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Model X Crash on US-101 (Mountain View, CA)

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There are two messages from Tesla.
1. Keep your hands on the wheel. You are fully responsible not us.

2. In 2017 the car will drive ny to la without the driver touching anything.
The new cars are FSD capable.
In 2019 you could sleep in your car while it drives you.
The car will uber for you...
Yes, I also take every bit of marketing to the bank as if it were gospel, and drive as if marketing hype were true, even though my every experience in the car says AP cannot drive for me! NOT!

I just don’t understand this whining “they said it would...” that somehow absolves people from using their 5 senses and making rational judgments.
 
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Ok, so I was wrong about AP not being active, I suck.

Now we need to modify the theory of what happened. We are now assuming that Walter thought he was in the adjacent HOV Lane? The one that would have taken him to the 101? I’m still confused as to how the car goes straight at that point. With a lead vehicle cutting him off an obscuring Lane lines for a moment? What’s the working theory now?

We won’t know until they finish their investigation, until then we can only guess.
See, AP has nothing personal against any of us, it is and it was (as we know now), totally possible for AP to drive the car against the concrete barrier, it has tried that before, both my MS and MX.
 
After looking at a video of another driver on that road, it is easy to see this scenario, as the crucial line between the lane and barrier is horribly faded.

It becomes easy to see, since the lines are in needing of painting, a lane following assistance system could "jump lines" over to the brighter line, into the barrier "lane" if the driver was not paying attention.

When I'm driving and I see not very well maintained lines like this, my attention level spikes up.
View attachment 290819

In your image there is the remnant of the diamond (HOV lane marker) that is well worn down. Someone or something might see that and think it is an arrow to go left, or another white stripe marking the right edge of the lane. Combine that HOV diamond lane marker remnant with the worn down gap in the left hand white lane marker and I could see someone/something drifting from the right HOV lane into the gore area because they were confused into thinking that the lane bent left.

diamond-fake.png



diamond-fake2.png
 
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ABC7news went to the Mt. View Supercharger to talk to a few people there about whether the accident had shaken their confidence in their Tesla: Tesla drivers still feeling safe despite deadly crash

BTW on the page that linked from their site to the story, ABC had this photo showing the hood and a tire (not sure that's off the Tesla). First time seeing the hood.

HoodTire - 1.jpg


Is that the left front tire. Can't tell if it says Continental or not. Tread pattern looks close.
 
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We won’t know until they finish their investigation, until then we can only guess.
See, AP has nothing personal against any of us, it is and it was (as we know now), totally possible for AP to drive the car against the concrete barrier, it has tried that before, both my MS and MX.
Yes, I've never questioned the ability for AP to drive itself into a barrier.... the thing that shocks me is that in this particular instance, it goes against the behavior I've seen regarding lane recognition... I hope someone can try different scenarios to see if AP drifts in that area.
 
ABC7news went to the Mt. View Supercharger to talk to a few people there about whether the accident had shaken their confidence in their Tesla: Tesla drivers still feeling safe despite deadly crash

BTW on the page that linked to their site, ABC had this photo showing the hood and tire (not sure that's off the Tesla). First time seeing the hood.

View attachment 290934

Is that the left front tire. Can't tell if it says Continental or not. Here's a another photo for comparison from the crash scene of the right tire.

Tread pattern looks right. There's clearly the remnants of a wheel just to the left of it, too.
 
Yes, I think that is the front left tire, and that cut may have been from it hitting the edge of the smart cushion.

I think I saw that hood on the left side of the barrier way up the road in one of the "right after the crash" photos. Someone may have carried it over to the debris pile later.
My sense is that the hood basically ejected over the barrier and flew forward a great distance away from the rest of the crash.

hood1.png
 
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Yes, I've never questioned the ability for AP to drive itself into a barrier.... the thing that shocks me is that in this particular instance, it goes against the behavior I've seen regarding lane recognition... I hope someone can try different scenarios to see if AP drifts in that area.

The recent NNs are great but I've had 2 crazy instances with them. With 2018.10.4, the car tried to take me into oncoming traffic going through an intersection AP had never failed in for almost a year. With 2018.12, my car hopped across a lane (partially) before I could disengage. It did both very suddenly and I usually don't keep a death grip on the wheel so I could only disengage by holding very hard while it tried to take me into dangerous areas. Luckily both were not accidents and I was there to take control but the new NNs are not fool proof and are, in my opinion, prone to these kinds of random errors because they are so intent at following what it thinks are lane lines and it acts with total confidence now.

