You couldn’t pay me to drive a Tesla, and that’s double true for Tesla on “autopilot”.
That’s bad that the car’s software confused a closed garage door for a kid.
I have an older Teala with AP, and I dont understand how this is possible…
You can’t engage it on your driveway. It’ll say its unavailable. You gotta be moving a bit first on a roadway.
If he was on the roadway and turning into his driveway, AP cant make turns, so thats not possible.
He could have had traffic aware cruise control on, and auto steer off so he could steer it, but then he’s the one who drove it into the garage.
Edit: maybe a cul du sac where he’s at the end and itd drive straight up, but he wouldn’t have been able to turn onto it, which means he would have had to turn it on just for the small street?
Edit: and if they story is it went off the road into the garage on its own with a sudden turn… check that angle out. Its not like it came in on a shallow angle, its almost 90 degrees to the garage from a short driveway…
As the article states, they may have meant FSD. Which people very frequently call Autopilot.
The article suggests it wasn’t the driver’s garage. The driver’s story seems to be “It was driving itself happily and then went mad and crashed into this random person’s garage!”.
It’s down to the crash investigators to find out whether that’s the truth, or the driver crashed it themselves and then just blamed the AP.
Ya i better understood that just a few moments ago. The angle it went into the house seems pretty suspicious still. Thats a pretty sharp turn vs if it tried to dodge an imaginary deer for example.
FSD is not capable of dodging a deer - it just brakes.
If the deer darts in front at the last second it will try to swerve around it, but maybe not too aggressively. Similar to if a car intrudes in your lane. But ya, if its standing in the road in front of you it will just brake.
Edit: Looks like someone did a video of it a couple days ago of swerving to avoid a guy throw an inflatable dummy at it, so this is what I’d expect for a deer that jumps in front of it. Some pretty good speeds reactions in there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KRr9Of46MM
https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1u69k79/fsd_reaction_time_testing_45_mph/
AP probably disabled itself in the middle of a bend in the road…
This is why AI shouldn’t be making any management decisions
that tech at IBM all those years ago had it right the whole time
Pretty unlikely. No third party analysis of the logs? Just putting this out there as “driver says”
Very basic autonomous systems can avoid collision with a large flat stationary surface.
Very basic autonomous systems can avoid collision with a large flat stationary surface.
I guess Tesla’s systems don’t even qualify as very basic. Here’s a video from as far back as 2020. Tesla crashes straight into a huge flat surface.
There’s so many more examples if you go looking.
That would have been AutoPilot 6 years ago.
AP back then had radar, but radar cant reliably detect a stationary object at high speeds. Every OEMs traffic aware cruise control had this weakness if its radar based back then. They typically warn you about it before first use, which is part of why you must pay attention.
Only vision or lidar can address an issue like this, and cars weren’t really shipping with lidar back then.
Newer Teslas with HW4 and FSD would handle this better. HW3 and FSD might not reliably handle it, but its hard to say.
Edit: and even today on HW4 car, AP would probably fail here like this story. Its just not meant for this and is very very old at this point.
The point was to illustrate the failure of the visual system from way back then. And considering the price point of Teslas, the fact they still don’t have lidar today is criminal.
the fact they still don’t have lidar today is criminal.
That would require the muskrat to experience a moment of self reflection and admit he was wrong about something.
The point is that no consumer system on the road back then would have reliably prevented that incident, and it is better today.
Edit: to clarify, youre trying to say it isnt even basic because back then it failed at something everything would have failed at.
it failed at something everything would have failed at.
Lidar first started getting deployed commercially in cars in 2017.
it is better today.
Teslas are still using the same sensors today that they were back then.
Yes, radar was found to be useless at highway speeds for stationary objects because if it responded to such events, you get sudden, emergency “ghost braking.” Radar is so low resolution, it cannot tell the difference between the back of a tractor trailer and a large sign or overpass.
teslas can’t. As has been proven multiple times, even wile e coyote style
The problem with wile e coyote comparisons is that a lot of humans would also crash into a wall that was painted to look like it wasn’t a wall. It’s much more meaningful to find mistakes that a human wouldn’t make.
