Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving | Hacker News Reader

Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving

click2houston.com

384 pointsbdcravens736 comments

Some people are quoting the recent Tesla safety report [1] as evidence that Autopilot is on average much safer than a human driver. This is a classic case of the Simpson's Paradox [2].

On the first look it seems that Autopilot is 4x safer than driving without any safety features (1 accident every 4.19 million miles vs 0.978 million miles). However, the data used to compute the stats is different in two important ways:

1. Autopilot cannot be always activated. This means that is some particularly difficult situations, the driver needs to drive himself. These are more dangerous situations in general.

2. If a driver disengages Autopilot to avoid an accident and engages it again straight away on a 10 miles drive, then you will have 9.99 miles driven on Autopilot without accident. The statistic misses the cases where the human driver intervened to avoid an accident.

This means that we are comparing the same measure (accidents) on different datasets and therefore in different conditions. This is dangerous, because it may lead us to wrong and often opposite conclusions (see Simpson's Paradox [2]).

I'm not saying that Autopilot isn't safer than a human driver, given that the driver is at the steering wheel and alert, but that this data doesn't lead to that conclusion. If the driver is not sitting at the driver seat, then it is certainly much more dangerous.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the preventable root causes that can be learned from here.

context:

* https://laist.com/2020/01/03/car_crash_accident_traffic_viol...

* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/04/04/associated-press-caut...

* https://chi.streetsblog.org/2021/04/05/laspatas-ordinance-wo...

It'd be nice if folks here would be mindful of the role language plays. Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes.

last edit I swear, but a good catchphrase I've seen recently that I'll be pinching is "Accidents happen, crashes don’t have to."

> Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes.

The argument made here isn't very good. "Traffic violence" implies intention to do violence. Intention to speed is indeed intention to incur the risk of harm, but that risk is in general quite low, whereas 'traffic violence' strongly implies direct intention to cause harm. Intention to take risks that have harm as a potential consequence is not equivalent. It may be true that 'accident' cuts too strongly in the other direction, but the correct term is clearly closer to 'accident' than it is to 'violence'.

> The word "accident" suggests nothing could have been done to predict or prevent the collision.

I mean, that's clearly rubbish, isn't? When I accidentally shut my thumb in the door, I use the word accident to indicate I didn't do it intentionally. It doesn't minimise the fact that I was a blithering idiot and could have avoided a broken thumb with the minimum of attention.

Wow, how unhelpful. I don't know the acceptable way to call this out, but how about focusing on substance instead of just bringing pedantic language stuff into the mix. I see this happening a lot, when people can't find a real way to contribute, they start debating the position of commas or whether it should be called inquiry or enquiry or whatever. It distracts from real debate, and maybe gets you some attention (lots of bureaucratic leader types love this sort of thing) but it's really wasting everybody's time.

(Edit, the irony isn't lost on me of providing a low value comment that doesn't contribute to the discussion in response to one I accuse of something similar. But I've seen so much time wasted and so many people getting ahead and in some cases basically build a career on engaging with these kind of language things instead of doing any actual work, I wanted to bring it up)

Emergency vehicle driver training (which is acceptable in some states in place of a CDL, and also covers other rules) used to be called "EVAP" (Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention).

It's now called EVIP (Emergency Vehicle Incident Prevention).

A friend of mine has a saying

"There are no accidents, there are only fuckups. Maybe getting hit by an asteroid would be an accident - but hitting or getting hit by another vehicle, or driving into the scenery, is _always_ a fuckup on somebody's part, not an accident."

(Though I'll bet "people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety" have a more socially/professionally acceptable word for "fuckup")

The NTSB openly defines transportation investigations as accidents. The entire purpose of the agency existing is to issue recommendations based on the root cause for transportation accidents to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Any foreign transportation safety agency counterpart in the world has the exact same definition. Whoever the “people who study the problem space” are it sounds like they are trying to twist language for their own personal beliefs and not really studying the problem at all.

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ntsb-accident-investigat...

Hot Fuzz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4

Interesting - I never thought about this aspect! This crash was of course 100% preventable by... driving.

The word "accident," as it pertains to traffic collisions, is actually just translated to "collision" in my head. In no way does my brain understand it to mean that "this was done unintentionally," it instead basically acts as a homonym to the word which has anything to do with intention.

> Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the preventable root causes that can be learned from here

Nah, it's just a line from law enforcement and prosecutors who want to feed more people to the justice system. More convictions means more revenue and career advancement.

The marketing and messaging around auto-pilot simultaneously argues that auto-pilot is safer than a human driver but blames the driver when there is an accident.

Heads I win, tails you lose. What's so difficult to understand? /s

Autopilot in a plane can make things significantly safer by reducing cognitive load for the pilot. However the plane autopilot will in no way avoid a collision. Pilots are still primarily at fault if the plane crashes.

A human and Autopilot working together is safer than just a human driving. Autopilot by itself is currently less safe than just a human driving (which is why it's still level 2). There's no mixed messaging.

I have read the criticism of how the Autopilot miles aren't apples-to-apples comparisons with national averages many times. However, this cherry-picks a single number from the safety report and ignores the other reported statistics. If the explanation for why Autopilot miles were so much safer than non-Autopilot miles is that people turn it off in dangerous situations — and thus equal or greater numbers of crashes were occurring for Autopilot users overall compared to the national average, they were just occurring when Autopilot was off — the crash rate without Autopilot engaged would have to be higher than the national average. Otherwise, where would the crashes go?

However, it isn't. The crash rate with Autopilot off (but with other safety features on) is about 4x better than the national average. And with all safety features turned off, it's still 2x better.

I don't think you can explain away the high safety record of Autopilot by claiming the crashes are concentrated in the non-Autopilot miles, because they aren't. While Autopilot miles are safer than non-Autopilot miles, non-Autopilot miles are no more dangerous than the national average (and in fact are less dangerous).

Autopilot+human is considerably safer than human alone.

Even if what you argue is true, it doesn't follow from this report. Why is the accident rate of Tesla with Autopilot and all safety features off 2x better than the national average? Because there is a difference in the demographics - Tesla drivers are probably younger and more enthusiastic about driving than the average driver.

Now, if you do the same statistics on the same demographics for all non Tesla cars, you could actually get less accidents than Tesla - here are where the hidden accidents went. Again, I don't have the data about this and I don't claim it is true, but without knowing this, you cannot make the conclusion you are making as well.

Otherwise I agree with you - I also believe that Autopilot+human is safer than just human. Unfortunately, the usual way that people interpret these numbers is that Autopilot is safer than human...

> However, it isn't. The crash rate with Autopilot off (but with other safety features on) is about 4x better than the national average. And with all safety features turned off, it's still 2x better.

You still can't figure that out from Tesla's stats. It'd have to be "compared to the same roads in the same conditions". Tesla only knows where its vehicles have been driven, not every vehicle on the road. Let's be honest, this stat is just marketing.

The total crash rate in Tesla cars is not necessary less than that of say Prius cars.

Comparing Tesla cars crash rate with that of the overall population is dishonest:

1. drivers are biased population 2. the age of the car is biased

The quoted statistics on either side are not helpful here. See:

>> Driving to Safety

>> How Many Miles of Driving Would It Take to Demonstrate Autonomous Vehicle Reliability?

>> Key Findings

>> Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries.

>> Under even aggressive testing assumptions, existing fleets would take tens and sometimes hundreds of years to drive these miles — an impossible proposition if the aim is to demonstrate their performance prior to releasing them on the roads for consumer use.

>> Therefore, at least for fatalities and injuries, test-driving alone cannot provide sufficient evidence for demonstrating autonomous vehicle safety.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1478.html

Note also that Tesla's numbers are reported after several years that Tesla cars with Autopilot have already been driven on public roads. Whatever the numbers say now when Autopilot was first released there was no evidence of it being safer than human-driven cars, only wishfull thinking and marketing concerns.

