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

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

If you drive the car expecting it to make mistakes and then you may be prepared to avoid this but most people drive the Tesla thinking the car has their back if they make a mistake.

You must not drive a Tesla with AP.

 

[kkboss]

You must not drive a Tesla with AP.

I know that already. Thanks to all the local news channel and repeated coverage of all the Tesla accidents with AP, my 7-year-old has already ordered me not to use AP. Her excitement level has gone down as well since we test drove and reserved ours.

 

[bonnie]

I know that already. Thanks to all the local news channel and repeated coverage of all the Tesla accidents with AP, my 7-year-old has already ordered me not to use AP. Her excitement level has gone down as well since we test drove and reserved ours.

I don't think he was warning you away from using AP. Rather, your comments about AP make it clear you don't have first-hand experience with it.

 

[Barklikeadog]

Yes of course. What can be more important than the safety of human beings. For all the fingers pointed at Tesla, I feel more fingers need to be pointed at how poorly the roads are maintained and how horrible the road markings are.

The point being, the road is so horribly marked that both AI and actual human beings constantly get confused and hit the gore point.

They should definitely fund road maintenance and safety and this is why I suggested that politicians who don't assign adequate funds for road safety should see a pay cut if someone is gravely injured or died because the roads were poorly maintained.

It is funded by those who pay taxes on gasoline... So thank you Ice drivers for maintaining our roads. But gas tax revenues are falling for some reason.


Hehe

 

[Mrcook4590]

Looks like that location used to have the sand barrels too, then they switched it to a Smart Cushion.
It looks like the Smart Cushion has been impacted multiple times in recent years.
View attachment 292049

I think they intentionally use that device in places where they have observed frequent impacts.

Interestingly they seem to be switching back and forth. If I flip through the years I see barrels in 2014/2015, then Smart Cushion in 2016, then back to barrels in early 2017, and now back to Smart Cushion again.

View attachment 292052

I wonder if those Smart Cushions are turning out to be less re-usable than they first thought. If they replaced one with barrels for a while, the old one must have been damaged beyond repair. We can't really tell from photos when they either repair/reset or have to replace the whole thing.

Don't you love how the orange cones are around the damaged portion? Like nooooobody's gonna hit it with those orange cones there...

 

[Krazaak]

It is funded by those who pay taxes on gasoline... So thank you Ice drivers for maintaining our roads. But gas tax revenues are falling for some reason.


Hehe

NC charges me $130 annually, which represents the tax on approximately 382 gallons of gas. Since I tend to drive about 18k miles/year, that equates to about 47mpg, which isn't bad. Those who drive substantially less though are paying more than their fair share.

 

[BrentwoodX]

There are multiple weaknesses that aligned to caise this deadly crash. Remove one and it would not have happened.

Please forget TSLA profits for a few hours and look at risk reduction.

Do you think poor Walter Huang would have crashed if he had not been using AP?

Potentially yes. His hands were off the steering wheel for six seconds. I doubt they were folded neatly in his lap. A distraction of some type occurred and held his attention for that six seconds. iPhone?

 

[alcibiades]

His hands were off the steering wheel for six seconds.

In the words of a tmc icon:

your comments about AP make it clear you don't have first-hand experience with it.

 

[JTseng]

I know that already. Thanks to all the local news channel and repeated coverage of all the Tesla accidents with AP, my 7-year-old has already ordered me not to use AP. Her excitement level has gone down as well since we test drove and reserved ours.

Driving is a serious business. All these attentions Tesla's AP L2 get lately reminded us that AP feature is fun (and relax) to drive and at same time, be ready to take control. Hope you and your kid will enjoy the car as much as it is designed for.

 

[JTseng]

Potentially yes. His hands were off the steering wheel for six seconds. I doubt they were folded neatly in his lap. A distraction of some type occurred and held his attention for that six seconds. iPhone?

If that been the case, Steve Job would be the guy to blame?

 

[TEG]

You must not drive a Tesla with AP.

Two ways to interpret:

#1: You must not be allowed to drive a Tesla with AP.
#2: You must not have ever driven a Tesla with AP before.

 

[MXWing]

I know that already. Thanks to all the local news channel and repeated coverage of all the Tesla accidents with AP, my 7-year-old has already ordered me not to use AP. Her excitement level has gone down as well since we test drove and reserved ours.