I don’t like this either as it seems to lead people to overestimate the capability of lidar and radar systems (and radar is worse than useless. False positives are dangerous too).
There is NO automated system on the road that is proven. Waymos and shit will also end up killing people. Please, people, don’t do their marketing for them. The road system and cars are a lethal system with dangerous tradeoffs by design.
The ones with actual sensors can, anyway.
I get what you’re referencing (lack of radar, lidar etc.), but objectively a camera is a sensor in the exact same way as the others, that’s not even up for discussion.
It’s a sensor relying on image recognition, which is only as reliable as the image recognition software. The more clever software tries to be, the more potential failure states that exist.
Yes that is true all sensor input is only as good as the algorithm interpreting it. But that doesn’t change the fact that a camera is just as much a sensor as a lidar or radar, which is what I stated.
Yes, a camera is technically a sensor. Just not one that can tell you a distance to an object. And that capability is pretty useful to not have a car drive through a solid garage door.
Yes, a camera is technically a sensor
Which was all I stated, but somehow people disagree with facts here.
Edit: and you actually easily can measure distance quite accurately with cameras in a stereoscopic setup, but of course this is not what Tesla does, despite having several forward-facing cameras.
It’s because it adds nothing to the discussion.
You can absolutely tell the distance to an object with cameras if you use more than one. Our eyes do it all the time.
It is possible, but it is not error-free. For example, there is no way to tell a distance to a featureless wall that takes up the entire field of vision. But Teslas don’t even have stereoscopic vision. The moment you start using neural networks and monoscopic vision, you get affected by all the visual illusions that humans get. And that is in addition to the system not being as good as humans at processing visual information.
My read was “The ones with actually good sensors can, anyway.”
(good for the purpose)
Nice to be technically correct, but of course (best kind of correct!)
edit: elaborated
They still have ultrasound sensors for slow speeds like parking. Either they failed or he was at roadway speed when he entered the driveway.
Yeah, its just the new version of “my gas peddal got stuck” or the more general “my car accelerated out of nowhere”
FYI, neither actually happen, despite thousands of claims going back decades, and if they did, brakes easily overpower engines. People confuse their pedals and don’t believe it.
If brakes easily overpowered the engine, I would never be able to accidentally drive away with my parking brake still engaged.
A parking break is different than the breaks operated by the floor pedal.
Are people stupid enough to actually trust Tesla’s autopilot, or do they do it on purpose to then sue Tesla?
Nevermind, I know the answer…
It works well, until it doesn’t. That first part lulls people into complacency. I rented a Kia last year that had automatic cruise control and lane keep assist and it kept me on the road far past when I should have pulled over and taken a nap from being sleep deprived after a redeye flight. Dangerous? Yes. Skill issue? Maybe. What I took away from the experience is that it is frighteningly easy to get used to a thing “just working” and forget about its limitations when it is convenient. I also learned that I do not want lane keep assist or automatic cruise control in my personal car.
I own modern Kia with these systems you described. I use this almost constantly BUT: the first month after getting the car I was terrified, literally scared and 15 minutes drive exhausted me just like 2 hours in my previous car. I was learning to trust the system, had to known all the limitations first. I now know when to take over and really like adaptive cruise control especially in traffic.
I am a software engineer though, there is nothing “smart” in my home (apart from TV obviously) and I can see how people can fall into the trap you described.
I really like the automatic cruise control on my fairly new Honda Jazz. I’ve found that it has a net positive effect on my attention to the road, because I become less fatigued from the small, brief slowdowns that I might encounter on a motorway. There was actually an instance where I narrowly avoided a crash while using this system because of how quickly I acted when a potentially dangerous situation developed into an active crash; I felt like I was more alert than I would’ve otherwise been after a day of driving
However, I do not like the lane-keeping system, especially combined with the automatic cruise control. I remember testing it when I was on a clear but fairly curved section of the motorway, with my hands completely off the wheel (but hovering over the wheel, ready to take control again if necessary). I was horrified by how effectively it took me round the bend — effectively enough to be dangerous. There is a warning beep if you spend too long without your hands on the wheel at all for a while, but this was just something I did while testing it. I’ve not used it since, because I was confident that, unlike the automatic cruise control used on its own, this would diminish my attention and leave me unable to properly respond to an exceptional circumstances.
