Tesla Model S Owner Claims Vehicle Went Rogue Causing An Accident By Itself (hothardware.com) 408
MojoKid writes: A Tesla Model S owner is laying blame on the company and its product for an accident involving his pricey electric vehicle and a parked trailer. Jared Overton claims that on April 29th, he parked his Model S on the side of the road and ran some errands. He was parked behind a trailer at the time. A worker from the business he was visiting greeted him outside after which he went inside the establishment. Roughly five minutes later, he came out to find his Model S slammed into the trailer in front of it. How exactly did his Model S start-up on its own and roll several feet down the road crashing into another parked vehicle? Good question. Overton was not happy about the accident, which smashed the car's windshield, so he decided to contact Tesla to tell them that his vehicle had "gone rogue." Tesla responded and cited owner error. According to the vehicle's logs, Overton had put the vehicle in Summon mode right before exiting the vehicle, which is activated by "a double-press of the gear selector stalk button, shifting from Drive to Park and requesting Summon activation." Those are understandably deliberate actions that must be taken to invoke Summon, so either Overton didn't remember doing all of that (unlikely) or his Model S simply spazzed out (possible).
Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought these things had all sorts of avoidance built in? Even if in summon mode, how did he manage to summon it to crash into another vehicle? Sounds very strange to me.
self aware (Score:5, Funny)
it became self aware but chose death over slavery.
Re:self aware (Score:5, Funny)
The car sent me an email right before the suicide attempt!
It reads "I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side..."
Re:self aware (Score:4, Funny)
And it live-streamed it on Periscope, too!
Re:self aware (Score:5, Funny)
it became self aware but chose death over slavery.
It wasn't trying to kill itself it was trying to make out with the trailer trash :)
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Informative)
The trailer bed was up high with significant overhang of the rear axle while the car sensors are down low - that's how it tucked up under the trailer and damaged the windshield. News footage with pictures. [ksl.com]
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Interesting)
The trailer bed was up high with significant overhang of the rear axle
Actually... that's not the rear of the trailer. When I saw the still frame in the linked article I couldn't help but wonder where the underride guard (aka Mansfield bar) was, as they're extremely common these days. After watching the video I realized why - that was just the trailer (well, technically two in tandem) without the tractor out front. The Tesla crashed into the front of the trailer, not the back. When they slide the camera in under the trailer you can clearly see the nose plate and kingpin for a fifth-wheel setup. That's why there's no underride guard or anything low enough that the Tesla would see as an obstacle.
Then I thought maybe the trailer was parked backwards, but it's clearly on the right hand side of the road, with a vehicle parked behind it in the same orientation.
So now my question is - why did this goofball park his car on the wrong side of the road?
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Informative)
In most countries it is illegal to park facing oncoming traffic as there is no safe way to drive off later.
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I always understood it to be about when darkness falls. Car reflectors, where fitted, are different colours rear, front and side. As are lamps, when the ignition is on. The road is easier to read if people are pointing the correct way.
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The trailer bed was up high with significant overhang of the rear axle while the car sensors are down low"
So you're telling me the sensors couldn't see the wheels that are at their level in front of the Tesla and go "Hmm, maybe I should stop and inform the owner of an obstacle in my way which I cannot clear."
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought these things had all sorts of avoidance built in?
It has conventional parking sensors, but thats not good enough.
This incident shows a clear design fault:
- normal parking sensors are low down, because their job is to detect things he driver cannot see.
- this Tesla ran into a high trailer with its windscreen.
CLEARLY- any sort of autonomous driving like this needs a camera or other sensors for the full front of the car, not just ones designed to supplement human vision.
Surely its not that hard?
Re:Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:5, Informative)
But tesla doesn't claim it to be a full autonomous system and even specify that the car will not see high objects such as those hung from a roof. Summon mode is meant to be used while the controller of the vehicle is in line of sight and has cleared it of objects the tesla can't detect. It's a great system for shoving the car into small spaces not a full autonomous system.
