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According to this article: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30877577/driver-tesla-mod...

"Data from his phone indicates that a mobile game was active during his drive and that his hands were not on the wheel during the six seconds ahead of the crash."



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Gotta love how quick Tesla is to throw their customers under the bus using telemetry data the customer cannot access on their own..

Their customer is perfectly aware of whether he has a video game going on in his hands instead of a steering wheel. No telemetry needed from that perspective.

Yeah but it is auto pilot! It can drive itself!!

You have no idea how many Tesla drivers will openly admit to taking their hands off the wheel and eyes of the road in order to take off a coat, tend to a child, etc. I work with somebody who claimed to do just that routinely.

Here is somebody from a few days ago bragging about taking their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22231927


People already do the things you listed, though. Hell, when my kids were in car seats I frequently had to reach around behind me to soothe them via touch. AutoPilot would have been a godsend, because I wouldn’t have had to stress out so much about juggling two things at once.

This is the part where you call me irresponsible, right? It seems like every discussion on this topic follows that pattern. The fact remains, though, that humans are in cars, and have all the weirdness that goes along with it. AP makes it easier. A lot.


Not much of a leap between that and playing a video game with your phone, honestly.

You know, it’s almost like we’d benefit from having an autopilot system. I mean, think about it: people drive drunk, or tired, or get in fights with their mom on the phone, or have a crying baby demanding attention, or any number of other things like that.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had something to help with that? Like, it doesn’t even have to do everything, just most of it, and keep you from running into shit.

That would be awesome, wouldn’t it?

Yeah, that exists. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we had before, which was nothing.


You can wish all we want but you don’t have an auto pilot system. The Tesla is auto pilot up until you actually do what their marketing (and fans) claim it does and get in an accident. Then both Tesla and the fanboys come out of the woodwork denying that it was ever intended to be used hands off even for a second. In fact Tesla goes way out of their way, presenting telemetry from the car itself “proving” the driver was not in control and thus it isn’t Tesla’s fault because the driver was an idiot and down in the fine print on line 42 section (B) it says Tesla isn’t an auto pilot and the driver should be in command of the vehicle at all times.

See also, this very thread. All though there seems to be a worryingly high number of people here and elsewhere who, like I said, brag about not paying attention to their driving in a Tesla while simultaneously claiming it isn’t actually “auto pilot” because airlines pilots have to pay attention or some hot garbage. You yourself openly admit to not lacking attention to your driving because you think the Tesla is in control. Basically, trying to have their cake and eat it too... kind of scary.


You are focused upon strawmen and arguing in bad faith.

It is a scientific fact that AP is safer than not having it. Statistically, you are less likely to get in an accident if you have it. Anecdotally, I have witnessed this with my own eyes, having had it take drastic action before I was even aware of the danger.

I’m done with you specifically, though. I’ve come to believe that anyone who uses the word “fanboy” is almost never someone you can have a productive conversation with.


Drive drunk? Get a cab. Tired? Get a motel. Fight with your mom on the phone? Park your car and continue the conversation. Baby demanding attention? Park your car and care for the baby. Ignore it until you do.

It would be awesome if we have something for that. For now we don't, there is not a system where you can do the tasks above responsibly while in the driver seat. So park your car first.


> This is the part where you call me irresponsible, right?

Well, yes. But let's say everybody does things like this: the problem is that on a normal car you'll try to keep the off-hand time at a minimum, keep half hand on the wheel, or just give up and stop the car.

If you rely on autopilot you'l could just lower your attention for a longer time, and you can't rely on autopilot to actually do the right thing, it may work fine ten times and then crash your car into another on the eleventh killing both you and your baby.

The stress you feel is a good thing.


So are you saying autopilot is, overall, a bad thing? Because it seems that the argument you are making is that the world is worse having it available, an argument I find to be perplexing.

Yes at the moment. But tats just my personal opinion i have because a lot of people get false sense of security using it, and stop paying enough attention.

Look at this guy. He even apparently noticed this behavior on this road before, but still wasn't paying attention and got killed.

You either need 100% self driving or 0%

(driving assist is fine, as long as it's assist, and requres your attention)


The real issue with Autopilot is that it is a 99.99% solution, which makes people feel safe. But actually 99.99% isn't good enough.

99.99% as in, roughly one in 10000 times when you take your attention of the drive (e.g. to soothe a child) you'll have an issue where you should intervene with the autopilot. The likelihood of someone actually having this happen this is low, let alone the number of times people don't notice and other drivers solve the situation. As such, many people feel totally comfortable doing it. At the same time, the roads would be a lot safer if people did not feel comfortable doing this stuff.