Please correct for demographics. The average Telsa owner does not include poor people driving beaters with bad brakes, so there's a heck of a lot of self selection going on that is probably skewing the statistics.

As I like to point out to people when they quote this self driving statistic, student drivers have the best driving record out there. No fines, no accidents. Yet nobody would ever confuse a student driver for a good driver even if they are probably better than current self driving tech.

Why do you say that? Student drivers certainly do get into accidents, despite the fact that some driver's ed cars allow the instructor to take partial control. When my partner was in a program, the student driving the car they were in rear-ended another car.

Maybe you mean that it doesn't go on their driving record, but is that really true? The one reference I could quickly find of this happening says that the student was issued an infraction: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/04/04/Student-driver-crash...

That's a pretty weak argument regardless of your stance on self driving cars. Student driver records aren't meaningful because we don't have enough data to make a judgement. We have lots of data on self driving cars. There are other ways to cast doubt on self driving car records but this isn't one of them.

Do you mean that any individual student driver is likely to have a perfect record because they haven't driven much? That seems like it wouldn't apply here, because Teslas have, in fact, driven a large number of miles.

Or are you claiming that supervised student drivers are much safer because they, like self driving cars today, are supervised?

Maybe I'm totally missing the point of your analogy, but it seems like it doesn't clarify much.

A student driver ran into my neighbors yard on our non-busy street.

There is also an other problem with only trying to better than average driver. If your system is only slightly better than average. That means basically 1 out of 2 people are better than your software.

Autonomous, driving should be multiple sigmas better than average. Especially given the reaction times that are possible for a computer vs a human.

If its only good as average a large amount of drivers would be safer to drive themselves.

Basically it should be as good if not better than the most capable drivers. Average is way to low of a bar to aim for.

The reaction time is actually an interesting question. Reactions in humans which do not require thought/planning can be quite quick, and the human vision system is /very/ quick, especially for movement. How fast is the vision system in a Tesla? Not only frequency, what's the latency from vision change to decision? My guess is the Tesla is faster, but by less than an order of magnitude. I would not be surprised that it's slower for some cases. But I really don't know.

The Tesla Safety Report is so misleading:

1. The accident rate does not take into account of drivers age, credit score and prior safety record, or the age / value of the car.

2. Most people only turn on autopilot when driving is easy (e.g. on a highway).

Sorry, a non-American here. By "credit score" are you referring to the financial credit score or some sort of "points system" for drivers? If the former, then why would it be important to include it?

Does any car company give a detailed normalized report like you're asking for in 1?

edit: by which I mean, if tesla autopilot gets into more accidents than rich white yuppies but less than the national average, it's not entirely obvious to me is the conclusion is rich white yuppies shouldn't use autopilot or that autopilot isn't safe enough. It also suggests its very useful for poor minorities.

Location and local driving conditions are the only real differentiator where this might make a difference on decision making. Those are going to be correlated with the demographics of the person driving them, but are weak proxies at best.

Does the safety report account for vehicle age and price? Because I imagine there's a difference in accident-free miles if you were to compare a new Mercedes-Benz S-Class to a 15-year-old Camry.

No it doesn’t, that’s one of the main criticisms along with comparing highway miles to city miles.

Volvo xc90 had no fatal accident from 2002 to 2018. Beat that for starters.

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/motors/2018/04/17/no-fat...

What about the people that the XC90 rams into?

> I'm not saying that Autopilot isn't safer than a human driver

I'm saying that Autopilot isn't safer than a human driver. The fatal accidents involving Autopilot so far, mostly crashing into stationary objects, were easily avoidable by a marginally competent driver. Tesla is playing with fire.

There are definitely accidents with Autopilot that could have been avoided by humans, but we need to compare those against the cases where autopilot prevents accidents that are unlikely to be avoided by humans, like this one: https://youtu.be/bUhFfunT2ds?t=116

It's pretty clear that human paying attention + autopilot is safer than either: 1) human only 2) autopilot only.

I totally agree with your argument.

But playing the role of the devil's advocate here one might argue that the major benefit of autopilots is that the data will be accumulated to the set of happened accidents, so that they don't happen again in future.

When comparing accidents of manual vs automated driving, manual cases don't have any learning effect (let alone communication of it and availability of that to other human drivers). Automated driving on the other hand has the theoretical benefit, if it's openly shared, that all edge cases of untrained accidents go asymptotically to zero over time.

But in order to achieve that there must be a law that enforces the use of the same dataset, and that defines this dataset as public domain so that all autopilots can learn from that knowledge.

This was actually my initial hope for OpenAI. And oh boi have I been disappointed there. Nothing changed when it comes to reproducability of training or availability of datasets, and most research of OpenAI seems to be spent on proprietary concepts.

> manual cases don't have any learning effect

Not true. The traffic and safety regulations are in part based by analysis and lessons learned from crashes. The infrastructure, e.g. road profile, speed limit, signage, etc. benefits from the same.

The problem of people overestimating the capability of the car or just losing their attention when Autopilot is engaged could easily wipe out whatever wins you do get.

Valid stat comparison will be average accident rate of all cars with autopilot vs same of all cars without, and with $30k - $50k current market value. This will equalise many things.

I, personally, wont trust some autopilot scripts, at least in this decade.

I don't want to detail the conversation too much, or distract from the excellent points you have made... But how is this simpson's paradox?

Simpson's paradox is easier to understand geometrically.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simpson_paradox_vectors...

L1 and L2 in the diagram have smaller slopes than B1 and B2, and yet their sum is higher. It's not hard to characterize when this happens. So the canonic example is that a drug might be more effective against all sub-cases (e.g. mild, severe illness) and yet appear less effective overall.

You, on the other hand, seem to be describing selection bias.

Simpson's paradox can be thought of as selection bias as well. To make the Simpson's paradox clear, consider the following simplified scenario: autopilot has more accidents per city mile, and more accidents per highway mile, but because highway miles have fewer accidents, and autopilot is tested on a much higher proportion of highway miles, on average it has fewer accidents per mile overall.

To avoid #2, Tesla specifically counts any accidents within 5 minutes after autopilot disconnect as an autopilot accident.

Five seconds.

"To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before a crash, and we count all crashes in which the crash alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed."

At the bottom of:

https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

Does that really avoid #2? My understanding of that situation was this:

1. The driver senses an impending accident or dangerous situation, so they disengage autopilot.

2. The driver personally maneuvers the car so as to avoid any accident or crash.

3. The driver re-engages autopilot afterwards.

In this scenario, there is no accident, so there's nothing for Tesla to count either way. The idea is that there could have been an accident if not for human intervention. Unless Tesla counts every disengagement as a potential accident, I don't really see how they could account for this.

What they of course should do is count any manual intervention as a possible autopilot accident.

When I say possible, what I mean is they should go back, run the sensor data through the system, and see what autopilot would have wanted to do in the time that the human took over.

Can you explain how that avoids it? Not sure I understand.

its really really annoying that even smart people puppet 'self driving cars are safer than human ones'.

self driving cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous than human drivers. its absurd to say otherwise, and to do so requires a level of stupidity that can only be explained by dogma.

Can't we easily avoid these pitfalls by just comparing accidents/km on autopilot-equipped cars vs others? And disregard whether or not the autopilot is engaged.

This is a tangent about the Simpson's Paradox that may or may not be relevant to Autopilot. Specifically about the archetypal example given in the Wikipedia article, "UC Berkeley gender bias":

Even if the deeper data analysis showed a "small but statistically significant bias in favor of women" in terms of admission rates in individual departments, it doesn't prove that there isn't another kind of bias behind the overall admission rates (44% for men, 35% for women). Specifically, why doesn't the university rebalance department sizes, so that all departments are similarly competitive? It would result in the overall male and female rates converging. It would also make a lot of sense from a supply and demand perspective. It is entirely possible that there was no urgency or desire to do so because of bias on the part of administrators, who were mostly male.

