News: 1620735313

There is no technology that is idiot proof, especially when driving at 60 MPH with hands off the wheel.

Fundamental problem with any AI or ML system is that it has no conscience, self awareness or self preservation. It doesn't care or know if it kills itself, its operator or any other person or animal in the process.

A donkey pulling a cart is more intelligent than any of this sh!t which is being wilfully set loose on our roads.

The day that computers gain a conscience we are all doomed, though.

Driving should be restricted to people over 70 who passed their test 50years earlier haven't had an eye test for 30 years and are taking more than a dozen different types of medication.

You can't trust computers

So, you're going to need to be more specific, if in a very broad way. Ban the cars, then?

Ban what? Old people driving cars?

The situation here is:

* Two people get in a car

* Crash spectacularly less than 200metres down the road

* Tesla claim autopilot wasn't engaged, and even if they're lying, NTSB failed to make an exemplar car engage Autopilot on that stretch of road (unless you're then making the case that Tesla quickly pushed an update disabling AP for that specific stretch to cover their tracks, in which case I have a fine range of tinfoil hats you might enjoy).

Based on the evidence, Occams Razor suggests the most likely sequence of events went something like:

Jimbo gets in the car with Dimbo, says "hey, watch this", thinking to show off the spectacular acceleration common to EVs and Teslas in particular. Enables launch control, hurtles 100m down a 30mph residential road and loses control. Neither bothered to put on their seatbelts because hey, they're only taking a quick turn around the block - how much trouble are they going to get into?

I'm more than happy to see flack thrown at Tesla when it's deserved, but the way this played out on a notionally 30mph road looks far more like someone playing the fool as they depart the house.

"although Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted that logs recovered indicated that Autopilot had not been enabled"

If the storage has been destroyed how the fuck did they know that??

or does it constantly tell HQ everything?? (major privacy issue!!)

I don't own a Tesla, so I don't know if this is actually true or not, but...

I would have thought a lot of data is logged "in the cloud" so you, as an owner, can retrieve and review it later on.

The owner ? Retrieve his own data ? Outrageous thoughts!

>does it constantly tell HQ everything?? (major privacy issue!!)

Yes

If the storage has been destroyed how the fuck did they know that??

The dashboard infotainment storage was destroyed but the black box safety data logger was read by the NTSB.

Ps if your car has an airbag it likely has data logging recording the rate of deceleration before the impact, even if there is no other spyware in the car

I'd have thought that seeing the car can tell you you're not wearing a seat belt when someone is on the passenger seat then it must know where you're sitting and then refuse to go if you don't have a person in the driver's seat. Granted the person there may not be awake.

Even my incredibly dumb Volkswagen Up! can tell me when I'm not wearing a seat belt.

> A parallel investigation by the Harris County Texas Precinct 4 Constable's Office is also under way.

No doubt that will find the cause was the use of EE-lec-tricity to power a car. Should have used god fearin' gasoline like Davy Crocket intended.

It's the NTSB they will decide it's the pilots drivers fault and then send Boeing a bunch of flowers

In a previous case reported here they didn't cooperate with the NHTSA:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/26/tesla_apple_death/

"Members of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), questioned during the hearing, said Tesla snubbed requests to describe how its cars were designed to operate under specific conditions, and that Elon Musk's engineers did not intend to take any actions regarding NHTSA’s recommendations in its previous safety reports."

Has Tesla's policy changed? Do they always cooperate when the NTSB get involved? Or is it on a case-by-case basis?

So autosteer needs white lines painted on the road to work then. Might as well have a slot in the road to recharge the car and steer it at the same time. IE a big Scale Scalextric.

BTW what happens if two driverless cars meet each other on a single track road?

A quantum singularity, swiftly followed by a series of rapid fire Musk tweets and an unfathomable rise in the value of dogecoin?

dodgycoin?

DodgeCoin, buy your next Fiat Chrysler product today!

I'll get my coat, no shoving, yes I know it's a horrible joke.

So many options:

They both go "safe and stop". refusing to go in any direction.

They both drive to the nearside into the verge/bank/ditch/hedge

One or both goes into a dither and whilst it is thinking about what to do drives head-on into the other.

One or both have figured out where the last passing place is and which is nearest so they can back up to it.

I am sure there are plenty more scenarios, all leading to a conclusion of the journey somehow.....

Whilst the vehicle will have been chopped up by the emergency crews there does appear to be an awful lot of damage. You do occasionally get fires with accidents but given the number of petrol cars on the roads, the propensity for a Tesla crash to end with a fire does appear higher. Are the batteries in the equivalent of a fuel tank that is outside of the cabin? Is it that the heat generated by a battery fire is so great that in sort of firewall or containment is just ineffective?

