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CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver's Seat
- Thread starter PaulSu
- Start date
Lol @ anyone bringing up putting a brick on the gas pedal, what decade are you in? Any remotely modern car has Cruise Control that will gladly lock you into a set speed and plow ahead regardless of what you do aside from hit the brakes, but there is zero perception that the car can drive itself. ”Autopilot” and “Full Self-driving” give people the impression that they can do stuff like this and they need strong controls in place to reasonably prevent circumvention, but it’s likely not reasonable when random people / YouTubers / testers can very easily defeat it.
I’d guess there will be regulation coming that will mandate much stronger measures. For a company that is so ahead of legacy automakers in self-driving capabilities, it’s actually a bit mind blowing that Tesla has the weakest and least technologically-advanced safety measures.
I’d guess there will be regulation coming that will mandate much stronger measures. For a company that is so ahead of legacy automakers in self-driving capabilities, it’s actually a bit mind blowing that Tesla has the weakest and least technologically-advanced safety measures.
shrineofchance
she/her, they/them
- Whoever pointed out that easily hackable locks had to be updated: the clear disanalogy here is that a lock is something to prevent someone else from intentionally doing something. The Autopilot safeguards are to prevent yourself from doing something, especially by accident (e.g. distraction, falling asleep) or temporary faltering of willpower (e.g. texting and driving).
There is an interesting parallel, though, between locks and Autopilot. As I understand it, many locks are very easily defeated with simple tools. However, even an easily defeated lock serves an important legal purpose: if someone had to defeat a lock to get in somewhere, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that they were going somewhere they knew they weren’t supposed to go, rather than, say, getting lost and going through the wrong door. Knowing what Autopilot’s safeguards are and then defeating them is the equivalent in terms of determining intent.
- To those saying Tesla needs to implement a visual (i.e. camera-based) driver monitoring system: we already know this software has been developed to some state of readiness and is being tested with Early Access users.
Visual driver monitoring is a complex computer vision problem and not a trivial thing to code. The driver-facing camera in Supercruise is, according to journalists, easy to trick (i.e. is easy to generate false negatives for driver attentiveness) and it also, frustratingly, often thinks the driver isn’t paying attention when they are and disengages the ADAS (i.e. it spontaneously generates a lot of false positives).
The sooner Tesla can implement a good visual driver monitoring system the better, of course, but good cutting-edge Software 2.0 is not something that can be developed, tested, and refined in the snap of a finger.
- I am curious: do we have hard confirmation that the driver’s seats have a weight sensor? If so, then I guess it makes sense to use this too, but then again, anyone who wants to defeat the safeguards will just put something heavy on the driver’s seat.
- It should go without saying that amateurs “testing” a system isn’t a good excuse for risky behaviour. For example, driving 40 mph at your friend to test the pedestrian AEB would be a really stupid and dangerous idea.
- A distinction I haven’t seen anyone bring up is between defeating Autopilot’s safeguards for an indefinite period of time vs. something bad happening in the (at least usually) seconds-long grace period Autopilot gives you to demonstrate that you‘re still attentive and in control. A few seconds is all it takes to go from a safe trajectory to a crash, so crashes sometimes happen in that grace period when the driver isn’t paying attention and/or isn’t in proper control of the vehicle.
Suppose someone climbed out of the driver’s seat and then Autopilot did disengage. Obviously, this could result in a severe crash, depending on what the car was doing the moment is disengaged. If it was driving fast around a tight corner during that moment, a bad crash would be very likely.
Of course we would like Autopilot to be able to safely make an emergency stop anytime it disengages itself, but this amounts to asking for what is practically full autonomy: the ability to handle any and every possible situation.
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shrineofchance
she/her, they/them
Tesla has liability because someone decides to defeat numerous safety features.
Both Tesla and Consumer Reports tells us not to defeat the safety features and drive this way.
Consumer Reports implies that Tesla has some sort of liability for making it possible to defeat the safety systems.
Consumer Reports provides step by step instructions on how to defeat safety systems.
Consumer reports has no liability for showing us how to defeat safety systems.
Both Tesla and Consumer Reports tells us not to defeat the safety features and drive this way.
Consumer Reports implies that Tesla has some sort of liability for making it possible to defeat the safety systems.
Consumer Reports provides step by step instructions on how to defeat safety systems.
Consumer reports has no liability for showing us how to defeat safety systems.
Tesla has liability because someone decides to defeat numerous safety features.
Both Tesla and Consumer Reports tells us not to defeat the safety features and drive this way.
Consumer Reports implies that Tesla has some sort of liability for making it possible to defeat the safety systems.
Consumer Reports provides step by step instructions on how to defeat safety systems.
Consumer reports has no liability for showing us how to defeat safety systems.
