At this point, it is unknown whether the car was using AP or if it's speed was even low enough for AP to be a possibility. At 4 AM, a crash into an emergency vehicle covered in flashing lights is very likely to involve some intoxicating substance and/or excessive speed.
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AP/FSD related crashes
- Thread starter Terminator857
- Start date
DanCar
Active Member
Since life was taken away that trumps license taken away.
Investigation result will be interesting. Did they have a defeat device? Did they fall half asleep? Is it common human nature to not pay attention with AP type of system at 4 am? Even if it is common human nature, I agree these people should be made examples of and thrown in jail if they live.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Whether AP was in use or not should not matter - remember the safety features exist on all Tesla vehicles as Elon Musk has said - safety will always be free (paraphrase). Vehicles with AP should be no less likely to run into parked vehicles than one under manual control.
A highly instrumented vehicle under manual control with HW3 (no idea what this one had) should not be running into parked vehicles on the freeway. Should have full braking capabilities (in excess of AEB).
Sadly the promise has not been realized.
I assume the driver can always overpower AEB. But in any event there's too many of these type of accidents. I recall one older drove couple off the highway and ran into a parked semi at a rest stop. There's probably a few reasons why NHTSA hasn't closed the files on Tesla accidents. Hopefully Tesla is providing crash data in a timely fashion.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I disagree. When the driver is in full control, AEB should be tuned to avoid false positives, especially given it can interfere with avoidance maneuvers of the driver (for example if the driver was going to swerve, they don't want the car slamming on the brakes).
It is essentially impossible to avoid all false positives, so this difference will pretty much always be there.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Of course!
But that is my point. This difference really should not exist. False positives have to be minimized.
The point is the car needs to avoid collisions. There is not really any excuse for a robotaxi-capable vehicle.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
But when you have a driver operating, it necessarily has to operate differently than when the car has most or all of the control. This is because the car doesn't have a good way to tell driver intent. Even for L4 cars, they disable the factory AEB systems to avoid conflicts.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
This is just a UI issue. But…in the end you can’t be crashing into parked cars. More to the point, though: do you think there was driver input in this case? That’s why this is clearly a UI issue. A human would be able to tell whether the driver should be in control, or the vehicle.
Just a question of balance, determined by the false positive rate.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
My point is there is always going to be a false positive rate that is non-zero when driver is operating the vehicle. For example, you don't want to crash into parked cars, but you don't know if the driver will swerve to avoid the car. That means the AEB system will have to wait until the last second to activate to avoid a false positive. I don't see how UI will fix this, given it is not practical for driver to input their intentions in the short amount of time allocated (if it were, they wouldn't have crashed in the first place).
Tesla have made similar comments before:
"AEB does not engage when an alternative collision avoidance strategy (e.g., driver steering) remains viable."
Tesla elaborates on Autopilot’s automatic emergency braking capacity over Mobileye’s system
However, when the car is in a L3+ mode, the car knows what next action is planned, so it can respond accordingly (even then L4 cars disable the factory AEB given many L4 systems are retrofitted on an existing vehicle and not integrated). Even in a L2 mode, it is already in control of acceleration and braking, so it can brake accordingly (what one of the recent updates were supposed to address). In cars that include avoidance maneuvers (I posted previously a test that the Zeekr 001 has a "Antelope Avoidance" capability that can be used), that can also be used while in L2.
The comment I made here years ago applies too, an automaker is not liable if AEB didn't prevent the accident, but is potentially liable if it causes an accident (for example braking unnecessarily or interfering with the driver's avoidance maneuver).
Autopilot: Crashed at 40mph
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Im not sure why it's so hard for AEB to prevent crashing into stationary objects. I've seen AEB work better on other manufacturers. The obstacle avoidance has done some amazing things for me like swerve the car out of the way of a bicyclist approaching too closely from the passenger side or a car trying to squeeze into passenger side pseudo-lane and curb and the car did great to prevent side swiping by a careless driver. I wish AEB worked well and we'd have stories like tesla stops for a car / barrier / fire engine in roadway.
And these 2 features ought to be mandated on (remove disable switch or huge warning if done). They were off by default and probably most drivers leave them off I would imagine.
And these 2 features ought to be mandated on (remove disable switch or huge warning if done). They were off by default and probably most drivers leave them off I would imagine.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Right, that is why I did not bring up AEB! It’s not a significant factor when it comes to preventing collisions.
And perhaps an automatic speed limiter so you can't out drive the automatic braking? AP is limited for a reason.
I couldn't find a good place to put this but it's another crash with fire. Doubtful it's FSD related.
Reportedly the driver was parking the vehicle when it lunged into a building. It caught fire within seconds and then caught fire again while being towed away. A bad day for many driving in the area as major traffic flow both north and south needed to be diverted.
On the bright side the husband says they will buy another to replace it.
Tesla crashes into Scottsdale building and catches fire - twice
Reportedly the driver was parking the vehicle when it lunged into a building. It caught fire within seconds and then caught fire again while being towed away. A bad day for many driving in the area as major traffic flow both north and south needed to be diverted.
On the bright side the husband says they will buy another to replace it.
Tesla crashes into Scottsdale building and catches fire - twice
The number of occasions in motoring history that ‘the car just lunged forward’ has turned out to be a mechanical fault rather than driver error is effectively zero.
I would imagine the husband that wants to put his wife and child back in the exact same vehicle has already worked this out.
And battery fires are hard to extinguish - can’t just make the energy in the battery disappear after all, but they’re a long slow smoulder rather than the petrol fuelled blazing inferno that people picture when they hear of a car fire.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Not FSD related but accidents like these just make me reflect on debating Level 4-5 autonomy when modern cars can't even reliably stop a driver from hitting the wrong pedal and plowing into a building.
Generalized robotaxis are far away, stopping stuff like this shouldn't be. Y'know? Show me a car that you can put somewhere in front of or behind an object, mash the accelerator, and it won't let you crash.
It is a perplexing dilemma. Some vehicle backup USS and camera sensors are used to trigger hard brake prior to making contact. It's harsh but effective. You'd think below a certain speed there would be almost no harm stopping these lunging vehicles especially when located in parking lots.
USS could but it's just very short range, you'd think vision systems would be capable of stopping something like this.
The cameras saw the building there, one accelerator mash away.
As @Daniel in SD pointed out previously, AEB can be overridden by hard acceleration - so if someone does accidentally smash the accelerator (thinking it's the brakes for example), AEB would not be able to stop the car.
Edit: I think they may be due to human freedom and not a technical limitation. Of course AEB could override the accelerator and stop the car no matter how hard you stop the pedal, but regulators don't want to force that as the human driver may have a good reason for doing so - perhaps they crashed the car into the building on purpose to avoid hitting a group of pedestrians - a human judgement call.
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