edit: Worth pointing out that in the previous Tesla fatality investigated by the NTSB for Autopilot-related issues, the victim was well known as someone who posted videos that showed off his Tesla's Autopilot capability. [0] I don't think anything like that is known about the 38-year-old victim in this week's incident. More details of that accident are here, from the San Jose Merc:
> Friday morning, a San Mateo man died when his Tesla Model X crashed at the Highway 101 and Highway 85 connector, authorities said. Wei Huang, 38, was traveling in the carpool lane of southbound 101 around 9:30 a.m. that morning when he collided with the barrier separating his lane from the Highway 85 flyover carpool lane, according to the California Highway Patrol.
With the Uber accident, I think the public is going to be very wary about over-hyped self driving claims. Tesla is a big offender in that regards where the marketing is that its collision avoidance and lane assistance technology is "Autopilot".
This isn’t the only thing that has happened, a major hedge fund guy apparently predicted that they’ll be bankrupt within four months unless something really big changes because they’re spending is totally unsustainable.
What's frustrating for me is I don't know how much to trust the ratings agencies any more after their involvement in the 2008 financial crisis. Moody's in particular was fined over $800 million. Admittedly part of that is ignorance of how the agencies have performed overall, but that is such a strong black mark. Trust is one of those things that once lost is hard to regain.
While I don't disagree that continued bad press could set back consumer confidence in this new technology, I think the wheels are already in motion - self driving vehicles (in some form) are coming, like it or not.
Waymo is already operating self driving cars without a safety driver moving people around Chandler.
So I guess that self driving cars are already here.
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -William Gibson
In other words, yes, you will have high-tech enclaves ("works around Chandler because we already know how to drive there"); they will be minor compared to the rest of the world still living in 20th century (if even that). Try driving a SDC outside the population centers - this is literally uncharted territory. "But but but cities are hard, everything else is EASY!" Oh yeah? Once SDVs venture out in the open, we'll see another wave of deaths (beyond the one that begins now): "car drove itself off badly marked road", "car stranded itself and did something profoundly stupid" etc.
Driving with exact maps takes off one of the hard parts; having a point cloud of the entire continent sounds improbable.
And minor engineering issues leading to missiles raining down from the sky.
If we're talking safety, thousands of low-flying objects in dense urban areas is not a good idea in the foreseeable future. And certainly not in public perception.
So we need to invent magic to make that happen. Because optimistacally that is at least 75 years away. Wide scale self driving cars is probably a good 20 years away.
I had written this else where, but I think
there should be separate tests designed for a self driving vehicle and every single one of the SDV should pass the tests consistently before being put on road...
Until such laws and tests are devised, the all testing of SDVs on real roads should be suspended..
How would have helped in this case where an assisted driving system, allegedly, caused a fatality?
For assisted driving systems the driver is always in charge and I think that we already have mandatory tests for the drivers.
I'd be pretty happy with just self-parking... since it seems parking spaces are way too tight in a lot of places. Almost counterintuitive, but with a backup camera, I tend to do better parking backwards, often giving a few more inches to my driver side aligning with a forward parked vehicle.
I think I recall someone saying building a very limited driving control would already bring a lot of benefits.
I think that car that would drive themselves below 1mph would already make people happy. You can move things around near house, near stores, near office. At speed that are near danger free. And it feels a tad exciting as consumer experience.
Your sentiment is absolutely correct and it doesn't have to be constrained to a week. I would say a couple more incidents over the next year or so and the public will shut this tech down. Those of us in high tech may think self driving cars are super cool and urbanists may think they will solve the worlds housing problems but to the public at large, self driving cars are a curious novelty. Once a curious novelty has the capability and propensity to kill, it becomes a public nuisance and will not be tolerated.
Eventually, autonomous vehicles will come around but in a much more measured and cautious deployment, as opposed to the VC cash fueled headlong rush we are currently experiencing.
It was at a point where the future was uncertain: no longer a bleeding-edge technology, but not yet an everyday occurence. Could have gone both ways, the disaster pushed it to extinction.
