First Tesla Autopilot death

[bitslice]

Volvo's have not been safer or better than any other car for a long time. Volvo has been owned by Ford so you are basically buying a Ford with a Volvo badge.

Ford Motor Company bought it in 1999
Geely Holding Group bought it in 2010

so it's Chinese now, like a lot of companies.

but yeh, most of production is based on the Ford EUCD platform, which still does well in the NCAP tests regardless of whether it's a rebadged Ford or not.

[CentralServices]

Sorry to hear that Murphy was his uncle

[CatalinaWOW]

This one came out yesterday:

Could this be the first?

Second Tesla autopilot crash under federal scrutiny
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/06/autos/tesla-autopilot-accident/


The same article is publishing the following:

Federal data shows that human error is responsible for 94% of the 35,200 traffic fatalities last year. That works out to 1.12 deaths for every 100 million miles driven.

Tesla says its owners have driven more than 130 million miles using autopilot. The one fatality works out to 0.78 fatalities per 100 million miles.

This doesn't instill much confidence. According to these numbers, the autopilot is marginally better than a human driver.

Also, as nctnico points out, if those miles are mostly done on highways, where accedents are an order of magnitude fewer, this makes the Autopilot actually perform worse than a human driver.

On the other hand, since there are too few Teslas on the streets, statistically speaking these numbers are meaningless. The Autopilot could be much much safer in reality than a typical human driver. Only time will tell.

My only fear is that regulators might have a knee-jerk reaction and axe this system completely. This would be a pity because it looks really promising.

Perhaps the real point is that the autopilots are already good enough to debate whether they are better or worse than human operators.  There is every reason to believe that the autopilots will get better over time, while there is little reason to believe that human operators will significantly improve after over 100 years of practice.  That observation applies over both the easy and difficult driving situations.

The only real question is whether economics and law will allow autopilots (or possibly require) to be as good as they can be.

[Bud]

It would be interesting to watch development of liability question for accidents.

[Maxlor]

It would be interesting to watch development of liability question for accidents.

wouldwill.

Won't be long until the first big court cases now.

[nctnico]

It would be interesting to watch development of liability question for accidents.

That depends on how the legal framework is setup around responsibilities for accidents with vehicles. Over here the owner of a vehicle is responsible for any damage caused by the vehicle no matter who drives it. Therefore all car owner are required by law to have a liability insurance. It is up to the owner of the car, or more precise: the insurance company to claim the damages from a third party.

[dannyf]

It would be interesting to watch development of liability question for accidents.

Absolutely. The whole auto-driven car thing is a hype, driven by people naive enough to believe it (both users and investors). It wouldn't surprise me that there are big lawsuits down the road. And how the insurance companies approach it would be quite interesting as well.

It is not just a technology thing (if anything, tech is the least interesting thing about the whole story).

[dannyf]

BTW, Tesla is being investigated by the sec for disclosures surrounding it's autopilot accident.

[zapta]

Another accident claim

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-friend-model-x-crash-bad-on-ap-yesterday.73308/

Edit: from that link "Also, it is not a divided highway, so it is not a good idea to use Autopilot.". This suggest strong bias of 'easy miles' in the statistics as discussed here earlier.

Edit: also from the link "In the user manual it clearly states that it will not detect stationary objects when driving over 50mph.".

[dannyf]

An interesting read. Gizmodo: Tesla's Autopilot Driving Mode Is a Legal Nightmare. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw86bMmiw

Bad for Tesla.

[zapta]

The Autopilot's smart camera supplier will not renew the contract with Tesla due to disagreement on how Tesla presented the capabilities (or lack thereof) to its customers.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105260_camera-supplier-mobileye-drops-tesla-as-customer-citing-autopilot-crash

[CatalinaWOW]

Lawsuits will work both ways.  It won't be too long before someone is sued for not having an autopilot.  I suspect the first occurrence of this will be in a rear end accident that could have been avoided through one of the auto braking systems.  A very limited autopilot application, but a step on the road.

[Avacee]

Apologies if this was covered in another thread .. If so my google-fu is weak

The NTSB report has been released and concludes that Tesla's autopilot was partly to blame for the crash.
My interpretation of the articles and reading some of the reports is that it gave a false confidence to drivers as well as not correctly detecting the truck.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40340828
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41242884

NTSB report table: https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=59989&CFID=1126988&CFTOKEN=b1b9a5b7e849bb32-88C471C8-01C8-077F-A22C23E2E219927F
Driver Assistance System Report:  https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/59500-59999/59989/604889.pdf

Selected snippets from the 2 BBC's articles:
It found that in 37 minutes of driving, Mr Brown had his hands on the wheel for just 25 seconds.
The documents also found that Mr Brown had set cruise control at 74mph (119km/h) which was above the 65mph speed limit.
In its report, the Safety Board said the truck should have been visible to Mr Brown for at least seven seconds before impact but that he took "no braking, steering or other actions to avoid the collision".
The report said that the car remained in autopilot mode for most of his trip and that it gave him a visual warning seven separate times that said "hands required not detected".
In six cases, the system then sounded a chime.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that Tesla's Autopilot system was partly to blame for a fatal accident in which a Model S collided with a lorry.
Federal investigators say Tesla "lacked understanding" of the semi-autonomous Autopilot's limitations.

"In this crash, Tesla's system worked as designed, but it was designed to perform limited tasks in a limited range of environments," Christopher Hart, a member of the NTSB said in a meeting to discuss the findings of its investigation.
"Tesla allowed the driver to use the system outside of the environment for which it was designed, and the system gave far more leeway to the driver to divert his attention to something other than driving."

Following the meeting, the NTSB's report includes seven safety recommendations requiring car manufacturers to add safeguards to prevent automated vehicle control systems from being used outside the conditions for which they were designed.
Tesla has yet to respond to the NTSB's findings.

[nctnico]

I think I know how Tesla fixed the bug: their cars stop in the middle of the road for nothing!  Very annoying to drive behind so I passed it first chance I got.