How the CHP stopped a Tesla on FSD with a drunk passed out driver

[EELinneman]

Technically, not the driver, but still. Interesting video. This is something new that law enforcement will have to deal with - Teslaman!

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[Steve-o]

Why Musk needs to stop calling it autopilot. Its a Level 2 autonomous vehicle and no where ready for Level 5 as much as he tweets about it.

 

[RedStallion]

NTSB: Tesla's "Full Self Driving" is “misleading and irresponsible ... It has clearly misled numerous people to misuse and abuse technology”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-m...es-rankles-a-top-safety-authority-11632043803

 

[Kabish]

Why Musk needs to stop calling it autopilot.

100% Absolutely agree, I've been saying that for ages.

I think at first it was a marketing ploy that has now turned into a whole monster of its own. What I really don't understand is why they don't use a camera system inside the car... Kind of the same tech as the MME uses, which apparently is pretty good. Passed out, whelp there goes your car driving your drunk ass home.

I think if people KNEW if they did not pay attention their car would disengage then they would stop doing this BS and we would not have all this crap happening surrounding driver aids.

 

[one5460]

100% Absolutely agree, I've been saying that for ages.

I think at first it was a marketing ploy that has now turned into a whole monster of its own. What I really don't understand is why they don't use a camera system inside the car... Kind of the same tech as the MME uses, which apparently is pretty good. Passed out, whelp there goes your car driving your drunk ass home.

I think if people KNEW if they did not pay attention their car would disengage then they would stop doing this BS and we would not have all this crap happening surrounding driver aids.

There is a cabin camera that sat 'dormant' for a while. Or so they say. They started enabling it for monitoring on some cars already. I believe it will be fleet wide by the time of the beta is released to the public.

I agree though, it should be have been enabled already.

 

[ARK]

To be fair, I really don’t think the person would have believed that the car could get her home (unless she has the street driving beta and has super confidence in it?). She probably just passed out while driving, not intending to pass out in her car.

The car, realizing she was no longer paying attention, apparently slowed to a crawl. Perhaps it would be better if it stopped, or might actually moving slower be better here?

Without autopilot, she very well likely would have flown off the road and possibly been severely injured or worse when she passed out. If the car came to a complete stop, it arguably would have been even more dangerous for her (and other drivers) to have a car at a dead stop on the freeway, with her passed out in the front.

So while this is a sensational thing to occur (drunk, passed out driver driven for miles by self-driving car), I’m not sure any alternative is better from the car’s point of view until self driving improves so much so that the car can safely pull over on the shoulder or something along those lines when faced with an unresponsive driver.

 

[ab13]

There is a cabin camera that sat 'dormant' for a while. Or so they say. They started enabling it for monitoring on some cars already. I believe it will be fleet wide by the time of the beta is released to the public.

I agree though, it should be have been enabled already.

That was actually intended to watch the passengers in the car when the system was doing "robotaxi" It's not set up to see well in the dark or sunglasses, and it is watching everyone. Could be a privacy issue.

 

[Carsinmyblood]

This failed experiment needs to be stopped. Cars are not self anything.

 

[Awmustang]

100% Absolutely agree, I've been saying that for ages.

I think at first it was a marketing ploy that has now turned into a whole monster of its own. What I really don't understand is why they don't use a camera system inside the car... Kind of the same tech as the MME uses, which apparently is pretty good. Passed out, whelp there goes your car driving your drunk ass home.

I think if people KNEW if they did not pay attention their car would disengage then they would stop doing this BS and we would not have all this crap happening surrounding driver aids.

Car and Driver did a test on this and ALL of the driver assistance technologies currently available from a number of different automakers could be fooled in to staying active even when there was no driver or the driver was not paying attention. They fooled the Ford system by where joke glasses with googley eyes printed on them.

To be fair, I really don’t think the person would have believed that the car could get her home (unless she has the street driving beta and has super confidence in it?). She probably just passed out while driving, not intending to pass out in her car.

The car, realizing she was no longer paying attention, apparently slowed to a crawl. Perhaps it would be better if it stopped, or might actually moving slower be better here?

Without autopilot, she very well likely would have flown off the road and possibly been severely injured or worse when she passed out. If the car came to a complete stop, it arguably would have been even more dangerous for her (and other drivers) to have a car at a dead stop on the freeway, with her passed out in the front.

So while this is a sensational thing to occur (drunk, passed out driver driven for miles by self-driving car), I’m not sure any alternative is better from the car’s point of view until self driving improves so much so that the car can safely pull over on the shoulder or something along those lines when faced with an unresponsive driver.

I think the cop car slowed the Tesla by slowing in front of it. It doesn't appear the car had realized she was incapacitated. All she had to do was rest her hand on a wheel spoke and the car would happily drive till it ran out of juice.

 

[Kabish]

To be fair, I really don’t think the person would have believed that the car could get her home (unless she has the street driving beta and has super confidence in it?). She probably just passed out while driving, not intending to pass out in her car.