Yes. Laws. They matter. Tesla fanboys ignore them but will Tesla pay a price for continuing to shirk their legal responsibility to design a safe system with industry proven safeguards? Liability is clear if they don't.
This thread is rife with the typical ignorant and disingenuous arguments to excuse Tesla. Bricks! It's so hard to move?! CR did it!
The first amendment obviously at play but how did CR design the system? Did they profit from it? Such weak sh!t. Judges aren't fanboys. They aren't so intellectually weak and confused to think a manufacturer should somehow be absolved from consumer protection, product defect and other laws just because Elon tweets about Dogecoin and makes big rockets. Grow up.
Tesla needs and must do better. End of story.
how do you feel about hot water heater manufacturers allowing their products to be turned into missiles?
rxlawdude
Active Member
In which jurisdiction?Tesla has liability because someone decides to defeat numerous safety features.
shrineofchance
she/her, they/them
Industry proven safeguards like what? The driver-facing camera in Supercruise vehicles can be easily defeated.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Can you show me what the industry proven safeguards for AP are ?
Heck, what are the proven safeguards for cruise control / TACC ?
Tam
Well-Known Member
Tesla with AP1 was sold in 2014 and it was shortly demonstrated after that that it could drive on its own with no one in the driver's seat. There have been multiple youtube demonstrations but there were no fatalities with a vacant driver seat.
Mercedes's demo resulted in no death in that video.
Now, there's one and it's not from Mercedes, it's from whichever brand that is.
An L2 car fatality with an empty driver seat? That's the first because people didn't die even in older AP1 without a driver in the driver's seat.
People wonder: A recent youtube demo shows that as soon as the seatbelt was unbuckled, the Autopilot would be disabled. Many believe that driverless in this case was impossible in this incident because the Autopilot was not enabled so they even think up the third occupant as the real driver...
When there's death in new technology, people want answers and it doesn't matter which brand it is.
Adding my two cents here. The day of the accident, I read a local newspaper report (local to where the accident occurred) that reported 3 occupants in the car. Whose to say that there wasn't a driver in the driving seat who escaped from the crash before anyone arrived at the scene. The reason for doing so would be to escape being charged with the deaths of the 2 other occupants as well as civil liability suits and a host of other legal problems. Of course the report of a 3rd occupant could have been supposition on the part of that newspaper when they were told both bodies were found in passenger seats.
Having said that, let's go with what has been reported by the majority of the media. Two occupants of the car, one, the car owners friend in the front passenger seat, the other, the owner found in the rear passenger seat. Here is what I see as the most likely scenario. The owner starts out in the front driver's seat and his friend is next to him in the front passenger seat. They are driving around and talking about the car and all its technology including the Auto-pilot function. The driver (owner) wants to impress upon his friend how great his car is, so he sets the cruise control and believes he has activated the Auto-pilot, which Tesla says can't be done if there are no lines on the road, which it is said was the case here. The driver, believing that he can yield all control of the car to the car, unbuckles his seat belt and lifts himself out of the seat, over the console, through the gap between the front seats, and into the back seat (I've had passengers in my car do this plenty of times when I was driving growing up). He does this to prove to his friend that he is not supplying any control or input to the car. The car, having never really been engaged in Auto-pilot, or momentarily engaged and then self disengaged, continues at speed, in the direction it was pointed, ultimately resulting in the crash. The same scenario could be re-enacted today with any car equipped with cruise control. Has there been an outcry for better safety features in those cars? The answer is "NO". So why is Tesla being singled out? The simple answer is, "because it's Tesla" and has led the way in electric cars and self driving technology, so they are expected to have ALL the answers; even the answers to human beings making stupid decisions and doing stupid things.
This driving accident, bears a great deal of similarity in one respect to the accident in Layton, Utah, where the headline read, "Bird Box challenge leads to two-car crash in US, despite Netflix warnings". In both cases, the driver of the car did something inherently unsafe and decidedly stupid. The one in Utah, by thinking she could safely operate a car without being able to see where she was going and the Tesla owner thinking he could operate a car without being in the driver's seat where he could have control of the car. Both instances act to reinforce the saying "the least safe part of a motor vehicle, is the operator". By the way, in the Utah accident, they never mentioned the manufacturer of the car she was operating, which brings me to my next point.
