Tesla crashes in self driving mode.

[ZR]

The driver killed when his Tesla sedan crashed while in self-driving mode was travelling at 9 mph above the speed limit just before hitting the side of a tractor-trailer, federal accident investigators said Tuesday.
Data downloaded from the Tesla Model S shows the vehicle was travelling at 74 mph in a 65-mph zone on a divided highway in Williston, Florida, near Gainesville, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report.
The driver, Joshua Brown, 40, a tech company owner from Canton, Ohio, was using the sedan's cruise control and lane-keeping features at the time, the report said. Those features are part of the vehicle's Autopilot self-driving system, but the NTSB report doesn't mention the system.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is also investigating the crash, has previously said the Autopilot was engaged.
The Tesla's roof struck the underside of the truck's 53-foot semitrailer at a 90-degree angle, shearing off the sedan's roof before it emerged on the other side of the trailer, according to the report. The truck was making a left turn at the time.
The sedan is equipped with automatic emergency braking. Tesla and NHTSA have previously said the Autopilot was unable to distinguish the white side of the truck from the brightly lit sky and there was no attempt to brake by either the self-driving system or Brown.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk didn't address the report Tuesday at an event at the company's battery factory in Nevada. But he did reiterate that the company will press ahead with semi-autonomous driving features, which can prevent injuries and accidents.
"I think it's been unequivocally a good thing," Musk said.

[Ponyryd]

I honestly could never understand who would trust a car to drive itself.
Rip to the vehicle owner

[ZR]

You and me both brother.

[ZR]

Apparently he'd previously posted several U Tube vids of the car operating in self driving mode.

[Ponyryd]

The systems are getting better, but they are nowhere near self-driving yet, I don't think they ever will be. Luckily he was the only one killed.

[StAnger]

Call me a Luddite, but I don't care for all this electronic garbage.

[Ponyryd]

Would this entire incident not even the truck drivers fault? The report says the car struck the truck while it was turning, so did it not simply turn in front of the tesla? I'm sure many of us would have hit the truck also.

[Blackmare]

Call me a Luddite, but I don't care for all this electronic garbage.

Luddite! :)

[ZR]

To me, all this technology is producing even worse drivers. If the car can't save em, the driver certainly has no skillz.

[Ponyryd]

^100% trust right there. All the driving AIDS are taking the "driving" out of driving, nobody actually tries to be a good driver anymore, they just rely on the car to stay in its lane, stop, park, etc......it's really getting bad. It clearly doesn't work though, even with the electronics people still don't get that you need to actually drive and focus on driving.
Backup sensors/cameras are a perfect example. My wife's friend backed into a light pole and damaged her escape even though the sensors were beeping, same thing with my sister. Pay attention people!

[Scrape]

And it begins. Driver dependency on a computer for driving.

[RedSN]

Backup sensors/cameras are a perfect example. My wife's friend backed into a light pole and damaged her escape even though the sensors were beeping, same thing with my sister. Pay attention people!

So in this case the driving aids worked perfect. Operator error.

I misunderstood the initial reports of this incident. They claimed that it was a self driving car. But it's just semi autonomous. This guy just thought the car would brake for him instead of hitting the truck?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ZR]

No, in that mode it should not have been speeding, report says it did not recognise the difference in the bright light vs the white side of the trailer.

[Screw]

Backup sensors/cameras are a perfect example. My wife's friend backed into a light pole and damaged her escape even though the sensors were beeping, same thing with my sister. Pay attention people!

Lol when I was looking for a used pick-up all the ones with bumper mount sensors were dented

[stangstevers]

I don't use the backup camera on the truck, find it to be not very useful. Mirrors and my eyes is all I need. I also find it funny that people with the "blind spot" sensor bright yellow in the mirror and they still try merging onto me (and I'm hard to miss in a big full size 4 door 4x4 truck) on the 401. Sometimes I really miss my lifted Ranger because I just used to laugh it off and wished for them to hit me because it would be funny to push them into a wall.<- ok maybe it's a good thing I don't have that truck anymore.

As far as driverless technology, meh...

[RedSN]

I don't use the backup camera on the truck, find it to be not very useful.
Really? I absolutely love the camera on mine. I find it very useful and accurate for lining up parking spots (I always back in). That being said, I don't rely on only the camera, I use it about 50:50 with looking back and using the mirrors. It's really good for those last couple of feet.

I don't tow a trailer often, but being able to see the trailer hitch will make hooking up a trailer way easier. The back-up camera was a "must have" when shopping for my truck.

