Two men killed in Tesla car crash 'without driver' in seat

MorNando06660 said:
I’m not sure I share your pessimistic view.

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-full-self-driving-release-in-2021

Taken from the link above:
In the US, car accidents occur every 479,000 miles, according to NHTSA data. Meanwhile, in Q3 2020, Tesla recorded one accident for every 4.59 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. These data demonstrate Tesla Autopilot's colossal safety performance—almost 10 times safer than a human driver.

Tesla are supposedly rolling out a full auto version of their autopilot system (level 5) at the end of this year with huge improvements. Whether it will happen that quick I’m not sure but it will happen and it will happen fast, but won’t be mainstream for another 5-10 years.

Ford are also catching up too and they have their own version hot on the heels. It’s called BlueCruise
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It's all marketing whaff though isn't it to keep the money coming in. Tesla (and anyone else for that matter) is simply nowhere near achieving Level 5 autonomy.

Let’s All Laugh At These Bad Autonomous Car Predictions From Just A Few Years Ago they've been telling us they're imminent for years.
 


McMackem said:
"It's not clear if the autopilot was engaged" WTF? There was no one in the drivers seat, how could it not be engaged!
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I reckon if the autopilot isn't engaged there's a fairly good chance the car will crash......maybe the person in the passenger seat was suicidal and turned it off whilst travelling at speed? It's been known for pilots to kill themselves by flying a plane with passengers into the ground.
 
You are much less likely to have a crash using autopilot than you are driving a standard car. Latest figure show up to ten times less likely to crash.

the problem here is still people, stupid people, who were not even in the drivers seat.
 
Joe Public said:
You are much less likely to have a crash using autopilot than you are driving a standard car. Latest figure show up to ten times less likely to crash.

the problem here is still people, stupid people, who were not even in the drivers seat.
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You can hack a tesla auto drive easily. Just need some weight on the wheel
 
James said:
It's all marketing whaff though isn't it to keep the money coming in. Tesla (and anyone else for that matter) is simply nowhere near achieving Level 5 autonomy.

Let’s All Laugh At These Bad Autonomous Car Predictions From Just A Few Years Ago they've been telling us they're imminent for years.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree a lot of what comes out is optimistic sales tactics. However, Tesla are saying that it’s this year for level 5, not 3, 4 or 5 years in the future. To say that means they are basically putting the spit and polish on a system that already exists.
 
I use the autopilot, not full self drive,it’s brilliant although not flawless yet, I still get phantom breaking on the motorway at certain times, usually when overtaking large lorries, so it’s certainly not ready to rely on.

it is brilliant tho and takes a lot of work out of driving, over long journeys I am much less fatigued than I used to be.
 
MorNando06660 said:
Yes, I agree a lot of what comes out is optimistic sales tactics. However, Tesla are saying that it’s this year for level 5, not 3, 4 or 5 years in the future. To say that means they are basically putting the spit and polish on a system that already exists.
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He was saying this exact same thing last year. He'll say it again next year too.

They're at Level 2 at the minute, it's a good driver assistance system but human input required. To go from that to L5 which means the car doesn't need any human input (i.e you could remove the steering wheel and it would drive fine) is fantasy stuff.

There's a fairly well balanced article on it here: Why Is Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Only Level 2 Autonomous?

Fwiw I think Tesla should be banned from calling it 'full self driving' when it's anything but. That is dangerous and people do think they can sleep at the wheel. You see the legions of Musk nerds on social media chatting about it all the time.
 
MorNando06660 said:
I have driven a Tesla before who are streets ahead of the competition. Anything else isn’t in the same league right now. It changes lane for you on a motorway to overtake and stops/starts at a red light.

It also senses when you take your hands off the wheel in a Tesla too but you can get round the whole thing by wedging a tennis ball between the middle section and the wheel. I shit you not, people are actually doing this to get round the safety measures. Like I said, it’s the dumb people who are dying.
Edit: I think the tennis ball thing was fixed quite quickly a few year ago.
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Joe Public said:
You are much less likely to have a crash using autopilot than you are driving a standard car. Latest figure show up to ten times less likely to crash.

the problem here is still people, stupid people, who were not even in the drivers seat.
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That’s
Joe Public said:
I use the autopilot, not full self drive,it’s brilliant although not flawless yet, I still get phantom breaking on the motorway at certain times, usually when overtaking large lorries, so it’s certainly not ready to rely on.

it is brilliant tho and takes a lot of work out of driving, over long journeys I am much less fatigued than I used to be.
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You shouldn’t get phantom breaking but it happens in my car and it’s annoying, full on emergency stop when the Mrs was driving.

It kicks in quite often in multi storey car parks.

You need to be in control as technology doesn’t always work as it should and that will never change no matter how much they put into it.

Yes there are stupid people but you cannot attribute 100% of incidents down to that factor alone as some seem to be.
 
Joe Public said:
I use the autopilot, not full self drive,it’s brilliant although not flawless yet, I still get phantom breaking on the motorway at certain times, usually when overtaking large lorries, so it’s certainly not ready to rely on.

it is brilliant tho and takes a lot of work out of driving, over long journeys I am much less fatigued than I used to be.
Click to expand...

