Tesla Autopilot failed to notice a tractor trailer
 

Yes, saw this story break in the UK. Seriously if you are driving in autopilot would you completely switch off from the task of driving. Not that I am saying this poor driver wasn't paying attention but reads like the driver was in automode in the mental sense..

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXls4cdEv7c"]Tesla Model S driver caught sleeping at the wheel while on Autopilot - Electrek - YouTube[/ame]

Just can't design for idiots.

Not surprised, it was inevitable that this would happen regardless of the technology. Even if it worked perfectly there are circumstances that would have lead to this, just as human driven cars cannot avoid all fatal conditions.

What I did find interesting is how far the car traveled after going under the truck, going through two fences, and impacting a power pole. It seems like there was more than one failure of the autopilot system.

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...tion.jpg&w=480

Tesla's autopilot sensors also have some notable blind spots, specifically items hanging from the ceiling or below the front grill. This first came to light after someone turned on the summon feature and the car casually (and slowly) ran into a parked trailer.

http://jalopnik.com/man-claims-his-t...all-1776021675

There are other sources as well, but this was the first that came to mind. The lead image in the article shows exactly how something like the accident can happen.

http://roa.h-cdn.co/assets/16/19/980...38345559-o.jpg
Parked car crash, not the fatal one (hopefully) obviously.

There are a lot of people using this as an excuse to make various blanket statements such as "all cars have to be autonomous for them to work, outlaw all drivers" or "autonomous cars will never work." I can dig up examples just as Google can, but it is all nonsense. While Tesla seems to arguably make a good product, the autopilot isn't fully baked yet, and a "public beta" is a bad idea. Turn it off. Let the engineers work out the blind spots in the senor net, and then take it back to the public. This accident was the result of rushing something to market that had no business being there, and will likely have a negative impact on the advancement and adoption of the technology in the future.

Keep in mind I say that while still not willing to give up my third pedal, let alone my steering wheel. Still, I understand the advantages for those who view driving as a necessity rather than a hobby.

ETA: To be clear: the accident is almost certainly the truck driver's fault for taking a left with oncoming traffic. My statement is about how the autopilot didn't stop the car when a truck had pulled in front of it far enough for the trailer to be what it struck.

i work in the IT field and i learned along time ago computers suck and don't work properly

i would NEVER EVER trust a computer to drive a car for me

I suppose the old adage 'turn it off and turn it back on again' won't work driving down the highway at high-speed.

I think it's going to be much harder than most people think. I suspect it's not about a literal blind stop, but about the ability of the computer to interpret complex visual scenes. Possibly, the computer was still able to see the road ahead underneath the trailer and interpreted it as if there was no obstacle.


We are still far from understanding how the brain does it, and much further from being able to apply it in a machine that operates using very different computational principles.

I also read that the driver was watching a movie when the crash occurred. Maybe he shouldn't have been :iono:

Let's hope it wasn't Vanishing Point.

I am jumping to conclusions here, but this guy comes across as a bit of an idiot. This is the same guy whose video went viral a while back when his car swerved out of the way of a truck merging into his lane. He apparently just decided that Autopilot allows him to not drive at all. I feel bad that he's dead, but this guy sounds like he really had it coming the way he was acting.

http://i.imgur.com/IXrKE8b.jpg


https://media.giphy.com/media/xTiTnL...LhCw/giphy.gif