There’s excellent discussion about the accident at the Tesla forum. [1]
The big take-away from their research is that particular exit-only left-lane (which is one of two side by side carpool lanes) is poorly marked, has been consistently gotten worse as changes have been made to the road over the last several years, does not have proper lane markings (missing chevrons in the non-lane), routinely has cars cutting right across the gore point (to the point where there are dash cam videos of almost accidents at that exact point linked in the forum) and, most damning of all, the resettable safety cushion device [2] which protects the gore point had already been hit just recently and there’s evidence it had not been reset when it was hit again by the Model X, which meant the X suffered a direct impact with a narrow slice of concrete.
If anything I think NTSB should be investigating
Caltrans for this one.
I commute on this part of the road every single day, and every day there are people whipping and and out of the two hov lanes as they approach the flyway fork. The model X was probably trying to make it into the flyway at the last minute or continue down the 101 part at the last moment, cut across thinking they had time, and fatally misjudged.
NTSB should look into this in the event that the person was under autopilot at the time, or if there was some flaw in the design of the model X that should have helped or mitigated the death of the driver. I would love to see better guidelines for tesla and for emt/fire staff as the road was shut down for about 6 hours while they tried to deal with the battery. Someone from tesla eventually came down and helped the fire dept deal with the fire...
So, sure, this is a tricky and maybe even dangerous fork, and caltrans will probably put in those dividers like the ones on southbound old middlefield road, but its okay and smart to look into the driver, the model x and the subsequent 6 hours of delay and blockage to improve safety across the board.
> "NTSB should look into this in the event that the person was under autopilot at the time, or if there was some flaw in the design of the model X that should have helped or mitigated the death of the driver. I would love to see better guidelines for tesla and for emt/fire staff as the road was shut down for about 6 hours while they tried to deal with the battery. Someone from tesla eventually came down and helped the fire dept deal with the fire..."
This is explicitly what the NTSB mentioned in their tweet (included in the article) announcing the investigation:
> "2 NTSB investigators conducting Field Investigation for fatal March 23, 2018, crash of a Tesla near Mountain View, CA. Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash. Issues examined include: post-crash fire, steps to make vehicle safe for removal from scene."
Interesting. I've not seen those before, but I wonder why they weren't able to make it automatically reset itself (providing it hadn't been damaged enough to prevent that).
The whole point is it can be reset in ~45 minutes with $40 of parts. There are some bolts which shear off but a typical collision will not actually destroy it!
I think what's being massively overlooked in many crashes that involved Tesla is the insane inferno caused by the impact on the batteries. I mean, the guy died from the burns from the inferno, not from the actual impact of the crash.
The picture shows the front side of the car completely incinerated. Not to mention, the cleanup of the crash took much longer than it should've because of the EMS had serious concerns about the melted batteries.
Tesla cars are great until you get trapped inside a battery-fueled inferno. Youtube it, those batteries literally create a meteoric fireball.
I'm by no means sure of the relative danger, but plain old gas cars can also have pretty big fires. Is it actually worse with batteries? The energy density is if anything lower.
At least with liquid fuels, the job of a fireman can be as simple as extinguishing the existing flame and cooling down anything that is hot.
It's not so simple to stop a damaged lithium battery from continuously self-igniting. Read about the recent incident with the Rimac Concept One—it kept catching fire for five days!
But I suspect your training and experience with car fires is substantial compared to EV fires. I suppose I didn't meant to say they are simple but rather well understood.
I wonder when there are literally hundreds of unique popular models of EV on the road, whether there will be issues arising from having innumerable unique designs for battery packs, first responder lines etc.
In many ways EV fires are easier (gas or gas vapors from a ruptured tank can flow quite a ways away from the vehicle, potentially unnoticed, before igniting; batteries don't tend to flow well...). It's just water, water, and more water...
Tesla in particular is actually quite good about providing training materials for dealing with their vehicles, including facilitating the production of some excellent videos on hazards during extrication.