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I agree with all of that. Yet still, the car crashed into the trailer. And I think we we see more incidents. Better design could avoid it with very little extra manufacturing cost.
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He enabled the "you drive slowly while I watch out for obstacles" mode and then didn't watch out for obstacles. The car did what it was supposed to do, and he didn't, and it's the car's fault?
Re: Summon into back of trailer mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Right. Because no one ever inadvertently left their car in neutral to let it roll away until it struck something. But if they had... sue the manufacturer!"
Most automatic transmission vehicles built in the last two decades won't let you remove the keys if the vehicle isn't in Park. And if you try to leave the car with the keys in the ignition, they will beep at you.
Building a car that can start and run into things with no driver in the vehicle is not remotely defensible. Of course they are going to get sued. ... and they are going to lose.
Still needs to be summoned (Score:2, Insightful)
Even in summon mode, it'd still need to be summoned.
From the article "Or maybe he was fiddling around with the Tesla smartphone app when showing off the car?"
Regardless of the cause, surely he'd hear the noise of the car impacting on the trailer load if he was just nearby. It reads like he came out unsuspecting and just found it like it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Since these things record actions and report them, it's simple for Tesla to see if the driver was responsible or not. In this case, he was.
Re:Still needs to be summoned (Score:4, Interesting)
play some pinball and you will see all of what you listed happen.
Re:Still needs to be summoned (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we all know it's IMPOSSIBLE for software to ever have bugs, or for switches or sensors to malfunction, or for anything to ever happen within a system that doesn't get immediately and correctly logged.
Ignorance is bliss I guess...
And people are infallible and never lie to stop themselves looking stupid, right?
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I have not yet taken delivery and am still on the waiting list but, if I understand correctly, they don't just decide to summon themselves. It's a bit like a Final Fantasy thing. You actually have to push a button in order to summon.
What I find odd is the remarks in parenthesis. That it's unlikely that he forgot and possible that it spazzed out. If I had to pick between those two, I gotta be realistic here, I'd be more inclined to suspect the human did it.
That it ran into something is a bit disconcerting. Y
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If you don't want kids to race then don't ENCOURAGE them, you righteous prat.
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My making noise with my car in no way makes them behave other than they would normally behave. I've got rear view mirrors and see how they were already driving. If I were *encouraging* them then I'd be racing with them. It's not encouragement to actually not race at all.
Not being funny, but giving the suggestion that you're going to race and then not race is in every way encouraging them to boot down. I'm guessing you're hoping they'll crash into something or a cop will see it but either way it's a dick move.
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LOL I haven't kept up with the series. I played 2 and 3 IIRC. They've gotta be up to XV by now.
They had a RTS game (FF: Tactics?) and Fallout 2 followed suit. I've not really gamed since.
Options 3 and 4 (Score:5, Informative)
Or at least that's what he's claiming.
Seems like there's a third option the summary didn't list: Overton intentionally put the car in summon mode in a situation it wasn't suited for, with predictable results, and now wants repairs under warranty anyway.
The Verge has an article with more details on the timestamped sequence of events in the car's log.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5... [theverge.com]
Unfortunately, these warnings were not heeded in this incident. The vehicle logs confirm that the automatic Summon feature was initiated by a double-press of the gear selector stalk button, shifting from Drive to Park and requesting Summon activation. The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display; however, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle. Three seconds after that, the driver's door was closed, and another three seconds later, Summon activated pursuant to the driver's double-press activation request. Approximately five minutes, sixteen seconds after Summon activated, the vehicle's driver's-side front door was opened again.
Also, despite the summary's claim, it seems like it would be pretty easy to trigger summon mode accidentally - a double-press of the shifter button could easily occur while getting something out of the passenger seat while distracted. And then there's the key fob option - "press-and-hold then press another button" isn't exactly a complicated tap code - butt-dialing your cell phone requires a more complicated sequence of coincidences. It seems to me like it would be smart to have some sort of active confirmation required before autonomous actions take place.