[cf105arrow]

Based on what I see on the road, I'd feel safer if their car wash driving and not the people with their head buried in a phone.

[ZR]

WASHINGTON -- Tesla Motors Inc. told U.S. Senate Commerce Committee staff it is considering two theories that may help explain what led to the May 7 fatal crash that killed a Florida man who was using the car's "Autopilot" system, a person familiar with the meeting told Reuters on Friday.
Tesla staff members told congressional aides at an hour-long briefing on Thursday that they were still trying to understand the "system failure" that led to the crash, the source said.
Tesla is considering whether the radar and camera input for the vehicle's automatic emergency braking system failed to detect the truck trailer or the automatic braking system's radar may have detected the trailer but discounted this input as part of a design to "tune out" structures such as bridges to avoid triggering false braking, the source said.
Tesla declined to discuss the meeting except to say it did not suggest that the vehicle's cameras nor radar "caused" the accident. It was not clear if other factors are under investigation.
Joshua Brown was killed when his vehicle drove under the tractor-trailer. It was the first known fatality involving a Model S operating on the Autopilot system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked on Twitter why the radar did not detect the truck. Musk wrote in a June 30 tweet that "radar tunes out what looks like an overhead road sign to avoid false braking events."
Tesla said in a June blog post that "neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor-trailer against a brightly lit sky."
Tesla confirmed that the briefing occurred, but a spokeswoman declined to comment on what transpired.
The source said Tesla also told committee staffers it views braking failure as separate and distinct from its "Autopilot" function, which manages steering, changing lanes, and adjusting travel speed.
On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board said its preliminary findings showed the Model S was traveling at 74 miles per hour (119 km per hour) in a 65-mph (104 km per hour) zone at the time it struck the semi-truck near Williston, Florida.
The report said the NTSB confirmed the Model S driver was using the advanced driver assistance features Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer lane-keeping assistance at the time. The NTSB has not yet determined the probable cause of the crash.
Tesla faces a separate investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into whether the system poses an unreasonable risk to driver safety. It faces a Friday deadline to answer the safety agency's initial questions about the crash.

[ZR]

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/01/business/inside-tesla-accident-1467416244323/inside-tesla-accident-1467416244323-master495.png

[ZR]

I wonder how they will explain "the car", in spite of sustaining an appreciable impact, continued down the road, through a fence, across the grass n through another fence, struck a pole then stopped (we could assume likely disabled at that point). Impact / crash / air bag sensors had to have picked up something well north of the car hit a pot hole in the road.
For all they really know, driver was pushing the brake pedal when it impacted the trailer. Just as possible, he felt in spite of being in immediate danger "the car" was going to bring itself to a safe stop, you know like it's suppose to.
Fucking technology.
Just like run away Toyota's, bet it suddenly just goes away.
So busy trying to make cars safer but the problem of ridiculously poorly skilled drivers is never addressed. We all see them each and every day. Add in the assholes that have zero regard for anyone's safely and what should be the real focus of road safety becomes crystal clear.

[ZR]

UPDATE.

A witness who was one of the first people to approach the crash site following a fatal Tesla accident in Florida last year told federal investigators he did not see or hear a video playing in the car in the moments after it came to a stop.
A truck driver also involved in the crash previously told The Associated Press that he had seen Harry Potter playing in the car after the accident, but the new witness told investigators he never saw the truck driver at the crash scene in the hour or so he stayed on site to talk to emergency responders.
The accident happened May 7, 2016, and involved 40-year-old Tesla owner Joshua Brown, who was killed when his car crashed into a truck driven by 62-year-old Frank Baressi. Brown's car had Autopilot engaged at the time of the accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board released a report (https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/PR20170619.aspx) on the crash Monday, including a transcript of an interview with one of the first witnesses on the scene. The witness, Terrence Mulligan, said he did not see any signs of a video playing, despite reports of the truck driver saying he heard a Harry Potter film playing from the vehicle.
"Everyone's asked me about a video," Mulligan said. "I can't tell you there wasn't one playing, but I did not see one playing and I didn't hear one playing, and I was at the car twice."
NTSB documents show that Baressi had trace amounts of marijuana in his system shortly after the crash. He was hauling blueberries in his truck, which was making a left across US-27 in Williston, Fla., when the Tesla rammed into the side of the trailer and went under the truck.
Baressi initially told police he didn't know what had hit the trailer. The Tesla traveled 910 feet after striking the trailer before it came to a stop. Later, he refused to talk to investigators and referred them to his attorney, the NTSB documents said.
The accident marked the first fatal incident involving semiautonomous driving technology. When the crash was first reported in June, the driver of the truck Brown collided with claimed Brown was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen," according to the Associated Press (https://apnews.com/ee71bd075fb948308727b4bbff7b3ad8/self-driving-car-driver-died-after-crash-florida-first). Police reports on the scene do not include details on a video, and Tesla said at the time that it is not possible to watch a video on the vehicle's touchscreen.
Mulligan said there was a black and yellow toolbox on the back seat of the Tesla, which had had its roof shorn off. He said it was clear upon arriving at the car that Brown had died. Emergency responders offered Mulligan emotional support to help him deal with the gravity of the scene.
In January, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed (http://www.autonews.com/article/20170120/OEM06/170129991/sigh-of-relief-for-self-driving-cars-after-tesla-cleared) its investigation into the crash, determining that Tesla was not at fault.
The NTSB investigation is still ongoing. In the documents released on Monday, the agency also reported that Brown's hands had not been detected on the wheel for 37 minutes before the crash. The vehicle had given visual and auditory warnings to the driver to put his hands back on the wheel.

