Tesla Rear-Ends Bus On Germany’s Autobahn, Driver Blames Autopilot

[FrodosPet]

Source: CBS SF Bay Area

September 29, 2016 9:09 AM

BERLIN (CBS / AP) — Police in northern Germany say that a Tesla driver is blaming the car’s autopilot after crashing into the rear end of a bus on a highway.

Ratzeburg police say that the crash happened Wednesday afternoon on a stretch of autobahn about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Hamburg. The Tesla driver was slightly injured.

Police said in a statement Thursday that the 50-year-old Tesla driver told officers he had used the car’s autopilot. It wasn’t immediately clear whether police had themselves confirmed the autopilot’s use, and calls to the Ratzeburg police precinct weren’t answered late Thursday.

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Read more: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/09/29/tesla-germany-autobahn-crash-driver-blames-autopilot/

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Autopilot is THE WRONG NAME for this feature. It seems to be leading people to believe that it has autonomous capabilities that it does not.

[VMA131Marine]

1. Did his feet stop working too?

See there's this thing called the brake pedal .... Oh, never mind ...

[FrodosPet]

2. The human is not supposed to need to hit brakes or steer

That is the fundamental feature of Tesla's Autopilot.

You are supposed to remain vigilant, but the name alone leads people to believe that they don't need to stay aware and engaged.

[VMA131Marine]

3. Not true

Tesla says that even in autopilot mode the driver should keep his/her hands on the wheel and remain alert to their surroundings. Unfortunately, I think Tesla made a mistake by calling it "autopilot" which infers capabilities that the system doesn't have. It's really more of an intelligent cruise control and not close to the capabilities of the Google self-driving cars.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. I can't believe the lawyers let them use the term autopilot.

Maybe they figured the cautions and warnings would lessen the liability - and the remaining liability is worth the hype the term autopilot creates.

[FrodosPet]

5. Tesla Model S involved in a crash with a bus in Germany, Autopilot is being blamed again [Updated]

Fred Lambert - 4 hours ago

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According to one report (German), the driver told the police that the vehicle was doing the steering when the accident occurred.

He was reportedly trying to overtake the bus by moving to the left lane and the crash happened when trying to move back into the right lane.

Update: Another source, who talked with the driver, says that the Model S was driving forward when the crash occurred and that the bus was the vehicle changing lane.

Tesla’s Autopilot has an automatic lane change feature that enables the vehicle to change lanes using the turn signal while on ‘Autosteer’, but Tesla says that the driver is still responsible for looking and making sure that the lane change is safe before activating the turn signal.

Therefore, the Autopilot system isn’t likely to be at fault here, but the vehicle is also equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking and a Side Collision Avoidance system. The police said that they were looking into why the features didn’t prevent the accident.

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[C Moon]

6. I don't know much about it, but I would think you still have to look out for

drivers signalling wanting to get into your lane (like when they were flying by everyone at the end). Does the auto pilot see stuff like that? I always slow down when I'm in an open lane and I see cars signalling.
So, I think you shouldn't play checkers or put your seat back and sleep.

[FrodosPet]

7. Tesla Model S Collision Avoidance HUMAN TEST! Collaboration Video

Hold my beer and watch this

[LanternWaste]

8. And Corn Flakes are not corn!!!

And Corn Flakes are not corn!!!

No one except the daft and the simple adhere to ad branding as part of the instruction manual.

[FrodosPet]

10. Like this guy?

Or this one?

[paulkienitz]

9. A self-driving car is like a human who needs glasses driving without them.

Correct decisions during driving depend on understanding what you see. No machine yet made, especially not anything mass-produced, is capable of viewing a scene and rapidly identifying the objects in it. They're moving through a world of vague undefined meaningless shapes. There's no way they can make accurate and sound judgments. They're not going to know that, for instance, kids kicking a ball or a dog chasing a frisbee are far more likely to suddenly intrude into traffic than, say, a mailman stuffing letters or an old lady on a motorized wheelchair is. They're not going to know that footballs take crazy bounces but skunks don't, or why you should not hit the latter. They don't understand that there's a spectrum of mobility in which shopping carts, wheely garbage cans, and lilac bushes all occupy different positions.

Once self-driving cars are "ready", I would still recommend waiting another decade or so before riding in one.

[aggiesal]

12. They also can't hear ...

emergency sirens blaring around the corner, and could
enter an intersection in front of a speeding emergency vehicle.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

11. I don't even like cruise control.

It limits my ability to gently slow down and speed up so I can't save fuel and brakes wear faster.

[Odin2005]

13. Another moron who doesn't understand the autopilot's limitations.

[FrodosPet]

14. Tesla Employees Raised Concerns About Autopilot Long Before Fatal Crash

Tesla Employees Raised Concerns About Autopilot Long Before Fatal Crash

Engineers raised numerous concerns about the safety of Autopilot, only to be told by Elon Musk not to worry.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/news/a30186/tesla-autopilot-crash-employees-worried/

BY BOB SOROKANICH | JUL 29, 2016

Tesla has had a tough couple of months defending its Autopilot advanced cruise control feature. The semi-autonomous technology has been linked to a crash that killed a Tesla driver in May, and brought up in numerous nonfatal accidents since then.

Now, CNN has interviewed several current and former Tesla employees, all of whom say they raised significant safety concerns during Autopilot development—only to be dismissed by CEO Elon Musk.

Those with inside knowledge of how Autopilot was developed and implemented describe a culture that eschewed safety precautions in the name of faster rollout of the new technology. One unnamed source told CNN that the team's motto was "not to let the perfect be the enemy of the better," with Musk insisting, "don't let concerns slow progress."

Eric Meadows, a former Tesla autopilot engineer who has since been dismissed, told CNN that his initial excitement for the technology turned to fear as he realized its limitations. "I came in with this mentality that Elon had: I want to go from on-ramp to off-ramp and the driver doesn't have to do anything," he said.

~ snip ~

[Zorro]

15. "Autopilot" is a marketing term

It is a sophisticated Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) capability combined with state-of-the-art lane changing technology, with a couple of other things thrown in (summon, auto-park).

It is not a fully autonomous system and is even listed as "Beta" software -- but it is very effective and very impressive, and will only get better with real-world feedback.

Like it or not, it is a technology that will be implemented on many vehicles in the next 5-10 years.