Tesla runs red light into a semi-trailer truck

Watch this one instead. It's clear that the roof was cut off and the floor of the semi is level with the top of the door sills. There is no divot. You are seeing the roof folded back.

 

Sorry, I can't see anywhere near enough material to account for a cut-off roof. From the closeups and overhead, it looks to me like mostly C-pillar and hatch, not A-B-pillar or much roof.

A different report indicates that the driver had just minor injuries and was quickly released from the hospital. And that the vehicle was not under A/P, but was under full control of the driver, who was attempting some sort of sharp evasive maneuver, also recorded by a nearby surveillance camera.

The driver has been charged with reckless driving causing serious injury, which is a felony, and also for driving on a suspended license.

 

Over the weekend, a local Tesla on "Autopilot" failed to properly negotiate its way around a police vehicle stopped on the roadside with emergency lights flashing:

Tesla in autopilot mode hits Snohomish County deputy’s SUV

 

hmm... the picture from the link doesn't look like this row of potholes....

I wonder if the pothole road played a role in the collision ?

 

Doesn't matter.

If you ever get to take an FAA test, there's a pattern more or less to some of the regulatory questions.

In any question that involves the word "responsible" or "responsibility" you can pretty much bet that the answer is going to be:
"The Pilot in command"

That pilot's name is NOT going to be "auto".....nor will the name on the registration.....

 

It shouldn't, because the apps I use put the location nearly a half mile north of that corner, closer to SR530.

As ETC(SS) pointed out, that is irrelevant. The pilot should have been driving for the conditions, and should have both slowed and moved left a full lane to increase clearance to the emergency vehicle with flashing emergency lights.

 

Tesla admits its Full Self-Driving technology is a Level 2 system | Autoblog

"Tesla has never claimed that Full Self-Driving (which it charges $10,000 for) turns a Model 3 or a Model Y into an autonomous car, but the emails add fuel to a fire that intensified when regulators began questioning the name in October 2020. Level 2 autonomy is defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) as a system that delivers partial driving automation. Crucially, the driver needs to remain behind the wheel and aware at all times"

"Although Tesla will probably one day make a fully autonomous car, it still has a long way to go before Full Self-Driving lives up to its name."

 

Tesla's very unfortunately named 'autopilot' will have to go through probably quite a few a few more of Moore's doubling cycles before they take the steering wheel and the pedals away from the human operator.
Furthermore I'm amazed at both their in-house lawyers and my beloved government for allowing Tesla owners to whistle up their car to obediently drive itself to its owner from it's slot in a parking lot - albeit from only a short distance.....150' if I'm accurately informed.

All it's gonna take is ONE squished kid or oldie on a walker.....

My only experience with autopilots have been through using an 'Iron Mike' aboard ship and having pilot friends scoff at "George"....or more recently, "Otto" aboard aircraft.

Never.
Not once in 32 years, have I EVER met a sailor or a pilot who was crazy enough to leave the front office while the ship was moving - in the air, on the sea, or IN the sea.

They serve a vital function for both airships and ship ships, but those operators seem to often be better trained and have to go through a slightly more rigorous licensing process.

YMMV.

Fun Fact:
Submarines used to have auto pilots - even as far back as 60 years ago.....but I have never seen or heard about them being used then or now excepting for 'rumors' about the 774s...which I honestly have not even seen from the inside.
I can see where they might be useful during periscope ops - something that is a little more challenging than one might suppose.....but just as Priuses CAN BE much more fuel efficient when they are 'hand flown' autopilots aboard subs woulf have to be VERY VERY good to replace a human vestibular system mated to a working pair of eyeballs.

Autopilots were long ago disabled on my two boats.

Bonus Fun Fact:
The name 'George' for aircraft autopilots is sometimes attributed to a patent holder, George De Beeson and NOT associated with George Mortimer Pullman or the derogatory use of his name in the 19th century.
Our friends on the other side of the pond, being proud aerospace pioneers sometime surmise that the name arose from their Monarch at the time, Albert Frederick Arthur George.....or HM King George VI....who "owned" all of the aircraft.

Again.....ACTUAL mileage may vary.

 

I'm referring to the potholes (at speed) messing with with autopilot sensors. not the human that was supposed to be driving.

 

got coordinates ? I just googled it and it showed that potholed turn.

 

It helps to be local enough to know the county addressing grid, and to immediately spot the obvious inconsistency in those images you put in post #25.

The incident location is called out as "25200 block of 103rd Ave NE", and locals know that all Aves run north-south. But your red pin is on an east-west Street, specifically 246 St NE. And 246 NE should be 6 blocks south of the 25200 NE block. Note also that the vegetation and terrain in the SCSO photos are not consistent with the satellite imagery around your pin.