This is basically automation bias you’re describing and it’s what scares the hell out of me with these “FSD” teslas on the road.
Even if you were able to keep constantly alert during the 99% of the time where this works (which I think is close to humanly impossible) why would you want a system that doesn’t offload you at all? The only value of this system is if people ignore the limitations and allow themselves to zone out - the rest of us are at risk when it goes wrong!
I use lane assist and traffic aware cruise to keep my shoulders and (bad) knee physically relaxed on long highway stretches. That said, I would probably choose to tolerate the inevitable day of neck and/or knee pain if it meant no one was using this stuff. Automation bias is scary.
[…] why would you want a system that doesn’t offload you at all? The only value of this system is if people ignore the limitations and allow themselves to zone out […]
I think there are some “absolutes” used here that make these things incorrect.
- “doesn’t offload you at all” means that these systems provide 0 offloading, which is not true — not even for the classic cruise control that only maintains speed.
- “The only value of this system is if people ignore the limitations and allow themselves to zone out” means that there’s no other value it provides. Using the old classic cruise control as an example again, it provides value even without being able to its limitations.
That said, my car is a bit old and just has the classic kind of cruise control. I’ve only used the newer stuff on a few road trips in rental cars, so maybe I just haven’t had enough experience with it to reach the levels of carelessness required to drive into a garage door yet.
Cruise control lets me relax my legs. It’s purely mechanical.
Other automations like lane assist and emergency break system saves my ass if I’m not paying attention. FSD (if used as intended) does exactly the opposite: I have to save it’s ass if/when it overlooks something. I have to be constantly alert without almost ever having a reason to. The human mind is not made for that. I would 100% find it harder to pay attention in that scenario than if I’m also doing the driving and not because Elon is an asshole.
If I could check my email or read a book and have the car say “take over in 10 seconds time” I would get it, but if I’m constantly aware, hands on the ready and eyes on the road I would literally much much mucho much rather not have it at all.
But of course that’s not how it’s being used. Tesla drivers are willing to run the risk on behalf of themselves and anyone they are sharing the road with.
I’m not a fan of Elon or Tesla, just for the record. So I hate to actually be the one defending them. But I’m guessing on the same exact day about 12 people drove through their garage doors, NOT in Teslas.
Yeah, but there are more than 100x other cars on the road. And this one is automated. And this was a stupid mistake if true.
I mean, they’re probably lying about it being on autopilot, they just pushed the wrong pedal or something. That said, I drive an electric van at work and it wouldn’t let me bump into something if I tried.
“autopilot” shouldn’t even be used on a narrow residential street like that.
Putting the company aside for a second, genuinely why? Low speed residential, especially narrow or precision driving should be bread and butter tier 2 autonomous driving, right under tier 1 = highway, and quite a lot over the complexities of mixed use areas at higher speed. Unless you specifically meant their Tesla autopilot and not the concept as a whole with it in quotes.
Autonomous vehicles have been known to run over and through quite a few things. In an area where a bunch of kids are likely to be playing is a bad place for such a technology IMO.
But so do people so we have to consider the statistics. I just think if this goes anywhere, low speed precision should be it’s bread and butter scenario.
Oh Yeah!
Check the mobile phone records from the idiot driver. He was staring at his iPhone or Galaxy and failed to pay attention to the neo-Nazi shitbox making a directional change. If that’s the case, revoke his damn license.
I thought they stopped calling it autopilot due to legal stuff and such, or has that not gone through yet?
It’s “full self driving (supervised)” last I checked.
Autopilot isnt FSD Supervised.
Autopilot just keeps you in lane and distanced from a lead car, mainly meant for highways/ freeways. A combination of auto steer (for lane) and traffic aware cruise control.