The point I'd like to make here, is about how the media reports things like this. Why is it necessary for every news reporting agency to emphasize, and include in the headline, that the car was a Tesla; to single one car manufacturer out as if the car was at fault for a driver's unthinking behavior? I can only surmise that it's because of news media bias, where the media believes it makes the news more "news worthy" if they say the car was a Tesla. Thousands of auto fatalities occur every day in the U.S., and you don't see headlines like "Toyota SUV Involved In Head On Collision", "Ford Pickup Causes 3 Fatalities", "Volkswagen Golf Strikes Tree Killing 2". More often than not, the vehicle involved in the accident isn't mentioned until you start to read the article, somewhere in the first or second paragraph, if it's mentioned at all, and usually says something to the effect of "the operator of a" or "the driver of a". Seems like the name Tesla has become instant click bait. Let's see if the first news report of a fatality involving a Ford Mustang Mach-E includes the manufacturer's name in the headline.
Having said that, let's go with what has been reported by the majority of the media. Two occupants of the car, one, the car owners friend in the front passenger seat, the other, the owner found in the rear passenger seat. Here is what I see as the most likely scenario. The owner starts out in the front driver's seat and his friend is next to him in the front passenger seat. They are driving around and talking about the car and all its technology including the Auto-pilot function. The driver (owner) wants to impress upon his friend how great his car is, so he sets the cruise control and believes he has activated the Auto-pilot, which Tesla says can't be done if there are no lines on the road, which it is said was the case here. The driver, believing that he can yield all control of the car to the car, unbuckles his seat belt and lifts himself out of the seat, over the console, through the gap between the front seats, and into the back seat (I've had passengers in my car do this plenty of times when I was driving growing up). He does this to prove to his friend that he is not supplying any control or input to the car. The car, having never really been engaged in Auto-pilot, or momentarily engaged and then self disengaged, continues at speed, in the direction it was pointed, ultimately resulting in the crash. The same scenario could be re-enacted today with any car equipped with cruise control. Has there been an outcry for better safety features in those cars? The answer is "NO". So why is Tesla being singled out? The simple answer is, "because it's Tesla" and has led the way in electric cars and self driving technology, so they are expected to have ALL the answers; even the answers to human beings making stupid decisions and doing stupid things.
This driving accident, bears a great deal of similarity in one respect to the accident in Layton, Utah, where the headline read, "Bird Box challenge leads to two-car crash in US, despite Netflix warnings". In both cases, the driver of the car did something inherently unsafe and decidedly stupid. The one in Utah, by thinking she could safely operate a car without being able to see where she was going and the Tesla owner thinking he could operate a car without being in the driver's seat where he could have control of the car. Both instances act to reinforce the saying "the least safe part of a motor vehicle, is the operator". By the way, in the Utah accident, they never mentioned the manufacturer of the car she was operating, which brings me to my next point.
The point I'd like to make here, is about how the media reports things like this. Why is it necessary for every news reporting agency to emphasize, and include in the headline, that the car was a Tesla; to single one car manufacturer out as if the car was at fault for a driver's unthinking behavior? I can only surmise that it's because of news media bias, where the media believes it makes the news more "news worthy" if they say the car was a Tesla. Thousands of auto fatalities occur every day in the U.S., and you don't see headlines like "Toyota SUV Involved In Head On Collision", "Ford Pickup Causes 3 Fatalities", "Volkswagen Golf Strikes Tree Killing 2". More often than not, the vehicle involved in the accident isn't mentioned until you start to read the article, somewhere in the first or second paragraph, if it's mentioned at all, and usually says something to the effect of "the operator of a" or "the driver of a". Seems like the name Tesla has become instant click bait. Let's see if the first news report of a fatality involving a Ford Mustang Mach-E includes the manufacturer's name in the headline.
So the manufacturer of the car involved in the Utah "Bird Box Challenge" needs to do better? The manufacturer should install cameras to make sure the vehicle operators aren't wearing blindfolds? And because the manufacturer didn't, the manufacturer bears some liability for the accident? Any sane driver knows you can't safely operate a car from the backseat, any better than you could with your eyes covered. Ultimately, barring MECHANICAL failures, the operator of a car is legally liable for any accidents such as these.
Humans are incredibly ingenious at finding ways to do stupid things and the least safe part of every car is the person responsible for operating it.
The modern world doesn't quite make this true. The failure of AP to detect a stop sign will not be a "mechanical failure" yet the manufacturer may have liability. An airbag failing to go off in a crash where someone is being stupid is not the direct liability of the manufacturer, but the manufacturer sold you a safety device that didn't work, so they have liability. You should see the lawsuits that occur in aviation where the airplane had no functional issues and was just flown into the ground but the jury still finds for the plaintiff because the "design was unsafe" and the manufacturer should have done more to protect the occupants.
Not saying this all applies here, but it's not simple as "they were being idiots so there is no liability." There is such thing as a attractive nuisance- you can't put a vat full of acid in the middle of a field, slap a "don't touch" sticker on it and then claim no liability when someone is injured. At some point technologies like this can start to drift into that zone (especially when Tesla itself has all sorts of advertising and naming making it seem like you can drive hands off).
