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Tesla vs. semi crash reported 03.11.21

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Thread title is FUD and ClickBait

🤦🏻‍♂️ “on THE AP”. Can’t even take this poster seriously

"AP" in this case I believe meant "Associated Press", check the by-line in the article. Regardless, there were multiple ways to misinterpret the thread title...at least two have been fixed.

Bruce.
 
Looks to me like the Model Y (no question; door handles and rear liftgate are definitive) was headed south-southeast on Waterman (at 3:20AM...), entered the intersection with Fort St, went under the moving semi (headed west-southwest), and got dragged along Fort to somewhere close to the exit from the muffler shop
That all seems correct. I'll also point out that if the Tesla was traveling SSE on Waterman through the Fort St. intersection, in order to get there, it would have come from the W Fisher Service Dr. intersection, which is a 4-way stop, and only about 180 ft away. It would be hard to imagine a law-abiding passenger vehicle getting enough speed to have this kind of an accident from a dead stop at such a short distance. I'm guessing someone ran that light, and they might have been doing it quickly.
 
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...disturbing news...

NTSB/NHTSA have been investigated Tesla Autopilot accidents multiple times starting from the fatal 2016 Florida Autopilot crash, so this is nothing new.

Each time, they have concluded that the system is L2 so the driver should drive the car instead of letting the car drives the driver.

However, they repeatedly want Tesla to crack down on L2 driver's freedom by implementing a stricter driver-nanny system such as

1) interior camera (not just Tesla steering wheel torque monitoring style) to monitor drivers and disable the Autopilot for inattentive drivers,

and

2) geofence just like the GM Cruise that making paying for the automation useless in most scenarios except if you are driving on pre-mapped non-reconstruction zone freeways with only limited entries and exits (no turns from median allowed).

It's possible they will keep investigating Tesla until Tesla will cave in the demands.
 
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So - owners still complaining (as has yours truly) about phantom braking (seems over pass is the lion's share) on the one hand ... but on the other, there still seems to be the possibility of sliding under trailers (if AP is on). Make mine phantom, if there's a choice.

.
 
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That all seems correct. I'll also point out that if the Tesla was traveling SSE on Waterman through the Fort St. intersection, in order to get there, it would have come from the W Fisher Service Dr. intersection, which is a 4-way stop, and only about 180 ft away. It would be hard to imagine a law-abiding passenger vehicle getting enough speed to have this kind of an accident from a dead stop at such a short distance. I'm guessing someone ran that light, and they might have been doing it quickly.
Good point. I guess I could see someone launching from that stop sign (or just ignoring it since it was 3:20 in the morning) in an attempt to blow through that intersection right after the light turned red, but got unlucky because the semi had timed the light, or something.

Or just blatantly ran the red, after running the stop sign. All quite inexplicable but that's how most accidents are.

.. but on the other, there still seems to be the possibility of sliding under trailers (if AP is on). Make mine phantom, if there's a choice.

I'm not sure what this has to do with those prior situations, since AP was almost certainly not in use here. (The police in your video suspect the driver ran the red light.)

I guess we could say that AEB does not seem tuned to brake for semi trailers; the detection is still not good enough for that? That seems consistent with prior experience and related. Though I'm not sure what AEB does when the driver is pushing the accelerator. It may be very little.

I wonder what was this video the investigators speak of, showing the evasive maneuvers.

I mean, I suppose it is possible the truck ran the red light. But doesn’t sound like that’s what the investigators think so far. Maybe they have surveillance video from the muffler shop.
 
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NTSB/NHTSA have been investigated Tesla Autopilot accidents multiple times starting from the fatal 2016 Florida Autopilot crash, so this is nothing new.

Each time, they have concluded that the system is L2 so the driver should drive the car instead of letting the car drives the driver.

