Tesla Autopilot, fatal crash into side of truck 6

[IRstuff]

Certainly, in California, a left-turning vehicle must yield to a vehicle coming straight-on, under the law.

gotta love having GPS coordinates in the traffic crash report, although, someone's GPS is WAY OFF, like about 200 ft, but good enough.

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[itsmoked]

I heard an eyewitness said when they got to the car a Harry Potter movie was playing on the screen. This would explain what appears to have been no pre-contact reaction what-so-ever by the Tesla driver, yet the police report states the Tesla driver was "not distracted".

Keith Cress
kcress -

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[VEBill]

byrdj, thank you for the link to the 4-page report. Failure to Yield is listed. I stand corrected on that point.

 

[NormPeterson]

I have to wonder whether the Tesla's speed could have been retrieved from the event data recorder within the short period of time between the crash itself late on one day and issuance of the report the next. And if not, how was it estimated?

If the Tesla was in fact speeding, the "failure to yield" call against the truck driver should go away . . .

Norm

 

[IRstuff]

The traffic report says not; speed limit 65, speed 65

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[NormPeterson]

I realize that's what's on the report. But if that "65" number wasn't taken directly from the EDR, and the short amount of time between the crash and the report suggests that it might not have been, how do we know how accurate it is? That it wasn't just an assumption based on the posted speed in the absence of immediately available and solid evidence to the contrary?

Norm

 

[JStephen]

Some of that information on the police report is just going to represent lack of evidence to the contrary. "No distraction" may mean "he wasn't on his cell phone." The "65 mph" may just mean "no evidence of higher speed". (Don't they estimate speed from the skid marks? And there weren't any here, right?)

 

[LionelHutz]

What screen would the movie be playing on exactly? I highly doubt you could play a movie on the in-dash system while the car is moving.

 

[BrianPetersen]

If I recall correctly, one of the first "updates" that Tesla had to make to the Autopilot system was to limit the speed to not much over whatever the posted speed limit is (IIRC 5 mph over).

The movie was apparently playing on a portable DVD player - not on the vehicle's own screen. The vehicle itself is not capable of playing movies on its own screen while driving, but there's nothing it can do to stop people from using separate equipment to do so.

 

[cranky108]

Did I just see another roll-over crash reported after 9 days after the event?

 

[NormPeterson]

Yes. And there are official plans to cite the driver even though the car was on autopilot.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-car...a-autopilot-blamed-in-model-x-rollover-crash/

Norm

 

[JStephen]

You know, it occurs to me that the accident scene must have been pretty gruesome already. But would have been worse if that car had just navigated its way on home and parked in the garage or whatever the normal procedure was. And that's bound to happen at some point with self-driving cars, too.

 

[IRstuff]

As it was, the car supposedly drove 300 ft past the accident, until it went off the highway and crashed into a tree.

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[JohnRBaker]

Does that mean that the computer can be charged with "leaving the scene of an accident"? ;-)

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[MacGyverS2000]

So it didn't avoid TWO major objects in its path... a semi and a tree.

Dan - Owner

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[VEBill]

Very old advice: "A.I. is hard."

 

[NormPeterson]

JSteven - skidmark lengths are worthless for estimating the speed of ABS-equipped vehicles. Generally, there aren't any, by ABS system intent

MacGyver - I'm guessing that all bets were off as far as autopilot being able to do anything right from the moment of the first "failure to avoid".


Norm

 

[IRstuff]

It supposedly was able to thread its way between two other trees, but couldn't figure out about the third tree.

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[stevenal]

See the report linked above. The car hit the truck prior to smashing through two fences prior to hitting a utility pole. I count three more failures to avoid after leaving the scene of the first failure to avoid.

 

[LionelHutz]

From what I understand, Tesla uses a radar unit in the grill for obstacle avoidance and a camera behind the rear-view for lane detection. I would expect the autopilot software to disconnect due to a system fault after the camera was knocked-off the car.

The above is also likely why it drove under the truck. The radar unit in the grill is looking ahead, not up, hence it didn't think anything was in it's path. Not ensuring the road is clear for the whole car is a rather large deficiency in the system.

There is also this incident where it appears the "Summons" feature was accidentally activated and the car drove under a trailer.

http://jalopnik.com/man-claims-his-tesla-model-s-crashed-into-a-trailer-all-1776021675

And the new rollover incident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Friday being reported.

I see no mention of this portable DVD player in the accident report, and you'd think that would be a rather important detail to note.