Might the quickness to dismiss the issue as a Simpson Paradox reflect another bias?

I believe autopilot's safety features were disabled so these statistics are meaningless. I'm not talking about simply forcing it into autopilot, but disabling autopilot's ability to control the vehicle's acceleration. The reason I think this is the case is due largely to the speed the vehicle was traveling which is... unlikely under autopilot which limits speeds to 5 MPH over the speed limit.

If you are pushing on the gas pedal, the car can only steer and has no control over speed.

This weird sort of hybrid riding where the car is controlling the steering and the driver is controlling the speed puts the car in an untenable situation. It is a driver with no brakes and no control over the gas pedal.

Maybe Tesla should disable this mode entirely. Tesla (very reasonably) limits speeds to 5MPH over the speed limit when you are in autosteer mode, so lots of people like the ability to bypass the speed. Personally, I very much like being able to push the speed when it's reasonably safe to do so. If you are operating the system as designed, it's no less safe than cruise control.

Tesla does not limit the speed over the speed to 5 mph over the speed limit.

> Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.

This will become a massive issue in the years to come unless we find a way not only to drastically reduce the number of crashes but also massively improve reliability.

High voltage battery fires are probably the worst kind of fire a regular emergency responder would have to deal with, between the hard to put out fire and the risk of electric shock. It also causes some massive damage to the surroundings (the actual road surface, surrounding cars, or any garage unfortunate to house the car at that time).

Today very few emergency responders are even trained to properly deal with such a fire, and it's a topic really lagging behind everywhere compared to the rate EVs are popping up on the streets.

There's a public set of first responder guides with detailed diagrams for every make and model available. While I'm not sure they have a hotline, Tesla has always tried very hard to provide accurate information how to douse flames, which cables to cut to render the HV system disabled, and how to take care to ensure the car doesn't reignite. See: https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders (e.g., a specific guide: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...)

Interesting information! "...can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire"

What is it with US tech companies and refusing to provide basic information like this? How does that even benefit them?!? With GPUs and radios there's the nebulous "it helps protect trade secrets" bullshit but I can't imagine how refusing to tell a firefighter how to extinguish your burning crap does that.

Tesla's and other electric cars have been around for a decade now. It's completely reasonable to expect fire departments to have trained their staff to deal with EV crashes.

My municipality gives the fire chief a $900 stipend each year. That's it. The fire department is 100% voluntary.

In contrast, 60+% of the budget goes towards making sure police officers can make over $200,000 a year with overtime.

I think it certainly raises questions about the extent to which it's reasonable for public utilities to pick up the slack for negative externalities caused by profitable companies. Of course it's a hard thing to price because of course fossil-fuel vehicles have a laundry list of negative externalities of their own.

I think you may be overestimating the resources fire departments have. Many are woefully underfunded as is, particularly the ones that are 100% volunteer. There are probably dozens of things (equipment and training) that departments could spend money on that would benefit the community they serve more than training for ev accidents.

How are 3 out of 3 replies discussing what the fire-department should do from a training and policy perspective and nobody commenting on the science/engineering of dealing with a EV fire.

EVs have represented a relatively small fleet of new and mostly high end cars so far. Which means that they haven't posed much of a problem so far. The budgets for most fire departments are pretty limited and they focus on priorities. EVs are hardly a priority for most of them even now as the fleet is growing exponentially and perhaps more critically, it's aging thus increasing the risk of fires.

You can train all you want but unless you have a burning EV right in front of you, all training is only theoretical. Practice makes perfect and no fire department will set a Li-Ion car battery on fire just to demonstrate what happens.

Any fire department employees should no the basic classes of fire and what I used and not used on them,

Any company H&S rep will know this

What's the best way to actually put them out?

The official Model X first responders guide suggests 3,000 gallons of water (https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...).

Anecdotally from a good friend of mine who's a fire chief at a local station, when they finally extinguish electric vehicle fires they have to park the burned car at least 50 metres away from other vehicles in their holding yards, because of the risk of re-ignition. They often put out an EV fire and then have the thing catch on fire again days later.

A dump truck of sand.

Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.

> What's the best way to actually put them out?

Submerge them in a container filled with water, [1].

[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-bur...

Quickly connect a bunch of fans to them, which will then blow the flames out or drain the batteries. Whichever comes first.

Thermal runaway in Lithium-ion battery packs is one reason that I don't ever want an EV parked inside my garage. These fires are hard to put out.

I'm not really seeing a scenario where an out-of-control car fire has worse results in a garage for gasoline vs. lithium ion.

In both cases it's an absolutely massive thermal conflagration, with no hope of putting it out using anything a homeowner has on hand, and it will proceed so rapidly that the house is going to be totaled by the time the fire department shows up.

I have to figure this is just bias toward the familiar. I will grant you that I don't refill an ICE car inside my own garage, so maybe charging genuinely makes the electric more dangerous. But it probably doesn't do so in fact, I would guess in both cases the biggest risk is something like leaving rags soaked in linseed oil and getting spontaneous combustion.

I don't believe EV cars are anymore likely to catch fire than gasoline cars. Either way, if a car catches fire in your garage you are in for a bad time.

It's definitely good to spread the awareness that many fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires, though.

Everybody else keeps trying to tell you ICE cars store more energy, or could spontaneously combust just as easily, and they're not wrong.

But when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. I do not leave it to slowly trickle fill overnight, like one would with an EV; not only am I not there in that scenario, but odds are I'm not even awake.

The odds are minuscule, and you're more likely to die in many other ways. But the fix is so easy - assuming it's not going to hit -30, just keep it outside. And the risk (probability multiplied by chances for it to happen) is going to get so great when everyone has an EV, that I can at least see your point.

I don't agree, and were I able to afford a house with a garage and a Tesla to park in it, I probably would. Doubly so as it hits -50 with wind chill here. But to dismiss your concerns outright doesn't feel quite right to me.

Probably not a major concern in your garage. These battery packs are built with fairly well-isolated cells that even if one fails should not result in a domino effect.

The reason you see issues in cases like this is because the wreck totally decimated that isolation with mechanical force and so you get runaway effects.

Many promising alternatives to lithium ion batteries are being experimented with now, so saying you don't ever want an EV parked inside your garage based on problems with lithium ion batteries may not be entirely reasonable.

Gasoline has way more thermal energy. Yes, it's easier to put out, bit it gives you way less time before things really get out of hand.

I have literally never heard of a Tesla bursting into flames while parked in a garage. Have you?

I mean that’s fine if this is the hill you want to die on, but right now I think it’s just as likely your gas car fireball explodes like a Hollywood movie while parked in your garage.

if solid state batteries materialize it will be such a boon

“They just get too used to it. That tends to be more of an issue. It’s not a lack of understanding of what Autopilot can do. It’s [drivers] thinking they know more about Autopilot than they do.”

Hmm, that seems like a rather stark contradiction.

Elon I think has some character flaws and when people are dying it's not the time to be defensive. I'm one of the least naturally empathetic people I know and yet I wouldn't be talking about anything other than condolences.

Finally he can't continue to defend the term 'autopilot' - in Public Communications, you're talking the masses, the lowest common denominator, and the 'laziest mode' of even high functioning people - you gotta use words that will shape outcomes. 'Autopilot' is just a bad choice - he needs to change it.

I agree. People here will cite the aviation term not refering to autonomous flying, but if you ask a regular person in the street, they think that Tesla's are self-driving. This is a dangerous belief that is held by a lot of people and needs to change. However, Tesla knows this adds an intriguing cachet to the brand, so they seem reluctant to downplay it.

