Local CBS story, Tesla in autopilot mode hits fire truck

[phaduman]

Great insights / readings, thanks. Also many speculations. For one, if there were any casualties (either in car or outside), just imagine how much worse the situation would have been for all sides?

Tesla at minimum needs to have the tesla black box store the “video” from the camera(s) leading up to accidents - this is key to diagnosing what happened so the world as a whole can learn and make next gen systems better. In these matters of safety, instead of stepping on each other, Google, Volvo, ME, Tesla et al should come together as one force and solve them. For the betterment of the human race.

 

[benfar]

Here are a few points:
1) Tesla changed approach for dealing with already-stopped vehicles in late 2016, starting with software 8.0, for both hardware 1 and hardware 2 vehicles. See Upgrading Autopilot: Seeing the World in Radar . Assuming the Model S in the accident had its software updated at least once since then, that was what was operating.
2) It is forward collision warning (FCW) and automatic emergency braking (AEB) that deal with stopped vehicles. They are standard and, unless deactivated by a driver at the beginning of a trip, are active at all times -- whether Autopilot is engaged or even available.
3) Tesla radar is mounted low, so is able to detect a second vehicle ahead of one being followed, but not if it is very far ahead. So a second one driving ahead may be detected, like in the avoided crash recorded by a dashcam in the Netherlands. However, a stopped vehicle ahead of a moving one being followed will likely not be detected early, because the radar's view of the stopped one is blocked by the followed vehicle ahead. So if the report that the Tesla was following another vehicle that swerved into another lane is true, its radar probably could not detect the stopped fire truck until or very close to that point in time.
4) Even the second-hand report about the Tesla driver said he didn't know if the Tesla began braking before the impact. The NHTSA and NTSB teams will obviously get access to that data from Tesla if it can be retrieved, and will then know exactly what happened.
5) Until that time, everything is wild speculation. My guess is that the Tesla will be shown to have reacted to the fire truck as quickly as it could be detected and began braking before the impact. If so, then AEB did its job well and significantly reduced injuries from the crash.
6) I don't work for Tesla, but I've been working with these types of systems since the 1990s, and I read the Tesla owners manuals carefully.

 

[Az_Rael]

Tesla at minimum needs to have the tesla black box store the “video” from the camera(s) leading up to accidents

Based on Jason Hughes findings with a crashed Model X, Tesla does store that info. They just don’t release it.

 

[Superendo]

Looking at he videos of the crashes and from my own observations the core problem is imo not recognizing the correct lane and it’s boundaries.

Try it yourself; look where the leading car is in a curve. Often it looks as it is not in your lane anymore and ping pong driving is often by a lane that shifts in your display but not in reality.

If lane recognision is good it should be easy to see when it is blocked.

I am not a computer guy but that is how it looks to me

 

[thegruf]

either
Tesla hit fire truck (which being particularly heavy would not have moved significantly in the accident and also must be made of adamantium as it is barely marked) at 65 mph and driver walked away with minor cuts and bruises.
Damn the Model S has astonishing safety protection as no other car on the planet could hit a fixed object at 65 mph and the driver emerge relatively unscathed.

or

vehicle in front of Tesla switches lane at short notice, driver sees fire truck late and the Tesla on AP (set to 65 mph - but possibly driving slower due to traffic conditions) due to the active radar scanning technology that Tesla introduced "sees" the fire truck where most other systems would simply have failed to react at all, applied the brakes, AEB functionality also steps in and magnifies the braking response that the driver belatedly applies further diminishing the impact speed which is probably more in the order of 20mph. Tesla safety systems likely significantly improved the Tesla driver's life prospects. Driver (hopefully) buys another Tesla whilst the press and agencies go into hyperbolic overreaction mode ... well because it's a Tesla.

 

[alevek]

There is probably someone else commenting on this in the thread, but there is no way the car was doing 65 when it hit the truck. Can you imagine how destroyed the Tesla's crumple zone would be? It was probably going 25-35 mph or less after hard breaking.

The "...hard breaking.." occurred after impact, which was probably reduced due to hard braking before the impact.

 

[Shaggy]

Yeah, the numbers needed for obstacle avoidance if the leading vehicle swerves and AP doesn't are not unreasonable, but likely not possible in city traffic.

60 MPH stopping distance of 180 feet (dry conditions, zero reaction time) is roughly a 2 second following distance (176 ft). As this is 10ish car lengths, that gap may not exist for long.

This assumes the driver cannot see past the vehicle in front of him and was out-driving his vision, which is on him, NOT AutoPilot. I'm still suspicious that an attentive driver would not see the emergency response vehicle in front of a truck over 2 seconds in front of him. If it was over a hill then maybe and again we come to him going faster than the road conditions allowed.