The battery is only just starting to ignite at this point after suffering catastrophic damage. (You can see individual cells torn apart). I would say this is significantly safer than a dozen gallons of gas which surely would have exploded in the same scenario.
What IS true is that the aftermath is harder to cleanup because the damaged cells can pose a threat for reigniting.
Gasoline under normal conditions doesn’t explode, it burns. I’m not denying that a fire was the likely outcome in either case, but neither gasoline nor batteries detonate, they deflagrate. Gasoline in particular, despite what Hollywood would have you believe, isn’t like nitroglycerin.
It depends hugely on the conditions. Fuel tanks (car or otherwise) containing petrol are most dangerous when nearly empty, and even then the air/fuel ratio needs to be exactly right. If it is, though, it's possible to get your movie-style explosion... just not very likely.
The fuel tank is usually located at the back not the front & generally survives intact in a frontal collision & there are shut-off valves in the fuel lines to the engine so that fuel doesn't leak everywhere in an accident. The system isn't perfect, but I suspect that in this particular incident had the vehicle been a modern petrol fuelled one there would have been no fuel leak.
Look at the Tesla in that video - the rear of the car is pretty much intact.
Well unless the front of the vehicle simply evaporated I don't see how what I said is incorrect.
You can clearly see at 30s the outline of the inferno on the tire. It completely incinerated all the shreds of car were destroyed from the crash.
Even at the beginning of the video, where it shows where the front of the vehicle should've been, it too is barely there because it was incinerated but the batteries.
It takes first responders hours to deal with, sounds like Tesla has traded gasoline for a much more lethal battery. Once again, cost externalization.
"the X suffered a direct impact with a narrow slice of concrete."
Does anyone know if that sort of impact would be what the IIHS calls small overlap frontal crash? IIRC when they added that test in 2012, many previously very safe cars were found to do poorly in that specific test because so much energy is concentrated into a very small area.
I was watching videos of that test and I actually laughed as a Volvo s60 abruptly careened off to the right as the overlap object hit a deflection bar/panel in the engine compartment, thereby protecting the passenger area. Living up to its reputation as very safe vehicle.
Volvo has publicly said that their objective is always years ahead from the testing bodies, so they have done (and designed for) the small overlap scenario for years.
I'm not referring to this particular case, but similar cases in general: There are a lot of people merging right on that place in the last minute, just like there are a lot of people merge left on an exit only lane on any other highway exits. It's not because they are poorly marked, it's because the exit only lane moves faster and they want to cut other people. Even if the lanes are poorly marked (I don't think the side-by-side carpool lanes are poorly marked, there are plenty of signs indicates that the left one is exit only) and they are on the exit only lane by accident, they should still have a common sense about what's safe to do. They can always exit there and come back to the highway on the next entrance. They just decided that their time is too valuable to do that so they are just jerking around. How is that Caltrans' fault?
They usually investigate companies whose products have a major impact on safety on the roadways [firestone for the Explorer rollovers, for example]. Anyhow, if there's an extra-ordinary vehicular/transport accident of note, they will likely investigate.
NTSB also investigates failures of highway safety equipment, such as the crash barrier in that location. Which may or may not have been missing after a recent crash.
Good point as it appears the impact attenuator had not been replaced after having been compressed by what appears to have been a previous accident, if the photos and timelines by witness are correct.
This might sound a bit retroactive, but why not require that systems which allow for even temporary autonomous mode have road-embedded systems and real-time comms with neighbors in order to be activational?
That is, do not allow autonomous mode, unless there is an old-school road-embedded autonav system and if there are other vehicles on the road, it be able to realtime comm with at least xx% of its directional and radial neighbors (to add predictability and reduce misinformation.) This in addition to all current guidance systems.
Obvs road-embedded systems do not account for debris, accidents, etc., but know the ideal path and would be backup-of last resort (incapacitated operator, other systems down). Real-time comms with neighbors surfaces good information and buries stale or inaccurate info.
