Man accused of dangerous driving for sleeping in self-driving, speeding Tesla

https://globalnews.ca/news/7534323/a-legal-first-b-c-man-accused-of-dangerous-driving-for-sleeping-in-self-driving-speeding-tesla/

by ponderingfish • 6 years ago

41 92 6 years ago

globalnews.ca

webmobdev5• 6 years ago

“They are not self-driving systems,” said Supt. Gary Graham of Alberta RCMP Traffic Services.
“These technologies assist drivers, but do not replace them,” said the statement from the federal institution responsible for transportation policies and programs ...
Tesla’s website states, “All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future.”

... full self-driving capabilities in the FUTURE ...

So it is a DISHONEST marketing issue that creates a wrong perception in the consumer, and that's what the government should address.

Create regulation that do not allow such vehicles to be marketed as "self-driving". Create some kind of certification to earn the right to advertise a vehicle as "self-driving". And define and standardize better labels for the current technologies used, and publicize it well.

tehlike• 6 years ago

You think it's regulation issue. I say it's because it's overtrust for an almost working system.

If something gets good enough you will rely on it more and more. It will work, until it doesn't.

camjohnson264• 6 years ago

And the systems fail in ways that a human wouldn’t which makes it more dangerous. Teslas often “shadow brake” when driving under overpasses or overhead signs because the radar system gets confused.

foepys2• 6 years ago

So it is a dishonest marketing issue that creates a wrong perception in the consumer

German courts share this opinion and Tesla is prohibited from naming their product Autopilot or referencing any FSD.

phaemon2• 6 years ago

So people keep claiming, but I've yet to see a single example of an actual Tesla owner who was confused about this.

The person in this story wasn't confused and didn't even attempt a defense that Tesla had mislead them.

orange_tee3• 6 years ago

So he and his passenger went to sleep fully knowing that Tesla's driving assist could fail at any moment? You mean, they were both suicidal? Much more plausible is that he is scared to implicate Tesla into this.

tintor• 6 years ago

Even with certification, person behind the wheel will still be responsible (as long as he / she has control over vehicle). Once vehicles ship without steering wheels / pedals, that will not be the case anymore.

webmobdev5• 6 years ago

As someone else suggested, manufacturer should be made liable in case of an accident for "self-driving" vehicles.

janaagaard• 6 years ago

Curious: Why would the Tesla be speeding, since it was in “autopilot” mode? Wouldn’t it know about the speed limits? Or dis the driver set on cruise control first?

SEJeff3• 6 years ago

You can happily set the autopilot speed to above the speed limit. There are a few gotchas and it won’t always let you, but in general, it is fine. I normally set it to 10% higher than the posted speed limit as an example.

everyone• 6 years ago

You intentionally wish to drive 10% higher than the speed limit.. So, you desire to be in car crash? Also one at faster speeds and therefore exponentially more deadly?

Everyone has to use public roads, not just you. You are endangering all other diligent road users with your behavior, not just yourself.

foepys2• 6 years ago

Teslas still cannot reliably read signs. It's working in good weather conditions but dirty signs or rainy conditions are still a problem for Tesla's allegedly just around the corner full self driving ability.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

"Witnesses claim the man behind the wheel and his passenger were asleep with their seats fully reclined, as their Tesla travelled up to 150 km/h on the freeway near Ponoka..."

Given this and the man's other past incidents, the Tesla was only a minor contributing factor in the guy's global stupidity and danger that he inflicts on the world daily?

Edit: Btw, what would be the end accident scenario here? Presuming that the car wouldn't hit any other car on the road, would it lose control on a curve that was too tight for the speed, or fail at the end of the freeway or something? Would it alarm and then come to a gradual stop? Not a Tesla owner here.

vmception• 6 years ago

Tesla's have crashed and obliterated their owners, even right here in California on major highways on the way to their Silicon Valley office park.

Alarmed engineers taking the exact same route to reproduce the bug successfully.

gambiting8• 6 years ago

"Presuming that the car wouldn't hit any other car on the road" - it absolutely would though. The tech is good enough to avoid hitting another car that slows down in front of you, but if someone was broken down(and fully stopped) in your lane, the car will hit them at full speed. It might start breaking just before impact, but not fast enough to slow you down from 150km/h. No self driving or adaptive cruise tech can save you from this situation, because they are all trained to ignore fully stationary objects. I've also seen situations where road markings disappear on the road for whatever reason and Tesla goes from being 100% confident and in control to "take over the wheel NOW" in about 1 second flat. Best case scenario here is that the car would eventually realize that you aren't in control and come to a gradual stop - the problem there is that now he is fully stopped on an active highway and chances of getting plowed from the rear are astronomical.

I think the biggest problem with all of these self driving systems is that in cars they can require you to be fully 100% aware of your surroundings and take over in a split second. People compare it to plane autopilot, but I don't think that's quite right - in a plane, you will have at least a minute or two before you hit the ground, even if the plane takes a straight nose dive. In a car, you go from being fine to being headed for a head-on collision in no time at all.

anonu• 6 years ago

This [1] was the famous 2016 crash where a Tesla broad-sided a basically stationary semi-truck. Are you suggesting Tesla hasn't solved this type of problem yet?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-crash/tesla-driver-...

fiddlerwoaroof6• 6 years ago

My Tesla has regularly come to a full stop from freeway speeds in response to traffic ahead. This may not be 100% reliable, but it’s not true that “the system is trained to ignore stationary objects”.