However, they repeatedly want Tesla to crack down on L2 driver's freedom by implementing a stricter driver-nanny system such as

1) interior camera (not just Tesla steering wheel torque monitoring style) to monitor drivers and disable the Autopilot for inattentive drivers,

and

2) geofence just like the GM Cruise that making paying for the automation useless in most scenarios except if you are driving on pre-mapped non-reconstruction zone freeways with only limited entries and exits (no turns from median allowed).

It's possible they will keep investigating Tesla until Tesla will cave in the demands.
I just wanted to clarify that NTSB and NHTSA are not the same entity. NHTSA is overall ok with Tesla's implementation (at least after previous investigations, this may change in future ones if they determine it's not enough). NTSB however is not, and have been very vocal they want NHTSA to force way more changes on Tesla.
This is the NHTSA:
About NHTSA
This is the NTSB:
About the National Transportation Safety Board

The NTSB can make recommendations, but have no enforcement powers. The NHTSA has enforcement powers via fines for not complying, and also handle a bunch of different things (like recalls, TSBs, crash testing, etc).

In fact, NTSB have heavily criticized the NHTSA for not following its recommendations, most recently last month.
NTSB cites Tesla to make the case for stricter autonomous driving regulation | Engadget

NTSB slammed the NHTSA in 2020 multiple times:
Safety tension boils over at hearing on Autopilot

In this case the reports is the NHTSA has sent a team to investigate. The reports that use the headline that NTSB have done so, appear to have made the same mistake you did (treating both the same), given when you go to the body of the articles, it says it's the NHTSA.
 
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Here's today's coverage at 5:07pm from Detroit NBC 4's of the accident including the police's update of info.

BTW this is an new video from the one @hill posted above although the video image appears to be the same used.


I have to wonder if the driver knew he was going to hit the trailer and ducked a second a head of time where as the passenger maybe didn't have as much time to react, her being the person in critical condition with head (brain bleeding) and back injuries according to the news broadcast. Such a frightening thing to see. I wonder if there will ever be legislation to have the skirts mandatory on trailers.
 
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As was mentioned further up the thread, police have already determined autopilot was not engaged. Another case sadly of driver error.
“We believe that once we look at that black box and download that information along with the information that is on the SD card, we’ll be able to determine for sure whether or not the vehicle was in auto pilot mode or not,” added (Detroit Police Department Assistant Chief, David) LeValley.

Do they have the ability to pull that information themselves, without giving the "black box" and SD card to Tesla?

“Guerrero has been charged with reckless driving causing serious injury... It appears that speed was a major factor in the collision. All the indications that we have at this point are that the vehicle was not in autopilot mode, that the driver was in control of the vehicle at the time of the crash,” said LeValley.

For the purposes of Autopilot or not, I guess "in control" means that he was driving. So he was driving out of control "in control" then.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news...ing-semi-truck-that-critically-injured-woman/
 
...Do they have the ability to pull that information themselves, without giving the "black box" and SD card to Tesla?...

I think you can retrieve camera footage and user-recorded music from a USB card but not the car's log.

If they don't want to get it free from Tesla (as in a court warrant), they'll need to buy $1,200 cable to retrieve the car's log on their own as sampled below:

1615958973777.png
 
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I just saw an image on a DailyMail article of the car and truck during the daylight and it looks to me like the trailer did have a white skirt on it and the driver crashed into it. This photo follows the one of Banner's red Model 3 and shows more of the trailer to the right of the car. In the other photos I've seen this was cut off or not obvious in the photos, maybe had already been removed. In which case if autopilot was on I think the car would have recognized the skirt on the trailer and braked. Do people agree?

Also found this short Instagram video from Metrodetroitnews showing the trailer and car in the morning and with a slight pano view of the area.
 
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In which case if autopilot was on I think the car would have recognized the skirt on the trailer and braked. Do people agree?

