First Tesla Autopilot death

[nctnico]

Still, I still find it hard to believe the driver didn't see a trailer crossing the road.

Most likely he wasn't looking.

If the sun is directly in your face it is hard to see ahead. Also the truck driver may have been tired of waiting and suddenly pulled up to cross the highway while assuming the other traffic would stop / was far enough away to stop. If you look on Reddit you can find the link to the intersection where it happened. It is a pretty simple situation.

[Towger]

They both have low resolution compared to let's say 3D laser scanners. A laser scanner shouldn't have a problem distinguishing between a truck and an overpath.

Google use lasers in their car, but  lidar does not work in the rain.

[Jeroen3]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-autopilot-death-self-driving-car-elon-musk

Here is another link, don't know if it is geo-locked though,

Apparently the car failed to differentiate the trailer from a bright sky, what has me more curious is why the car crashed after continuing down the road, if it was only the windscreen up that was impacted, the ECU's should have still been operating, so this may also hint at another issue,

I would assume the sudden deceleration of the collision would deploy airbags and disable any kind of driver assist.
If so, the car would coast. The same applies to a normal car. If you bump the steering wheel, or deploy the airbags, cruise control is disbled. If the driver is then unconscious or injured. Nothing stops the car.

[ez24]

Most likely he wasn't looking.

I wonder if is is ok (legal) to text while driving in these cars?

This will set this technology back years, so I will never be able to buy one 

Someone talked about side truck skirts like it is unusual not to require them.  So do other countries require them?  It would help (for radar) to have them but since we do not,  I am sure we never will.

Also I think there will be no lawsuit because of the disclaimers and I am sure Tesla will give the heirs a very good "settlement".

[rollatorwieltje]

Most likely he wasn't looking.

I wonder if is is ok (legal) to text while driving in these cars?

This will set this technology back years, so I will never be able to buy one 

Someone talked about side truck skirts like it is unusual not to require them.  So do other countries require them?  It would help (for radar) to have them but since we do not,  I am sure we never will.

Also I think there will be no lawsuit because of the disclaimers and I am sure Tesla will give the heirs a very good "settlement".

It is not legal to text or do anything else in a Tesla. Autopilot is basically just advanced cruise control, it isn't fully autonomous at all. It will be legal when the steering wheel goes away would be my guess.

Guards on the sides and back of trailers are mandatory in Europe sice the 80's. The side guards are mostly there to avoid other road users going under the wheels in a sideswipe collision. As a bonus they also reduce fuel consumption (when executed as skirts)..

[chris_leyson]

I think amyk is probably right, "Most likely he wasn't looking", I don't drive these day's as I was a crap driver and it's too expensive but at least I kept an eye on what was up ahead and behind. As regards sensors Omron have some high power pulsed IR LEDs specifically designed for time of flight distance measurement, I was looking to use then in a project. But I think anybody on the forum who has worked with image processing knows damned well how difficult it is even under artificial lighting conditions let alone real world lighting conditions. If you are going to use cameras to see what is up ahead you need at least two otherwise how the hell you get depth perception, and the car running "beta" software, how the hell is that legal.
Today I read thet BMW and Intel looking into developing autonomous vehicles,  , the roads are dangerous enough with bad drivers, but bad software driving you car 

[GreyWoolfe]

I was reading about this on FoxNews.com and the article said that the driver was supposedly watching a Harry Potter movie.  The truck driver told the Associated Press this, but nothing was mentioned in the initial police report so this information may have to be taken with grain of salt.  Here is a snippet of the article:

Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen" at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that "he went so fast through my trailer I didn't see him."

"It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road," Baressi told The Associated Press in an interview from his home in Palm Harbor, Florida. It was not immediately clear whether Tesla's systems would allow a movie to play while the car was being driven and there were no references to the movie in initial police reports.

[edavid]

They are claiming there was a portable DVD player: https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-shares-slip-following-fatality-damage-seen-limited-123836137--finance.html

[Gyro]

so this information may have to be taken with grain of salt

A wise caution, Fox News were reporting that we were leaving the UN the other day. 

[continuo]

Please... Harry Potter...

This has to be a hoax 

[SeanB]

Side skirts are not mandatory here on articulated trailers, but rear underriders are. They can and do save lives in collisions of a car into the rear of a truck, often occurring in twilight or inclement weather, or with a truck that had broken down ( depressingly common in some places, where you will often find a truck broken down multiple times a day for fuel flow problems or overheating, due to operators either not replacing fuel filters when clogged or neglecting to drain water, along with poor maintenance in general and use of incorrect fuel) where the vehicle is severely damaged, but the occupants survive.