Seeing that you have to keep your hands on the wheel, watch the road and stay awake there wouldn't be a huge benefit over just using cruise control on long trips I would have thought, until it becomes fully autonomous?

A snag I can forsee is the age of cars. I might trust a new Tesla with autonomous driving but what happens when these cars are five years old or older. I know that the software can be easily updated but even so I'd be wary unless every vital CPU was also regularly replaced.
 
GingerNick said:
they dont..the pilot is there for backup now
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But ready to react
Is this the case with driverless cars
Do you need to be sober and in the front seat at the wheel in a driverless car
McMackem said:
"It's not clear if the autopilot was engaged" WTF? There was no one in the drivers seat, how could it not be engaged!
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It’s like the jetsons
Ember said:
Seeing that you have to keep your hands on the wheel, watch the road and stay awake there wouldn't be a huge benefit over just using cruise control on long trips I would have thought, until it becomes fully autonomous?

A snag I can forsee is the age of cars. I might trust a new Tesla with autonomous driving but what happens when these cars are five years old or older. I know that the software can be easily updated but even so I'd be wary unless every vital CPU was also regularly replaced.
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Or software hacked by ???????
N Korean Russia or chyner
 
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James said:
I don't think they'll ever manage it without fundamentally changing the layouts of roads and who can use them, which in itself is a dangerous precedent. We're only now beginning to unpick the mess of anti-pedestrian and pro-automobile planning of the 60s and 70s, it would be nice if we didn't start undoing that to compensate for technological struggles.
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It's going to be fun seeing the driverless cars arguing about who should reverse when they meet down a country lane. Especially so when a tractor and trailer comes along mid-reverse.

We can't be far away from proper autonomous driving on motorways though which could certainly prevent accidents caused by fatigue.

If the cars "talked" to each other it could be far safer too, as they could be aware of any impending problems ahead. Of course that would require some sort of Standard protocol to be defined - and we can't even manage that with a government directive on Smart Meters!
 
MorNando06660 said:
I’m not sure I share your pessimistic view.

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-full-self-driving-release-in-2021

Taken from the link above:
In the US, car accidents occur every 479,000 miles, according to NHTSA data. Meanwhile, in Q3 2020, Tesla recorded one accident for every 4.59 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. These data demonstrate Tesla Autopilot's colossal safety performance—almost 10 times safer than a human driver.

Tesla are supposedly rolling out a full auto version of their autopilot system (level 5) at the end of this year with huge improvements. Whether it will happen that quick I’m not sure but it will happen and it will happen fast, but won’t be mainstream for another 5-10 years.

Ford are also catching up too and they have their own version hot on the heels. It’s called BlueCruise
Click to expand...
Someone’s dream does not necessarily get bought into by the masses.
It’s just another way of making money at the end of the day.

Technology doesn’t come cheap so they are eliminating quite a bit of the market for starters, it’s a bit of a niche thing and could quite possibly end up a piped dream, it’s all well and good developing autonomous driving but you need the customers for it to work and get a return on investment.

I cannot see the masses wanting it even 10 to 15 years down the line.
 
Roger said:
It's going to be fun seeing the driverless cars arguing about who should reverse when they meet down a country lane. Especially so when a tractor and trailer comes along mid-reverse.

We can't be far away from proper autonomous driving on motorways though which could certainly prevent accidents caused by fatigue.

If the cars "talked" to each other it could be far safer too, as they could be aware of any impending problems ahead. Of course that would require some sort of Standard protocol to be defined - and we can't even manage that with a government directive on Smart Meters!
Click to expand...
That is one area that I think is exciting, the idea of being joined up.

Picture a motorway and there is an issue, perhaps a bit of a shed load dropped in a lane. How far ahead can a human see it? A third of a mile? Less? A joined up database or comms platform and all of a sudden, rather than one pair of eyes, you have hundreds of sensors. If that issue is on your route, your car knows about it when you set off from home, even if it is 100 miles up the road.

So the outside lane is blocked and the lanes need to merge. What happens with humans? The cars in the middle lane should ease off a little way in advance, only dropping by 1mph for a short while and that will open up a wide enough gap for cars in the outer lane to drop their speed and people merge in turn. Lets assume everyone is being good and going at 70, dealing with an incident like that need only require a drop of speed of 1mph, the road flows. What actually happens is half the people in the outside lane race up to the issue then slam on their breaks before trying to force their way in. People in the middle lane see people merging ahead and some thing "buggered if I'm letting them in" and start to close the gap with the car in front. This causes cars to stop and then merge in slowly, the whole road drops to 10 mph or less.

Similar story trying to turn out from a T-junction on a busy road. With humans behind the wheel you have to judge the speed of two lanes of traffic and of course you have the people who suddenly slow and signal at the last minute when you could have pulled out if you had known. Potentially with a car network, your car signals it wants to pull out. It then negotiates with two streams of cars which ease off creating a gap from the right and one from the left. It is timed so the gaps meet at your junction and your car is poised ready to pull out into it. Again, just a slight drop in speed and traffic flows. The people sitting reading a book don't even know it has happened.

The trick to this of course is that no matter what make of car, they all agree to a communication policy and information database. If you have a Ford network and a Tesla network, so Fords only give way to other Fords, then it all fails.
 

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