Electricity is a cruel and unforgiving thing at times.

At the power densities in an EV or Plug-in Hybrid pack, a dead short can vaporize cabling/metal, and that's even before you get into the flammable electrolytes.

Even a normal lead acid battery can do the same, but for a shorter time, and it's why some manufacturers have explosive disconnects on remote mount batteries with long cable runs.

In a crash, all sorts of "unintended packaging configurations" happen, and some result in a compromised pack, and things get hot, quickly.

Sure, a tank of diesel/gasoline has more overall energy density, but it also very rarely comes with it's own means of catching fire spontaneously.

Unless it's in contact with a catalyst, which happens from time to time.

Linseed oil on a rag combusts if I remember right.

Or if you're really feeling frisky, outdoors, in a VERY well ventilated area, preferably on something stone/foil lined, in a pail of sand, saturate a cotton ball with cyanoacrylate glue.

Icon because that's what happens.

In the end, it's a trade-off, and I think that a mild hybrid/KERS setup is better than full electric for most use cases. Diesel hybrid would be better, but good luck getting anyone to bankroll that idea.

A bowl of petunias and slightly confused looking sperm whale appear...

I ride in fear of auto-pilot cars, jes if they are dumber than car drivers I'm in big trouble,

"if they are dumber than car drivers I'm in big trouble"

Dumber than human drivers? Yep they certainly are. On the other hand, computers don't drink and they can safely text while driving. So maybe it's not as bad as it seems.

In Trouble? Yeah, most likely. Might be time to start planning your move to a very small island. One with no roads.

Hmmm.. No drinking..but wait till you get the 'Please wait - downloading updates' as you frantically try and disengage autopilot when the white lines run out just before the hairpin turn on the mountain side.....

Based on the way a number of people drive on the road, I would say when push comes to shove, the self drive vehicles will be safer to be around if you're on a motorbike.

Being that I've been in several motorcycle accidents where I was on the motorbike.

* Hit from behind whilst stationary at traffic lights and ending up sprawled in the middle of the junction (Didn't see you)

* Pulled out on from a side road - wrote off the motorbike (didn't see you), driver reckoned I was doing 70mph in a 30mph where there was a red light 20 metres away just behind the side road he pulled out of

* U-Turn on main road with traffic (didn't see you)

Also, lane changes on motorways with no indication and various other near misses including doing a superman impression at 70mph due to a trail of oil/diesel on a wet motorway.

Love riding motorbikes, don't ride them anymore as the roads are too dangerous now

Seconded. Also a biker, and it's easy to spot when someone on front is messing with the radio/satnav/ [1]eating a bowl of cereal , as the car drifts inexorably towards the lane boundary followed by a rapid overcorrection - almost certainly without checking the other mirror first, so any motorcyclist that misses the telltale signs and tries to pass is a gonner.

That said, lane assist seems fairly hit and miss. Definitely underwhelmed with the version in the Aud e-tron, although I test drove a VW ID4 a few weeks back and - despite being the same manufacturer and only a year apart - it seemed to work a lot better. Still wouldn't rely on either in the UK, too many bad or missing lane markers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvvS6NAGFBU

I too have given up motorcycling. I kept one bike for tinkering and restoration but it gets ridden rarely.

We have a family Japanese car that does the lane driving thing and the auto cruise control and it works very well. I've done a few long journeys with that helping and I am certain I'm feeling much less tired by the driving.

The lane keeping thing does come up and say its for dual carriageways and motorways only. Though it does work on other roads.

Seems like the local investigators might have been a bit quick to come to a conclusion that the driver's seat was unoccupied at the moment of impact.

Could the driver have not gone into the back after the accident because the front doors couldn't be opened for some reason? Damage, proximity to fire, remaining locked?

It's that last option that is most scary!

I am sure they already thought of that...

After a 60mph crash into a tree, at the very best, nobody is going to be conscious, let alone able to think rationally about their predicament and try to get out.

As someone who was in a car years ago as a passenger, doing 70mph on the motorway, that then hit stationary traffic at full speed (driver had nodded off, I hadn't noticed till it was too late!).

I can attest that I was not only conscious, but fully aware of what had just happened and able to think straight. My only initial issue was ringing ears, I was essentially deaf for a couple of hours or so!

the article mentioned that cctv showed no one getting into the drivers seat, front & rear passenger seats yes.

The car didn't travel far before crashing.

my 2011 Merc estate moans if someone is in a rear seat and not wearing a seat belt, sensors in the seats pre set air bag charges so they go off at just the right amount if there is an accident. tech is available to determine if a person is sat in the drivers seat or not.