It also beeps when it thinks I’m going to hit a stopped car and other things that demonstrate that this claim is false.

underseacables• 6 years ago

I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk so take this with a grain of salt, but the company has totally misled and overhyped the self driving feature. It’s almost like a wink and a nod, giving people a false perception, and that’s wrong.

jocker122• 6 years ago

Under a new proposal from the UK‘s Law Commission, the “user in charge” of the vehicle would not be prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving, speeding, or breaking red lights when the car was in self-driving mode, the Telegraph reports.

The Law Commission instead suggests that responsibility should fall on the developer or manufacturer of the hardware that enables self-driving functions on the vehicle.

see https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/12/18/autonomous-vehicle-m...

tjoff• 6 years ago

Tesla doesn't have self-driving though..

webmobdev5• 6 years ago

That's a pretty decent idea - if a manufacturer claims his vehicle is "self-driving" then they should be the one accountable for any accidents in case the vehicle malfunctions. (Ofcourse, this would make the vehicle costlier to own - manufacturers may demand regular check and servicing of the vehicle, driving up the total cost of ownership.)

DanBC• 6 years ago

Here's a link to the documents. This is a consultation document.

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsx...

https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/automated-vehicles/

AnthonyMouse5• 6 years ago

Does this mean we can get number plates which are issued to the manufacturer, and the same for every vehicle from that manufacturer, so that they're not able to be used for mass surveillance of individual vehicles anymore?

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, stock go brrr and world go round.

Empirically, you’re absolutely right, except that it’s not wrong.

I’ve come to terms with it. How long are we going to bleat about morals while the world ignores it?

I’m asking genuinely, for what it’s worth. It’s one of the central questions I’ve faced. What are your morals worth? Why cling to them? It feels good to call out Tesla as immoral, but both legally and practically this seems to be mistaken.

speedgoose2• 6 years ago

One solution is to put a camera inside to monitor the driver behaviour. Mazda is already selling cars with this technology.

wayeq• 6 years ago

Tesla makes you apply force to the steering wheel occasionally, but there are hacks that to try to circumvent it.

speedgoose2• 6 years ago

Yes it's too easy to circumvent it. The camera solution is a lot safer.

Cro_on• 6 years ago

I find it a little concerning that the car is allowed to drive in autopilot with the seats reclined. I thought there were warnings for taking your hands off the steering wheel? I suppose they can be ignored. But full recline is a bit OTT.

AnthonyMouse5• 6 years ago

A car is not your mother. It has no obligation to prevent you from speeding or driving the wrong way down a one way street or otherwise being an idiot. And it shouldn't try, because sometimes the car has an inaccurate map or doesn't know that something unusual is happening or the sensor is broken etc.

c22• 6 years ago

When I'm driving I get to decide how loud the radio is or whether all the windows are down, not my passengers. If the car is doing the driving I have no problem with the car stipulating its own requirements to ensure a safe trip.

lmilcin2• 6 years ago

Very much appreciated.

People need to understand THEY are responsible for what they are doing, not the companies for not preventing them doing stupid things.

"A car is not your mother"

I am definitely going to use it:)

bb883• 6 years ago

A car is not your mother.

Rhetoric like this works until it won't anymore. And that rhetoric breaks when innocent bystanders start getting killed in numbers. Line up enough grieving families in front of congress and congress will act, and then the new rhetoric will be "The car should be your mother."

maxerickson• 6 years ago

I mean, there's interlocks between the shift mechanism and brakes, at least in part because it's safer.

Which there's two things to separate out; the lack of a feature on a vehicle doesn't particularly free the driver from responsibility for things they do, and then there's what sort of idiotic vehicles we are willing as a society to share the road with.

"A car is not your mother" doesn't really answer the second part.

gz5• 6 years ago

x (40?) years from now:

12-car accident triggered by manual mode

defense attorneys stated a poor decision due to fatigue, while prosecutors provided evidence that the driver had taken a 25-minute power nap, woke up and performed well in a class she was taking, and then proceeded to override the autonomous vehicle system in a manner which showed specific and malicious intent to cause the accident.

anonymousiam• 6 years ago

I have told my kids many times that I expect piloted cars to be a rarity in the future. Once reliable self-driving cars are common, the difficulty in obtaining a driver license will likely increase.

robocat• 6 years ago

It’s entirely possible that self-driving cars could be realistic about the time we all get flying cars.

sharkjacobs• 6 years ago

Provincial motor vehicle acts don’t address self-driving vehicles

Right now, in Canada, we have to meet certain criteria and pass multiple tests to get our drivers license without which we cannot legally drive on public roads.

Until there is some kind of similar certification for self driving systems I don't understand why there would be any legal difference between doing this in a Tesla Model S and doing it in a '94 Miata.

zaroth• 6 years ago

The last time this hit HN the article was a bit more informative.

Two people in the car with both front seats reclined, “appearing to be asleep.”

The asleep part is almost certainly sensational drivel. This is a driver with a history of reckless driving who was screwing around with his friend.

But because he was screwing around in a Tesla it is therefore newsworthy.

The seats were reclined, but there is no evidence that the driver and passenger were both asleep. They “appeared asleep” because the seats were reclined.

This was undoubtably a stupid prank. I’ll be glad for the day when kids can’t pull stupid pranks in their cars. The trade-off is we’re unlikely to truly “own” our own cars at that time, they will operate as essentially private taxis.

makecheck• 6 years ago

Tesla sells an upgrade literally named “Full Self-Driving Capability”. The owner/driver is clearly liable but a strong argument could be made that Tesla should not be allowed to name things the way they do.

Man accused of dangerous driving for sleeping in self-driving, speeding Tesla

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