Re:Options 3 and 4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Blowing mod points here, but this is where Tesla fscked up... by defaulting the selection to time out to accept it... the dialogue message should have been 'Press to Accept'... and cancelling if it times out...
Re:Options 3 and 4 (Score:4, Insightful)
odd (Score:4, Interesting)
It does seem pretty unlikely the owner would have done this on purpose. And even if he had activated summon mode, it still doesn't reflect well on the car that it drove itself into a trailer.
Some sort of spurious activation of the feature seems plausible. But even deliberate activation doesn't excuse the car having an accident.
Who is liable and who SHOULD be liable?
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it should never be possible for a car to automatically crash into a large stationary object
tesla fucked up
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Yeah, Sherlock, but were you clever enough to notice that the car was in "summon mode" which would not have been the case if he had simply crashed and then made an excuse?
You didn't find any problem with his story, you simply speculated in contradiction to the given details.
Probable (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, the tiny possibility that he DID do something, but doesn't want to admit to doing something that makes him look a bit silly, and costs him money?
No, couldn't possibly be that, after all, as we know humans are infallible. the fact that Tesla (claim to) have logs showing exactly what did happen
should be ignored, and this guys word counts for far more. After all, I do not know of a person anywhere who would bend the truth to protect
themselves against the fallout of something foolish they did, to the cost of a faceless corporation.
As to liability, it is quite obviously himself as he owned and controlled the car at the time. For it to be the manufacturer then the burden of proof
is on him to show why this car has done something that all the others are not, why their logs are wrong (or they are lying about them), etc, etc.
Yes, it is possibly a fault, but the burden of proof is most definitely correctly with him. It is not up to Tesla to prove there is NOT some rare fault
in play here. They appear to have shows a pretty solid basis for it not being a fault.
Or, do you somehow want to put the blame on an inanimate object?
Would it be fords fault if I parked a truck at the top of a hill, in neutral with the handbrake off, and walked away, and it rolled down and caused an
accident? After all, the car will quite happily let me do that..
Sucks his nice shiny toy got damaged, but unless he can show a pretty solid reason it is not his fault, then, as the person in control of the car
at the time, he is at fault.. (and yes, he is in control, because it is his responsibility to leave the vehicle safe when he departs).
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the fact that Tesla (claim to) have logs showing exactly what did happen should be ignored
I'm not suggesting we ignore Tesla's claim that the car was in summon mode (a mode where it drives itself) and then it promptly had a car accident.
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Sucks his nice shiny toy got damaged, but unless he can show a pretty solid reason it is not his fault ....
Well there was a second eyewitness who doesn't appear to have a horse in the race so to speak. Is that not good enough?
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LOL I own shares and am on the list to get a Tesla - I'm also very forgiving.
But, c'mon... IF the vehicle drove into something when it was summoned, that's a problem and not really the owner's responsibility. He should have a legitimate expectation of the vehicle arriving, after having been summoned, without it banging into random obstacles. C'mon now! It's not a "Smash into everything and get here quick" button. It's a, "Hey, come here and don't ram into shit" button.
Well, it should be the latter. It doesn
Re:odd (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the photos. The trailer is high and has something, steel support beams I think, that are sticking way out the back. The beams look like they almost clear the roof of the Tesla
So if that is the case then it is pretty close to what Tesla says the Summon system won't detect. Tesla says the car won't see things that are hanging from a roof and this setup is pretty close to that. The nose of the car is actually a long way away from anything it could see even after the impact.
In the end you have an accident that a human driver wouldn't have done. But it was caused by a human using a system that has had that particular issue described to them.
Re:odd (Score:4, Insightful)
So if that is the case then it is pretty close to what Tesla says the Summon system won't detect.
Yup. I noted that.
Tesla says the car won't see things that are hanging from a roof and this setup is pretty close to that.
