The data is that this incident [pending confirmation] is the 4th or probably 5th fatality in a Tesla where use of AP is a contributing factor:
1. Gao Yaning, † 20 January 2016, Handan, Hebei, China
into road-sweeper on motorway, AP confirmed.
2. Joshua Brown, † 7 May 2016, Williston, Florida, USA
into truck crossing dual-carriageway, AP confirmed.
3. Walter Huang, † 23 March 2018, Mountain View, California, USA
into collapsed gore-point, AP confirmed.
4. Reinhold Röhr, † 10 May 2018, Bellinzona, Ticino, Switzerland
into divider at Autobahn construction zone, AP suspected likely but neither officially confirmed nor disproven as car plus driver were cremated
in situ.
5. Jeremy Banner, † 1 March 2019, Delray Beach, Florida, USA
into truck crossing dual-carriageway, AP atm unconfirmed but appearing highly probable.
6. That's without mentioning the many more incidents of AP into stationary obstacles in planned path with fortunately non-fatal outcomes, whence sprang the moniker
Firetruck Super-Destruction mode [a.k.a. ironic FSD].
7. Despite this sorry record, Tesla has apparently done nothing effective to address the contributory design flaws in AP in over 3 years since the first fatality.
8. My contention is that any car company serious about customer safety would not only have hustled to preempt the inevitable lawsuits by eliminating the design flaws identified here but would also actively collaborate with competent independent testing institutes like
Thatcham Research to vividly demonstrate how their product has been made as safe as it can possibly be.
9. Instead we see studied silence from Tesla while in official EURO-NCAP tests of mid-October 2018 [on late v8.1 sw AFAICT] a Tesla Model S on HW2.5 was
still failing the cut-out test at 80kmh, though [big whoop!] the FCW did this time sound off.
10. Seeking shelter behind technically true statements such as "
the deceased customer's hands were not detected on the steering wheel in the final 6 seconds as our vehicle automatically accelerated him into the massive stationary obstacle in its planned path" is at this late stage a deeply pathetic self-indictment which only serves to highlight the multi-level failures in Tesla's AP, including the chronic inability of its apex management to accept any responsibility for same.
11. If continuing in the current vein, Tesla's pushed luck will surely expire when the following circumstances coincide:
A) An innocent third-party who has not agreed to any AP/FSD beta-testing is killed.
B) Their surviving next-of-kin cannot be bought off with an out-of-court settlement and NDA.
C) The Tesla does not auto-cremate and the logged data makes it to court.
D) The Tesla driver dies and the vehicle is proven to have been operating under AP/FSD on an approved highway at the time.
E) Ambitious, able and well-resourced lawyers are engaged by the plaintiff.
12. With a rapidly expanding AP fleet driven to an uncertain extent [10%?] by those liable to take literally Musk's recent ridiculous but dangerous claim that "
we already have FSD on the highway", this will probably happen sooner rather than later.
13. Sticking one's head in the proverbial sand cannot prevent but only hasten the day of reckoning, whether at a personal level for those of us using AP or for the company itself.
