It is well understood what NTSB's ground rules are. Basically, "No Unauthorized Statements. Especially not statements that cast blame on others or deflect blame from oneself" This isn't a case of Tesla innocently violating the rules, or sticking with the spirit of the rules. Tesla just flagrantly broke the rules, multiple times, and then had a hissy fit when NTSB kicked them off the investigation for breaking the rules.
What I'm speaking of is the party's expectations of what would be authorized to release. Tesla basically released raw data.
I can understand why Tesla might have felt that the ability to participate in the investigation wasn't nearly as important to Tesla as the ability to publicly spin the accident. But it should have made a choice between the two, not tried to do both at the same time. The rule is that you can either be a party to an investigation or you can publicly spin the mishap being investigated. You can't do both.
Sure, and Telsa gained nothing by being a party, so the line of thought of not signing up is a reasonable one.
And what exactly do you think Tesla's word "Auto" means in "AutoPilot" ?? HINT: It doesn't mean car.
The problem is not what I think. The problem is people don't RTFM, place their hopes and expectations on AP and then complain when it doesn't meet them. Tesla's autopilot has more functionality that a boat or airplane's.
I note that NTSB has possession of the car's onboard data recorder, not Tesla. And I believe that it is an ongoing point of annoyance for NTSB that Tesla won't provide NTSB and other authorities with devices/software that would allow the authorities to directly pull/analyze data from the onboard recorder.
Possession of the HW is irrelevant once the data is copied off. No one outside of Tesla's AP team will be able to do anything with a raw data dump. Just like 99% of people can't do anything with a Windows blue screen or a Linux core dump.
No one should be super-comfortable with the fact that Tesla has sole control of the devices that read onboard recorders (and, frankly, all of the data that Tesla is scooping up over-the-air from the fleet). Tesla has a huge incentive to not properly read/relay information that would tend to show that Tesla was responsible and every incentive to present data in a manner that casts blame on the driver. I'm not saying that Tesla would falsify/spin/fudge such data, but even the fact that they have a huge incentive to do so (and ability to do so) is kind of scary. Also, the fact that NTSB is dependent on Tesla for reading crash data is problematic, because it means that even if Tesla chooses not to be a party to the investigation, it will still have information about what kind of data NTSB is seeking from the recorder and will also have access to the full downloaded data set. This wouldn't normally be true for a non-party.
Again, Tesla has the only people capable of parsing and interpreting the AP log data. (And maybe cut the unknown intentions comments, its akin to me saying "I'm not saying you work for a hedge fund, but people who work for hedge funds would post negative claims against Tesla. You are suggesting ulterior motives so the shoe fits, I'm not saying you're wearing it mind you, but you likely have feet...", not useful for discussion)
I think you are over-interpreting the value of the logged data. Some real-world recreation is likely to be useful/necessary to determine how the sun might have impacted driver visibility as well as the exact positions/approaches of the car that cause it to misinterpret the lane lines and the change in pavement surface. Clearly it only has problems interpreting these markings under some conditions (or approaches, speeds, angles, etc) but not others.
First, neither of us know what it logged. It could have full camera capture (which would have justified the 150 meters clear line of sign report). Second, people already did drive-bys at similar times along with sun angle studies (up thread). But most relevent, why would that be useful? It is already known that the sun can mess with the cameras (as stated in the manual). It is already known (and stated in the manual) that the system is not 100% reliable. What new data is there to discover? Even if they created a scenario, it will never match the original to the level needed to mimic the exact SW response.
I agree... The truth will come out. But I dislike the fact that NTSB is in any way dependent on Tesla for reading the recorder. It should be readable by investigators/trusted third parties.
Your feelings are yours, but how could an NTSB employee develop the knowledge of the AP system well enough to independently interpret the data? If you are going to put Tesla outside the circle of trust, you also can't rely on them for tools to decode the data.
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