It doesn't matter what a "regular person in the street" thinks, from a safety standpoint. What matters is what Tesla owners think (i.e. the people driving the cars). Are they fooled by the term? Search around on TMC, /r/teslamotors, or any other owners group, and you'll find it's pretty universally understood.

Additionally, the car reminds you of its limitations every time you use it. And it disables if it doesn't detect torque on the steering wheel, or weight in your seat, or the seatbelt clipped in. I understand how someone could be mislead by marketing early in the buying process. But by the time you get to operating the vehicle, it is borderline impossible to use Autopilot and still believe it requires no human attention.

The big difference between car drivers w/ "autopilot" and airline pilots with autopilot is that the airline pilots have massively increased training requirements, regular re-certification, and physical fitness requirements.

Even if plane vs automobile autopilots are equivalent in functionality, the difference in operator training is separated by multiple orders of magnitude. Not to mention the frequent presence of a second pilot in commercial airlines and a dedicated ATF crew on the ground to monitor their situation.

Do you feel the same way about Ford's "Copilot 360"? Surely everyone agrees that a "copilot" is more capable than an "autopilot"...

> 'Autopilot' is just a bad choice

It depends on what your goals are. It is a widely known term, associated with Tesla and seen favorably. Sure, it is supremely misleading but in this case that seems like a feature.

If Tesla's goal was safety they wouldn't have shipped this feature in the first place. Instead they are aiming for luxury.

He's defensive because the news media is talking about a product that can't be operated in the way the news media is describing. It's not physically possible. The car can't be operated with no one in the driver's seat. Autopilot shuts off automatically.

And yet there are plenty of videos like this... https://youtu.be/VS5zQKXHdpM?t=93

My guess would be Tesla makes the driver detection relatively simple to defeat compared to what they could enforce if they wanted.

Yeah in that case they had to put a weight on the seat, keep the seat buckled, and also keep applying force to the wheel. At some point you just have to give up as the threat model becomes too big.

For anyone else wondering why this is notable:

“Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC 2 that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car.”

I’m sure the Tesla crowd will jump in to say this is driver error because Tesla has a disclaimer that the feature requires active driver supervision, but the problem has always been the marketing that causes users to over estimate the system’s capabilities. Musk says that autopilot is safer than human driven miles, but this is apples and oranges since the human driven miles include city driving and all models of car, which have much higher rates of accidents than luxury cars like Teslas.

Full Self Driving’s marketing has been criminal. Tesla is trying to solve self driving without lidar, which it’s competitors are using. Waymo is way ahead of Tesla, but they create the illusion of being ahead by releasing features that are clearly extremely dangerous.

This video is a little over the top but highlights the abuses of FSD marketing better than anything else I’ve seen: https://twitter.com/FinanceLancelot/status/13752898727562731...

> Tesla has a disclaimer that the feature requires active driver supervision

Tesla has also had, since 2017, a prominent page on the website that says "The driver is only in the seat for legal purposes. The vehicle doesn't need it." (Ironic, given the circumstances of this accident).

I’m sure the Tesla crowd will jump in to say this is driver error

Did I read the parent post incorrectly? There was no driver in the seat.

> I’m sure the Tesla crowd will jump in to say this is driver error

There was literally no one in the driver seat.

Aside:

>Musk says that autopilot is safer than human driven miles

Is there a breakdown for income with road safety? The best I could find is that poorer countries have higher road deaths / km, but I couldn't find any data on road safety within a country.

Have you ever driven a Tesla with full self driving?

If you engage self driving the car pops up with a giant alert to keep your hands on the wheel and the car doesn’t allow you to use full self driving unless you wiggle the steering wheel every few minutes. There is no mystery as to what is safe.

The driver... wasn’t in the seat. Yes I would say that’s driver error.

Or maybe... lack of driver error.

The CEO of Waymo just resigned so I doubt they’re way ahead.

I don't see how autopilot was involved here. This was a tiny cul de sac (the address is in the article). Autopilot simply won't achieve the kind of speeds needed to cause that collision.

Frankly I agree with other posters here that the most likely scenario is that there was a human driver in the seemingly-undamaged drivers' seat who fled the scene. Absent that, you'd have to play games with launch mode or some kind of device to press the accellerator. You just can't do this with autopilot as I see it.

I found this notable as well:

> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.

Fire departments are going to need to learn how to put out battery fires and have the relevant equipment available. If they are in the profession of putting out fires, at some point it's on them to know how to not waste 32,000 gallons of water as these vehicles become more common.

"Use lots of water" is actually the best practice for extinguishing these kinds of fires.

First of all, there are actually parts of the car that are on fire (plastics, fabrics, etc.) and may spread fire to the surrounding environment. You need to extinguish those.

Secondly, the battery system is not "on fire" in the classical sense. It's undergoing a self-sustaining thermal runaway. You pour as much water as you can on it to remove heat and break the chain reaction.

The water wasn't wasted. It was used to put out the fire.

We're talking about $50 worth of water. Negligible compared to the overall costs.

How do you put them out?

The unsatisfying response in this case might just be: some fires can't be put out. At least, not quickly enough to matter for anyone inside the car. The priority in cases like this might just be to remove occupants from inside the car if possible.

According to Tesla's information, battery fires can be extinguished by using a lot of water. So, it is possible to do with an ordinary fire truck (and self-contained breathing apparatuses so firefighters can get near a burning car without breathing the fumes), but it might actually be a rare case where putting the fire out is consequential to the outcome for the occupants: I'd imagine in most cases they either got out in time or it was already too late by the time putting the fire out is a plausible option. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though.

Well how do you put out a battery fire? What new materials does every single fire station in America need to acquire? What new skills/training do local firefighters need? Who's going to pay for all this?

Maybe they can learn some techniques, but also car manufacturers must make the cars more ready for those kind of situations. It won't be the first time more "dangerous" vehicules are created, and technical solutions to be found (think of the liquefied petroleum gas design which had to have a safety valve).

Alternatively, perhaps this troublesome aspect of their design should be changed before they become more common?

Yet another absolutely deadly device we are introducing to our neighbourhoods because people hate public transport so much. This is insane.

Some "authorities" they are. Took me about 5 seconds to find the answer. Not one person thought to Google it?

Maybe in a situation like that, going by the first search engine result isn’t the best idea?

The first result for my query says "copious amounts of water are recommended as the best means to extinguish a high voltage vehicle fire." What did you find?

So it seems pretty possible that they followed the standard procedure and it didn't work?

I’m confused how this is possible. I have a 2020 Tesla and you have to turn the wheel every couple of minutes while Autopilot is on otherwise it will just turn off after beeping a ton.

Most of Tesla’s ass-covering mechanisms can be circumvented easily. The steering wheel nag in my Model X is easily fooled by any kind of asymmetric weight on the wheel. There are other mechanisms, like seat belt and seat weight monitoring, but these can be easily circumvented as well.

To Tesla’s credit, they have reportedly recently started using gaze tracking on cars equipped with a passenger-facing cam, which is much harder to circumvent. If you look at literally every other public sale automaker doing self driving, they use gaze tracking.

Tools to fool Teslas minimal hands on detection have been available for years. Amazon even sells them[1]. Anyone buying them should have their license suspended as precautionary measure.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/QCKJ-Steering-Autopilot-Assisted-Auxi...

It is perfectly possible to nudge the steering wheel from the passenger side.

Totally agree with you. I own a Tesla and I am definitely not a big fan of how they communicate or treat their customer (customer service is just horrible). But in the present case, this is not a tesla issue, just an issue of two irresponsible people. The car would have beeped thousands times before crashing (at least very loud beeps for not applying force on the steering wheel and other loud beeps because the car was going off road and hitting a tree - obstacle detection).