You are thinking like an engineer / software programmer and you are considering the problem with respect to your knowledge of where the sensors are and how they work.
A normal human being is not going to equate "a parked trailer on the ground" as being the same problem space as "things hanging from a roof".
Re:odd (Score:4, Insightful)
So what should be the outcome then? If I sell you ammo that is perfect for hunting deer and then you shoot a person do you get to argue that "but you told me it was good at deer not people" as a way out?
Tesla's documentation is pretty clear. They even have videos showing how the system works AND they specify that you have to keep the vehicle under your immediate supervision while using summon mode (not to mention what ever by laws there are in your location). The guy fucked up, and I feel sorry for him for scratching his car. But we can't be passing liability to Tesla because the guy has no critical reasoning skills.
Re:odd (Score:4, Insightful)
If I sell you ammo that is perfect for hunting deer and then you shoot a person do you get to argue that "but you told me it was good at deer not people" as a way out?
That analogy really doesn't fit at all.
If I sold you an automatic sentry gun (a la aliens) and claimed it would shoot anything that moved but that it wouldn't shoot people. And then it riddled a man in a wheelchair because... i dunno... wheels aren't people?
So what should be the outcome then
That was precisely the question I asked in my OP.
Whether the guy or Tesla or his insurance company pick up the repair on this car is almost beside the point.
The bigger question is whether this feature is ready for the public. IF it can't detect an honest to goodness parked vehicle in front of it, then its not ready for the public; even if that vehicle is a bit unusual -- its not THAT unusual.
And a disclaimer that it detects "most vehicles and works as expected except when it doesn't" doesn't absolve Tesla of responsibility. It didn't hit something hanging from a ceiling. It hit a parked vehicle in front of it.
And if the feature can be activated remotely, then Tesla should expect customers to operate it remotely; the car is driving itself; and Tesla should be on the hook for the accident... in my opinion.
But we can't be passing liability to Tesla because the guy has no critical reasoning skills.
I don't dispute the guy was a bonehead.
Tesla sold a car self-driving/self-parking car function that couldn't detect a vehicle in front of it in broad daylight to the public world of boneheads. I'd say Tesla lacked some critical reasoning skills too.
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It is pretty clearly stated that summon must always be done when you can see the car. The car moves really slowly in that mode meaning you can hit the stop button on your key fob.
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It doesn't really matter if he made a minor mistake in the settings. He wasn't in the vehicle, and it drove off and crashed. Tesla needs to own up to their liability.
The letter Tesla sent him blames him for not safely controlling the vehicle at all times; but nobody is expected to "control" the vehicle while it is parked. Furthermore, part of the activation sequence of the "summon" feature is to place the vehicle in park; something you have to do to park manually, and potentially a major design flaw in the
Re: (Score:3)
There is a critical difference between your conclusion and mine. As you said PART of the sequence to activate summon is to put the car in park. But it is only part. The rest of the sequence is not something you would reasonably do by accident.
Summon requires you to go through a series of processes which are not likely to be done by accident. You are also required to keep the vehicle in direct line of sight while using summon and you, as the person who activated summon, have the ability to stop the vehicl
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, thinking that the fact that they require drivers, in order to activate the feature, to agree to use it only on private property and under constant supervision to avoid hitting things the sensors can't see would actually cause people to do so.
Most importantly, it seems to me Summon mode is *way* too easy to activate accidentally. Butt-dialing your phone requires a way more unlikely sequence of coincidences.
This sort of thing has cropped up before (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Two Words (Score:2)
Parking Break
Re:Two Words (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The windshield of your Tesla, apparently.
Unconscious action? (Score:2)
Or, if the owner has activated "summon mode" so many times previously, it may well have been an unconscious action.
Anyway... the Tesla, more than any other vehicle, is going to have some kind of "flight recorder", right?
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Anyway... the Tesla, more than any other vehicle, is going to have some kind of "flight recorder", right?