FSD Supervised is meant for anywhere and will take turns, change lanes, stop for lights etc.
They no longer sell or include AP, and its been renamed to something involving autosteer for existing owners. New purchases can only subscribe to FSD Supervised now.
They might be one of the only major OEMs that dont include any kind of lane keeping in their cars now, which is pretty much standard now.
They no longer sell or include AP
That’s true only in the USA and Canada. You can still get autopilot in most of the world, especially in countries where FSD isn’t approved.
Oh youre right, my bad on that. Thanks!
Bet they are lying and just pressed the wrong pedal by themselves. Bet they were on their phone, the cruise control beeped and then they panicked and floored it. Insurance companies probably have to deal with a ton of Tesla owners who are blaming the Autopilot for a mistake the driver made, even when the cruise control wasn’t used.
I feel like your insurance should automatically be higher for being stupid enough to purchase one.
I still think it nuts that the main insurance companies will even insure these things. Especially the stupid truck.
It is. Tesla insurance is expensive.
Seems like a pretty risky lie as the car should have logs saying exactly what happened (at least to the level of detail of cruise control + accelerator vs self-driving).
Non-Tesla cars have black boxes already and have for years so you yeah you’re right
Until Tesla scrubs that from their log again like they were already caught doing once
Curious: what was the outcome of them being caught doing that?
The jury didn’t like it, but it didn’t really prove anything that wasn’t already known. I’m not really sure why they did what they did in the end? It wasn’t disputed that AP was on, and that the guy overrode the saftey systems. The jury found them partially at fault because they allowed the system to operate there and because they claim it didn’t work as advertised, and it was a huge jury verdict damages they have to pay.
I have a feeling it’s going to get a reduced damages though as it goes through appeals. The dude was looking down for a phone he fumbled with his foot on the accelerator which overrides the safety systems, to the point the car warns you on screen that it will not brake while your foot is on the accelerator. And guess what… the car did not brake! Surprise!
Oh, that might have been plain old incompetence rather than deliberate evidence tampering if both sides agreed to the bits that incriminate their own side. Unless there was something more going on that the logs would have shown, like “damage detected while self-driving enabled, dispatching Tesla cleanup crew to take care of the witnesses”.
It was definitely deliberate. Something happened for some reason.
Maybe they were worried about something bad being in there before they knew the facts were agreed upon, and then they had already dug their own grave?
Thanks! I would have had to go looking to remember the details
I swear most Teslas I hear driving always have a “rattle” when they go over bumps. Sounds like bad build quality, I rarely hear other cars with the issue. For sure seem like poorly made cars.
It could be the control arms. Older Model 3’s have famously shitty control arms that collapse all the time, but a lot of people don’t seem to notice until it gets really bad (myself included, unfortunately).
I may have had bad luck, but I feel like this is very common across any American car brand. Recently rode in a new Rivian, and the door closing had a rattle like something was a little loose.
This is crazy, I was in a parking lot yesterday and saw someone have their Tesla driver right up to them to pick them up in the parking lot with no driver inside. Kind of pissed me off I was so near in the same parking lot that was operating on its own, with my wife and nieces. I know Elon Musk wouldn’t give one fuck about me if his dumbass machine ran me or mine right over
Feel free to fuck with that car, there really isn’t a penalty for say moonwalking in front of one, if it does hit you, great you’re a millionaire. Or if you don’t feel like doing it just point it out to my dumbass.
After almost getting hit twice by a driven Tesla while walking in a lot, the guy parked it in a handicap spot with no placard and speed walked into the store. Upon exit from a different door, the driver had it drive itself to him. I’m miffed i missed my chance to fuck with it because I didn’t know what was going on. I was waiting, debating calling police for the placard issue (given there were multiple open spaces nearby). I decided to not get involved and drove in front of the tesla to exit. Weird, I noted, seeing the drl bar and left blinker on. Turns out, it was waiting it’s turn to leave autonomously.
Fuck that guy. DoorDash vibe. 150ft walk.