I was thinking the same.. the driver had to be up to some kind of shenanigans. The front end damage from the tree didn't look too bad. Maybe the driver was drunk and fled or got in the back seat to avoid arrest?

Reach over and turn the wheel from the passenger side?

This one sounds like an ID10T error.

How the heck was the car driving itself with nobody in the drivers seat? Surely that's a minimal requirement the car must pass before it engages autopilot.

It's not physically possible. The car can't be operated with no one in the driver's seat. Autopilot shuts off automatically. Further, it was in a cul-de-sac, some place autopilot doesn't operate.

I've been wondering about that too.. could have sworn that was the case. The front end damage from the tree looks minimal, have been wondering if the driver was drunk, the car crashed, he didn't think it was going to burst into flames, so he got in the back seat and buckled in to try to avoid getting arrested. Or maybe they were screwing around and the driver changed seats, then it crashed?

Also:

> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2020_Lit...

It's not physically possible. The car can't be operated with no one in the driver's seat. Autopilot shuts off automatically.

Rapture.

New information released says it was a 2019 Model S and the 2 men were talking about the car’s features with their wives before they took it for a test drive. Police believe the vehicle was on autopilot and traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash.

https://abc7ny.com/amp/tesla-crash-houston-fatal-car-autopil...

Some details in the article:

1) The police stated "no one was in the driver seat at the time of impact" of the Model S

2) Two people died in the subsequent fire from the crash into a tree

3) "it took firefighters nearly four hours and more than 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire."

4) "At one point, crews had to call Tesla to ask how to put the fire out, Herman said."

5) "The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright."

Another link with some additional details: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-f...

Is there a particular reason why they had to fight the fire instead of waiting for it to put itself out? IIRC this is what Tesla itself recommends if there is no danger of spreading to nearby objects.

People are commenting on this story without the benefit of all of the necessary facts.

1) Autopilot will not activate without lane lines on the road

2) FSD will not activate without lane lines either

3) The car was not equipped with FSD software

4) There were no lane lines on the road where this happened

https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1383855271710056460

So what's the conclusion here? Who needs to do the double check? The coroner, because the event did not happen thus the passengers are alive and stationary due to lack of a driver or the fire department because there's a driver on the drivers seat but they missed it?

To me, there's lots of possibilities. Driver couldn't open the door after the crash, so moved to either the passenger or back seat to try and escape...but failed. Or, third person was driving, fled the scene on foot. Both kind of unlikely. But how likely is it that they circumvented the seat belt, put a weight on the seat, and kept torque on the wheel, and then engaged autopilot?

Whatever happened here is going to be something weird and unusual.

Nitpick: there's a difference between "will not activate" and "will deactivate if it was already active". (For the record, my opinion is that this was entirely the driver's fault and not Tesla's fault at all.)

Autopilot also supposedly wants the seat belt buckled and weight on the seat, right?

Article says it’s unconfirmed whether the car was in auto-drive. Part of me (without any knowledge) thinks someone was showing off the auto-drive and turned it off accidentally. But more details will come out I hope.

One thing in particular sticks out as concerning: the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.

That’s not something specific to Tesla, Tesla does not make all battery powered cars, the fire service should know how to suppress electrical fires.

I once unhooked my belt to take off my jacket while on autopilot. It immediately started screaming at me, disabled autopilot and started slowing down gradually.

I've also heard it uses the seat sensor to do the same. Unless they've found a way to bypass multiple safety features, then the car wasn't in autopilot.

Funny how it turned a disengaged safety belt (something endangering the occupant) into something endangering people not in that particular vehicle.

Auto pilot immediately switches off if it doesn’t sense pressure in the seat, which would result it tons of beeping and the car slowing down and moving to side of road.

Tested this. Unbuckling turns it off, but lifting off seat doesn't trigger anything. Obviously didn't try actually not being in seat completely. More here: https://twitter.com/Singularitarian/status/13841868748104417...

Lithium-ion fires are hard to extinguish, especially with thermal runaways. There are flame retardant products that can extinguish lithium-ion fires, Class D extinguishers can be used.

I would guess the fire crews that responded were not equipped with this type of extinguisher.

Lithium-ion fires are not Class D. Class D is for lithium metal fires, and lithium-ion batteries don't contain lithium metal.

To put out a Tesla fire, you just use water. Lots and lots of water. Which is exactly what these guys did.

> “[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact,” Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said. “They are positive.”

This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.

> the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.

Tesla's advice is "let it burn":

> Tesla’s guidance suggests it’s better to let the fire burn out than continuing to try to put it out.

> This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.

I thought autopilot had a safety feature to prevent no-driver operation, though there is a “SmartSummon” feature intended for parking lots which does not (but requires continuous press of a fob button.) So, there’s no way this should be possible, absent a major malfunction to even allow self-driving in the reported condition.

Reminds me of a separate incident, where the fire department ended up dunking the Tesla in a container of water to prevent re-ignition: https://electrek.co/2019/06/01/tesla-fire-supercharger/

There are a bunch of more pertinent things to say, but I was struck by just how thoroughly demolished that car looked, and by the fact that it took 32k gallons of water to put the fire out because the battery kept re-igniting. I'm no expert on what typical high-speed crashes look like, but this seems ... problematic.

These are good points. I am not qualified in this area, but it would be interesting to hear if 32k gallons of water is a lot to extinguish a total wreck fire. Is water the best thing to use for these battery fires? (Hint: Is a foam product more suitable, but more expensive?) Also: Do the batteries in hybrid cars have similar issues?

Something in this story doesn’t add up. There is no implementation of AutoPilot on Tesla cars that doesn’t require intervention by the driver every 15 seconds. Perhaps the driver undid their seat belt and reached behind to get something and was then thrown from his seat elsewhere?

TFA doesn't agree:

> The company’s cars only check that attention with a sensor that measures torque in the steering wheel, though, leaving room for misuse

So they could have held the steering wheel from the passanger seat.

> Tesla CEO Elon Musk has rejected calls from Tesla engineers to add better safety monitoring when a vehicle is in Autopilot, such as eye-tracking cameras or additional sensors on the steering wheel, saying the tech is “ineffective.”

In my country there was recently an event where a Tesla on Autopilot crashed out with the driver fast asleep behind the wheel. I'd say regulation to make it mandatory to install fool proof safety tech ensuring the driver is actively observing the traffic is needed, and fast. And this tech is trivial compared to even semi-autonomous driving, no matter what Musk is claiming.

> So they could have held the steering wheel from the passanger seat.

We don’t have the diagnostic information that indicates AP was engaged. So, which is more likely: driver error and no seatbelt, or driver sitting in the passenger seat? I contend the latter is extremely unlikely, since there would be basically no benefit to doing this given the requirements of AP currently.

It’s possible the driver was pulling a stunt. In which case, the deaths are attributable to deliberate misuse, no different than “ghost riding the whip”

I live in this area, which is highly wooded and full of curvy roads. It would be a cinch to crash into a tree here in 2 or 3 seconds. It wouldn't take 15.

When automation does a 95% job, sometimes it isn't worthwhile using it because of the overrides required for the extra 5%. If you require full concentration while using driving assist, it might actually be easier to just drive the car regularly or you'll struggle to maintain that ability to intervene immediately when required.

When you deliberately rig your car so the driver seat can be empty, yeah those extra 5% suddenly become a very tall mountain.

Sane people can work with the software so they complement each other. People make mistakes, the software makes mistakes. Both together make fewer mistakes.

If you start watching shows or playing games on your phone, or sleeping, that won't happen.