When my 6 year old says ignorant things I make a point to educate him.

You might as well get back your 5000 EAP option and buy her a pony.

Everyone’s happy now.

 

[NeverFollow]

>> Isn't a design flaw for the AP to rely principally on the road mark.
Nope, that's how I drive.

>> What about if there is suddenly some snow, rain, or mud... covering the road marks.
Then I use the shoulders, or previous car tracks, or look for where the markings are poking through.

>> Or if the lanes get controlled by traffic light to be shared with the opposite traffic during rush hours.
Then I follow the lights/ markings.

>> Following the car in front also is not ideal, as show with the collision with a fire truck.
Following other cars is fine as long as you keep enough space for braking and reaction time.

>> I believe that AP need to be associated with some type of GPS and AI control.
GPS doesn't handle the firetruck or traffic signal issues you just raised. Also not as reliable in valleys or cities.

>> This would certainly necessary for autonomous driving.
FSD will have vision and mapping integration.
However, with EAP (only form of AP on Teslas) people are still the drivers.

Tesla must have been alerted every time a crash occurred, like the GM OnStar network,
so Tesla must have know and mapped already previous similar incidents locations.

And unless there was a major damage or a fire, Tesla might even have been able
to access recorded information or even video image capture.

I would be very curious to know if Tesla may have tried to reproduced previous accidents,
and even been aware of this line mark and facing sun issues.

So what can be done to improve AP?
- additional front cameras on each side of the car to give a better stereoscopic vision.
- implement a more precise telemetry measurement to detect obstacles.
- increase obedience from the driver to keep the hands on the steering wheel.
- ...

 

[kkboss]

When my 6 year old says ignorant things I make a point to educate him.

You might as well get back your 5000 EAP option and buy her a pony.

Everyone’s happy now.

I am no way going to let this AP steer for me. I am trying to find out if I lose TACC if I don’t buy EAP. Or if there is an option to personalize AP to not steer or deactivate after certain speed limit.

On educating the 7 year old, I myself have doubts have that I can use AP safely. At least, I am happy that my little one knows what I was planning to do with AP and is worried about me.

 

[MP3Mike]

I am no way going to let this AP steer for me. I am trying to find out if I lose TACC if I don’t buy EAP. Or if there is an option to personalize AP to not steer or deactivate after certain speed limit.

Yes, TACC is part of EAP so if you don't purchase EAP you get plain old dumb CC. You can enable/activate just TACC if you want.

 

[EVie'sDad]

Looked up the street view for CA-92 at the gore point with the Hesperian Exit and saw this. The accident with the red MS in this I-Team Report said it happened last September. This google map view is from October 2017 so doubt it had changed much in one month's time. Thankfully this MS driver had the benefit of a properly extended crash attentuator barrier and lived. Given the driver was driving against morning rush hour traffic, he likely was driving at or near highway speeds upon impact. Unfortunately the I-Team report doesn't give us as many details as we here would like to know. For example did he see the barrier at the last minute and try to take over?

View attachment 292036

The report doesn't indicate which lane the Red MS was driving in (on 92 or in the exit lane for Hesperian) but I could see if he was in the left most Hesperian exit lane how his AP could have missed picking up on the broken solid white left line in the exit lane and instead picked up on the solid white that runs on 92 and tried centering on that. In this case he impacted the barrier on the right side of his car and ended up on the left side of the barrier. Of course there's also the possibility that the driver was in the 92 right lane and being blinded by the sun didn't see his exit signage or barrier until the last minute, signalled to turn right attempting to move over to the right to take the exit but hit the barrier before he could safely do so. We've seen the car will cross the white line on a turn signal and then apparently from what I understand lock on to the gore lines as if they were lane lines.

So bad lane markings for AP combined with glare from the morning sun were factors as well. At this point drivers using AP should understand why Tesla said you need to stay aware of the road at all times. Not much you can do about driving in a direction with a rising or setting sun and I honestly don't know if road lane markings will universally be kept in good enough condition to rely on all the time. Certainly measures like painted gore lane chevrons (if we could count on them being painted and maintained, or rumble strips) would help prevent or avoid these situations. Don't know if AP recognizes painted chevrons as no go - not a factor in either the Mt View or Hayward crash. The rumble strips if placed far enough back in the gore area would certainly get the attention of the driver.

