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Another Model X crash, driver says autopilot was engaged

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Why am I not surprised it wasn't engaged? As someone who lives in China, this looks to me to be typical of a certain set of behaviour. There is a lot of scamming to get compensation from companies. I am sure that's what this is.

In this particular case the driver was a fairly wealthy well known individual. Sometimes in life you just have to accept the simplest explanation. In this case he likely didn't realize it wasn't on. So it really comes down to a UI issue. He certainly wouldn't be the first person to crash a Tesla thinking Autopilot was on when it wasn't.
 
In this particular case the driver was a fairly wealthy well known individual. Sometimes in life you just have to accept the simplest explanation. In this case he likely didn't realize it wasn't on. So it really comes down to a UI issue. He certainly wouldn't be the first person to crash a Tesla thinking Autopilot was on when it wasn't.
nor will he likely to be the last, but that doesn't mean we should blame the technology.
 
nor will he likely to be the last, but that doesn't mean we should blame the technology.

My belief is that we learn the lessons of each accident, and we make changes according to the evidence. We don't accuse the driver of ulterior motives and completely dismiss what they felt happened.

The fatality accident that happened recently with the Jeep being in neutral technically was the drivers fault in that he failed to do it properly (and didn't use the parking brake on a hill). But, ultimately it was Jeeps failure by making it extremely error prone.
 
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My thought is that the entire color scheme of the driver's display should change when on AP so it was totally obvious. The current UI is pretty subtle both in showing the 3 states, off, TACC, AP and the transitions.

I could also imagine the car continuing to monitor the wheel, even when AP was off, and if it couldn't detect a hand on it, emit some pretty noticeable warnings. We're all in agreement that people should have at least one hand on the wheel when not in AP, right?
 
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My thought is that the entire color scheme of the driver's display should change when on AP so it was totally obvious. The current UI is pretty subtle both in showing the 3 states, off, TACC, AP and the transitions.

I could also imagine the car continuing to monitor the wheel, even when AP was off, and if it couldn't detect a hand on it, emit some pretty noticeable warnings. We're all in agreement that people should have at least one hand on the wheel when not in AP, right?

Given the current hardware, that would be pretty hard to detect without a lot of false positives. It detects torque on the wheel, which in a lot of normal, hands-on-wheel situations would be minimal. Without a contact sensor, this wouldn't be feasible without being annoying.
 
Given the current hardware, that would be pretty hard to detect without a lot of false positives. It detects torque on the wheel, which in a lot of normal, hands-on-wheel situations would be minimal. Without a contact sensor, this wouldn't be feasible without being annoying.
Autopilot is already pretty bad in this regard. I often will rest my hands on the bottom of the steering wheel while in Autopilot (so my hand are on the wheel as they want), but I still get "Place hands on wheel" alerts that require me to firmly grasp it in order to register.
 
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Autopilot is already pretty bad in this regard. I often will rest my hands on the bottom of the steering wheel while in Autopilot (so my hand are on the wheel as they want), but I still get "Place hands on wheel" alerts that require me to firmly grasp it in order to register.

Me too. I raised an eyebrow when one of Tesla's statements about one of the crashes said that the software could detect hands rested on the wheel from micro torque movements. It doesn't appear to in my case. I have to actually jiggle the wheel for it to realize I'm holding it.
 
Me too. I raised an eyebrow when one of Tesla's statements about one of the crashes said that the software could detect hands rested on the wheel from micro torque movements. It doesn't appear to in my case. I have to actually jiggle the wheel for it to realize I'm holding it.

It's possible that the vehicle can detect it, but a certain threshold has to be reached before the vehicle acknowledges it.
 
I just grip the wheel comfortably and let it move and never have any nags. It's more than just resting my hand on the wheel, but I don't do anything at all except let the wheel move my relaxed hand and arm.

If someone is actually steering though, I'm pretty sure they put in a lot, at least 10s, of corrections per minute, even on a straight road. It should be possible to detect them, and their lack pretty easily.
 
Alright, so he was ignoring/missing the warnings up until the car slowed down. He acted by grabbing the steering wheel and pressing the accelerator down. 10 seconds later he drifts out of his lane and crashes.

I wonder if he thought Autopilot was back on after he intervened (based on his statement to police)? Either that or he was still distracted/impaired in some manner while driving (or both - thought AP was on AND was distracted/impaired).

I think that he didn't understand, that AP had disengaged. As you know, normally when you get the nag and put some pressure on the wheel AP continues to operate.

Here is an interesting article of NASA's research on AP-human interface problems;

What NASA Could Teach Tesla about Autopilot's Limits
 
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I think that he didn't understand, that AP had disengaged. As you know, normally when you get the nag and put some pressure on the wheel AP continues to operate.

Here is an interesting article of NASA's research on AP-human interface problems;

What NASA Could Teach Tesla about Autopilot's Limits
That's a horrible article. No one is making drivers use Autopilot. Its not Automatically On upon delivery.

I really don't understand. I don't understand the difference between AP and cruise control as far as liability is concerned.
 
In the aviation world, where that auto-pilot name comes from anyway, Mode Confusion is a real issue that has been researched and solved in various levels of success throughout time.

Mode Confusion on Tesla's Auto-Pilot - and indeed any such car system - seems equally a potential problem. If the user confuses the Auto-Pilot as being on, when it is indeed off (or any other similar modal confusion), that might lead to catastrophic consequences.

The transition and current state from Auto-Pilot to manual control (and anything in-between) should be clear on any such system, be it a plane or a car.

Not making any commentary on what Auto-Pilot currently is or is not - or who is responsible of what. Just a general commentary that certainly automated piloting systems can increase or lessen mode confusion depending on the success of their design.

There is a recent press interview from Audi too of them taking Mode Confusion very seriously in their autonomous vehicle work.
 
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I think that he didn't understand, that AP had disengaged. As you know, normally when you get the nag and put some pressure on the wheel AP continues to operate.

Here is an interesting article of NASA's research on AP-human interface problems;

What NASA Could Teach Tesla about Autopilot's Limits

Thanks for posting the article, it had a lot of great perspectives and some interesting insights into the recent AP involved accidents.
 
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Here is the Audi's Dr. Stefan Knirsch (a member of board of management for technical development) answer on autonomous vehicles and mode confusion. It seems a relevant industry talking point, at least. Also, interesting from the perspective of what AP 2.0+ might eventually be like. This is from the latest Plugin Magazine.

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Autopilot is already pretty bad in this regard. I often will rest my hands on the bottom of the steering wheel while in Autopilot (so my hand are on the wheel as they want), but I still get "Place hands on wheel" alerts that require me to firmly grasp it in order to register.

The steering wheel does not have "touch" sensors per say. The steering wheel control system detects slight resistance against it's directed control. In other words, if you just turn the wheel slightly while the system is trying to keep it straight, or vise versa - if it's trying to turn slightly and you are holding it straight, it registers it as hands-on-wheel.