I don’t want to get ahead of the investigation here, but I’d bet a lot of money that AP/FSD was not on here. There’s no information from anyone involved, including the driver, indicating that AP was in use. And the circumstances are completely inconsistent with AP use. You’d be unlikely to get this sort of collision with this severity with AP or FSD in use on surface streets. The speed limits are very low.

Frankly, all these articles pointing to the possibility of AP seem completely stupid. And I am not one to defend Tesla on this sort of thing (I was not saying this on the last underrunning incident in Florida which was due to the use of AP). But these articles are ridiculous, because everyone is saying that AP was not in use, and it would not make any sense for it to be in use anyway - plus it’s quite unlikely to use it in this environment and have this result. But, clicks.

As far as detection, I do not know what AEB would do if you have the go pedal mashed to the floor, which looks like was an approximation of the situation here. To me it looks like the car did not act significantly on any detection, and these aero deflectors they have under the trailer do not prevent under running. I would think the radar would have picked it up a bit, but there was no time to do anything significant to mitigate the collision, even if the car actually reacted.

In a very different situation, if AP had been in use, the car would have been traveling much more slowly, and perhaps the detection would have worked, and perhaps the car would have collided less violently with the truck, if the truck had run the red. But no idea how reliable that would be.

I have no idea what this driver was thinking, and his poor girlfriend (?) was the victim, while somehow he apparently came out basically fine (I guess it says he is critical but he seems quite communicative).

No indication of drunkenness at this point, nothing mentioned - looks like just straight up showing off Tesla acceleration at 3:20 in the morning. Bizarre, but young people literally have incompletely formed brains, so that is the way it goes. Race on tracks, not on public roads.
 
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...it looks to me like the trailer did have a white skirt...
Agreed!

On the same side of Tesla, there's white skirt on its right (passenger side), white color on the same side, black on the other side due to lack of light:

whiteskirts.jpg




On the opposite side where the Tesla went through underneath, the Tesla lifted up the white skirt:

wjbk_tesla-v-semi-2_031121[1].jpg
 
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...I wonder if there will ever be legislation to have the skirts mandatory on trailers.

A skirt (in this case) or a solid cement median divider (in the Mountain View fatal Model X Autopilot case) won't help.

That's because current Tesla's automation system is still using RADAR which is designed to label moving obstacles running in the same direction as Tesla are dangerous.

If the obstacles are stationary or moving but in a different direction (Lateral Turn Across Path--LTAP, in this case), then the current RADAR is designed to ignore them and the car would go ahead and slam right into them as proven in previous Autopilot accidents (not just fatal but also non-fatal Autopilot accidents too: Police cars, fire trucks, vans...).

That's why other companies are using LIDARS for those above cases.
 
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If the obstacles are stationary or moving but in a different direction (Lateral Turn Across Path--LTAP, in this case)

Yeah most likely. Though in this case as the truck moved the return on the angled aero skirts (they are not always perfectly parallel to the sides of the trailer, which I think was the case here, as you can see in the picture) would have changed position (first you would get return on nothing, then on cab, then return on aero deflector, then return on deflector a little closer, etc.). Likely not enough to trigger much reaction though, as you say. Seems like speed might have been high enough that even a reaction would not have prevented the collision.
 
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A skirt (in this case) or a solid cement median divider (in the Mountain View fatal Model X Autopilot case) won't help.
Truck guards or lateral protective devices would at least provide protection against under-run. If you can have the full protection of your cars crumple zones and airbags you've got some chance. Under-running the truck, even if there's a skirt, gives almost no protection.

Of course at a high enough speed nothing will help. Based on this crash and the survival of both occupants, though injured, side guards (not skirts) could have been helpful.
 
"Moderator note: Edited thread title to be more descriptive and less click-baity."

click-baity certainly wasn't the intention

AP was referencing Associated Press
I posted this article because I am concerened for Teslas FSD and how its being recieved by the non-Tesla community
- and to clarify for the sensitive folks - FSD means FULL SELF DRIVING -

good grief
 
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