.. and on top of that if you add the 5+ star crash test rating then it becomes the safest car on planet as of now..
Sadly it happened to the wrong person: A Tesla enthusiast and a Navy Seal.
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.. and on top of that if you add the 5+ star crash test rating then it becomes the safest car on planet as of now..
Sadly it happened to the wrong person: A Tesla enthusiast and a Navy Seal.
green1
Active Member
So will those who've hidden behind the lack of a final report finally stop claiming that the NHTSA secretly ordered Tesla to neuter autopilot?
(several stated that the final report would prove this)
(several stated that the final report would prove this)
(half joking half serious)
(1) The NTSB final report isn't out yet.
(2) The NHTSA Special Order asked a fairly suggestive line of questions. It would not surprise me if Tesla reacted to that reading between the lines.
(3) The NHTSA report had several ominous footnotes, including:
Yet people keep using/"testing" AP on surface streets with signaled intersections, despite the warning not to do so...
Just to be clear: I don't personally subscribe to the conspiracy theory because they aren't in my nature. I'm just acknowledging that there still exist lines of reasoning that lead to believing the conspiracy theory.
I just found it noteworthy that the NHTSA highlights on two occasions that it was not going to blanket-excuse automakers for hiding behind a warning statement (whether it's in the manual, on the touchscreen, or every time you activate Autopilot).
a total non sequitur, his being a navy seal and a tesla enthusiast had little to do with the causes of his fatal crash. inattentiveness and disregarding the proper usage of the AP system is the cause of the crash and it's results.
Not sure I totally agree with that statement. Some airplane autopilots are incredibly sophisticated. Take a look at the autopilot of a CAT-III landing equipped airplane with auto-throttles, and the autopilot will execute course changes, hit intermediate fix altitudes, adjust speed to hit speed restrictions and fly the plane all the way down to the runway and braking to stop the plane on the runway center-line.
On the other hand, a simple wing-leveler is also technically an autopilot, albeit a basic one-axis device.
That said, I agree that most people have a fundamental misconception of how an autopilot works in an airplane and most Tesla owners don't truly understand how Tesla autopilot works on a technical basis or what its limitations are...
Agreed. Bottom line is you could look up right now, see perfectly normal road conditions, look down for 7 seconds and end up dying due to a change of traffic conditions. That's a sobering lesson to learn, and it sounds like something that most people don't accept. This thread has a lot of reasoning along the lines of implying that the driver had to be even more grossly inattentive than a couple seconds of looking away from the road.
I have read the whole thread and followed with great interest. I've seen those reports as well as the analysis by many users of what could be done differently. But what is novel (to my knowledge) in today's report is that the NHTSA recreated the accident circumstances and determined the rough timeline of when the truck should've been visible to the driver.
Yes, there are many other things that added together to result in this accident, that's for sure. But it's worth stressing how important it is to pay attention to the road and not zone out for even brief periods of time. 7 seconds is like less than 10% of the most aggressive Hold Steering Wheel nag interval. It's shorter than how long it takes for most people to type in a street address in a navigation system.
Regardless of that, the NHTSA did explicitly note the nags for AP as a *positive* step Tesla has made towards improving safety. I'll not make any claims on secret negotiations, but they're publicly pushing Tesla more in that direction.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
Exactly.
Plus, there were no secret negotiations - there were confidential negotiations. There is a significant difference.
Tesla could either work with the NHTSA or be subject to an order. Tesla worked with them, and took positive steps towards improving safety as is made clear in the report. Here's just one example from the report:
"As part of Tesla’s 8.0 over-the-air (OTA) software update in September 2016, Tesla revised the timing of the hands-on warnings and added a feature that takes away the Autopilot driving feature for the remainder of the drive cycle if the driver fails to respond to the alerts adequately (known as an “Autopilotstrikeout” – Figure 6)."
I could point out other examples from the report but there's no need -- this one proves the point. It's foolish to think this change did not occur as a result of Tesla working with the NHTSA.
This report also proves exactly what I said all along. No conspiracy theories are required. This is just the reality of negotiations with automakers and the NHTSA.
Ha! See the quote from the report above -- the NHTSA is boasting about a change that they had nothing to do with, right?
It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong.
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Andyw2100
Well-Known Member
Is it really necessary for you and others to denigrate the deceased driver? The exact circumstances are not known and may never be known. We know it was not an autopilot failure. Isn't that enough?
There's a difference between denigrating the person and noting mistakes they appear to have made. Acknowledging something that implies they were not 100% perfect absolutely all the time is not insulting their memory, but it does provide a valuable lesson for future drivers to learn from.
In that link it says:
"Baressi, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment, said the Harry Potter movie “was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road”. He told the AP, however, that he heard the movie but didn’t see it.
The Florida highway patrol told Reuters that there was a portable DVD player in the vehicle."
He said he knew it because he could hear it still playing after the accident.
Andyw2100
Well-Known Member
It was reported that a DVD player was in the front seat with the driver and playing when the truck driver and other witnesses ran to the crashed model S to assist the driver.
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