Two reports of Teslas on AP hitting stopped vehicles in their lane on the freeway

[bmah]

Moderator note: Merged multiple threads on the same topic.

Bruce.

 

[MrAustraliaTax]

I don't think anyone believes that once the autopilot is set the pilots take a nap, decide to read a book or watch a movie

Actually, I think that's *exactly* what people think an airplane autopilot does, hence why there are so many mishaps with Tesla autopilot.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

You make it sound like Tesla is somehow ahead of the pack in visual crash avoidance. In actual fact, they are behind the pack. Many other manufacturers have visual stopped vehicle avoidance at a level significantly more reliable than Tesla.

But, if we're really being honest they kind of all suck in some way.

Sure some are better in visual stopped vehicle avoidance, but then there is some other issue that plagues them. Like BMW X1 famously failed even the basic IIHS pedestrian detection. Other vehicles like the Nissan Rogue had to be recalled due to massive fall positives with AEB.

Not a single manufacture aced the AAA pedestrian detection, and Tesla in particular did poorly.

A lot of it comes down to the fact that the testing by the various agencies like the IIHS are simply not that rigorous. There also seems to be an allowance for false positives which I regard as being far worse than false negatives.

So I think for things to get better the testing has to get better. So poorly implemented system get exposed in testing, and not on the streets.

One thing that's cool about Tesla is any weakness in detection/localization gets exposed pretty easily. They're the only ones that I'm aware of that give visualization. They're the first ones to really try to give the customer the ability to fully utilize things like autosteer without being nagged to death. After a bit of use it was soon apparent that the MobileEye based AP1 had some serious limitations when it came to radar and visual detection. Hence to two fatality accidents, and the split from MobileEye.

 

[MP3Mike]

And here is what it looks like when someone with a vehicle without automatic safety systems pilots their vehicle into a first responders vehicle:

Cyberlon Tusk on Twitter

 

[Fredneck]

And there it is. Do not put your life in the hands of any of these systems. Until manufacturers improve the systems to the point where they’re confident enough to take on liability while the system controls the car, you absolutely should always be monitoring and ready to take over no matter what system you’re using.

That doesn't even happen when not driving on autopilot. That's why we have accidents.

 

[Saghost]

Because the driver was paying attention and braked hard to avoid collision. Like really?



Your mental gymnastic on anything Tesla is downright unhealthy.

Autopilot accelerates towards stopping vehicles!

Seriously?!?

Here we are in a thread that’s about accidents that folks believe are caused by Autopilot not being able to recognize stopped cars in the lane that it never saw move.

You post without further explanation that another one happened today, attaching a video that doesn’t feature stopped cars that it never saw move or a collision, and somehow I’m the one doing mental gymnastics when I point out that the video is totally unrelated to the subject at hand?!?

This thread isn’t about whether Autopilot can drive in every circumstance, and it isn’t about idiots on the freeway. That video belongs in a different discussion, and one has to wonder why you felt the need to distract from this discussion with it...

 

[MrMassTransit]

I completely understand... I am a pilot myself! I do have to add though, as you know, we have been trained in the operation of the craft and must hold a rating in such type of craft to legally fly it. Should there be training for driving assist vehicles?

Driver assist or not, I personally believe that the training and standards to receive and hold a driver’s license should be substantially increased. I think a module on driver assist technology would probably be worthwhile, but we need to raise the level of training and accountability across the board.

 

[qdeathstar]

You’re kidding yourself if you think everyone who uses autopilot is paying as close attention as they would if driving normally.

no, but that’s not the standard i would use to determine if we should outlaw autopilot or not,

 

[Bladerskb]

The fire truck was a couple years ago, and I don’t think it would happen with today’s firmware.

I don’t know what happened with this new case in CT, but I’m guessing it is some form of mode confusion - the car didn’t think it was doing what the driver thinks it is doing.

As someone noted above, one obvious way for this to happen is the driver accidentally pressing the accelerator while they twist in the seat to look behind them.

Detecting stopped cars is a fundamental challenge for all Adaptive Cruise Control and Autonomous systems, but these days Tesla has gotten pretty good at it.

 

[Kenz]

Tesla's software is still improving month after month.
I would not put the following distance to the lowest level for safety sake.
I keep mine at the max level for safety and it seems to work fine.
Being too aggressive can be dangerous.