I would contend that. Dissemination (even distribution) might be slower, but it could evolve in specialized local areas (large campuses, special transit corridors, etc.) and slowly but safely expand outside those areas.
Given that you don't have any idea if autopilot was involved in this accident, why are you calling for anything to change? Shouldn't you wait until a few more facts are known?
That's true with regard to this incident. But there are the incidents by other developers of the technologies where the systems have proven at fault.
What I'm saying is that given that the technology has not yet proven itself in demanding scenarios, we may ask for more rigorous requirements if this is to become the default navigation mode of the future (no human intervention).
Do we have data on how many times people have had to avert an incident that wasn't reported (my autonav almost crashed me, but I took over)? If we had public data, we could make some kind of assessment but even then, if they proved good, we could make them even better yet with the additional support/failsafe systems.
What absolutely cannot work safely is any sort of system that relies on lane markings. Anyone who's driven around the Seattle area can tell you that much. State DOTs simply DGAF about compliance with road-marking practices, especially with respect to visibility in bad weather.
And then there's the question of snow. Additional fail-safe mechanisms of one type or another are definitely going to be necessary.
Which sort of helps if everybody is honest and at worst feeds data that's stale or imprecise. Enter Mallory. (cf security of Internet @ 1990 and Internet @ 2018)
So, is the NTSB staffed/staffing up to accommodate the massive increase in these types of investigations that are likely to crop up over the next few years?
I imagine the point the parent was trying to make is that the NTSB will be more interested in autonomy-related accidents than common car crashes, and as more cars with autonomous features are sold there will be more such accidents to investigate, regardless of how good the systems may be.
So today the NTSB probably investigates very, very few car crashes, but that should rise quite a bit.
People are assuming that all over this discussion, but it's not necessarily the case. I drive past that location on a regular basis, usually in the carpool lane and into the left exit. I've seen many drivers cut over from the exiting left lane to the main road, often dangerously. So no, I wouldn't assume autopilot is involved at all.
Why are comment about Uber accident different than about Tesla accident. Why are many so biased about the subject.
In Uber case everyone was levelheaded about the news and waited for official answer . When Tesla maked an accident there are 50% of post questioning about if it happend , why report and useless armchair reporting about conditions of the road.
The difference is that the Uber accident was the first pedestrian fatality of an autonomous vehicle, whereas fatal crashes of drivers have been happening for a few years now.
We are part of a team consisting of highly efficient developers and hackers.
Upgrade University Grades
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Line, Skype Hack
Delete unwanted online Pictures and Videos on any website
Remove Criminal Records
Hack bank accounts
Apps hacking
MasterCard, Paypal, Bitcoin, WU, Money Gram with untraceable credit on it etc.
We also develop hacked facebook, twitter, instagram, yahoo, gmail passwords etc.
We do custom software and web development in php, java, asp.net
etc.
We have 100% records from our client as well as highest repeat hire rate.
our work speak for ourselves, we provide a perfect software solution to all clients.
We believe in mutual growing with client and hence we work as a technology partner and consultant for our clients.
Contact us geraldhacks30@gmail.com ICQ: 703132619 or WhatsApp:+14696660879or Skype: geraldhacks30@gmail.com
We are part of a team consisting of highly efficient developers and hackers.
Upgrade University Grades
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Line, Skype Hack
Delete unwanted online Pictures and Videos on any website
Remove Criminal Records
Hack bank accounts
Apps hacking
MasterCard, Paypal, Bitcoin, WU, Money Gram with untraceable credit on it etc.
We also develop hacked facebook, twitter, instagram, yahoo, gmail passwords etc.
We do custom software and web development in php, java, asp.net
etc.
We have 100% records from our client as well as highest repeat hire rate.
our work speak for ourselves, we provide a perfect software solution to all clients.
We believe in mutual growing with client and hence we work as a technology partner and consultant for our clients.
Contact us geraldhacks30@gmail.com ICQ: 703132619 or WhatsApp:+14696660879
We are part of a team consisting of highly efficient developers and hackers.