[ZR]

Does it not seem odd to anyone else there is not a fail safe built in whereas the vehicle slows down n pulls over when the warning to put your hands back on the wheel goes without response?

[5.4MarkVIII]

Up untill this crash they were adretising it as self driving. All the car review guys set it and then take their hands off. And let it do its thing
Since the accident it's now semiautonomous and there are apparently warnings.

My Lincoln had adaptive crushed and lane guidance but if you took your hands off it waned twice then shut of the cruse and rolled to a stop

I'm willing to bet Tesla thought is system a
Was Bette than it was now they want to avoid lawsuits

[StAnger]

Technology in cars is just a bad idea...

[RedSN]

^^^I assume you mean just the "bad" technology in cars?

[mavrrrick]

Ya.....I'm for being in complete control of my car, and complete responsibility.

[bluetoy]

I drove a Tesla and when in self driving mode you must put your hands on the wheel every couple of minutes or the car stops and you cannot re-engage self driving unless you stop the car and shut it off first.

[ZR]

Perhaps a malfunction kept it moving forward in spite of the warnings.

[Ponyryd]

^In the event of a malfunction, I would think (hope) that it would pull over safely and shut down. My guess is that it was hacked or modified to allow self driving for a longer period of time.

I'm not surprised it kept going though, the truck likely just took the roof off, and I bet there are no crash sensors in the roof, so the car had no idea there was a crash until it his some posts.

[5.4MarkVIII]

^^^^ that makes sense.

Didn't tesla originally try and say the guy was asleep? Which would go against the safety feature of having to put your hands on the wheel.

I would hope that the force required to take the roof off would be enough to trip the g sensors. But maybe not.

[Ponyryd]

^Hands off the wheel for 37 minutes? Ya, I'd agree and say he was asleep, or possibly in a coma. But are we really supposed to trust that the car "knew" his hands were off the wheel that long? If indeed the car wasn't supposed to allow hands to stay off the wheel for a couple minutes, but it did so for 37 minutes and still kept going, I'd say the car cannot be trusted for any actual, useable data at all. This is clearly going to end badly for Tesla, so I'm sure they'll say anything to take the blame off themselves, true or not.

[5.4MarkVIII]

Very true.

The law suits from this will pave the way for future self driving cars. Be interesting to see how it turns out.

[Scrape]

http://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got-numerous-warnin-1796226021?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=drivetribe

[RedSN]

5 minutes, 30 minutes, hands off the wheel, asleep....

fact is the car still ran into a truck.

This is fascinating, incredibly complex, brand new technology. They still have some work to do.

[5.4MarkVIII]

What worries me is that the excuse will be something about sensors and radar only detect so much and the answers will be something put in other cars and trucks so that they can be more easily detected and avoided.

[Ponyryd]

^I doubt that (and hope it won't happen). The issue here is that he was clearly asleep, or eyes off the road at the very least, these cars are supposed to assist with driving, not drive themselves...there should really be no accountability to Tesla because the driver is supposed to be watching and remain in control. Self-driving cars IMO are a great idea-if you're stuck in traffic-but out on the road, no thanks, I trust myself more than sensors, even though I'm sure they're a better driver than me, lol.