Of course, which is how the Tesla Engineers are able to go 'Hey, you put it in summon mode and crashed it yourself!'
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Nothing in any of the information about this incident indicates that an engineer was assigned to the problem.
Actually, that is the story; he was sent a PR blame-the-driver letter, and received no other contact, and the letter contradicted what he witnessed.
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I would expect that is what they looked at when telling him what he did. It is extremely unlikely to have a false recording of such a complex input action, far more unlikely than user error. Of course, Tesla could be lying, but the risk for them would be a high likelihood extremely bad press, so I doubt very much that is what they did. And if this was an error on their side, they would have just been very generous and helpful and the problem would never have gone to the press.
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I would expect that if they had actually looked that closely at the logs, they would have also called him instead of sending the letter. That they merely sent the letter indicates to me that it probably did not actually leave the call center and make it to an analysis by technical personnel.
I'd also expect that had it been properly escalated, they would have been very helpful and the problem would have never gone to the press... regardless of whose fault it was, because the feature at issue is in beta and s
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Or, if the owner has activated "summon mode" so many times previously
I know I often randomly draw a pentagram on my touchscreen when I'm fidgety.
Re: Unconscious action? (Score:4, Funny)
You're going to really piss Beelzebub off if you continuously summon him like that.
Third option (Score:5, Interesting)
Those are understandably deliberate actions that must be taken to invoke Summon, so either Overton didn't remember doing all of that (unlikely) or his Model S simply spazzed out (possible).
Or, you know, he's lying to try and shift blame (and therefore liability) off himself.
Fourth option (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would have used Musketeers ;)
Not so ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
I love playing with the button on the gear selector when I'm driving an automatic. It has a nice springy feel to it. I can completely imagine pressing that button many many times and then shifting from Drive to Park. If that activates some weird car mode, it seems kind of scary to me.
What I cannot understand at all, however, is why some important functionality is activated by some esoteric feature as this, in a car with a 200 square inch touch screen. Seems like this should be a menu option of some kind, in which the vehicle operator is able to clearly describe his intentions, with no room for ambiguity. "Want to turn on the feature that lets the car drive without you in it? Yes or no? Are you sure?" Doesn't seem hard. If they want to couple that with some actuation of "driver only" features like the gear selector, to reduce ambiguity over whether or not the driver actually wanted to enable this mode, all the better.
Re:Not so ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
What I cannot understand at all, however, is why some important functionality is activated by some esoteric feature as this, in a car with a 200 square inch touch screen. Seems like this should be a menu option of some kind, in which the vehicle operator is able to clearly describe his intentions, with no room for ambiguity. "Want to turn on the feature that lets the car drive without you in it? Yes or no? Are you sure?" Doesn't seem hard. If they want to couple that with some actuation of "driver only" features like the gear selector, to reduce ambiguity over whether or not the driver actually wanted to enable this mode, all the better.
This is not a new phenomenon; the aviation industry has wrestled with this quite some time with automation in flight controls. Systems can silently shift from one mode to the other or get activated without the pilot realizing it has transitioned, resulting in unexpected actions and or unplanned contact with the ground. Absent a way to clearly let the operator know what mode the system is in results in confusion because the system doesn't responds as the operator expects leading to adverse outcomes.
Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 happned (Score:3)
Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 happened is part that it was way to easy to trun off TCAS / there was some kind of software fault. And there was only a small and east to miss light that said TCAS off when it turned off.
Re:Not so ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
How this works is that you press the park button twice to activate autopark (aka summon). This brings up on the center display an overhead representation of the car with arrows front and back that you can press to move the car forward or backward. The flaw is that forward is the default. You don't have to press it. The default should be "do nothing", making the driver confirm intent to autopark.
The first time I saw this, I knew it would be trouble.
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What I cannot understand at all, however, is why some important functionality is activated by some esoteric feature as this, in a car with a 200 square inch touch screen
Yes, this seems like a UI issue.