Tesla needs to quickly implement HD maps because without it their system is going to be inadequate.
 
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The recent NNs are great but I've had 2 crazy instances with them. With 2018.10.4, the car tried to take me into oncoming traffic going through an intersection AP had never failed in for almost a year. With 2018.12, my car hopped across a lane (partially) before I could disengage. It did both very suddenly and I usually don't keep a death grip on the wheel so I could only disengage by holding very hard while it tried to take me into dangerous areas. Luckily both were not accidents and I was there to take control but the new NNs are not fool proof and are, in my opinion, prone to these kinds of random errors because they are so intent at following what it thinks are lane lines and it acts with total confidence now.

Tesla needs to quickly implement HD maps because without it their system is going to be inadequate.

Thank you for the detail.

I don’t understand the sudden motions. There are road planning rules that seem to limit radius of curvature.

The car should test against max curvature before steering.

This sudden behavior should be filtered against possible routes on standard routes.
 
Are we really going to have a 72 page thread on every car accident involving a Tesla?
Tempting. Very tempting. This accident feels different. There are multiple issues at hand:

1) Uber and the news environment.
2) On the heels of the most impressive firmware release yet.
3) The fact that it doesn't appear to be a common type of failure with autopilot, it's a mystery to some extent.
4) The reports that he complained about AP at this exact site per brother (this may be the most befuddling item of them all, how do you let it wreck if you complained about it 7 times at that spot? IF this is true, something doesn't add up.
5) The fire.
6) Some damn good analysis by TEG.
7) The driver feels like a fellow member.
8) Morale of Autopilot Team.... I feel for these folks, and the engineers... I hope they keep pressing on.
 
Yes, I've never questioned the ability for AP to drive itself into a barrier.... the thing that shocks me is that in this particular instance, it goes against the behavior I've seen regarding lane recognition... I hope someone can try different scenarios to see if AP drifts in that area.

Well, if it helps any, I still get pronounced drift toward medians as I traverse intersections. Requires intervention as much now as with any version of AP2 - which is to say almost every time. When no median, there’s now rarely a problem.

I don’t know that I have the cojones large enough, or sense absent enough, to test much drifting at highway speeds beyond running over the lane markers (when adjacent highway medians aka barriers). And a test in the right lanes wouldn’t be helpful.

Nice summary of yours above as to why occasional lengthy crowdsourced threads are useful, btw.
 
I marked out on the map ~150 meters to the start of the barrier as shown on satellite:

View attachment 290885


Here it is to the collapsed location:
View attachment 290896

So that means something was in the "gore lane" blocking his view just before that point. He couldn't see the barrier until after the lane split even though it would be straight line of sight if no other vehicles were on the road.
 
Yes, I also take every bit of marketing to the bank as if it were gospel, and drive as if marketing hype were true, even though my every experience in the car says AP cannot drive for me! NOT!

I just don’t understand this whining “they said it would...” that somehow absolves people from using their 5 senses and making rational judgments.

Perhaps I should do more research, I'll start with the video Tesla posted where the driver never touches the steering wheel. It's the first thing you see on the Autopilot/FSD page.
 
Are we really going to have a 72 page thread on every car accident involving a Tesla?

People who don’t own AP2 Tesla’s, or even Tesla’s period come out of the shadows to argue and troll from a false sense of authority.

Those who actually know what’s going on have to waste time and energy refuting FUD.

Bottom line is there was an unfortunate tragedy.

It got attention because it was a Tesla.

Mr. Huang was 100 percent responsible for the actual accident itself. Full stop. End of story.

Anything related to AP and Caltrans are independent of the above fact.

I have much sympathy for Mr. Huang and his family but that too is irrelevant and changes nothing for what the “world wants to know”. Who or what was RESPONSIBLE?

It wasn’t Tesla and it wasn’t autopilot and it wasn’t Caltrans for that initial hit. It was 100 percent Mr. Huang.

It doesn’t matter if:

1. Mr. Huang was incapacitated
2. Mr. Huang was distracted
3. Mr. Huang trusted autopilot

Trusting a 3rd party in the realm of vehicle assistance does not transfer legal liability to that 3rd party.

Could Tesla use this to improve its enhanced cruise control platform? They most certainly will.

If a lawsuit happens it falls on Caltrana based on them failing on their duties to maintain our road ways.

It’s not as sensational and salacious as people want to make it out to be but that’s all there is to it.
 
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