Another fatal autopilot crash - China

[EVie'sDad]

Most companies do not comment or speculate on ongoing investigations. Elon has spoken out several times when data revealed during the investigation sheds light on the conditions and settings of the vehicle at the time of said incidents.

To speculate otherwise might be deemed irresponsible.

Wait for the facts to play out for themselves, and let the evidence show you the actual scenario.

We also know now that video is captured during the time of the airbag deployments, so perhaps there will be more details about this, especially if they have not been able to retrieve the logs from the car yet. Give it time.

 

[Matias]

Others have pointed out that this is a bad failure of AEB. I think this point should be amplified and put in context.

AEB was not activated by radar until 8.0, so logically for anything beyond ultrasound range it uses the camera .

No. Beyond 8.0 AEB requires, that camera and radar both think that there is need for AEB. If one or the other does not see obstacle, car won't brake.

 

[schonelucht]

If I died and it wasn't over I'd be like WTF???? What now?

You play through the game again, but on hard mode

 

[googlepeakoil]

Does this crash not seem eerily similar to the 2 other Autopilot incidents where AP fails to spot a car / van in a part of it's lane. There was the other (non-fatal incident) where a car going down the motorway at circa 20mph doesn't take evasive action to move around a car parked across a 1/4 of the lane and rips up the side of the Tesla. This one is across > 1/3 of the lane and the car takes no action.
The driver was apparantly the son of the owner - so even if the owner was told about the AP limitations - the son (a younger generation) would be hearing this 2nd hand. Speculation I know - but AP being on is my gut instinct.
The AP / MobileEye seems to have a real problem reacting to stationary objects across part of the lane.
I'd be pretty sure based on the similarity of incidence that the AP was on.
Also in the v8 thread one of the updates seems to mention a similar scenario:

• Car offsets in lane when overtaking a slower vehicle driving close to its lane edge

so it's something they knew about and have been working to fix.
With AP being "over-sold" in China (there has been a correction to the wording on the website + a re-education of sales people) it does seem highly probable that AP was engaged and that the driver was distracted.
It being over-sold and not being able to see certain "obvious" situations does paint Tesla in a very bad light - and makes the car less safe.
Recall that sales in China were seen as very poor against what the pre-orders lead them to believe. Re-listen to the 2014,2015 quarterly calls. This was caused by a large number of pre-orders (1000s) caused by people trying to "flip" the car giving an impression of higher demand than really existed. Then Tesla fires 1/3 the sales team. AP comes out. Sales people in China over-sell it. Sales pick up.

 

[Chopr147]

How do you explain that the owner below had to manually brake to avoid collision to a regular height sedan in front as posted by @TRON ?

The car was traveling at about 48 to 50 MPH, the owner braked when it seemed not to automatically brake on its own.

If you look at the the dashboard, there is and icon of the car in front.

That means the radar did detect the stationary obstacle in front and reported it on the dashboard appropriately.

This has happened to me. But it was a large box truck stopped at a light, icon on the dashboard and my S was accelerating!
Scary. Now having said that the car was one week old and this has not happened again. I'm thinking it was still learning but if I was not paying attention I would have been a dead newbie.

 

[ohmman]

You can't take off a sweater because the Tesla deactivates the AP when you unbuckle your seatbelt.

It's really awkward to remove a sweater with the seatbelt on.

I was going to say sweatshirt but I wanted to class it up.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

... and start fighting back against this ridiculous perception that AP is even capable of being at fault when it's clear that it is a driver assistance feature and not a driver replacement feature.

Apparently it's not clear. The first fatality was someone who knew Autopilot well, knew it wasn't a "driver replacement" feature, yet still used it as such. It's my humble opinion that the responsibility is on Tesla to do whatever it can to ensure the feature is used within the parameters for which it was designed.

Let's hope, with the new radar processing, that we don't see Tesla vehicles causing accidents while trying to avoid the random Coke can that is giving off a huge radar signature.

 

[Stoneymonster]

Let's hope, with the new radar processing, that we don't see Tesla vehicles causing accidents while trying to avoid the random Coke can that is giving off a huge radar signature.