Two men entered the car, one in the driver's seat and the other in the front passenger seat (according to home security camera footage). Seems pretty clearly rather the opposite. Maybe the article had it backwards at first, and has since been updated?

The article literally says this:

"Two men entered the car, one in the _driver's_ seat and the other in the front passenger seat"

(my emphasis to highlight the bit that says someone was seen getting into the driver's seat)

"the article mentioned that cctv showed no one getting into the drivers seat, front & rear passenger seats yes."

I think perhaps you misread: From the article summary: Two men entered the car, one in the driver's seat and the other in the front passenger seat

"Could the driver have not gone into the back after the accident?"

I don't know about Teslas I've literally never seen one. Most folks around here seem to own either cheap small cars or 4wd vehicles with lots of cargo space. But getting into the back seat from the driver's seat in most modern vehicles requires quite a bit of acrobatics. Not impossible for a sixty year old. I did the reverse (back seat to front) a few times when my front door locks froze. But it wasn't especially easy.

I expect that the official accident reports when we see them in a few years will address the question of how these guys managed to keep the vehicle accelerating if no one was in the driver's seat. Having spent a few Saturday nights in Texas I can imagine a lot of scenarios that might seem improbable to someone who hasn't been there. I wouldn't consider two large rocks -- one on the seat and one on the accelerator -- to be unlikely. But there is surveillance video. Surely that sort of stuff would show up?

I reckon we'll just have to wait for the reports.

It's not pretty but in a high speed accident a person can find themselves in a different part of the car quite easily. Or completely out of the car.

I was rear-ended on the motorway when my vehicle was stationary (a pedestrian ran across the carriageway about 5 vehicles in front and I was the last driver to stop). The driver of a car about 50 metres behind was on the phone and "didn't see that the traffic had stopped". Even though he applied the brakes, he hit my car at about 50mph. I was wearing a seat belt, but had a major concussion caused by my head hitting the back window (my seat collapsed). I'm fairly sure that in a major accident the driver and passenger could finish up anywhere, particularly if they are not wearing a seatbelt.

A number of fatal crashes have been attributed to over-reliance on vehicle automation by drivers.

I will not have a car with automation installed. Makes one lazy and tend to enforce the habit of letting your attention wander.

The driver need to be aware at all times of other cars and objects around his/her car.

If you want true automation, get a donkey/horse carriage.

And it's emissions are green.....

So is the face of the driver

I thought the emissions were brown and yellow?

And it's emissions are green

Well, yes and no. One or two donkeys are ok. But when everyone gets them...

[1]https://smartwatermagazine.com/blogs/agueda-garcia-de-durango/new-york-manure-and-stairs-when-horses-were-cities-nightmares

And, of course, these days methane emissions are of a concern too.

[1] https://smartwatermagazine.com/blogs/agueda-garcia-de-durango/new-york-manure-and-stairs-when-horses-were-cities-nightmares

An old quote from Steve Grand: "[W]e used to have intelligent cars; they were called horses. And they used to know stuff that our cars don't know. They used to know where they lived and how to get home and how not to knock people over. Even how to refuel themselves. The amazing thing was that they could even make new copies of themselves. The intelligent car would be like a horse. Something that really enjoyed a good drive and prided itself on not knocking people down."

Automation can be used safely. It should be designed to reduce the workload and allow the driver to spend more time on "important stuff" (like watching what's going on). However, it interacts differently with different people and the way they use the system.

For example, a driver can set (conventional) cruise control to 45 mph and basically drive along a motorway without really caring about what else is going on - they are unlikely to come across anything moving slower or have to do much until they decide to leave the road. Their workload will be low, but it is likely that their concentration will be low as well.

Things may be completely different for another driver using the same system. They may set the cruise control to 70 mph and use the reduction in workload to allow them to scan the traffic so they can spot gaps that can be used to (safely) change lanes to maintain that speed without having to cancel the system. Workload is reduced, but concentration, spacial and situational awareness are improved.

A fully autonomous system needs to be able to cope with an inattentive driver, and that is part of the problem with the various "levels" that are currently recognised within the automotive sector - one of these basically says the car is in full control until it gives the driver the 100mS notice that it won't be much longer...

* Based on some research I was involved with in the early days of autonomous cruise control development.

"A fully autonomous system needs to be able to cope with" a dickhead, or multiples thereof, human beings are inventive and there are no limits to the levels of stupidity some of them are capable of.

If allowing for those levels of Darwin Award winning behaviour is not planned for the auto pilot is not fit for purpose.

Very true. Anything above Level 2 or below level 5 is just a lethal combination of the driver being able to go "out of the loop" and the system potentially requiring near instantaneous return to control. It just does not work.