Upgrade University Grades
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Line, Skype Hack
Delete unwanted online Pictures and Videos on any website
Remove Criminal Records
Hack bank accounts
Apps hacking
MasterCard, Paypal, Bitcoin, WU, Money Gram with untraceable credit on it etc.
We also develop hacked facebook, twitter, instagram, yahoo, gmail passwords etc.
We do custom software and web development in php, java, asp.net
etc.
We have 100% records from our client as well as highest repeat hire rate.
our work speak for ourselves, we provide a perfect software solution to all clients.
We believe in mutual growing with client and hence we work as a technology partner and consultant for our clients.
Contact us geraldhacks30@gmail.com ICQ: 703132619 or WhatsApp:+14696660879
Now with discussion being a lot about the safety of this lane and barrier, here's a thought that could improve road safety for everyone:
With more and more auto-piloting cars on the road calculating the road and make decisions on what's the safest way to continue, wouldn't be it rather easy for this data to flow back? Spots that are often causing trouble for the brains of the autopilot could then be identified easily and be the road, markings, signage, etc improved much quicker. Today's method are most likely a mix of experience and looking at the fatality and accident statistics for last year.
It may be a bit of a political problem. "Hey, why are the potholes on my road not getting fixed, but Tesla gets the government to paint new chevrons on some fancy highway"
This is being looked into right now by Here, VW etc. Their plan is to for all cars that use the Here map backend (All Merc, BMW, VAG cars plus probably others who join down the line) to send updates automatically. MobilEye (now owned by Intel) is working on a similar system.
Have we seen similar levels of damage in other cars that carry large battery packs and have been in head-on-collisions?
I dont really have any commentary one way or another about autopilot or the safety of batteries, I'm just thinking there are probably other accidents that have happened in the industry in similar conditions to this.
For example, the Prius and Volt have been on the road for quite some time, and both cars carry relatively large batteries (though certainly not as large as that on a Model X). When involved in head-on collisions do they see such drastic damage/fires?
Just curious. I don't know that its even fair to compare those types of vehicles given the difference in the size of battery.
I think the old prius used lead-acid batteries, IE conventional automotive batteries. This significantly reduced the risk of fire, though I don't think that was the main reason for choosing them
116 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadedit: Worth pointing out that in the previous Tesla fatality investigated by the NTSB for Autopilot-related issues, the victim was well known as someone who posted videos that showed off his Tesla's Autopilot capability. [0] I don't think anything like that is known about the 38-year-old victim in this week's incident. More details of that accident are here, from the San Jose Merc:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/27/ntsb-investigating-fa...
> Friday morning, a San Mateo man died when his Tesla Model X crashed at the Highway 101 and Highway 85 connector, authorities said. Wei Huang, 38, was traveling in the carpool lane of southbound 101 around 9:30 a.m. that morning when he collided with the barrier separating his lane from the Highway 85 flyover carpool lane, according to the California Highway Patrol.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/joshua-brown-tec...
With the Uber accident, I think the public is going to be very wary about over-hyped self driving claims. Tesla is a big offender in that regards where the marketing is that its collision avoidance and lane assistance technology is "Autopilot".
The problem is, markets +-trust them, since there isn't anything better (although bringing better than shit shouldn't be impossible).
Unless there was a typo in the article I read
2030 is coming soon, and people have short memories.
In other words, yes, you will have high-tech enclaves ("works around Chandler because we already know how to drive there"); they will be minor compared to the rest of the world still living in 20th century (if even that). Try driving a SDC outside the population centers - this is literally uncharted territory. "But but but cities are hard, everything else is EASY!" Oh yeah? Once SDVs venture out in the open, we'll see another wave of deaths (beyond the one that begins now): "car drove itself off badly marked road", "car stranded itself and did something profoundly stupid" etc.
Driving with exact maps takes off one of the hard parts; having a point cloud of the entire continent sounds improbable.
No pedestrians to worry about, crashes easier to avoid, no mixing of autonomous and active traffic, and faster travel times.
