
Tesla driver dies in first fatal crash while using autopilot mode - summerdown2
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-autopilot-death-self-driving-car-elon-musk
======
bobsil1
Looks like the truck had a truncated view of the car because of a grade.

[http://imgur.com/a/lFRgf](http://imgur.com/a/lFRgf)

Elon says the radar ignores what it thinks are overhead signs.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/748625979271045121](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/748625979271045121)

More discussion:

[https://m.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4qnu4a/a_tragic_...](https://m.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4qnu4a/a_tragic_loss/)

------
isubkhankulov
"The top of Joshua Brown’s 2015 Tesla Model S vehicle was torn off by the
force of the collision. The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, Tampa was not
injured in the crash. The FHP said the tractor-trailer was traveling west on
US 27A in the left turn lane toward 140th Court. Brown’s car was headed east
in the outside lane of U.S. 27A. When the truck made a left turn onto NE 140th
Court in front of the car, the car’s roof struck the underside of the trailer
as it passed under the trailer. The car continued to travel east on U.S. 27A
until it left the roadway on the south shoulder and struck a fence. The car
smashed through two fences and struck a power pole. The car rotated counter-
clockwise while sliding to its final resting place about 100 feet south of the
highway. Brown died at the scene. Charges are pending."

source: [https://www.levyjournalonline.com/police-
beat.html](https://www.levyjournalonline.com/police-beat.html)

given the above, I suspect that even if the Model S' brakes kicked in, they
still would not have saved him. Unless the driver was asleep at the wheel or
otherwise distracted.

~~~
bobsil1
View of intersection:
[https://goo.gl/maps/nmbNuGMkbQs](https://goo.gl/maps/nmbNuGMkbQs)

------
legitster
> The first paragraph notes that this was Tesla’s first known autopilot death
> in some 130 million miles driven by its customers. “Among all vehicles in
> the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles,” the company then notes.

This statistic is a bit disingenuous, since the 1 fatality every 94 million
miles is across all road types, where as Tesla's autopilot is only used for
highway driving, mile for mile the safest way to drive.

~~~
ta834939874
Very interesting that you suggest highway driving is the safest part (I assume
in the US). In Australia it is country driving that is the most dangerous. An
area the Telsa self driving feature would be very suited.

[http://www.mac.sa.gov.au/campaigns/country-
driving](http://www.mac.sa.gov.au/campaigns/country-driving)

------
thomasthomas
This is why i'm skeptical of tesla rushing out autonomous features. i think
augmented driving being confused by customers as fully autonomous is extremely
dangerous. teslas rush to market and resulting accidents could set back the
whole industry.

I also don't understand how tesla can make the leap to fully autonomous
vehicles learning/using training data from the semi-autonomous vehicles that
are in the customers hands? google has driven 1.5 million miles fully
autonomously (with some human oversight) on city streets how many has tesla?

another thought: if tesla does get to fully autonomous vehicles... wouldn't
that destroy their sales? its generally agreed upon the demand for car
ownership decreases dramatically with self driving vehicles. maybe theyre not
afraid to cannibalize themselves akin to apple?

------
ropable
Even if the software was blameless, I could see an incident like this setting
back acceptance of autonomous driving a couple of years.

------
bobsil1
Brad Templeton argues a perpendicular truck would look stationary to radar and
be filtered out, so use LIDAR.

[http://ideas.4brad.com/man-dies-while-driven-tesla-
autopilot](http://ideas.4brad.com/man-dies-while-driven-tesla-autopilot)

~~~
ilaksh
The reason they couldn't use LIDAR on the Tesla is because Tesla is literally
the coolest car on the road, and the LIDAR protrusion on the top of the car
would completely reverse that. It would go from the coolest car to the
dorkiest car.

There isn't a way to just stick the LIDAR somewhere unobtrusive. So this is
the thing that, strangely, almost no one (aside from myself) seems to have
noticed: LIDAR is fundamentally incompatible with the current Tesla brand. And
that was especially the case when there was only really the super high-end
'cool' model of Tesla vehicle. But still, the way the vehicles are marketed
and designed today, they cannot add a functional LIDAR without that
fundamental change.

This is a little bit ridiculous, but the reality is that at some level, most
average adult consumers out there are not really much more sophisticated than
the average kid in your 7th grade English class. So it just comes down to the
fact that the thing on the top doesn't look cool.

Now, Elon Musk (and most Tesla fans) will never admit that.

~~~
bobsil1
You could add it as a fin, like BMW antennas. LIDAR is expensive and
mechanically unreliable: you can't steer light electrically, so you need
either a spinning motor or a phased array (under research). And isn't really
needed after optical, radar and sonar.

