming of that feature legal and passing regulation?

and i don't like the overly positive implication that auto-pilot saved this
person's life. no, in fact, its existence, as described in a separate incident
in the exact same article, likely encouraged the drunk driving in the first
place. a car just free running on the road with no one behind the wheel is not
a good thing. seven miles is a long time to stop the car and endangered many
other people's lives just as an active drunk driver would. auto-pilot did not
improve the situation as the article implies.

~~~
s_m_t
Isn't the autopilot in a tesla pretty similar to what is called autopilot in
an airplane?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Aeroplanes have ATC keeping multiple miles of separation, and thousands of
feet of height between vehicles, and regulations requiring a pair of awake,
sober and aware humans on board.

An aircraft autopilot can be quite dumb and remain safe.

~~~
bayesian_horse
An aircraft's autopilot does not absolve the pilot of keeping an eye on the
instruments, the flight situation, the windows (if applicable). He has to be
ready at any moment to disengage the autopilot or take the controls when the
autopilot self-disengages.

The only thing an autopilot, both the tesla's and the airplane's, is good for
is reducing the cognitive load of the operator.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Fully agree, but that is not how it is positioned by Tesla, which I think
creates most of the problem.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> but that is not how it is positioned by Tesla

I disagree, based on my Model S orientation from my delivery specialist, as
well as the very clear warnings on the MCU display regarding the driver
needing to maintain control at all times (which is also presented on the
dashboard display above the steering wheel each and every time autosteer is
enabled). It’s made abundantly clear what the limitations are.

Stupid people will do stupid things. Safeguards have diminishing returns, and
does not absolve an operator of personal responsibility.

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rmason
My grandfather was fond of telling me about drunks who'd get into their buggy
and trust their horse to take them home. I don't think we're too far away from
being able to do that with self-driving cars as long as you have the presence
of mind to say Google - Home. Society has to decide whether that is a good
thing or not.

~~~
lwansbrough
I’d imaging getting hit by a buggy carried a significantly lower risk of
fatality. Not to mention a horse is a better computer than a Tesla. But I
agree with your conclusion of course.

~~~
azernik
I think maybe that should be a goal for "strong AI" \- not human intelligence,
just the intelligence of a semi-smart animal.

~~~
slx26
well, that's still almost as complicated as human intelligence. the only main
part that's missing is language. and to be fair, although human natural
languages are really tricky, you could easily build communicative, natural-
like languages that computers can handle (similar in appearance to simplified
english). in any case, if you are solving learning, which is needed for a
semi-smart animal intelligence, you probably wouldn't be far away from solving
language. we are very semi-smart ourselves

------
ryanmarsh
This Tesla saved the life of a driver who fell asleep (drunk) behind the
wheel, as well as the lives of others on the road around it. Having seen first
hand what often happens when people do that I don’t understand what everyone’s
complaining about.

People drink and drive. It’s a huge problem in this country. If Tesla
autopilot made him drive drunk then needle exchanges promote drug use. You
can’t have it both way folks. It’s either a public safety issue or it’s not.

~~~
aw3c2
If a car is "intelligent" enough to drive, it should be able to refuse to
transport a drunk driver too.

~~~
bertil
That option was tried: a company developed a safety system on top of a car’s
ignition. To start, the driver had to blow into an alcohol test. It was meant
for parents’ letting their teenagers drive their car and court-mandates.

The system was rapidly scraped when people realise someone else could easily
blow in.

~~~
lttlrck
Parents feeling the need to install these things seems misguided at best. But
IID are in use all over the world and Universal IID hasn’t got far - as you’d
expect.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_interlock_device](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_interlock_device)

------
bfung
I upvoted an unpopular opinion, and I think it's worth reiterating. The
autopilot feature in this case probably saved the guy's life and other drivers
around him - if he was drunk, his decision to drive probably wasn't based on
autopilot anyways.

~~~
BoorishBears
How would lane keep assist and automatic emergency braking, both of which
would have triggered at the first hint of being tired with very strong alerts:

a) not have saved his life

b) not encouraged him to rely on them to make up for his current state

Now a basic Corolla will detect that you’re sleepy and encourage you to pull
over if it has to intervene often enough. Autopilot is a step backwards from
systems like this.

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primitivesuave
I wonder, does having a car with autopilot make someone more likely to drive
drunk, or is it simply averting an asleep-at-the-wheel car crash for the drunk
drivers fortunate enough to have this feature?

~~~
gronne
Probably both.

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fingerlocks
>“The situation is a bit of a puzzle because Autopilot is supposed to detect
if a driver's hands are on the wheel and disengage if they're not.”

Lack of information in these still-developing stories makes for some
entertaining discussion. We can conjure up all sorts of theories to explain
the unexpected phenomena.

I think the sleeping driver was slouched against the wheel and engaging the
two-hand steering touch sensor.

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BlackLotus89
Am I the only one thinking of the first episode of knight rider? Where Michael
Knight fell asleep while driving and had to prentend he was a deaf guy with a
bad neck.

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cedricium
An article with a little more information:

[https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/11/30/los-altos-planning-comm...](https://mv-
voice.com/news/2018/11/30/los-altos-planning-commissioner-arrested-for-tesla-
dui)

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wetpaws
This is so surreal. Just imagine reading about something like this five or ten
years ago.

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mtw
Tesla should be rename Autopilot to Auto-cruise Lane guidance.

However this would have ended more dramatically if the driver had a car from
another brand (except a Waymo, in which case he wouldn't be at the driver's
seat)

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walrus01
Maybe he wedged an orange in the steering wheel.

[https://youtu.be/TYZrehVQouc](https://youtu.be/TYZrehVQouc)

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lostmsu
And that never happened before?

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CodeWriter23
FFS, summon a Lyft/Uber.

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bertil
I’m not sure how much of a libertarian Elon Musk is, but similar stories would
give voice to demand that Telsas be able to recognise a Police car flagging
you, and pulling up safely unless over-ridden to keep on by the driver.

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sbhn
Sounds like the answer is giving the police a special button that can take
control of the car and pull it over automatically

~~~
ashleyn
All they need to do is box it in, and if it's functioning properly, it will
stop itself.

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masonic
"The driver was Alexander Samek, who serves on the Los Altos Planning
Commission."