I saw a graphic demo one evening travelling on a bus intercity. Station wagon came past in the mist doing close to Mach one, and I commented to the driver that we would see him soon again. Bus was doing a whole 20kph in the mist, and we had a long line behind us playing follow the leader. 10km later we stop for the mandated break, and 20 minutes later pull out to the long downhill pass section. A little down in the heavy fog ( mist on top of the mountain turned to fog on the way down) flashing  blue lights and a traffic cop indicating to change to next lane.  Carry on down another kilometre and more red and yellow lights, an ambulance and a tow truck, parked next to a sheet of what looked like crumpled white paper in the left of the road. another kilometre more and more blue lights, with a now convertible station wagon. Truck was 12km further at the bottom of the hill, he did not feel or hear the impact. No rear underrider, so the trailer bed cleaned the car off at door sill hight. No survivors there either, all 4 DOA.

Underriders became a mandatory item on all new trailers later, but you still have older ones which have none, as they are grandfathered in and have not changed owner. They do save lives.

As to drivers being stupid, I saw a guy one evening driving on the freeway, with a portable DVD player, playing a movie that would definitely " involve" the full attention of most regular men in it. He was doing 100 kph and not looking where he was going, except occasionally.  I passed and got out of the way, as he was coming up to merge areas and a notorious accident section.

[chris_leyson]

Google use lasers in their car, but  lidar does not work in the rain

I was reading something about this the other day, well months ago, I think it could well have been related to the Omron IR LEDs but they said it even worked in the rain or was it fog, damn I can't find the article now but I wasn't too surprised by this as many animals can see in IR, pirahas and goldfish can see in murky water for example but the particle size is a lot smaller, it's just a matter of scale or wavelength in that respect.
I can sort of see, no pun intended, how lasers don't work in the rain or fog, a narrow band souce is going to generate a lot of interference patterns whereas a broadband souce like an LED will be less likely to generate interference patterns. Anyway, lasers and bad optics waste of time.

[PA0PBZ]

Maybe I'm looking at this in a too simple way, but if he followed Tesla's recommendation that you should keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road he should have seen it coming and avoided the collision. If he did not see it coming then he would have crashed in any other car, and if he was watching a movie there's no way you can blame Tesla apart from giving the driver the false idea that the car would handle anything.

[Jeroen3]

Side skirts are called "fietsenvangers" (cyclist catchers) here. To catch cyclist who insist passing/staying next to trucks who are turning.
They are not intended to catch cars. They are made of aluminum bars which will bend.

[CJay]

Today I read thet BMW and Intel looking into developing autonomous vehicles,  , the roads are dangerous enough with bad drivers, but bad software driving you car 

If they manage to program it to indicate I'm all in favour of an autonomous BMW

[continuo]

I’m not rich enough to afford a Tesla Model S but what exactly is the purpose of the autopilot? You have to keep your hands on the steering wheel all the time as if you were driving the car on your own, you have to carefully watch the traffic, you have to be alert to take control of the car if the system fails, every second. If it crashes, you are responsible. Sounds quite dumb to me, you would be better of if you just drive it yourself. My suspicion: Almost all “autopilot” drivers will lose concentration after a few minutes max and start on daydreaming, texting on their phones or watching Hairy Twatter movies. If something is going wrong and the autopilot fails it takes them 10 seconds to wake up and act. Sounds like an outrageous dangerous gadget to me. Wonder how something like this ever got street legal 

[Jeroen3]

Autopilot in a traffic jam would be nice.

[continuo]

If they manage to program it to indicate I'm all in favour of an autonomous BMW

Zis is never going to happen   

[nctnico]

I tend to see it the other way around: the less you need to concentrate on controlling the car the more you can concentrate on the other traffic. I very much like to use the cruise control on long stretches of road.

@Continuo: that image is exactly the reason I'll never buy a BMW! No, I'm not kidding.

[SeanB]

Autopilot is great for slow traffic, where you are bumper to bumper and moving at walking pace ( or slower, where an EV is most efficient at MPG figures over any other vehicle) for a few minutes. Higher speed on a good straight road as well, but there you need no sudden events like animals. Other times the technology is not yet right.

On the gripping hand, i did see a Break My Window the other day using indicators to turn, but this could have been that the hazard lihts were on and the one bulb had burnt out. Common to see them with no lights at the rear and only the one headlight ( often only the bright) working.

[Marco]

They both have low resolution compared to let's say 3D laser scanners. A laser scanner shouldn't have a problem distinguishing between a truck and an overpath.  They are more expensive though and interfere with the aesthetic design of the car.

Fundamentally there is nothing they can do which a XBOX-One type depth camera can't (unfortunately only designed for small distances). It's just cheaper to design a laser scanner and do a high rep rate distance measurement than tape out a per pixel ToF determining ASIC ... also the laser scanner is old unencumbered tech and per pixel ToF is a patent minefield (Microsoft bought up most of the mines though).

