'There was no one driving that vehicle': Texas cops suspect Autopilot involved after two men killed in Tesla crash
- Reference: 1618867807
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/19/autopilot_tesla_fatal_crash/
- Source link:
According to reports, the collision happened at 23:25 local time on 17 April in the Houston suburb of The Woodlands.
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Neither of the two unnamed victims – born in 1962 and 1951 – were in the driver's seat at the time of the accident, according to Sgt Cynthia Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4, who spoke to [2]local TV station Khou-TV (geo-restricted).
Constable Mark Herman added the department was "100 per cent certain" no one was driving the vehicle.
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"Our investigators are trained. They handle collisions. Several of our folks are reconstructionists, but they feel very confident just with the positioning of the bodies after the impact that there was no one driving that vehicle," he said.
The vehicle, a 2019 Tesla Model S, was said to be traveling at high speeds when it failed to properly navigate a corner. After careering off the roadway, the car hit a tree and burst into flames.
Herman said it took four hours and more than 30,000 gallons of water for firefighters to extinguish the flames. With conventional cars, this takes a few minutes, he added, and fire crews were forced to contact Tesla for advice, understood to mean on how to deal with a fire involving its batteries.
[4]Listen, son... Monster trucks just aren't cool anymore. Real winners drive Tesla Roadsters
[5]Tesla broke US labor law with anti-union efforts – watchdog
[6]Bitcoin surges, exchanges flooded after Tesla says it bought $1.5bn in BTC, hopes to accept it as payment soon
[7]Watchdog urges Tesla to recall 158,000 Model S, X cars to fix knackered NAND flash that borks safety features
Tesla boss Elon Musk has not explicitly responded to the incident. He had posted a tweet earlier that day claiming cars running Autopilot were 10 times less likely to have an accident than the overall average.
Tesla has always maintained that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel when its Autopilot software is engaged, making it more of a super-cruise-control rather than a true autonomous vehicle system.
This wouldn't be the first fatal crash involving Autopilot. In 2019, a Tesla 3 [8]smashed into a passing truck killing the driver. Investigators claimed he engaged Autopilot about 10 seconds before the collision. The following year, the family of a Japanese cyclist killed after colliding with a Model X [9]sued the company in California Federal Court , alleging its Autopilot software failed to recognise other road users, and allowed the occupant of the vehicle to doze off while behind the wheel.
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The Register has asked Tesla to comment. ®
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"more of a super-cruise-control"
Tesla has always maintained that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel when its Autopilot software is engaged
Surely it is easier to keep an eye on the driver than the road around the car. Why don't these things have in car monitoring making it impossible for it to drive if the occupants aren't in the driving seat. OK, I get the feature that you can ask your car to come out of a parking space so you can get in easily if the cars next to you are too close, so maybe allow it to move a few yards at 1 or 2 MPH, but hurtling down the highway with no one at the wheel? Come on.
At the minimum the car should be taking a photo and posting it online to warn all other road users to stay away from the idiot.
Re: "more of a super-cruise-control"
First they need to be forced to no longer market it as "autopilot" as that implies a level of ability/capability/etc that doesn't exist. A plane has an autopilot that allows it to fly itself to specific waypoints along a route, but there still has to be a physical Human pilot at the stick. If you market your car as having an "autopilot" then you are implying it, too, can handle the bulk of any situation the vehicle is likely to encounter. Yet like the airplane it still requires a Human driver at the controls to take over for those times the car can't decide what to do.
I'm totally blind, I do not have & can not get a valid driver's license, so I can not legally drive a motor vehicle. Unless & until I can legally climb into the no-longer-legally-required driver's seat to have the car take care of *everything*, then you absolutely can not call it a true autopilot. If it might need a legal driver with full Human sensory perceptions to take over control in an emergency, then it's not an autopilot, it's just a bunch of software that lets it try & stay inside the lines.
Re: "more of a super-cruise-control"
Apparently other manufacturers' (GM?) systems have eye tracking cameras, which tells their cars where the driver's eyes are looking. No eyeballs in place looking the right way, no-go.
I gather that eye-tracking tech is fairly mature, reliable and not especially difficult. Given that such a thing is pretty good for when the driver starts nodding off, that alone is a safety improvement regardless of whether the car is self or human driven.
I like the idea of a car auto-posting "warning, my driver is an idiot" pictures!
Well, another two idiots written off.
Perhaps Tesla should name its cars after famous biologists. Darwin would be a good starting point.
Tesla boss Elon Musk has not explicitly responded to the incident
Well there is a surprise /s