New Details About Fatal Tesla Crash Emerge

[Onkel Neal]

http://gas2.org/2016/07/02/new-detai...-crash-emerge/

A woman driving on the same highway and in the same direction as Brown claims she was driving 85 mph when Brown’s Model S flew by her at a high rate of speed. That information is not included in the official traffic accident report filed by the Florida State Police, but is surely something known to Tesla, as it has access to all of the data stored in the car’s computer system. It is included in a story at Teslarati.

The driver of the tractor trailer, Frank Baressi, age 62, told the Dallas Morning News in a telephone interview that the Tesla driver was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen.” He added, “It was still playing when he died.” Baressi said “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.” He didn’t see the video playing, but claims he could hear the sound track still playing when the Tesla finally came to a stop several hundred yards up the road. Tesla Motors says it is not possible to watch videos on the Model S touch screen

Did I miss something, wth is "autopilot" and why is it legal in a passenger car?

[August]

And WTH kind of autopilot system requires the user to keep his hands on the wheel at all times? If I have to do that I might as well do the driving.

My guess is the victim had fallen asleep which is going to be a much bigger problem than the proponents of "driverless" cars are currently admitting.

[Catfish]

The BMW and Audi brands have a similar system, but it is intentionally not that autonomous. They already keep the distace to a car ahead automatically, and keep the car between the white lines, helped by GPS. They also have a kind of automatic braking system and lots of other little electronic helpers, that work for appx. three years from new.
Seems to be all the rage, everyone buys it and pays lots of money for that.
Just like in the new planes like Airbus and Boeing i might say.

I guess i'd never buy a used car, no one knows which of the electronic gadgets still work, and the repair shops are unable to cope with system errors.

[Platapus]

I don't think these cars should be allowed to engage any type of "autopilot" until the technology is mature, tested, and certified to be safe.

In this mode, this car was, in my opinion, essentially an experimental vehicle being driven uncontrolled on a public road.

What was the speed limit on the road? I would imagine that the first thing any type of autopilot would do is not exceed the speed limit.

Interesting technology but way too immature to be used on public streets.

[Torplexed]

AP & Reuters reported that the driver had a portable DVD player with him and was watching a Harry Potter movie. After passing under the truck the vehicle traveled another quarter mile before hitting a telephone pole. The driver had 8 speeding tickets. Friends describe him as fearless and a speed demon.

Apparently, this guy thought he had an autonomous car already and was "driving" like he did. You do get the impression that a lot of people out there are anxious to shed all personal initiative and responsibility even before the technology that they want to surrender it to is mature.

[Skybird]

What if Carl Benz 150 years ago would have bee confronted with the calculation of how many traffic kills his invention would score per anno, worldwide (far over one million, says the WHO, btw), and if somebody would have calculated for him how his invention would contribute to the emmission of climate-critical pollution? We probably would have no cars today, for his invention would have been stopped-to-death in its infant shoes. This is how a German TV anchorm commented on the issue yesterday.

Tesla says that statisctically every 150 million kilometers driven in a normal car somebody dies due to traffic accident cause dby car. The Tesla model now had already driven 225 million km.

We also know how notoriously irresponsible and incompetent especially young male drivers in the age group 18-25 can be if you let them take control of a wheel. Lets face it: a good ammount of young men from that age group should be banned from driving until they reach the mid-20s.

Finally we know from other transportation, espoecially train, that the majority of accidents get caused not due to failing technology, but failing humans.

Personally I feel little sympathy for automatic car driving - but if it is technologically possible, the development has plotted course for it in the future for sure. Its always like this with technology. What can be done, will be done.

Still I plead to leave this accident in relation to all car traffic there is - and the accident numbers that traditional carcv traffic causes: and almost always due to human error. I wonder how the description of the killed Tesla driver fits into that last sentence again.