I see this example thrown around a lot as a concern, but in the blog post they specifically called this example out as something previous system couldn't handle, then explained why the new system could. So I'm not sure why it's being used as a "gotcha" when Tesla themselves shined a light on it *as an improved capability of the new system*. I'd be more worried about corner cases they haven't thought of.

 

[zer0cool]

This is almost non-news in China, just a small article on the bottom of sina yesterday with a few hundred comments with many criticizing the driver for not paying attention on Chinese roads, which are super complex. No zou no die as the Chinese say. Major car sites didn't really mention this and pretty much nothing on forums.

According to the original sina article, his family is suing Tesla for 10k yuan, which is about 1500 dollars. Don't you like tort laws in China?

 

[Stoneymonster]

This is almost non-news in China, just a small article on the bottom of sina yesterday with a few hundred comments with many criticizing the driver for not paying attention on Chinese roads, which are super complex. No zou no die as the Chinese say. Major car sites didn't really mention this and pretty much nothing on forums.

According to the original sina article, his family is suing Tesla for 10k yuan, which is about 1500 dollars. Don't you like tort laws in China?

It's almost like China is its own culture and country!

 

[Zybd1201]

I realize you have a personal bone to pick with Tesla, however, you shouldn't allow your own disdain to slant your perspective. Again, you continue to throw around some pretty serious accusations based off of information you have no proof of other than your "opinion" which as I'm sure you know, is not a fact.

Jeff

You are very sorely mistaken. I have no personal bone to pick with Tesla at all. It may SEEM that way because I am sharing my honest opinion which is not favorable to Tesla. I would not confuse that with a "personal bone to pick."

Quite the contrary, you can see that as soon as I came to this realization I added a disclaimer to the bottom of my posts to explicitly declare they could not be used outside of this forum because I knew they could be disseminated and impact Tesla negatively.

I am actually attempting to impact Tesla positively. The opposite of a 'bone to pick.'

It may be easier to write me off than consider that what I am saying may be true.

 

[ohmman]

You are very sorely mistaken. I have no personal bone to pick with Tesla at all. It may SEEM that way because I am sharing my honest opinion which is not favorable to Tesla. I would not confuse that with a "personal bone to pick."

Quite the contrary, you can see that as soon as I came to this realization I added a disclaimer to the bottom of my posts to explicitly declare they could not be used outside of this forum because I knew they could be disseminated and impact Tesla negatively.

I am actually attempting to impact Tesla positively. The opposite of a 'bone to pick.'

It may be easier to write me off than consider that what I am saying may be true.

I agree that you seem to be approaching this using methods that are within your control (sell the car or get the guaranteed buy-back). I am always supportive of people who own their solutions.

You don't seem to be dismissive of others' opinions, either, which is more than I can say about a lot of "people on the Internet."

In general, your participation here is colored by your experience. Others have their experience. So long as one party doesn't think that their experience invalidates the other, I don't think anyone should complain.

 

[jeffro01]

You are very sorely mistaken. I have no personal bone to pick with Tesla at all. It may SEEM that way because I am sharing my honest opinion which is not favorable to Tesla. I would not confuse that with a "personal bone to pick."

Quite the contrary, you can see that as soon as I came to this realization I added a disclaimer to the bottom of my posts to explicitly declare they could not be used outside of this forum because I knew they could be disseminated and impact Tesla negatively.

I am actually attempting to impact Tesla positively. The opposite of a 'bone to pick.'

It may be easier to write me off than consider that what I am saying may be true.

Fair enough. I'm not trying to write you off, at least not from my perspective. My point was to provide context for someone who might not be aware of your other issues, regardless of their validity, and may have a different take on your post.

Regardless, I still maintain you're making accusations based off of opinions and not facts which is something I caution anyone from doing. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jeff

 

[M0DEL³]

So this current accident, seems to possess similar condition dynamics to this previous accident. It seems clear (from my admittedly limited view) that there is a notable technical issue here in AP's failure to recognize this threat condition. One can only hope that AP8 effectively addresses this issue without introducing new ones.