If we're talking safety, thousands of low-flying objects in dense urban areas is not a good idea in the foreseeable future. And certainly not in public perception.
How is it more dangerous than 12 lane autonomous intersections?
Until such laws and tests are devised, the all testing of SDVs on real roads should be suspended..
Why are people not asking/demanding this?
I think that car that would drive themselves below 1mph would already make people happy. You can move things around near house, near stores, near office. At speed that are near danger free. And it feels a tad exciting as consumer experience.
Eventually, autonomous vehicles will come around but in a much more measured and cautious deployment, as opposed to the VC cash fueled headlong rush we are currently experiencing.
Sad, given that we don't even know if Autopilot was on during this crash, and yet people immediately assume this is a self-driving issue.
They don’t investigate many per year though, so this is something special. I’m guessing they will be investigating these new technology crashes.
After all, EVs are becoming increasingly common; if fire departments need special training or equipment, now's the time to issue recommendations.
The big take-away from their research is that particular exit-only left-lane (which is one of two side by side carpool lanes) is poorly marked, has been consistently gotten worse as changes have been made to the road over the last several years, does not have proper lane markings (missing chevrons in the non-lane), routinely has cars cutting right across the gore point (to the point where there are dash cam videos of almost accidents at that exact point linked in the forum) and, most damning of all, the resettable safety cushion device [2] which protects the gore point had already been hit just recently and there’s evidence it had not been reset when it was hit again by the Model X, which meant the X suffered a direct impact with a narrow slice of concrete.
If anything I think NTSB should be investigating Caltrans for this one.
[1] - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-x-crash-on-us-...
[2] - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/posts/2636752/
NTSB should look into this in the event that the person was under autopilot at the time, or if there was some flaw in the design of the model X that should have helped or mitigated the death of the driver. I would love to see better guidelines for tesla and for emt/fire staff as the road was shut down for about 6 hours while they tried to deal with the battery. Someone from tesla eventually came down and helped the fire dept deal with the fire...
So, sure, this is a tricky and maybe even dangerous fork, and caltrans will probably put in those dividers like the ones on southbound old middlefield road, but its okay and smart to look into the driver, the model x and the subsequent 6 hours of delay and blockage to improve safety across the board.
This is explicitly what the NTSB mentioned in their tweet (included in the article) announcing the investigation:
> "2 NTSB investigators conducting Field Investigation for fatal March 23, 2018, crash of a Tesla near Mountain View, CA. Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash. Issues examined include: post-crash fire, steps to make vehicle safe for removal from scene."
https://twitter.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/978651644417265664
Informational sheet describing the benefits:
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/project_ads_addenda/06/06-0Q...
The picture shows the front side of the car completely incinerated. Not to mention, the cleanup of the crash took much longer than it should've because of the EMS had serious concerns about the melted batteries.
Tesla cars are great until you get trapped inside a battery-fueled inferno. Youtube it, those batteries literally create a meteoric fireball.
It's not so simple to stop a damaged lithium battery from continuously self-igniting. Read about the recent incident with the Rimac Concept One—it kept catching fire for five days!
As a firefighter, I think you and I likely have different ideas of what "simple" looks like in this case...
EVs definitely pose unique hazards, but there is nothing "simple" about a car fire.
But I suspect your training and experience with car fires is substantial compared to EV fires. I suppose I didn't meant to say they are simple but rather well understood.
I wonder when there are literally hundreds of unique popular models of EV on the road, whether there will be issues arising from having innumerable unique designs for battery packs, first responder lines etc.
Tesla in particular is actually quite good about providing training materials for dealing with their vehicles, including facilitating the production of some excellent videos on hazards during extrication.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntK3rvVl2Qw
As well as the standard safety manuals car manufacturers provide (though Tesla makes their especially easy to access).
https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders
Incorrect.
