Quote:
Originally Posted by Stang70Fastback
..90% of people are looking 10 feet in front of them, and have no clue what is going on beyond that distance, or around/behind them...
...At least I can be pretty sure that the car on Autopilot knows I'm next to it....
EDIT: And to add, I work in transit. You would be amazed and how cars will slam into our buses at speed. A giant bus. When asked what happened, it's not uncommon for them to say, "I just didn't see it." You just didn't see a 60-foot bus in front of you?! And yet people discussing this accident will inevitably take the position of, "A human-driven car would definitely have seen the truck."
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Yet these comments exactly describe how the Tesla autopilot failed. It failed seeing something even bigger than your bus in front of it because (I suspect) the programmers didn't take into account a big rig crossing in front of it in such a way that the road looked clear.
I'm not buying the whole "bright sky/white truck" description as the full blame on this. I really think the sensors saw clear road ahead underneath the trailer, or that was at least a contributing factor.
If you look at the diagram of the accident its pretty clear there was no attempt by the autopilot to slow down before and maybe even after the accident.
I have no idea what the driver of the car was doing, but it was definitely not paying attention.
Now, to be fair, this exact accident could have happened with a regular driver using cruise control only and texting his girlfriend on the phone. The automation in either case is a contributing factor but the root cause is the nut behind the wheel.