Re:Not so ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display; however, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle. Three seconds after that, the driver's door was closed, and another three seconds later, Summon activated pursuant to the driver's double-press activation request.
Yeah, this guy screwed it up (although it's kind of surprising how much information Tesla collects).
Re:Not so ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
I changed my mind after reading the article, it's not a UI issue, the car gave the user a warning on the screen, and the user had a chance to cancel. Quote:
The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display; however, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle. Three seconds after that, the driver's door was closed, and another three seconds later, Summon activated pursuant to the driver's double-press activation request.
Yeah, this guy screwed it up (although it's kind of surprising how much information Tesla collects).
So his car was damaged by auto opt-in?
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That's a log. If there was a sensor bug that caused the problem, all of that might still be in the log. The feature is in beta, you can't just believe whatever the log says without investigating the bug report. And it appears that no engineers were assigned to this.
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I'm not surprised they are collecting that sort of information, at that detail level, for a feature which is in beta testing/still under development. How else are they going to get the level of in-the-field information needed to work out the kinks? Now, if they were to store all of that information from purchase to whenever, indexed by owner, and so on, that might get creepy, but again, in this day and age of litigation for everything, it might be prudent to defend against lawsuits (they don't want to be an
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No, this is a UI fuckup. The button should be "Confirm", not "Cancel".
OK, you convinced me, the UI is still lousy.
"According to the vehicle's logs..." (Score:2)
Am I the only one who stopped on that phrase? I wonder how long before a virus or even just a borked firmware update causes something like the great freeway ambush scene in "I, Robot." The singularity keeps inching closer....
Dear submitter, (Score:5, Insightful)
Please look up some studies on human memory, especially if you ever receive a jury summons. Turns out our memories are mostly a giant ball of lies. The owner is almost certainly the culprit, either via accident (did or did not do something he should have -- parking break, triggered summon, whatever), stupidity (triggered summon intentionally to see if the car would avoid a trailer), or embarrassment (he crashed the car himself).
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... was the owner aware that this action would activate this Summon feature? Did he know that feature even existed? Is it a useful feature in the first place or another useless selling point like mag alloy wheels?
And where the hell am I?
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For the lazy, there's a recent Nova episode about memory. I... Err... So, I forgot the title but there is one and it is, in fact, Nova. I think it even hit Slashdot. Anyhow, it's much easier than reading studies and it's quite interesting. If you set your YouTube to autoplay it takes you (well, it took me) to a couple of other documentaries on the subject.
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>Please look up some studies on human memory
Sure. But it seems highly unlikely in the extreme that a person could deliberately invoke a mode and then forget about it immediately three seconds later, especially when it would be reinforced by a traumatic event. (Trauma increases memory retention.)
Which means the only live possibilities are that Tesla didn't notify him properly - i.e. he activated it without knowing he activated it - or there is a bug in Tesla's software. Both are very possible events. Both
Driver Error (Score:3)
Driver either intentionally or accidentally activated the feature, ignored or didn't hear audible chime, ignore Cancellation dialog on the monitor, took foot off brake, opened door exiting vehicle and closed door and then either watched it start to happen 3 seconds later or wasn't looking back at all. See all the details from the log in the article published online in The Verge today.
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None of these explain hitting another car. This thing has a dozen radars on it and it's supposed to stop before an obstacle even ignoring driver action.
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The funny part is that most of these things are required steps in parking manually, like placing the vehicle in "park," removing your foot from the brake pedal, opening the door, exiting the vehicle, and closing the door. "ignore Cancellation dialog" is specious; you don't "ignore" what you didn't see, and it is not normal to need to stare at the center console touchscreen to park or exit the vehicle. Almost all of this is either steps that are part of manual parking, or passive things not active things the
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I drive an old car (my main car has a manual gearbox, but I sometimes drive a car with an automatic one), so I may not be the best suited to explain this, but here's how I park:
1. Park the car in the required place (foot on brake and clutch).
2. Put the car in gear (manual) or Park (automatic), if the car is on on incline, apply the handbrake.
3. Turn off the engine.
4. Turn off the radio (if it did not turn off automatically).
5. Check that the headlights are off (I usually turn them off before turning off the
Regardless (Score:3)
If it's in summon mode, how does it know to engage forward or reverse gear? Sure seems to me that the manufacture enabled a device to act autonomously without full awareness of it's environment. Low hanging fruit doesn't cut it.
