Blog Tesla Releases Data on Utah Autopilot Crash

Last week, a woman in Utah crashed her Autopilot-enabled Tesla Model S into the back of a parked fire truck at 60 mph. The car was totaled, but the woman escaped with only a broken ankle.

During an investigation of the crash, the woman admitted that she was looking at her phone during the accident. In addition to local law enforcement, the crash is also under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Tesla agreed to cooperate with investigators and on Wednesday, the South Jordan Police Department shared details from data recovered on the car’s computer.

Technicians from Tesla successfully recovered the data from the vehicle. According to Tesla’s

report, shared in a press release from the police department, the vehicle indicated:



The driver engaged Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control on multiple occasions

during this drive cycle. She repeatedly cancelled and then re-engaged these features, and

regularly adjusted the vehicle’s cruising speed.

Drivers are repeatedly advised Autopilot features do not make Tesla vehicles

“autonomous” and that the driver absolutely must remain vigilant with their eyes on the

road, hands on the wheel and they must be prepared to take any and all action necessary

to avoid hazards on the road.

The vehicle registered more than a dozen instances of her hands being off the steering

wheel in this drive cycle. On two such occasions, she had her hands off the wheel for

more than one minute each time and her hands came back on only after a visual alert

was provided. Each time she put her hands back on the wheel, she took them back off the

wheel after a few seconds.

About 1 minute and 22 seconds before the crash, she re-enabled Autosteer and Cruise

Control, and then, within two seconds, took her hands off the steering wheel again. She

did not touch the steering wheel for the next 80 seconds until the crash happened; this is

consistent with her admission that she was looking at her phone at the time.

The vehicle was traveling at about 60 mph when the crash happened. This is the speed

the driver selected.

The driver manually pressed the vehicle brake pedal fractions of a second prior to the

crash.

Contrary to the proper use of Autopilot, the driver did not pay attention to the road at all

times, did not keep her hands on the steering wheel, and she used it on a street with no

center median and with stoplight controlled intersections.



Police said the driver of the Tesla was issued a traffic citation for failure to keep proper lookout under South Jordan City municipal code 10.28.030 (traffic infraction).

“As a reminder for drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles, it is the driver’s responsibility to stay

alert, drive safely, and be in control of the vehicle at all times,” the release said. “Tesla makes it clear that drivers should always watch the road in front of them and be prepared to take corrective actions. Failure to do so can result in serious injury or death.”

NHTSA continues to conduct their own review of this incident.

 

[bhzmark]

This partial blocking

not-in-control

driver may have been drunk.

Multiple factors involved. Removing any one of them perhaps wld have avoided the accident.

But even sober attentive drivers might not perceive a partially blocked lane until they were right up on it.

Fire trucks shouldn't partially block lanes. If the lane needs to be blocked they should clearly block the entire lane

 

[Raechris]

Over reliance on a hands on driver aid - it is not an autonomous system. It would be interesting to see if this education problem happened when cruise control was first introduced for lack of experience with a new driving aid

 

[WannabeOwner]

But even sober attentive drivers might not perceive a partially blocked lane until they were right up on it.

Agreed, except that an emergency vehicle has its flashing lights on ... I give them extra room even if they are taking up 100% of the next lane ... so I don't have any sympathy with anyone running into one.

Unless the flashing lights are found to be ineffective? I think you have red flashing lights in USA (whereas Blue here). Maybe Blue is more effective (because not used for other aspects of lighting, e.g. [and what I consider to be utterly daft] having flashing-red-tail-light as turning indicators, instead of mandating use of orange for that.

I'm dyslexic, I have "slow processing", and whilst I'm not thick the plethora of marketing-department-originating designs and styles for rear-lights on cars worries me that I might be slow to interpret a situation in an emergency and "more conventional and more consistent" use of lights would help [people like me].