There is the note that, when you feel you absolutely have to take your attention of the road, having auto-pilot is a lot better than not having it. In the end, it is hard to say which of these effects is stronger. However, the fact that auto-pilot causes some people to not pay attention because they feel safe is simply a bad thing.


This is mean spirited. The customers family is not perfectly aware.

You're missing the point. The family does not know this nor do they have access to this data which would be extremely useful in determining what their legal options are.

It wasn't Tesla.

NTHSB investigated the crash and got this particular information with Apple's help.


Calling it autopilot, full self driving is borderline criminal.

Borderline?

Autopilot is an appropriate term, taken from aviation. And no one calls it full self driving since that hasn't been released yet.

Seriously, what is people's problem with that word? Tesla actively explains how this works currently (both in person and also in bold font on their website) when anyone buys a car. There is no owner of this car that thinks that it has full self-driving capability. It is literally a non-existent problem.

Because nobody reads the fucking manual. It's like reading the headline only.

> Seriously, what is people's problem with that word?

You see this with every thread about tsla. Some grasp at any nonsense to attack it. I used to think the haters were financially motivated "investors" shorting tsla and I'm sure it was true in the past. But now, I'm thinking it's just people who dislike elon for some reason since they also attack musk/SpaceX in spacex threads. I mean "criminally responsible" for the autopilot name? It's hard to take them seriously at this point.


While that is my view as well, the behaviour of some Tesla drivers indicates that their view is different, and they use the autopilot in a different manner, which is a problem.

You're saying this on an article about two different people who seemed to believe it and paid dearly for their misconception.

We also know that the misconception is widely held. The term itself is misleading (https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-studies-highlight-drive...) and Tesla's marketing so much more so.


Wikipedia: 'Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the vehicle'

What telemetry do you mean? We are talking about data obtained from the iPhone (Screentime?), not from the Tesla.

The family is suing Tesla. Would you rather this evidence was presented in court after the family have already spent thousands in lawyer fees?

This doesn't really solve the PR problem for Tesla, though. If people continue to treat their cars like they're fully self-driving (they will), accidents like this will continue to happen

What Tesla is doing is like selling a space heater that emits carbon monoxide and declaring it's for outdoor use only


According to social media, YouTubers, Redditors Tesla's drive themselves and are not simply automobiles with electric propulsion but computers on wheels, they have all the necessary hardware built-in and the software gets a miracle updates over the air, it is called autopilot, there're people sleeping on the highway while their Tesla drives them home, machine learning and AI is about to automate everything and you are short-seller devil of the petrol industry if you question anything.

How fair is to say that the driver should have had their hands on the wheel at all time and checked and acquired a pilot license or at least studied what is autopilot?

Does Tesla's have driver attention detectors and warning systems? Is the car beeping or something like that when you don't hold the wheel?


Yes, the car is making noises when you don't hold the wheels and after 3 warnings, the Autopilot system is disabled until the car is restarted. The Autopilot is very explicitly not suitable for unobserved operation.

How do people sleep or play on their phones then? Are the warnings not frequent and prominent enough? Are people hacking it and disabling it? What's the deal here?

The car detects your hand on the steering wheel. So technically speaking, as long as you keep one hand on the wheel, you can use your phone with the other hand :p. There are also devices avialable for purchase, which convince the car that there is a hand on the wheel.

What I forgot to mention in the previous post: the autopilot does not only complain about hands off the wheel, but if you ignore the complaints long enough, it does stop the car. So people can't drive for long with their hands completely off the steering wheel, until they use some kind of defeating device.


> So people can't drive for long with their hands completely off the steering wheel, until they use some kind of defeating device.

Is that what happened in this case then? Serious question; never driven a Tesla. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/11/30/los-altos-pla...


As the driver was still unresponsive until woken by the police, I would think it was the autopilot eventually stopping the car.

They stopped the car by driving in front of it to trigger the braking sensor.

That would work too :)

You just need to bump the wheel every 15 seconds or so. The required interval seems to vary a certain amount, but in boring, easy, bumper to bumper traffic, where it makes the most sense, that's all that's required, in my experience at least.

> it does stop the car

More specifically: in my tests, it eventually disengages autopilot as well as adaptive cruise control (which only controls the break and acceleration) while beeping loudly and harshly. This has the affect of slowly causing the car to decelerate.


With a Tesla you hang a banana off the steering wheel. The weight tricks the system into thinking it is a hand.

With GM's Super Cruise you can go completely hands free, that's the intended use, but it has eye tracking to make sure you are constantly watching the road.


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