Let's say your car has a problem with a slip road in a particular bit of road you are about to hit in about 30 mins. If on autopilot, it will start to take the slip road, but confuse the hard shoulder with a lane, crashing into the barrier. If you have spent the last 30 minutes trying to stay awake because you have practically no input into the driving, you might not be alert enough to avert the accident. If you've been driving, not only would you be alert enough, but you also wouldn't have been in that situation.

So basically like a rich parent supporting their children often leads to them being unsuccessful in life, become drug addicts and so on. I know, bit of a jump in argument there. But that's where my train of thought autopilot brought me.

Maybe, but let's be clear that right now investigators think this driver was in the backseat. These are interesting conjectures but not at all related to the crash at hand.

Two men ... nobody driving.

This is a "hold my beer and watch this" accident.

Feels like a stupid reenactment of this Simpsons scene from two decades ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ToNp1MY3c

On the face of it, it appears we're putting waaaay too much trust in technologies that aren't anywhere near the levels of autonomy we expect them to have.

Whether that's an issue of the relevant car companies not communicating with their customers properly; or their customers being ignorant - or worse still, wilfully negligent, is probably something for the courts to decide.

Either way, it seems to me an extended period of reflection over what we as human beings are currently doing to one another with these new-fangled driving technologies, is needed.

"Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery."

Wow. Have there been other electric car fires which are so difficult to put out?

I was under the impression they are all this difficult to put out.

But maybe it depends on how many cells ruptured. Hitting a tree dead center is going to take out a lot of cells I guess.

This is even worse than the deadly autopilot, EV cars are much more likely to burn and the fire is much hard to extinguish, but no one who tries to sell you an EV will tell you "hey you are more likely to die by being burned alive!"

> Wow. Have there been other electric car fires which are so difficult to put out?

(In)famously the electric super car that Richard Hammond crashed.

The Rimec One Concept car is all-electric. Hammond's model was left destroyed and took five days to fully extinguish

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/5092851/richard-hammond-cras...

There have been many situations like this, including cars reigniting days later. Also a few cases of cars randomly catching fire while parked: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-cars-catch-on-fire...

>The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.

How is it possible, that the car doesn't stop immediately as soon ad there's noone in the driver seat?

It's the age of stupid smart vehicles. My favorite is 2018 Panamera heading into the sea[0] with no one at the driver's seat during a test.

[0] RU - https://youtu.be/nKMk3q7bHjA?t=564

Wow, someone would think smart cars would be smart enough to detect if someone is in the driver seat.

In case of the article's Tesla, they must have put some weight into the drivers seat or the owner has somehow hacked the weight sensor.

From [1]:

Bloomberg asked Urmson about Tesla's Autopilot technology—and particularly Elon Musk's claim that Tesla vehicles will soon be capable of operating as driverless taxis.

“It’s just not going to happen,” Urmson said. “It’s technically very impressive what they’ve done, but we were doing better in 2010.”

That's a reference to Urmson's time at Google. Google started recruiting DARPA Grand Challenge veterans around 2009. Within a couple of years, Google's engineers had built a basic self-driving car that was capable of navigating a variety of roads around the San Francisco Bay Area.

A couple of years later, Google started letting employees use experimental self-driving cars for highway commutes—an application much like today's Autopilot. Google considered licensing this technology to automakers for freeway driving. But the technology required active driver supervision. Urmson and other Google engineers decided there was too great a risk that drivers would become overly reliant on the technology and fail to monitor it adequately, leading to unnecessary deaths.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/04/the-largest-independent...

Does failing to monitor adequately include jumping in the back seat? There's inattentiveness and reckless endangerment, I think the driver here should be charged tbh.

I think the point is that the driver was fully confident that the car would do a much better job at driving compared to them.

is it reckless endangerment when elon constantly tells people to do this and says theyre gonna be robotaxis later this year and says autopilot is safer than a human driver and calls it "autopilot"?

What's really odd is that it happened about midway onto a very short ( < 300 meters) dead-end, cul-de-sac street where you have to take a hard right turn to enter. The address of the place is in the story...look at it on a map. Really odd.

I'm not a car safety specialist or anything but I think someone should have been driving.

Did the car start driving with nobody in the driver's seat? Or did someone move out of the driver's seat after it started?

The car won't even go into Drive without weight in the driver seat. These people had to put a lot of effort into making this happen.

I live in this neighborhood and it's easy to see how you could get a Tesla up to high speed and quickly encounter a tight turn. The entire area is full of that kind of layout. It's all long roads with curves around trees.

I think it was more people doing stupid things than the environment since no one was driving the car. I wonder how old the people in the car where.

Also they need to stop calling this thing autopilot.

From Elon Musk on Twitter:

* Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD.

* Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have.

dang or other moderators, can someone add the official title to this post? It’s unclear from the submission’s title that no one was driving the car, which is the only thing that makes this post notable.

I live in this area and I definitely think the terrain here was a contributing factor. It would not take 15 seconds of hands off the wheel to have an accident. It would take 2-3 seconds.

The Woodlands is not your typical residential area. It was carved out of two old lumber mills with the intent of keeping as many trees as possible, hence lots of curves, small roads, and trees alongside them. At the time it was built (by an oil wildcatter who was worried about urbanization's impact on his family), The Woodlands was the largest master planned community in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodlands%2C_Texas

Also, a recent video made after the crash shows Autopilot can be activated without lane markings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870417

Finally, local police here reported that the couple's spouses said the two men, aged 58 and 68, were talking about the Autopilot before they left on the drive and were excited about trying the features...

Maybe Tesla can help design some portable wall/dam system that could be setup around vehicles to capture water used in a pool rather than have it all immediately lost to drainage.

I wonder how many more people have to die before Tesla actually fixes it. Is either self driving or not, there is not such a thing as "supervised driving"(that's called driving), I also wonder if those people saying -actually, this link over here says self driving is safer....- will say the same if a family member die because of the "self driving" mode not working properly.

Fix what? There wasn't a driver in the driver's seat?

the self driving part? SELF driving? They also can stop advertising the SELF driving features so people dont think o it as a thing?

My first thought on seeing the tree in the right front quarter of the car and the fact that the driver's seat area is uncrushed, is that there was a third person, who departed the scene. I'm guessing whatever data the car collected to tell one way or the other perished along with the electronics. But don't these cars also upload telemetry all the time?

From the article

>The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.

My first thought was they were making a YouTube video

Yup, that or just showing off a sort of autopilot variation of ghost ride the whip to his buddy. Really sad and dumb reason to die.

My car gets irritated that I let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds. I've never dared to see how it reacts to a continued violation but presumably it could disengage the gas or engage the brakes.

Doesn't Tesla have some kind of seat or steering wheel sensor to prevent this? Could the owner have defeated the checks somehow?

They do have a steering wheel sensor. And yes, it can be defeated.

Per the article this happened on a cul de sac in a residential neighborhood. My question is how on earth they managed to get the vehicle to a fatal speed in that environment (seriously: Google the address, there's almost no runway available). It seems likely they were playing with launch mode and not autopilot, or perhaps manually messing with the accelerator from the passenger seat.

This definitely doesn't smell like an "autopilot" failure, though we'll have to wait for details.

(In fact as others are pointing out based on the location of the damage: it actually seems not unlikely that there was a human driver who fled the scene.)

Well Teslas are known for their incredible acceleration, and then if the occupants weren’t wearing seatbelts, even a relatively low speed crash can cause severe injury.

>My car gets irritated that I let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds.

My passengers get irritated.

