Tesla Model 3 On Autopilot Hits Yet Another Police Vehicle - Why Won't They Stop?

What an ignorant article. So if a guy using cruise control 20 years ago runs into the back of someone, is the cruise control at fault? Or the driver?

Tesla has told AP users over and over that they must be ready to take over at any time. The gut admitted he wasn't paying attention. Only an idiot takes his eye off the road for that long using technology this young. Obviously, we are at the beginning stages of autonomy. Because there are morons out there, should we stop technology from advancing?

It's just amusing to read articles like this. Had people just like you had their way 110 years ago, we'd still be riding around in horse and buggies to this very day!

BTW. Try telling the truth for a change. There have been 3 deaths using Tesla AP. Tesla's AP has been used for a total of 5.5 billion miles do far. The national average for human driven cars is 1 death every 100 million miles.

So do the math, had humans been driving those 5.5 billion miles, there would have been 55 deaths. So in reality, Tesla's AP has saved 52 lives.

But, hey, why report the real facts when they stand in the way of your agenda. It's hard to manipulate people if you tell the truth.

John, you didn't address Carl's point. Looking at it from the fatality averages, Tesla's AP has saved 51-52 lives when compared to humans, but you only fixate on the 3-4 lives lost. And keep in mind that most all of those lives lost were drivers that were not paying attention and did not avoid the accident either, even though Tesla warned them that this stage of AP is a driver's assist tool. Every time that I see you bring up one of these AP accidents, implying that autopilot is fatally flawed, I immediately think of the many similar human accidents that happen every day. Do you think that the guy who is blindly answering a text message is going to see the fire truck or police trooper who is positioned out in the middle of a driving lane? Nope. This kind of accident happens ALL the time. But for you it is big news when a computer is driving, and you can blame Tesla for being imperfect. And I have to remind you that no driving system is perfect, especially us humans. The driver of the Tesla said that he was attending to his dog in the back seat of the car when the accident occurred, and he kept driving after he struck the police cruiser until he was pulled over by the second cruiser. Your article didn't once mention that nobody was injured at all in the accident.

These are accidents that we are talking about, and Tesla's AP is safety equipment that helps prevent accidents. First off, the Tesla Model 3 is not a "luxury-priced" vehicle. The average new vehicle's price in 2019 is just over $37K, and the average new pickup truck price is $48K, so the Tesla Model 3's price is right in the middle. Unless you consider average pickup trucks as also being luxury vehicles. The reason why you would compare the Tesla's safety to all the other vehicles out there is simply that it is important to look at all vehicles when seeing if any safety technology brings an improvement. That is just using scientific method to look at the problem of automobile accidents, and compare this AP technology against other safety technologies out there on the road. Which includes all the other vehicles out there with poor, older safety equipment. The reason why this Tesla crash story is picked up all over is because there are active Tesla stock short-sellers that make money every time they publish another story that makes Tesla look bad, and because they have been so thorough about making sure the bad stories keep coming (to make more money), the news outlets pick it up because it gets hits. I have no doubt that Toyota and Honda and every other automaker's safety systems also cause accidents (likely at a higher rate than Tesla's) because no computer system is ever 100% perfect, but because there aren't groups of silent investors betting against Honda and Toyota and other automaker's success, those stories are not being written and distributed with such vigor. Just follow the money and you can see the key motivations. When was the last time that you published any story about Tesla's autopilot preventing an accident? I cannot recall a single story.

The Tesla Model 3 is not a compact car, or an economy car. It is a mid-sized/intermediate car, and as I mentioned it is priced right in the middle of the average sales price of cars in America. Autopilot is included in that price, but Full Self Driving is optional. Addressing your main point about full self driving. I agree that when that feature goes live, their software and hardware will be needed to approach error-free driving. Which is indeed a huge goal, because humans are nowhere near 100% error free, and there are these rare and extreme cases where vehicles are parked not where they are supposed to be (like the middle of a driving lane) to contend with for all drivers. When viewed objectively, Tesla's advanced software is equal to or better than the best rival offerings, but this is a very small group of competitors. Part of Tesla's problem is that they are labeling the top self driving option "Full Self Driving", and that name implies that the Tesla models with those features, software and hardware will be able to deliver level-5 autonomous driving, whereas currently Autopilot is operating at level 3 autonomy. And like other current level 2 and level 3 driving systems, they are not 100% without error. Which is why they require drivers to monitor the road and intervene when necessary (which the drivers in these rare accidents did NOT do). It is a valid question whether any commercial auto driving system is ready to fully take over all driving duties, but i believe that Tesla's self learning system is the best one out there today, considering it's scope and adaptability. From the mess that I see just in my 80 mile daily commute I would say that even being an alert and experienced driver, I face driving challenges of impatient drivers, inattentive drivers, and intoxicated drivers daily. Would i trust Tesla's FSD Autopilot to handle those conditions, and get me to work and back safely? Yes. But then again I am expecting 99.9% accuracy, not 100%.

I understand that you are trying to be dramatic, but Tesla's autopilot technology has shown to have far fewer accidents as the average vehicle. It seems silly to narrow any comparison to a small group of cars, when the point of any safety technology is to drive out in the real world, with a full population of vehicles. Is Tesla's autopilot safer than driving in most cars?, absolutely. If you were evaluating safety belts at a time where most vehicles didn't have them, would it show their safety value if you only compared them to other vehicles with seat belts? No, the value of showing the advantage of any safety technology is when being compared to ALL vehicles. One key additional point in this is that other automakers implementing semi-autonomous driving are not going to advertise any accidents for reasons of liability and reputation, so you are not going to get valid comparison data anyways. Another point is that Tesla has far more cars on the road using their autopilot technology. Tesla revealed their safety record for 2019 as: “In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged,” the automaker said today. “For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles.”

Could it be that all the flashing lights are blinding the cameras or confusing the Tesla computer? The Tesla should stop (or at least try to stop) if a vehicle is stopped in front of it even if not on FSD shouldn't it? We need to understand what happened in these cases.