 

[SMAlset]

either
Tesla hit fire truck (which being particularly heavy would not have moved significantly in the accident and also must be made of adamantium as it is barely marked) at 65 mph and driver walked away with minor cuts and bruises.
Damn the Model S has astonishing safety protection as no other car on the planet could hit a fixed object at 65 mph and the driver emerge relatively unscathed.

or

vehicle in front of Tesla switches lane at short notice, driver sees fire truck late and the Tesla on AP (set to 65 mph - but possibly driving slower due to traffic conditions) due to the active radar scanning technology that Tesla introduced "sees" the fire truck where most other systems would simply have failed to react at all, applied the brakes, AEB functionality also steps in and magnifies the braking response that the driver belatedly applies further diminishing the impact speed which is probably more in the order of 20mph. Tesla safety systems likely significantly improved the Tesla driver's life prospects. Driver (hopefully) buys another Tesla whilst the press and agencies go into hyperbolic overreaction mode ... well because it's a Tesla.

The answer is #2 if you were following the thread earlier and read the info from the owner's friend's son who posted about what the owner told them happened. Didn't get into the thread until Post #99: Tesla allegedly on Autopilot hits firetruck with 65mph • r/teslamotors
That said I'm thinking the car/driver knew there was traffic to the right of it so didn't make any other manuevers than to stay in lane and brake.

 

[buttershrimp]

The "...hard breaking.." occurred after impact, which was probably reduced due to hard braking before the impact.

Wow, I fully walked into that one (at 65 mph).

 

[O. Green]

Radar has difficulties detecting objects with angled surfaces, it would bounce off away from the source.
Look at stealth ships.
I'm working at a radar company.

 

[Phillip L]

We should start a petition immediately to make them stop using stealth technology on fire trucks.

 

[DFibRL8R]

We should start a petition immediately to make them stop using stealth technology on fire trucks.

O. Green does make an interesting point about radar in this scenario. The fire truck is performing a block which is done by parking the truck at an angle. This results in a deflection away from personnel in the event of a second crash and protects responders from injury. But if radar is fooled by angled surfaces, this positioning could interfere with the radar "seeing" a stopped vehicle (even a big one like the fire truck) parked at an angle. In most scenarios, the cameras will see the vehicle at an angle but, as in this crash, a late avoidance maneuver by the car in front would obscure the camera view until too late. Of course, a longer following distance could have helped to give the driver a better view of the scene and more time to react to the lead vehicles sudden lane change.

 

[Az_Rael]

Has anyone been able to find any info on the NTSB investigation of this incident? They tweeted they were doing a field investigation, but I can’t find any info or record of it on their website.

 

[BigD0g]

Has anyone been able to find any info on the NTSB investigation of this incident? They tweeted they were doing a field investigation, but I can’t find any info or record of it on their website.

Doesn't it usually take a six months to a year before the public get's the info from NTSB?

 

[Az_Rael]

Doesn't it usually take a six months to a year before the public get's the info from NTSB?

Well, the Uber investigation is already listed on their website as an ongoing investigation. No mention at all about the fire truck one

 

[pilotSteve]

Maybe not the best thread for this, but today my S90D (AP2) with 2019.16.2 surprised me with a "beep beep beep" and red image warning on the IC as a fire truck (with red lights flashing) slowed but ran thru the intersection ahead of me when I had a green light.

(And, IIRC, the IC depicted a fire truck vehicle icon as it drove thru the intersection. Can't be completely sure about this tho)

Impressive! It happened so fast I could not, of course, snap a photo or video but it was a surprising, correct and helpful alert from the car.

 

[Az_Rael]

Looks like final NTSB report will be coming tomorrow. Public info here: Accident ID HWY18FH004 Mode Highway occurred on January 22, 2018 in Culver City, CA United States Last Modified on August 22, 2019 16:08 Public Released on August 28, 2019 11:08 Total 13 document items

Guessing he wasn't looking at the road. Car was only going 21mph when the truck pulled out of the lane revealing the stopped firetruck.

 

[Tam]

...NTSB report

I am surprised that this kind of radar problem still can happen with such a slow speed collision under 50MPH.

It's interesting that the Forward Collision Warning was alarming but shouldn't that be wired to apply brakes when Autopilot was on as well?

It was AP1, would today's system any better with the same scenario?

I got to a similar scenario at the speed of 61MPH on AP2.0 version 8.1 and I manually applied the brakes when I heard the collision warning because I didn't think the automation would slow down in time:

 

[mongo]

It's interesting that the Forward Collision Warning was alarming but shouldn't that be wired to apply brakes when Autopilot was on as well?

FCW is a human alert precursor to AEB.
From the 3 manual (S and X similar)

f immediate action is not taken when Model 3 issues a Forward Collision Warning, Automatic Emergency Braking (if enabled) may automatically apply the brakes if a collision is considered imminent (see Automatic Emergency Braking on page 91).

 

[Az_Rael]

The driver interview was also an interesting read. He wasn't sure what he was doing at the time of the crash (maybe drinking coffee, maybe adjusting the radio?), but he was sure he was a tech savvy guy and knew when and when not to use AP.

Obviously he trusted the system too much.

Guess that follows Elon's comment many moons ago that the folks who have accidents are the ones who have more experience with the system, not always the new users.