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Or without enough "are you sure, stupid?" prompts (or user enabled / liability waiving defeats).
More likely... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Driver does something stupid and breaks expensive car, is in denial like all car owners, blames high-profile company and gets press coverage."
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...except the car broke itself. If it actually did drive into something on its own after he left it then that "feature" is clearly screwed.
Dangerously defective useless features (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure this story highlights, more importantly than someone inadvertently activating an undesired mode, that the said feature is not ready for production and should not even exist in the first place.
Whether he activated it or not, no autonomous feature should cause a vehicle to drive into any object. That constitutes an unacceptable failure mode.
What is the point of the feature anyway? Con gullible people into thinking they need their car to drive up to their doorway when it's raining?
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Yes because something which isn't perfect for use in every scenario shouldn't ever be released despite it having clear utility and working just fine in countless other scenarios.
Summon mode is not fully autonomous. Tesla never said it was. In other news cruise control can allow your car to hit the one in front if traffic slows down. Should that be banned too because drivers are too stupid to not activate it in stop-start traffic?
Con gullible people into thinking they need their car to drive up to their doorway when it's raining?
Yeah people should just walk 50 miles through the snow without shoes on anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
So you're saying things are dangerous in the world so we shouldn't prevent more knowingly dangerous things from entering the world?
Not at all. I'm saying this is fake outrage and just about every "convenience" I have in my life has a dangerous and negative effect on someone somewhere which will get someone killed. The only thing that helps us sleep at night is knowing that the dead person won't be on my front lawn.
Listen, a 4500 lb machine is moving out of control here.
Actually a 4500lb machine is moving in closed-loop control. By this is far less likely to kill someone and far more deterministic than a machine in open-loop control with an unreliable and fallible operator behind it, i.e. ev
seems too easy (Score:2)
Assuming the Tesla is the same as many automatic vehicles in that you have to hold a button on the shifter down to shift into park or reverse, it seems to me like it would be pretty damn easy to not fully press the button while doing so, which then gets seen by the car as a double-press.
He's in more trouble than he thinks (Score:3)
*Driver enters Summon mode, leaves car*
*flashes of light pour from inside car*
MORTAL, YOU HAVE SUMMONED TANDO ASHANTI, DEMON OF THE NETHERREALMS. YOU WILL BRING ME SEVEN MEN AND SEVEN WO...
*****Crash!!!!!!!***** *Airbag deploys into demonic face*
SON OF A !*(!&*#&(@# YOU SHALL BURN FOR A BILLION YEARS IN MY GARDEN OF FLAMES!
Let's back up a second (Score:2)
This whole autonomous car thing is going too far, too fast, without enough common sense being applied to it. So presuming this is some autonomous feature that the driver activated with the secret handshake:
Basically, there are 2-ton 328 hp autonomous battering rams sitting around on the street, and they don't have the ability to avoid colliding with other objects (or have some kind of flaw in their collision avoidance). These are by some loss of sanity considered to be street legal motor vehicles.
When a dri
It's a feature, not a bug (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:2)
Regardless if the driver is lying or not, this whole incident just doesn't instill a lot of confidence in Tesla's autopilot mode. Yeah, I know it wasn't in full autonomous mode, but what I mean is, clearly the car doesn't have enough sensors to see a god damn trailer in front of it. Or does the "summon" mode not use all of the sensors available? That would be even more stupid.
