Autopilot crass stupidity gets 18 month driving ban

[thegruf]

autopilot Tesla seat switch driver banned

Autopilot seat switch driver banned

Patel said he was the "unlucky one who got caught", the court was told.

No he was being an idiot.
I know of, and have never heard of, anyone being quite so idiotic with autopilot.

Unfortunately it is idiot behaviour like this that Tesla have to design for and why the system get dumbed down
Enough to make you despair sometimes.

Please Tesla blacklist this individual and don't let him buy one of your cars again, so that we can all be safer.

 

[brkaus]

Yea!

 

[Cosmacelf]

I always tell my kids that when you are driving a car, you now have the ability to kill people with a mistake. Everyone needs to drive with that thought in their minds.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

If he leased the car, that's a big fine.

 

[Krugerrand]

This needs to happen again and again until people get it through their thick skulls that cars are not toys and driving isn’t some video game. And that includes all those drivers who don’t educate themselves and think AP is something it’s not, get into an accident and then think the thing to do is sue Tesla for not holding their incompetent hands. Get your poo together people!!

 

[P-town_P85]

Tesla has an easy fix: if the weight changes in the front seat disable autopilot. Might need to add a timer so if people squirm around it doesn’t falsely turn off.

But if the seat is empty for more than a minute there is no driver: pull over and shutdown until re-enabled by calling tesla.

Draconian big brother? Maybe. But idiots like this need it. And those who drive like any sane person would never even know it is there.

 

[McRat]

The guy is a total retard, but I can't help but wonder if Britain deals out even harsher penalties for crashes.

The ultimate in dangerous driving is not goofing off. The ultimate is crashing into things, worst with injuries or deaths.

There are extremely few 'accidents' but lots of crashes. A crash is when you impact something with your car because one or more drivers ran out of talent. Even a parking lot crunch could have had a lethal outcome, by smashing a child between cars. So I'd assume a very large portion of UK drivers have had their licenses suspended. This is based on the number of dents I saw in cars in Southampton and London.

So would he have gotten only a 1 year suspension if he killed someone while texting?

 

[Ande]

No reason to "dumb system down" there will always be idiots .. like " ghost driving" was before.
One should only get rid of idiots while manual driving is still allowed.

 

[dipper]

Too bad Darwinism didn't take care of him like the guy in Silicon Valley.

 

[Saghost]

autopilot Tesla seat switch driver banned

Autopilot seat switch driver banned

Patel said he was the "unlucky one who got caught", the court was told.

No he was being an idiot.
I know of, and have never heard of, anyone being quite so idiotic with autopilot.

Unfortunately it is idiot behaviour like this that Tesla have to design for and why the system get dumbed down
Enough to make you despair sometimes.

Please Tesla blacklist this individual and don't let him buy one of your cars again, so that we can all be safer.

Sadly, he is not the first. I've seen a few videos of Teslas driving on AP with no one in the seat. I think it's become some sort of idiotic dare ritual like ghost driving mentioned above for some people.

It's stupid, it's dangerous for both them and everyone around them, and he certainly deserves what he got, but sadly there are more of them out there.

 

[princeofhouse]

it is annoying to see such stupidity.

 

[Galve2000]

I'm surprised the car continued to drive with no one in the driver's seat. Isn't it still true that when you lift your butt off the seat (while trying to see clearly in reverse for example) the car will shift to Park and stop?

 

[JammyP]

The guy is a total retard, but I can't help but wonder if Britain deals out even harsher penalties for crashes.

The ultimate in dangerous driving is not goofing off. The ultimate is crashing into things, worst with injuries or deaths.

There are extremely few 'accidents' but lots of crashes. A crash is when you impact something with your car because one or more drivers ran out of talent. Even a parking lot crunch could have had a lethal outcome, by smashing a child between cars. So I'd assume a very large portion of UK drivers have had their licenses suspended. This is based on the number of dents I saw in cars in Southampton and London.

So would he have gotten only a 1 year suspension if he killed someone while texting?

I think the maximum over here is life imprisonment now for “death by dangerous driving”. Used to be 14 years.

You will get a minimum 2 year driving ban.

This guy is an idiot and I’m sure he was doing it to get more kudos from his friends on his Snapchat story or something equally as ridiculous...

 

[brkaus]

I'm surprised the car continued to drive with no one in the driver's seat. Isn't it still true that when you lift your butt off the seat (while trying to see clearly in reverse for example) the car will shift to Park and stop?

I believe a buckled seat belt overrides the weight sensor. You don’t want a car going into park because you shifted to scratch an insect bite, etc.

 

[McRat]

I think the maximum over here is life imprisonment now for “death by dangerous driving”. Used to be 14 years.

You will get a minimum 2 year driving ban.

This guy is an idiot and I’m sure he was doing it to get more kudos from his friends on his Snapchat story or something equally as ridiculous...

I was referring to an average everyday crash that leaves everybody intact. All crashes are potentially lethal, and >90% are driver error. Is this prosecuted as a crime in the UK? All driving is 'dangerous' if you hit anything while driving due to driver error.

A crash is always dangerous, no exceptions. Stupid behaviour that does not involve a crash can be dangerous and should be punished, but without a crash, there is no potential of injury or death.

The guy was a dangerous idiot, but probably got a sentence harsher than somebody who 'didn't see the bicyclist' and hit them in a crash. These are often a traffic ticket.

Would a 30 days suspension, and a heavy fine achieved the same result? Probably. But I don't think that was the goal.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I'm a little confused about how this way done when I can't even remove my seatbelt to remove my coat without AP turning off.

Way back when they released AP some well known person on TMC did a video in a safe manner. He was replicating the video that some guy in an infinity did that everyone seems to be forget about with the obsession over autopilot.

Fairly quickly Tesla updated the system to use the weight sensor from what I recall.

So it will deactivate as soon as you get up.

The car also uses the weight sensor to go into park. In fact a valet kept accidently doing that with my car because for some reason when turning her head she kept lifting her self up.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I believe a buckled seat belt overrides the weight sensor. You don’t want a car going into park because you shifted to scratch an insect bite, etc.

I was wondering the same thing, and it does appear like it's an OR function for manual driving.
Car goes from reverse into park by itself | Tesla

For AP I believe it's an AND function. Where the seatbelt has to be attached, and a weight has to be there.

So to trick it you'd have to do the following

1.) Use a coke can or some other weight on the steering wheel
2.) Sit on an attached Seatbelt
3.) Put weight on the seat as you moved from the drivers seat to the passenger seat

 

[Az_Rael]

I'm a little confused about how this way done when I can't even remove my seatbelt to remove my coat without AP turning off.

I would guess he buckled the seat belt on an empty seat, than sat on it until he could engage AP. Way back when I was a kid in the 80s, this was a common tactic to defeat annoying seat belt chimes for folks who didn’t feel they needed to wear a seatbelt.

 

[X Fan]

Looks like the ban won’t impact him....he seems to spend more time in the passenger seat.

 

[BigNick]

Guessing this doofus has younger siblings eating detergent packs.