Try putting in some other addresses, such as 25201 103rd Ave NE 98223, and you'll find it landing at the north end of 103rd, next to SR530. Closer to matching terrain and vegetation. And close to a visible local power distribution line of the sort where a car could break a powerpole in half, as described in the story. Your pin is under a high tension transmission line, supported by big metal towers instead of wooden poles. And none of the towers are even close enough to the road to match up with the story. No local wood-pole distribution line is visible parallel to 103rd or to 246th.

Googling 25001 and 24701 addresses, they land north of your 25200 pin, revealing some sort of problem, as 25200 needs to be north of them. Also, try other mapping apps, such as MapQuest or MS Streets & Trips or Garmin. Here is a Garmin image capture of an imputed address much closer to a 25200 block:


Here is a MapQuest version:

 

take a look again, there are wooden poles running parallel for the first 200m or so on the west side of the road...

given the potholes on 103 n, imma guess they weren't on 103 at all, but instead cruising down 530 al, just a texting and having a wonderful time watching Netflix when ...

hello occifer

bam

or something like that

 

Looking closer on a different display, I am now seeing more powerline with at least one unquestionable pole shadow (and some more suspects), but not running all the way down to that corner with 246th.

And the painted shoulder stripe in the SCSO pictures should have been a clue too, the Google images seem to have it only on 530, not on 103rd Ave NE.

And the odds of spotting a Tesla cruising with driver in brain-off mode are vastly higher on that highway than on the rural side road.

 

(I seem to remember a later update indicating that AP was not engaged in the above collision.)


Tesla is under investigation because its cars keep hitting emergency vehicles

"Federal safety regulators are investigating at least 11 accidents involving Tesla cars using Autopilot or other self-driving features that crashed into emergency vehicles when coming upon the scene of an earlier crash.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said seven of these accidents resulted 17 injuries and one death.

All of the Teslas in question had the self-driving Autopilot feature or the traffic-aware cruise control engaged as they approached the crashes, the NHTSA said. ...

"Gordon Johnson, an analyst and vocal critic of Tesla, wrote in a note to clients Monday that the issue isn’t just about Autopilot users — but also other non-Tesla drivers on the road who could be injured by cars using the feature.

“NHTSA is zeroing in on a particular danger that Tesla creates for people outside the vehicle — ie, those who never agreed to be Autopilot ‘guinea pigs,’” Johnson wrote. “Thus, to simply say ‘Tesla drivers accept Autopilot’s risks,’ as has been used in the past, does not appear to be a defense here.”

The underlying issue of keeping drivers engaged while using these advanced driver assists wouldn't be unique to Tesla. They are just the first to reach critical mass.

 

Oh BOY! "Tesla has started pushing a new software update for its Full Self-Driving Beta program." "As for the timeline of the wider release, which has also been referred to as the “download button”, Musk commented that Tesla will still need to release at least one or two more updates to the early access program before v10, which is now the wider release update."

Tesla pushes new Full Self-Driving Beta update, don't hold your breath for download button - Electrek

 

With regard to the fact that Tesla autopilot has a tendency to hit cars and officers at an accident scene...

Recent discussion has focused on the wonderful neural net that Tesla has set up to "train" the autopilot software. In less technical terms, the neural net is only as good as the pictures it analyzes AND the feedback that's provided about the analysis. If there are no pictures of crash scenes in the feed to the analysis routine, then there is nothing that will educate the program as to what to do when there are blinding spotlights and strobing red emergency lights. A wider range of sensors, properly utilized, might help the program avoid running over people in hectic scenes.

There are reasons to use machine learning like neural nets, but there are also reasons to have a framework in place to apply reality and reasonableness checks. For instance, when the object identified as a house is in the middle of the road, it's a good idea to check to see if it has a trunk and ears as well as whether or not it is moving. A house in the road with ears should trigger human intervention if there is no "elephant avoidance" routine in the database.

 

Wow .... Tesla hitting emergency vehicles maybe every year !! .... we really really need to put a STOP to this insanity.

Statistics on Emergency Vehicle Accidents in U.S.

The other 6,499 emergency vehicle hits by other manufacturers? worrying about them? Yea - Not so much.

... an expression in the Middle East -
they call that, "straining out the gnats - yet you swallow the camel" .
Wake everybody up when the Tesla ratio gets a little higher - because right now, their accident ratio looks pretty good - when we don't approach it so myopically
.

 

I'm not going to try to figure out what percentage involved autopilot vs Full Self Driving Beta. You can do that if you want to bolster your argument. If it's 1 in 1000, that would be cause for concern as more Teslas start to use the software/hardware combination.

The problem that I see is that Tesla will be loading exactly the same rules into all their cars at some point in the future, and an oversight like this can lead to a lot of unnecessary deaths and injuries. They don't seem to be providing a safety net to recognize when things are too confusing to parse. More importantly, they also need a way to predict ahead of time that human interaction will be needed. It's bad design when you tell the driver to take over after getting into a situation where there might be eminent danger.

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of self driving cars. I hate the idea that off the cuff decisions are made in the development of such tools.