Two big questions for me are : - Will this change their decision to remove radar? - How did driver move to passenger seat (or idk exit the vehicle!) with autopilot still going? That should be impossible. car should have weight sensors for seatbelt in passenger side, maybe need one on driver side too!

race cars (and tanks and submarines - closed areas with high chance of fire and/or catastrophic consequences of fire) have automated fire suppression system. I wonder if EVs need to have one too. Right now the EV fires in the accidents call for memories of 196x movies where ICE cars would burst on fire in accidents. It was solved for ICE cars and need to be solved for EVs too - looking at those accidents, specifically at the damage from impact and thus related speed/etc. - it seems that the fire killed the people not the impact itself (i myself been in an accident in a regular ICE car where front of the car got smashed while we inside, being seatbelted of course, got only bruises, and if the car burst into flames the outcome would be completely different)

Hanging out in a Tesla online community, I've noticed there are two types of Tesla fans (and investors even).

The first are those that believe that EVs are the future and love the cars Tesla is producing.

The other are robotaxi/FSD evangelists and believe Tesla will usher in the age of autonomous cars sooner rather than later. These people genuinely believe we'll have fully road legal autonomous cars (as in, requiring zero human input) by 2025 and that human driven cars will be outright banned in many developed countries by 2035 or even 2030. Some of them actually want Tesla to stop selling cars to the public in favor of stocking them for the robotaxi fleet which they are absolutely sure will be widely deployed in a matter of a few years.

Regarding the latter group, this video[1] that was archived by an HN user[2] is pretty telling.

[1] https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26810351

It's really not that telling. Tesla short-sellers really will stop at nothing to try to recoup their bet.

Someone on HN has put together a fairly detailed timeline of Elon's comments on FSD:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26519357

There are two types of people: those who divide people into groups and those that don't.

Seriously though: there are many more Tesla fans, there are also those that hope the company succeeds but that wished that that self driving feature had been postponed until it actually worked because in the longer term this is bad for the brand and bad for electrics as a whole.

Don't get me wrong - I too am a Tesla fan, and my next car will most likely be one too. And disclaimer: I also own stock.

But yeah, I wish both Elon and the rabid FSD evangelists would quiet down and stop hyping FSD and robotaxi. I agree that hyping it right here and now today is going to hurt the brand more than help.

The bad attention is already happening. You hear about any other company making incremental advances in autonomous vehicle tech, and it's generally met positively. News about greater, more significant, advances from Tesla, are met with second guessing, doubts, and worries about how many people will get hurt.

> These people genuinely believe we'll have fully road legal autonomous cars (as in, requiring zero human input) by 2025 and that human driven cars will be outright banned by 2035 or even 2030.

I'm not a Tesla fan, but I think that's going to happen eventually. Probably much closer to 2100 though.

By 2100 people will realize how dumb people in the 2020 were and have efficient public transportation for that "autonomous" travelling.

It was only a matter of time, no one was driving the car.

I thought hey had systems to ensure that an attentive human was in the driver seat. Someone found a way to circumvent this?

The system detects torque on the steering wheel: you can find various hacks online to fake the input.

Bodes well for the narrow tunnel with no egress meant for these cars to self-drive in.

In fairness there are very few trees pictured in the TBC tunnels so far.

Trees sure. But a disabled car or something drops out/off of a car? That seems plausible.

Why would someone use autopilot when Tesla is not liable for damages? Its like you hire a driver but you are liable for any crash they do.

Because autopilot has nothing to do with the crash. You're supposed to pay attention and take over at any time.

Why does anyone drive any car when the manufacturer isn't liable for mechanical failures that could cause a crash? I'm much more worried about a suspension part failing and my wheel flying off than autopilot doing something dumb.

They behaved irresponsible, but Tesla could really use actual driver attention monitoring. It should not be possible to have no one sitting in the driving seat. They seem to have a broken attention monitoring system that is easily tricked.

> Why does anyone drive any car when the manufacturer isn't liable for mechanical failures that could cause a crash?

Manufacturers absolutely are liable if there is a design problem. This is the entire reason recalls exist.

One could certainly argue that Tesla's laissez faire attitude toward autopilot safety constitutes a systems engineering design failure, making it grounds for a recall.

>when the manufacturer isn't liable for mechanical failures that could cause a crash

uhm. Ever heard of the GM ignition switch defect? Ford Pinto? I'm sure there's more where a manufacturer is liable for mechanical failures that cause a crash.

Gotta treat it like cruise control.

There is something called personal responsibility that most people believe in. We aren’t children. You could ask that question about literally anything that you buy that could potential kill you.

That doesn't apply to cars, which have the potential to kill anyone who shares the road with you (or people on crosswalks, the sidewalk, cafés, inside shops, etc). So it is my business that you drive safely.

>There is something called personal responsibility that most people believe in.

If you are talking about the personal responsability of Elon Musk by misleading the public into thinking his cars have anything close to a self driving car, I agree. If autopilot is not autopilot, then why name it as such?

Deleted comment

You are expected to pay full attention.

To make driving more relaxing.

Instead of actively driving you switch to be a driving supervisor instead.

Think about it as a really advance cruise control.

Autopilot doesn't mean it won't crash, thats absurd.

Does anyone have any idea of how easily (or how difficult) it is for an EV battery fire to occur vs. a traditional combustion engine?

so, aren't tesla coming with an attention system and aren't tesla autopilots allowed on the pubblic road to the condition that a driver is always attentive?

I'd say there have been enough death from inattentive drivers and it's about time the legislators and licensing bodies start looking into the issue.

They measure torque on the wheel from the drivers hand. It is possible to fool via defeat devices etc (ex www dot autopilotbuddy dot com).

There is a WIP system that uses the selfie camera to monitor the driver but it's still possible to fool (image taped in front or block it with tape etc) so unlikely it can catch all cases of drivers being willfully being dangerous. https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1379928419136339969

Wow, that fire must have been intense. I have never seen so little left of a car. Is that from the battery fire?

>>The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road.

How did the car not stop recognizing no one was at the driver seat who could put hands on the steering wheel in case of an emergency?

> The company dissolved its press office and doesn’t usually respond to media inquiries, however.

Well, that's one way to solve the problem.

You can see from the red brake calipers for his is a performance model. I wonder if it was a Model S or a Model 3. The newer Tesla battery packs have put serious work into heat dispersion and preventing thermal runaway like this.

It seems like Tesla should at least have a safety feature that checks if someone is in the drivers seat. Cars already do this for warnings about seatbelts and enabling the air bags. Maybe the sensor is already even there.

They do, I mentioned in another comment I once unhooked my belt to take my jacket off while in auto pilot. It started beeping horribly, disabled autopilot and started slowing down. It then wouldn't even let me re-enable it until after stopping and putting it into park.

I've heard it does the same with the seat sensor.

Why is this comment downvoted? It is 100% correct.

I'm not sure why people are believing the cops here. This is physically impossible. If you're not in the seat or have the seat belt unbuckled it slows to a stop and disengages autopilot.

Vehicles with self driving capabilities should in my opinion be required by law to have black boxes like the ones from jetliners. And the tools to read the data must be given to the the government.

Teslas do have black boxes. Whether they would survive a fire like this is questionable though.

Tesla's "black box" data is obtainable like any other kind of crime scene evidence, via court order.

Hey, it's all fine that someone keep running experiments to find solutions that lead to less deaths on the roads. Just keep those experiments far away from me as possible. Thanks.

why is Tesla allowing auto-pilot driving when no one is sitting in the driver seat? people will always try stupid things, but seems like Tesla is at fault for allowing it.

Back in the 1970s, I heard a story (from my dad, a USAF officer) about a young officer in a foreign air force, from a wealthy family, who was in U.S. pilot training in San Antonio. Supposedly the young gentleman bought a tricked-out van, with a bar and a bed and everything. He got onto the freeway, put the van on cruise control, and went into the back to mix a drink. Fortunately, no one else was injured in the ensuing crash that killed him. (I have no idea whether the story is true and am disinclined to research it.)

This was a common urban legend when I was a kid, updated periodically to make the ignorant driver different nationalities.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruise-uncontrol/

Would the two have survived in an ICE car?