[donotdespisethesnake]

The driver in the fatal crash was the same guy who posted the video of his car avoiding a collision:



In this one he said "I became aware of the danger when Tessy alerted me with the "immediately take over" warning chime and the car swerving to the right to avoid the side collision", you can also hear some audio either radio or a video.

So it is highly likely he was watching a DVD and letting the car drive unmonitored.

I guess one of the advantages of working in tech is also understanding the limitations. Interesting moral question for engineers, is it better to provide "autopilot" mode and save hundred smart people from a collision even if one careless user dies? Or not allow anyone to use it until it is perfect?

[Marco]

Google use lasers in their car, but  lidar does not work in the rain.

Rain would make finding the right threshold for the measurement tricky I guess.

If you used a pulse packet instead of a pulse or step though, you could use correlation to find the largest response though ... although that makes what I said above about being able to use an ASIC a lie, this is much more suited to doing serial measurements at high rep rates.

[edy]

I’m not rich enough to afford a Tesla Model S but what exactly is the purpose of the autopilot? You have to keep your hands on the steering wheel all the time as if you were driving the car on your own, you have to carefully watch the traffic, you have to be alert to take control of the car if the system fails, every second. If it crashes, you are responsible. Sounds quite dumb to me, you would be better of if you just drive it yourself. My suspicion: Almost all “autopilot” drivers will lose concentration after a few minutes max and start on daydreaming, texting on their phones or watching Hairy Twatter movies. If something is going wrong and the autopilot fails it takes them 10 seconds to wake up and act. Sounds like an outrageous dangerous gadget to me. Wonder how something like this ever got street legal 

Exactly, the responsibility with all of these assists... no matter how far they advance... will still be the driver's. When does it "cross over" to the point that driver's are not responsible? Ultimately, we are heading towards the autonomously piloting vehicle where passengers will have no control of the vehicle whatsoever. Only at that point will you be able to sit back, with no control, and pray the systems are all working properly. Much like when taking public transportation.

Will these "transitory" technologies save lives? No doubt the stats are being gathered and we will know in a few years whether there is more benefit than harm. We know seat belts and airbags save lives. We also suspect that driver assist systems, given an ALERT AND AWARE DEFENSIVE DRIVER, save more lives because they fill in some of those "gaps" that sometimes still cause accidents. The key term is: "ALERT and AWARE DEFENSIVE DRIVER" + Driver assist = Save more lives than just ALERT and AWARE DEFENSIVE DRIVER *alone.

But.... What we don't know yet is if driver assist systems cause too much "complacency" and therefore drivers will not be as focused and alert and defensive. That is:

UNAWARE/BAD/DISTRACTED DRIVER + Driver Assist

...is WORSE THAN...

ALERT/AWARE DEFENSIVE DRIVER (with or without Driver Assist)

The Driver Assist may cause increases in DISTRACTED DRIVERS. Especially now with all the tech in cars.

We just got a 2016 Honda Pilot with Nav and it is full of technologies. However, I have tried to drive the thing and it is too distracting. The radio has 50 options, all ergonomically stupid. Touch-screen, buttons, menus all over, dozens of buttons on the steering wheel. It's barely usable when you are in park. Now imagine driving down the road at a high clip and trying to figure out something on the menu or navigation.

And I'm not some old geezer (no offense to old geezers). I'm in my 40's and experienced with computers and programming and have multitasked my whole life. But the interfaces in cars really sucks. At least this Honda one. All of the assists, buttons, features, etc... have only added to the "feature sheet" and may be great in theory but when the average driver needs to go from A to B, this stuff seems to be just overkill.

Compared to only a few years ago... My 2011 Honda CR-V (no Nav) has a simple radio system, no touch screen, no bluetooth, etc. I drive and listen to MP3's on USB or iPod hooked up to the USB input, or AUX in, Radio or CD Player or XM Radio. Very few buttons and options comparatively. I  don't get distracted by a million tech features in the car.... And even then, I have to pay full attention to the road because driving these days in a major city requires a lot of attention.

I feel like car companies have reached a limit on innovation on the mechanical/fuel efficiency side, or they feel the easiest way to get people to "upgrade" to a new car is by enticing them with technology improvements... since the cycle on tech is faster than the cycle on a car rusting or dying mechanically. Since most tech is deeply "built-in" to cars, it will be difficult to really upgrade a car with older tech. It is not easy to rip out the entire dash and fit in a new system. I'm going to stick to my basic few-distraction interior for now.
 

 

[Maxlor]

Florida Highway Patrol has published a sketch of the accident. Can't see any other possibility but driver distraction.