This Test Shows Why Tesla Autopilot Crashes Keep Happening

&gt; Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn’t make the car impervious to all accidents<p>This makes it sound like the problem is that there are edge cases that aren’t handled. In reality, the test shows that Autopilot is only designed to handle the special case of lane keeping and following the car in front of you, but is too simplistic to actually handle the general case of driving the car. It’s a very advanced cruise control, not a self-driving system that still has kinks to work out.

It’s clear the Tesla is dealing with this as a PR&#x2F;marketing problem, but the fail miserably even at that.<p>If you think it’s a PR&#x2F;marketing problem and the system operates as it should, then stop calling it Autopilot and stop advertising cars with full autopilot capabilities<i></i>*<p><i></i>* “Theoretically the hardware should be enough to enable full auto pilot some time in the future. At the moment use this other Autopilot, which is not really autopilot. Btw we made this really cool autopilot video, but it’s not the Autopilot you have in your car.”

I can understand Tesla&#x27;s position in saying that the driver should still be aware of their surroundings. <i>But</i>. Avoiding stationary objects should be the first objective of a system like this in my opinion, especially if the object is directly in the projected path the vehicle is travelling in.

Autopilot-bashing articles are becoming more and more popular as people love to gawk at accidents. I believe a lot of the comments on these threads are no more than online rubbernecking.<p>When these things pop up, I&#x27;d love to know the answers to some of these questions.<p>1. What is the rate of accidents for Tesla drivers with and without Autopilot on similar driving terrain.<p>2. How &#x27;correctable&#x27; are these flaws in Autopilot? I doubt someone is programming in what to do in every situation. Is the solution to twiddle with some weights and pray your ML pipeline spits out a better version? I&#x27;m guessing the true answer lies in the middle, but I don&#x27;t have the technical background to know for sure.<p>3. I see a lot of references to Waymo leading the pack of would-be self driving vehicles. What is it that Waymo has done that makes their self-driving tech so much better?<p>4. Are we okay with accepting the costs of self driving cars given their potential in the future? Most major transport-related revolutions have come with a significant human cost at the outset as the early adopters accept a large amount of risk to push the technology forward. With time and usage, things stabilize and become safer. Flying was quite dangerous early on, too.

It seems to me the kids who program these toys have never driven anything other than the RC model they built to get this job. And, of course, it drives fine on the toy &quot;roads&quot; they set up on the carpet in the living room. Real world, not so much.

Computers have one huge advantage over humans: they can process a lot of information very quickly.<p>Humans have one huge advantage over computers: we pattern-match instinctually, building mental models of our surroundings.<p>Tesla is taking advantage of the first fact, but by avoiding LIDAR, they&#x27;re falling victim to the second fact.<p>We humans don&#x27;t have LIDAR, so it makes sense that a car without LIDAR should be able to match us, but we have brains and visual systems that far exceed anything available today or at any point in the near future when it comes to pattern-matching.<p>40,100 vehicle deaths in 2017 in the US, most of them the result of distracted driving. It&#x27;s a shame that Tesla&#x27;s system performs worst at exactly the point that humans need the most help.

In that video, does the Tesla try to brake, and brake hard?<p>This seems to be the case -- if you watch the video the Tesla is at a full stop about 10 feet after the car, implying it must have hit the brakes hard way beforehand.<p>In that case, I don&#x27;t blame Telsa for crashing -- you literally are baiting it into the crash a la a bull with a flag. You make it follow one car, prevent it from changing lanes, and then have an obstacle parked in the middle of the lane.<p>I&#x27;m all for getting Tesla to be safer. The accident count has gotten way too high. But this seems to be a test that is rigged, and Tesla did break.

So...why is it that the default autopilot behavior isn&#x27;t to slow down drastically if the driver doesn&#x27;t initiate manual control fast enough?

Autopilot is currently an aspirational name. Perhaps the name should be changed.

So, why do non-autopilot crashes keep happening?

The video seems ludicrous. They fail to show that same test with a Tesla in autopilot crashing into the back of a car in manual mode. I doubt a manual driver would be able to ovoid that rear-end accident. I could be wrong, but they should demonstrate it with scientific results and facts instead of making fear-mongering promotional videos.