Hi Folks,
A fellow engineer in California sent me this, apparently the self driving feature saw the lane spacing as standard but ran into the concrete lane divider and killed him. I really like my Tesla-Y for towing the boat, seamless long distance travel/fast charging but I’ll hold off on buying the $10K self driving option for my wife (who has trouble driving now) until it’s approved by a third party testing like NHSTA. When My Chevy Bolt or Nissan Leaf poops out, I’ll probably buy a Tesla-3 but won’t use the AutoPilot (unless on long straight highways/trips with no decisions) or self driving option. From: William Hennessy Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2021 1:08 PM To: 'Mark Hanson' Subject: RE: AutoPilot drops out on tight road turns. An at that, a respected government agency that’s not been compromised by political donations… My 2018 Honda CR-V has adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist for highway use and it works pretty well, but gets upset when you take your hands off the wheel for more than a couple seconds. It also has collision avoidance braking assist which will slam on the brakes if it determines an impact is imminent. The adaptive cruise control’s low speed follow mode is great for rush hour stop and go traffic and will go to zero speed and resume if traffic is creeping along. I ran a test on it one day when driving through LA and was on cruise control at about 75; I could see traffic was stopped about half a mile ahead of me and normally would let off the gas and coast to the stoppage, but I let the cruise control do its thing to see when (or if) it would detect the stoppage and attempt to stop the car. At about 100 yards out I took over and stopped manually and I’m convinced the car would not have managed to stop itself in that situation. The problem as I understand it is that the radars used in these cars do not have adequate range to detect the traffic and react in time to avoid a collision at highway speeds and that the video image processing in the Honda is not advanced enough to evaluate the situation. I like to believe the Tesla sensors and software is significantly more advanced and capable; and for the price difference it should be… I think we paid about $28K for the Honda two years ago. This is the Google Map view of approach to ramp where the Tesla Model X accident occurred in 2018… It’s a left hand exit and the yellow striped divider is a collapsible energy absorbing design. Unfortunately the mechanism had been impacted a week earlier and had not been reset at the time of the accident. I don’t know of the driver was intent on taking the exit or remaining in the fast lane; however, assuming he was going to work at Apple he would have normally exited to Hwy 85 south from that location. And there are right and left exits to do that, the left exit being for carpool only (I don’t think there’s a FasTrak pass for those roads). So, is it conceivable that the Tesla navigation system glitched and knew it wanted to go south on 85 but saw it was going to miss the right hand exit and instead tried (too late) for the express lane exit? It’s an interesting story because the owner of the car, an Apple engineer, had previously informed Tesla about the car’s propensity to veer into this divider. Now one would think that as a curious engineer, who was aware of the problem, that it would have prompted his close attention when approaching this exit ramp. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fatal-tesla-crash-highlights-risk-of-partial-automation From: Mark Hanson Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2021 06:56 Subject: Re: AutoPilot drops out on tight road turns. Thanks Bud It appears that AutoPilot comes with all Tesla’s for highway use and the $10k extra software download option is for full self driving option like taking you to work on back country roads that starts and stops at traffic lights. I just have the highway “Autopilot “ that comes with the car but sounds like it can get confused with anything out of the ordinary like added unexpected barriers. I’ve used it on trips on big divided highways monotonous driving. I noticed it occasionally drops out , I guess when the software gets confused, but didn’t think much of it. Of course that can be deadly on a tight turn country road like what happened to my friend when he hit a tree. Sounds like in the article there was an unexpected barrier that the software got confused with. Probably best to not turn it on, certainly on short trips. There needs to be some third party testing so folks can feel comfortable with spending the extra $10k for full self driving. I also bought the Tesla so Teresa could use that feature as she’s having trouble driving now but after my friends accidents and the recent info on the EVDL about unexpected drop outs, don’t think I’ll be buying the $10k feature anytime soon unless verified by a respected government agency. Best regards Mark Sent from my iPhone On Jul 9, 2021, at 11:28 PM,Bud wrote: Not sure I’d completely trust it on the freeway either Mark… We saw the aftermath of this accident near my wife’s parent’s house when visiting a couple years ago. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-man-killed-in-tesla-crash-had-complained-about-autopilot/ Have a renewable energy day, Mark Mark E. Hanson 184 Vista Lane Fincastle, VA 24090 540-473-1248 phone & FAX, 540-816-0812 cell REEVA: community service RE & EV project club Website: www.REEVAdiy.org (See Project Gallery) UL Certified PV Installer My RE&EV Circuits: www.EVDL.org/lib/mh REEVA Demo: http://youtu.be/4kqWn2H-rA0 Fincastle Solar Weather Station <https://www.weatherlink.com/embeddablePage/show/a88920376f864ecabaed843dd8975b8d/signature> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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