“Witnesses were able to extract the driver before the flames posed any threat to him.“
Here is VIDEO of the Tesla immediately after the crash, taken by one of the guys who helped pull the driver out of the car:
https://youtu.be/RlQTeF45aIE
The battery is only just starting to ignite at this point after suffering catastrophic damage. (You can see individual cells torn apart). I would say this is significantly safer than a dozen gallons of gas which surely would have exploded in the same scenario.
What IS true is that the aftermath is harder to cleanup because the damaged cells can pose a threat for reigniting.
Also IIRC Mythbusters did an episode on this.
Look at the Tesla in that video - the rear of the car is pretty much intact.
At least then you know everything burnable is already burnt, so it's not going to reignite.
You can clearly see at 30s the outline of the inferno on the tire. It completely incinerated all the shreds of car were destroyed from the crash.
Even at the beginning of the video, where it shows where the front of the vehicle should've been, it too is barely there because it was incinerated but the batteries.
It takes first responders hours to deal with, sounds like Tesla has traded gasoline for a much more lethal battery. Once again, cost externalization.
edit: correction this photo evidence from the day before shows the barrier not replaced. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-knows-fatal-model-x-030...
Does anyone know if that sort of impact would be what the IIHS calls small overlap frontal crash? IIRC when they added that test in 2012, many previously very safe cars were found to do poorly in that specific test because so much energy is concentrated into a very small area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYLE55iYj0
or the more recent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnRIwQn9SA8
the latter is imo even more amazing
I'm not referring to this particular case, but similar cases in general: There are a lot of people merging right on that place in the last minute, just like there are a lot of people merge left on an exit only lane on any other highway exits. It's not because they are poorly marked, it's because the exit only lane moves faster and they want to cut other people. Even if the lanes are poorly marked (I don't think the side-by-side carpool lanes are poorly marked, there are plenty of signs indicates that the left one is exit only) and they are on the exit only lane by accident, they should still have a common sense about what's safe to do. They can always exit there and come back to the highway on the next entrance. They just decided that their time is too valuable to do that so they are just jerking around. How is that Caltrans' fault?
That is, do not allow autonomous mode, unless there is an old-school road-embedded autonav system and if there are other vehicles on the road, it be able to realtime comm with at least xx% of its directional and radial neighbors (to add predictability and reduce misinformation.) This in addition to all current guidance systems.
Obvs road-embedded systems do not account for debris, accidents, etc., but know the ideal path and would be backup-of last resort (incapacitated operator, other systems down). Real-time comms with neighbors surfaces good information and buries stale or inaccurate info.
What I'm saying is that given that the technology has not yet proven itself in demanding scenarios, we may ask for more rigorous requirements if this is to become the default navigation mode of the future (no human intervention).
Do we have data on how many times people have had to avert an incident that wasn't reported (my autonav almost crashed me, but I took over)? If we had public data, we could make some kind of assessment but even then, if they proved good, we could make them even better yet with the additional support/failsafe systems.
What absolutely cannot work safely is any sort of system that relies on lane markings. Anyone who's driven around the Seattle area can tell you that much. State DOTs simply DGAF about compliance with road-marking practices, especially with respect to visibility in bad weather.
And then there's the question of snow. Additional fail-safe mechanisms of one type or another are definitely going to be necessary.
So today the NTSB probably investigates very, very few car crashes, but that should rise quite a bit.
With more and more auto-piloting cars on the road calculating the road and make decisions on what's the safest way to continue, wouldn't be it rather easy for this data to flow back? Spots that are often causing trouble for the brains of the autopilot could then be identified easily and be the road, markings, signage, etc improved much quicker. Today's method are most likely a mix of experience and looking at the fatality and accident statistics for last year.
I dont really have any commentary one way or another about autopilot or the safety of batteries, I'm just thinking there are probably other accidents that have happened in the industry in similar conditions to this.
For example, the Prius and Volt have been on the road for quite some time, and both cars carry relatively large batteries (though certainly not as large as that on a Model X). When involved in head-on collisions do they see such drastic damage/fires?
Just curious. I don't know that its even fair to compare those types of vehicles given the difference in the size of battery.