Here's two screen shots from the ABC7news I-Team report of the Hayward's MS impact and the truck driver's dashcam view as he approached the barrier.

View attachment 292023
View attachment 292022

My hypothesis is that he was on the right side of the gore barrier intending to exit SB 880, but that due to that faded left line, the car somehow locked the left side onto the more solid right line of the lane going EB 92, the car corrected for the line change, keeping to the middle of what it 'thought' was it's lane, and unbeknownst to it, ended up in the gore zone tagging the right front section of the model S.

If Walter did the same thing, keeping on SB101 and then the car lost the left line of SB101 and locked onto the right line of SB85 overpass, again heading directly into the gore zone. Sadly, due to the state of the cushion disrepair, this cost him his life.

 

[EVie'sDad]

Another possible theory is, that if the car instead lost both lines and locked onto following a car that headed SB101 while he was either in the SB85 off-ramp or in the gore zone, the car may have followed the other car, crossing over into the gore zone as it attempted to get behind that lead vehicle.

 

[dgatwood]

To me, it looks like the paint on the left-hand lane marker is also faded (right after the crosswalk) and Autopilot may have lost the lane marker, but you could be right that the crosswalk may have also confused it.

Looks like you have a vehicle with AP2 based on the purchase date. I'm slightly curious which software update you had installed at the time as well since (in my opinion) navigation on "city streets" noticeably improved in 2018.10.4, although "wide-lane" support is a double-edged sword (helps in some cases, but still rough/needs fine tuning in others).

That was 2018.10.4, but I first noticed the bug in an earlier firmware revision. It pretty consistently fails at that spot. Given that it's only a block from their supercharger, that seems like a really bad spot to fail.

I just got 2018.12 Wednesday night, so I'll try to remember to test that spot again when I charge tomorrow and see if it reproduces.

So what can be done to improve AP?
- additional front cameras on each side of the car to give a better stereoscopic vision.

Not sure how you can do much better than the three cameras that it already has in the front. That should be plenty to get a reliable depth map and recognize the difference between dips in the road and actual obstacles. More cameras = more data = heavier compute load and slower reaction time, so I would expect that to make things worse, not better.

- implement a more precise telemetry measurement to detect obstacles.

This. Actually use the stereoscopic data.

- increase obedience from the driver to keep the hands on the steering wheel.

I think that's about as likely as getting an elephant to dance in a tutu. It's nice in theory, but in practice, it only pisses off the elephant.

 

[MXWing]

I am no way going to let this AP steer for me. I am trying to find out if I lose TACC if I don’t buy EAP. Or if there is an option to personalize AP to not steer or deactivate after certain speed limit.

On educating the 7 year old, I myself have doubts have that I can use AP safely. At least, I am happy that my little one knows what I was planning to do with AP and is worried about me.

When you activate AP for the first time and it doesn't kill you, are you going to do the right thing and go back to these threads and own up to the FUD that you are spreading?

As mentioned, you need EAP for TACC but you still have to pass attention with TACC.

It's one thing to say "Hey - I'm going to be a new owner and I have doubts, but we'll see and I'll take input from experienced drivers" vs casting judgment and coming off as an authority figure on how all this works. :/

Children turn to their parents for guidance on how to feel about things. They are afraid of things their parents are afraid of. Because of that, I'm careful to not have irrational fears because of the negative influence that will impart.

Yes, TACC is part of EAP so if you don't purchase EAP you get plain old dumb CC. You can enable/activate just TACC if you want.

Even with just TACC only and without autosteer you are still not absolved from not paying attention. Nothing prevents another driver from abruptly cutting in front of you. One must still need to be able to read the mood anticipate actions from other drivers.

And if you make the mistake of accidentally double tapping the stalk to activate autosteer.

Well.. you just activated a 'kill switch' that can wipe out your entire family.

 

[thegruf]

...I think that's about as likely as getting an elephant to dance in a tutu. It's nice in theory, but in practice, it only pisses off the elephant.

just googled elephant in tutu for an amusing image in reponse to the above - think i'll put the familiy filter back on