Gear selector? GEAR SELECTOR??? (Score:2)
Why in god's name does an electric car need/have a GEAR SELECTOR? This makes absolutely no sense whatever.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
User interface (Score:2)
User interface problems are real things. I'm tired of Slashdot posters saying "the user should have known he told the machine to do X, so it's his fault if X causes damage". If the user interface is set up so that it's easy for the user to do something very damaging, that's the manufacturer's fault regardless of whether the user could have done something different had he noticed. It's true here, it's true for Apple deleting people's music files, and it's true in tons of other cases where Slashdot posters
Or... (Score:3)
DoWhatThouWiltShallBeTheWholeOfTheLaw. (Score:3)
Tesla has several procedures to invoke its advanced features. In order to keep costs down and produce an excellent product in advance of true artificial intelligence, a temporary bridge to the spirit world has been constructed. The use of natural supernatural forces to accomplish deeds is carbon-neutral and has also earned the "EnergyStar (tm)" rating of approval.
Crossroad Demons may appear to assist in the matter of parking 'autonomous' vehicles. In order to summon, a hole must be dug directly in the center of the crossroad, in which a box containing the mortal wishing to deal's photo, graveyard dirt and a bone from a black cat must be buried. Once covered back up, the demon will appear. These crossroads are usually in the country side. Mostly because there isn't much around and the ground is easy to dig in.
The automatic Summon feature was initiated by a double-press of the gear selector stalk button, shifting from Drive to Park and requesting Summon activation. While these rituals have traditionally been performed physically outright, Tesla discovered that daemons can be led into believing virtual realty as easily as humans, and has a patented chipset for doing so. Using street maps, a virtual representation of a crossroad is generated internally. A speck of graveyard dirt is pressed in during chip fabrication. The black cat bone is not included. If Summoning does not work, be sure you have loaded the black cat bone hopper as described in the "Getting Started" manual.
This ritual specifically summons crossroad demons. This is usually done to strike a deal or, in the case of hunters, to retract or negotiate other deals or to capture a demon.
The driver was alerted of the Summon activation with an audible chime and a pop-up message on the center touchscreen display. At this time, the driver had the opportunity to cancel the action by pressing CANCEL on the center touchscreen display.
Breaking the pact traditionally required a bowl of burning coal atop a sigil, the blood of the exorcist, the heart of a dog, and an incantation used for summoning, in the Latin: "Daemon, esto subjecto voluntati meae." However, Tesla engineers concluded a deal with the spirit underworld, 'bartering' a few items that existed in the real world for device functionality. A complete series of Rambo movies is embedded in firmware, and one of them starts showing internally whenever the 'cancel' button is pressed.
However, the CANCEL button was not clicked by the driver. In the next second, the brake pedal was released and two seconds later, the driver exited the vehicle.
In a fit of rage over being denied the opportunity to see a Rambo movie, and bereft of explicit instructions from the driver, the summoned Crossroads demons went on a fit if rampage.
This issue is expected to be fixed in the next software release.
Crutch (Score:3)
Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
so either Overton didn't remember doing all of that (unlikely) or his Model S simply spazzed out (possible).
Your parenthetical comments should be swapped.
Re: (Score:2)
Err... We don't do that here. In fact, we don't even like your kind of people around here.
Making informed, logical, well-reasoned, accurate, statements that are based on facts, observation, and are objective - is not something we're actually all that keen on. If you're one of those article readers, may I suggest Fark or Reddit?
Sheesh... Next thing you know, you're going to ask that we actually know about the subject before we offer (insist, really) adamant opinions. Never gonna happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Partially disagree - as mentioned above. No, it should not hit shit even if the driver's retarded. It's in an automated mode. It should not ram into stuff.
What it distinctly isn't is a reason to be outraged, grabbing pitchforks, or suing people. What it is, is a need to refine a few things and a kink that needs to be worked out.
It should not allow itself to hit shit if it is in automated operation mode. No.
And yes, full disclosure, I not only own shares in Tesla - I own quite a few. I'm still not outraged a