It would be interesting to see if this education problem happened when cruise control was first introduced for lack of experience with a new driving aid

Early cruise-control that I had was not traffic-aware, so if approaching a slower vehicle I needed to disengage or brake (which also disengaged). Thus attention was needed more often, and of course I still had to steer so unlike stay-in-lane I couldn't take my eyes of the road [for long], so maybe that meant that early Cruisce Control had no / little impact [sorry!] on accidents? I don't remember negative news-headings at the time ...

I have a very strongly self-imposed rule for AP driving that I do not allow any distraction. It would be very easy to think that it is OK to just quickly read a text when my phone Beeps. I don't. And I always have a hand on the wheel - to the point where I don't understand people complaining about Nags and driving no AP with their hands on their lap. AP is so good, more than 99% of the time, that I think folk are lulled into false-sense-of-security. Maybe the car is only going to drive into a fatal gore-point/barrier once in 100/1,000 car ownerships ... I do not want to be that statistic, and I firmly believe that in such an extremely rare incident that the difference between hands-on-lap and hands-on-wheel might make the difference that keeps me alive. But my car has now done over 50,000 miles and mile after mile on AP without any scary moments, and that must make some people complacent enough to allow themselves to become distracted.

 

[cwerdna]

As I posted in another thread: Tesla sued: Woman wants $300k for crashing on Autopilot while reading phone | ZDNet. It seems to be the same woman.

 

[Brando]

Agreed, except that an emergency vehicle has its flashing lights on ... I give them extra room even if they are taking up 100% of the next lane ... so I don't have any sympathy with anyone running into one.

Unless the flashing lights are found to be ineffective? I think you have red flashing lights in USA (whereas Blue here). Maybe Blue is more effective (because not used for other aspects of lighting, e.g. [and what I consider to be utterly daft] having flashing-red-tail-light as turning indicators, instead of mandating use of orange for that.

I'm dyslexic, I have "slow processing", and whilst I'm not thick the plethora of marketing-department-originating designs and styles for rear-lights on cars worries me that I might be slow to interpret a situation in an emergency and "more conventional and more consistent" use of lights would help [people like me].



Early cruise-control that I had was not traffic-aware, so if approaching a slower vehicle I needed to disengage or brake (which also disengaged). Thus attention was needed more often, and of course I still had to steer so unlike stay-in-lane I couldn't take my eyes of the road [for long], so maybe that meant that early Cruisce Control had no / little impact [sorry!] on accidents? I don't remember negative news-headings at the time ...

I have a very strongly self-imposed rule for AP driving that I do not allow any distraction. It would be very easy to think that it is OK to just quickly read a text when my phone Beeps. I don't. And I always have a hand on the wheel - to the point where I don't understand people complaining about Nags and driving no AP with their hands on their lap. AP is so good, more than 99% of the time, that I think folk are lulled into false-sense-of-security. Maybe the car is only going to drive into a fatal gore-point/barrier once in 100/1,000 car ownerships ... I do not want to be that statistic, and I firmly believe that in such an extremely rare incident that the difference between hands-on-lap and hands-on-wheel might make the difference that keeps me alive. But my car has now done over 50,000 miles and mile after mile on AP without any scary moments, and that must make some people complacent enough to allow themselves to become distracted.

you've pointed out many of my "suspected" reasons for why US auto deaths are 3 to 4 times higher by most any metric compared to other industrialized nations.

 

[WannabeOwner]

you've pointed out many of my "suspected" reasons for why US auto deaths are 3 to 4 times higher by most any metric compared to other industrialized nations.

Interesting, thanks. Had never come across that, it was just my observation.

 

[jgs]

US auto deaths are 3 to 4 times higher by most any metric compared to other industrialized nations

I too was previously unaware of that statistic. 3-4x seems a little overstated, though. Looking at List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia and just comparing the US and the UK (because they happen to conveniently sort together alphabetically) I see that the US is indeed in that range per capita (3.7x). It's higher than the UK, but not by as much (2.5x) per vehicle. It's higher but by still less (2x) per mile driven. Looking at a few other industrialized nations, France and Germany are closer to the US. Japan actually has a greater death rate per mile driven, as does Spain.