The car doesn't appear to be wrapped around the tree, and the body looks intact.

It looks like the battery fire killed them.

We should rethink this as figuring out how to make self-crashing cars less efficient to a point above a ROC curve.

Why does the car move when there's nobody in the driver seat? Shouldn't a sensor have stopped the car?

The article only has "beliefs" for evidence. Obviously a great piece of journalism...

I blame the NHTSA for even letting tesla sell this autokill software. And maybe elon should be slapped with a manslaughter charge for claiming robotaxis are coming this year and that autopilot is safer than human drivers and calling it "autopilot" and "full self driving"

Government needs to step in and turn off these 'features'

I still wonder why Tesla doesn't use lithium ferrophosphate or another type of battery that won't catch fire. Shouldn't the safety risk of the batteries they use outweigh the slight increase in energy density?

Is not using water to fight a lithium fire not a good idea?

When it comes to extinguishing fire, you play the cards you have to mitigate the situation. If what you have is a residential fire hydrant system that can supply 36,000 gallons, you use water in overwhelming force. As evidenced by the article, it will not quell the reaction but it will dampen the overall thermal situation enough to permit humans to be extracted safely.

Presumably it would have been better to dump a few thousand pounds of sand on it but there are few sand hydrants in USA residential neighborhoods.

Thinking about a sand hydrant is the most entertaining thing I've done all day!

What is though? My first thought was halon gas but I think you still have outrageously hot temperatures in the cells that will reignite after the halon has dissipated.

Put a large bell jar over the car and then pump out all the air? Or maybe pump liquid silicone into the battery compartment? (The theory there is you need a flame-retardant 'foam' at very high temp but you could submerge the battery compartment in...something like silicone, to isolate it from atmosphere; there would be heat as the batteries discharge, but no combustion.

You need to cool the battery enough though. So you need water to carry away enough heat.

Lithium ion battery is not the same a lithium fire by itself.

How fast was the car going? Why how did they die? Did seatbelts and airbags fail?

Evolution in action!

The more I read Elon’s responses to these things, the less I feel like he actually cares. Elon’s response for me translates to “It’s not a misunderstanding of the name, it’s a misunderstanding if the name by experienced users” In the end the name Autopilot is a really cool name, but it is by actual definition misleading af. Given I don’t think Tesla’s cars are inherently more dangerous, it just seems like people think Autopilot is more than it is, experienced or not. They absolutely should implement features to make sure the driver is at least in the seat!!

This is the exact reason why Google/Waymo moved on from a similar system a decade ago to directly making level 4 autonomy work. It provides users a false sense of security. Same with FSD feature set as well. Tesla and Musk’s constant misleading statements and marketing doesn’t help either.

At the very least, these kind of systems must have fairly strict driver monitoring. Musk says it’s not effective because they don’t try hard enough. The wheel nag and seat weight check currently implemented are too easy to defeat. There are literally products you can buy online to overcome that. I don’t know what’s stopping them from implementing an eye tracking system using cameras the way GM Super Cruise does. It’s a much more effective solution IMO.

its pretty wild that you start out trying to automate driving but are on a route that requires you to automate warning a human who is giving too much trust to your automation.

I find the implication highly questionable that naming this feature something else would have prevented this boneheaded incident. Stupid people do equally reckless things in their normal cars every day. As Musk says, experienced Tesla drivers know the limitations of the system and just get complacent. Or for all we know these people were just suicidal.

There's been aggressive self-driving promotion for Tesla cars from the company and the naming of the 'autopilot' feature is just a small part of this. I don't know if this specific accident happened in a way that related to this, but I think it's likely that the general way that Musk and Tesla talk about their cars has led to accidents where people trust autopilot more than they should, or are trying to show off how great their car is because they think it can do more than it can.

Honest question: What is your opinion on the Coca Cola Vitamin Water case [0]? I feel this is pretty much the same thing.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/coca-cola-vitaminwater-settl...

If you turn on the autopilot in an airplane no one sane believes you can hop in the back seat and take a nap, and they don’t have eye tracking or control sensors. It’s not reasonable to blame Elon for someone who jumped into the back seat of a moving car.

So what you are saying is that Tesla should require certification with practice sessions with an instructor and a written test for all users of Autopilot? Or do you mean that Tesla should assign a controller to each car to keep it 1km away from other cars?

Those features exist. The article mentions that it is not specified whether or not the driver assist features were even in use in this instance.

> One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, the other was in the back seat, according to KHOU. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC that “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla at the time of the crash. It’s not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated.

How would the car still be moving forward if driver assist was not in use?

Is there more than anecdotal evidence confirming that more people than average are getting killed by this? HN is usually so critical of anecdotes and single sample points, unless it comes to Tesla.

There is not even anecdotal evidence. I am 100% sure that the rate of deaths per 1000 autopilot-driven miles is at least an order of magnitude lower than the rate of deaths per 1000 human-driven miles. Tesla has that info and occasionally publishes it... people just like to get freaked out when there is an accident. Sure, someone died doing something dumb with autopilot... but what, 50 people died doing something dumb in a normal car in the time it took them to put out the fire? Why are we even having this conversation? it's ridiculous.

I think his main argument is that if it's measurably safer than a person, that's good enough.

Dunno where the sweet spot is. My fear is that anything that isn't 100.00000% safe won't be allowed autonomy, it's easier to make a thing not happen than to make it happen.

I expect that at this point it's all about data acquisition. Keep pushing out new releases as you learn something, hopefully the system needs less and less driver input. Crashes are probably pretty interesting to the engineers.

Can you point to data that shows these systems are currently safer than people?

As far as I am aware, neither Uber, nor Google/Waymo, nor Tesla has released data showing these systems are safer than people.

It feels to me like Job’s response to the iPhone 4’s antenna issues. “You’re holding it wrong” just comes off as “stop besmirching my product...”

Blaming the user for a failure of a product is tacky.

Not really. Even the iPhone 4 wasn’t fatal if held wrong. At worst you might drop a call.

> The more I read Elon’s responses to these things, the less I feel like he actually cares.

He doesn't. Why would he, would you?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

While certainly not required, caring about whether one’s company’s products are killing people is generally seen as a favorable quality in a CEO.

Some people do have that ability, yes.

Of course he doesn't. Autopilot is already saving lives. It sucks when people die, but THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. How many others died in car crashes while OP was typing that question? 20? 50? 100? Where are the tears for them??

Wasn’t there a recent article posted here how safe Teslas are?

"Ah I see they died, we released a bug fix for those scenarios yesterday, just make sure to update before going on your holiday trip."

> Two men are dead after a Tesla traveling in Spring crashed into a tree [...]

What do they mean "traveling in Spring"? Is it the name of a place? That sentence is rather baffling to my ears.

It's the name of a city just north of Houston.

Texas seems to have very silly names for places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West,_Texas (not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Texas)

I’m wondering how often does Elon Musk use autopilot? If he does not do that all the time, users should not either; if he does, I’m worried about him and Tesla share holders.

A coworker at KSC saw him driving in through the South Gate in a large black Bentley, rocking out behind the steering wheel, so apparently he’s not always being driven around / in a Tesla!

I would be shocked if he drove at all. His time is worth more than that whatever it costs to hire a driver.

6 deaths from Autopilot now. At the very least, Tesla ought to drop the name.

https://www.tesladeaths.com/

If anything the name is the most accurate part of the marketing. My Garmin autopilot will gladly fly me straight into the ground if given the chance to do so. While they are getting more advanced, aircraft autopilots are even less autonomous. But yes, their marketing is aimed at making people think it’s a self-driving feature.

That's without counting for the Houston deaths as the use of FSD/Autopilot hasn't been verified.

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