Human nature being what it is, people will acclimate to letting the car do the steering, and develop inattentive behaviors, because it works "Most of the time". Nothing anyone says will change this. There is an old saying that goes something like, "Just because you can get away with something 99% of the time does not mean that it's not stupid 100% of the time". Becoming inattentive while using Autopilot, for some drivers, clearly falls into this category and the simple truth is that as Autopilot improves, more and more people will start falling into this "trap". Those who keep repeating "Autopilot is not responsible, it's the drivers fault", I respectfully suggest that it's time to "get real". One can continue chanting that like a Gregorian Monk but it's meaningless against human nature. If significant performance improvement doesn't come along in the fairly near future - you will still be chanting as social/legal pressures start building to disable autopilot fleet-wide. Right now it's primarily in the press, but let an Tesla, under Autopilot "control", kill a pedestrian or another driver, and the dynamics of this whole situation will morph very quickly.

Put simply, getting from where we are to L4 autonomy is going to be difficult, and the challenges are probably going to be as much about social/legal hurdles as technical ones.

I'd proffer the argument that it's probably in the best interest if the Tesla community to work on crafting a stronger response to the situation than the naivety that much of this thread seems to indicate.

 

[bro1999]

In this video at 0:54 you can hear him singing just before the accident. Doesn't look like a medical issue. Highly likely that he wasn't watching the road. He had maybe 4 or 5 seconds to react.

Daaaaamn...that sucks. File that under "misuse of Autopilo

 

[bro1999]

Chinese man blames Tesla autopilot function for son's crash

Family is suing Tesla for $1,499 + legal costs....definitely not out to get money. Looks like they just want admission of fault.

 

[luca]

The other two what? You posted one video. You claimed it proved the car didn't stop. I watched the video. The car stopped. The technology on the car in the 5 year old video is two generations old and doesn't have any applicability to recent vehicles. I don't know if you're being serious or just having a laugh at this point.

Edit:
Oh, I see. You went back and edited after I posted. You should be aware the the SUV didn't have tHe Technology Package needed for automated detection of pedestrians, as has been noted many times (it's even the top comment there with a link to an article about it).

The other video is even older than the first one you posted.

So, not very good evidence, no?

And This

 

[JohnSnowNW]

Chinese man blames Tesla autopilot function for son's crash

Family is suing Tesla for $1,499 + legal costs....definitely not out to get money. Looks like they just want admission of fault.

If that were true, they'd give Tesla access to the vehicle...that's literally all it would take.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

So this current accident, seems to possess similar condition dynamics to this previous accident. It seems clear (from my admittedly limited view) that there is a notable technical issue here in AP's failure to recognize this threat condition. One can only hope that AP8 effectively addresses this issue without introducing new ones.

Human nature being what it is, people will acclimate to letting the car do the steering, and develop inattentive behaviors, because it works "Most of the time". Nothing anyone says will change this. There is an old saying that goes something like, "Just because you can get away with something 99% of the time does not mean that it's not stupid 100% of the time". Becoming inattentive while using Autopilot, for some drivers, clearly falls into this category and the simple truth is that as Autopilot improves, more and more people will start falling into this "trap". Those who keep repeating "Autopilot is not responsible, it's the drivers fault", I respectfully suggest that it's time to "get real". One can continue chanting that like a Gregorian Monk but it's meaningless against human nature. If significant performance improvement doesn't come along in the fairly near future - you will still be chanting as social/legal pressures start building to disable autopilot fleet-wide. Right now it's primarily in the press, but let an Tesla, under Autopilot "control", kill a pedestrian or another driver, and the dynamics of this whole situation will morph very quickly.

Put simply, getting from where we are to L4 autonomy is going to be difficult, and the challenges are probably going to be as much about social/legal hurdles as technical ones.

I'd proffer the argument that it's probably in the best interest if the Tesla community to work on crafting a stronger response to the situation than the naivety that much of this thread seems to indicate.

It first needs to be determined whether AP was in use, something the family seems more than happy to claim while withholding the evidence to verify.

I don't think "crafting" a response to incidents with "limited view" is particularly helpful to anyone.

 

[Tam]

...According to the original sina article, his family is suing Tesla for 10k yuan, which is about 1500 dollars. Don't you like tort laws in China?

How does $1,500 cover the cost of $2,500 Autopilot and lawyers' fees?