She was drunk..... Do you think a person thinks logically when drunk?? Who gets behind a wheel and intends to pass out in a car... like what..... Don't try to excuse a drunk driver, I hope she loses her license, car is impounded/destroyed and she gets jail time. There should be absolutely ZERO tolerance to DUI. If these idiots start losing their cars because they are using autopilot drunk then maybe they will stop being stupid.

The car, realizing she was no longer paying attention, apparently slowed to a crawl.

Ummm no... The CHP did a rolling road block and stopped the car...

 

[TheVirtualTim]

The reporter said "...and it it's not just happening with Tesla -- other car makers are putting these features in as well..."

Except... it is just Tesla. Other car-makers have proper driver monitoring systems. Both Ford and GM have systems that watch the driver to verify their eyes are on the road. Tesla still doesn't do this.

Is there another car maker with a driver assist system that doesn't include driver monitoring?

 

[ARK]

She was drunk..... Do you think a person thinks logically when drunk?? Who gets behind a wheel and intends to pass out in a car... like what..... Don't try to excuse a drunk driver, I hope she loses her license, car is impounded/destroyed and she gets jail time. There should be absolutely ZERO tolerance to DUI. If these idiots start losing their cars because they are using autopilot drunk then maybe they will stop being stupid.


Ummm no... The CHP did a rolling road block and stopped the car...

I’m not excusing the drunk driver. On the contrary, I’m blaming her even more, saying Tesla shares no part of the blame with this specific incident - all the fault rests solely on her.

My point is, what is self-driving tech supposed to do in a situation where the driver suddenly becomes incapacitated. Whether it’s because of a selfish and foolish drunk driver, or a blameless medical emergency like a seizure, massive heart attack, brain aneurysm, etc., it’s going to happen.

If the tech gets good enough to change lanes, get off the freeway, safely pull over, great, I think that is best. But in the absence of that, I don’t think stopping on the freeway is necessarily the best approach. What would definitely be a terrible approach would be if the self-driving feature suddenly just disengaged and the uncontrolled car with the incapacitated driver just careened through the road.

Look at this guy suffering a medical emergency while driving and tell me it would have been better for all involved - the Tesla driver, the CHP, and bystanders - if the vehicle in question here behaved the same way.

 

[Kabish]

Ya, I think on all the cars, to my knowledge, if it detects you not paying attention it just shuts off the aid assist. I've always kind of questioned that cause now you have a car doing 70mph down the freeway with no assists on... I dunno what the alternative is though, unless like you said, the auto driving gets to the point where the car can exit a freeway or pull over into an emergency lane and fully stop.

I know if you don't pay attention to the MME it disengages the system but the ICC still operates at least from my experience. I had the system shut off on me once just to see what it did, but my cruise control was still on.

 

[RedStallion]

To be fair, I really don’t think the person would have believed that the car could get her home (unless she has the street driving beta and has super confidence in it?). She probably just passed out while driving, not intending to pass out in her car.

The car, realizing she was no longer paying attention, apparently slowed to a crawl. Perhaps it would be better if it stopped, or might actually moving slower be better here?

Without autopilot, she very well likely would have flown off the road and possibly been severely injured or worse when she passed out. If the car came to a complete stop, it arguably would have been even more dangerous for her (and other drivers) to have a car at a dead stop on the freeway, with her passed out in the front.

So while this is a sensational thing to occur (drunk, passed out driver driven for miles by self-driving car), I’m not sure any alternative is better from the car’s point of view until self driving improves so much so that the car can safely pull over on the shoulder or something along those lines when faced with an unresponsive driver.

The alternative would be not to drive intoxicated. The "autopilot" gave her enough confidence to drive in a condition she wouldn't dare to drive otherwise. She was just lucky to be caught by the police, otherwise she would have ended somewhere in a ditch in a ball of fire. Worse, everybody around those drivers are endangered. Had Tesla installed robust mechanism preventing inattentive and abusive drivers using the system it would have never happened and many lives would have been saved.

 

[ARK]

The alternative would be not to drive intoxicated. The "autopilot" gave her enough confidence to drive in a condition she wouldn't dare to drive otherwise. She was just lucky to be caught by the police, otherwise she would have ended somewhere in a ditch in a ball of fire. Worse, everybody around those drivers are endangered. Had Tesla installed robust mechanism preventing inattentive and abusive drivers using the system it would have never happened and many lives would have been saved.

That's a fair point, if she otherwise wouldn't have risked it at all without autopilot. However, we don't know that (don't have any info on that one way or the other since there is no background on the driver, where she was coming from, if she said something to the cops to try and explain herself, etc.) and it could very well be that she would have driven drunk regardless of her vehicle having autopilot or not.

I do agree that I think Tesla goes too far in how it markets autopilot versus the actual capability of autopilot (and what the fine print says autopilot can and can't do). However, if we reach the point of an incapacitated driver behind the wheel of a self-driving vehicle, I still think it's not unreasonable how the vehicle acted in this situation, despite the truly sensational act of a car taking a passed out driver for miles and miles in that state.

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