A digital video disc player was found in the Tesla car that was on autopilot when its driver was killed in a collision with a truck in May, Florida Highway Patrol officials said on Friday.
“As to the video, there was a witness who came to the scene immediately after the accident occurred, and we can’t verify it at this point,” said Paul Weekley of Tampa, the lawyer for the truck driver. “But what we have been told is that he saw a Harry Potter video still playing when he got to the scene.”
Again, tragic loss of life, but come on. You are responsible for your car.
Wouldn’t be surprising if the last text on his phone was “Dude, I’m watching Harry Potter while my Tesla is driving!”
Unfortunately it seems that for people without Autopilot driving is at best the 4th or 5th priority for them behind the wheel. I can only imagine the attention drop off when they think the car is doing all the work.
This guy is to blame. Send him a posthumous Darwin award.
That said, Tesla (and Google and Uber for that matter, though unrelated to this) have been hell bent on framing themselves as futurists and leading everyone to the land of milk and honey and self-driving cars. They created this perception that self-driving cars were easy. It wasn’t decades away. It was practically already here. Just lean back and laugh at the peasants in their carbon burning cars doing antiquated things like paying attention. Heck, you don’t even need a steering wheel. Welcome to the future.
Tesla should be thankful only the dummy driver died. If the truck that was hit lost control and killed several people, Tesla would also be dead.
This is a story just like the first person who died texting was a story. The first of many to do it – this first of just a coupe to make the news.
Except that Tesla hasn’t said any of the stuff you claim they have. They’ve been VERY clear that the self-driving features are in beta, that you need to pay attention and that if you don’t keep your hands on the wheel, the car will slow down, pull over and stop. Only someone hell bent on ignoring all of this just to be cool (or for some other reason), would believe that they didn’t need to pay any attention to where they were going.
How about let’s all assume some personal responsibility and not try to always shift the blame? If this guy ignored everything Tesla has said about the self-driving feature and decided to watch his DVD player he was a fool. Sadly, a dead fool for those who loved him. .
Leading Darwin Awards candidate.
I’m pretty sure you need to be dead to even qualify for the Darwin Awards.
But I could be mistaken.
The first known person killed by a motor vehicle crash (in the Western Hemisphere and probably the world) was Henry H. Bliss. Died September 14, 1899, a day after being hit while stepping off a streetcar in NYC.
Maybe the Tesla victim will be remembered as the first to die in an autonomous vehicle crash. (Depending on whether the Tesla is considered to be a truly autonomous car or not.)
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A rumor, spread by the lawyer of the truck driver … yet unconfirmed. And you deem it appropriate to incite hate on someone who is dead. Shame on you, Jim Dalrymple. I used to respect you.
Such an uninformed, irrelevant comment.
Half right. To qualify, you must be dead or unable to reproduce. The key is removal from influencing future evolution.
Exactly who created this perception, again?
Related: What are your other favorite tech blogs?
even if true, it doesn’t mean that he was watching it at the moment of the accident, maybe he was just listening. fatal crashes are going to happen with autonomous systems, the question is not “if”, but “how often”
go troll somewhere else. your obvious agenda on so many posts is plain to see.
I’ve never heard Tesla or any reputable tech news outlet refer to their system as an autopilot. I’ve always heard or read it called an Assisted Driving Mode and that it is not intended to be self-driving or autopilot at all. It is entirely different from systems Google and others are working on, including transit buses already working in the Netherlands and Washington, DC, construction vehicles already at work in Florida, and Daimler’s supertrucks already traveling in Arizona.
Actual self-driving vehicles are already here and they are coming, and I can’t wait for them. I’m nearly hit several times a day by people using their damn phones. Tesla’s problem is not going full automated and overconfident or ignorant people using it as such.
Nightmarish. I love Tesla, and yes the self-driving features are beta. But it seems to me that if the self-driving features fail, there’s going to be an incredibly high likelihood of an accident. It seems inevitable that if the car takes over driving then warning or no warning, you’re not going to be sitting behind the wheel with the same level of alertness. And if the autopilot is actually good (as a recent Ars article suggested it is), then you’re going to trust it more and more and more, until one day you decide it’s good enough that you can spend your time doing something else.
What I wonder is: would there have been an accident if the truck was using autopilot technology?
You mean aside from Tesla themselves calling it that?
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/your-autopilot-has-arrived
https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit#autopilot
We are going to have to accept a lot of deaths before fully automated driving will be available and safe. That’s unfortunate, but there’s really no other way to solve these problems than to put systems out there and learn from them.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s very likely the deaths from a human/tech hybrid system will be fewer than the deaths from a fully human system.
Eventually, it’ll be worth it.
But I’m sure glad I’m not involved at all.
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Well, that sucks to be me 🙂 I was certain I had read Tesla’s material on it, but I must have been conflating other reports of it being an assisted driving mode instead of full self-driving. Thanks for pointing out my error.
Probably sucks to be Tesla more now, though, because if they hadn’t played the autopilot/self-driving card they would have much better legs to stand on in this.