Tesla Investigated For Two Motorcyclists Killed In Autopilot Crashes

I don’t believe it does, no. I always take over when around cyclists as I like to leave a wider berth than 1.5m if there’s room. It’ll improve. It’s continuously getting a little bit better each update.

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The thing is, you, the driver are still in control, like the pilot of an aeroplane when they put it in autopilot. You still have responsibility and you have to apply your judgement on when to use and when not to use it. Though I appreciate that not everyone will respect this and will rely too much on it whilst it’s still in this beta version state.

I’ve wondered how the offence of ‘Not being in proper control of a motor vehicle’ would be applied to a Tesla driver, or what the Legal threshold for ‘being in proper control’ of a Tesla car would be?

What do Tesla drivers do to relieve the increased boredom or to ignore the increased distractions?

I remember a few years ago the late, great Terry Wogan broadcast on BBC Radio 2 an idea to relieve the boredom on the daily commute. The idea was to place your arms through the centre of the steering wheel and drum on the dashboard to the beat of the music. One of Wogan’s TOGs took up this advise and was famously given an Endorsement and Fine for ‘Not being in proper control of a motor vehicle’ Wogan later broadcast a disclaimer and rumour had it that he also reimbursed the TOG for the cost of the fine.

Heh.

For me, driving boredom is resolved through the usual application of very loud music and/or thought provoking podcasts :slight_smile: Though I’d like to point out the boredom is not caused by being on Autopilot - that’s actually a pleasant experience, it’s just when traffic goes to a crawl, say, like on the M25 at rush hour. Not much you can do to avoid running out of patience there, regardless of who is doing the driving :slight_smile:

I’d pick up on this. Quite seriously, how is the car getting in that situation? I do understand the safety behind a good autonomous system when you’re fatigued, but how often without an autonomous system were you getting in a situation that warranted an emergency avoidance, maybe once every 12 months and each time I’d imagine you could look back at it and realise you didn’t need to have got yourself in that position, and it was likely due to fatigue/distraction.

Dealing with intrusions into the road, i.e. cyclists and cars over the line

This is exactly what I’ve experienced, and it’s clearly dangerous. With the cyclist, it needs to leave its lane, straddle a hatched line, and return safely. I think it should do that regardless of the country, but I am sure from observation that if we opened the code there would not be a separate abstraction or rich rule configuration based on country. I’d also say that once a car has had reasonable time to recognise a filtering biker, they should move out of the way if it is safe to do so. I appreciate all the drivers that do it, but I do also feel we are entitled to it as vulnerable road users. I sold all my Tesla stock as I don’t have the belief in them you have; does your suspension make that creaking sound? A neighbour’s sounds like it’s going to crack in half when it goes over bumps

Out of interest - When driving on a motorway or dual carriageway does a Tesla on auto-pilot follow the Highway Code Lane Discipline rules and would it know if it was hauling a trailer or caravan?

Lane discipline (rules 264 to 266) - Highway Code.

It’s not getting us into the situation, it’s getting us out of the situation. I should have clarified, I mean when other drivers do something stupid. It’s very good at spotting when someone is merging into you, slamming on the brakes, etc. It’s those situations where it’s prevented a crash, so I find that hugely valuable.

I think that’s right, in that Autopilot is not a traditional rules-based system. It’s an AI using Neural Nets. Details are thin on the ground, but there doesn’t seem to be any per-region or per-scenario customisation. It’s just taught to drive on all roads around the world, which is backed up by my experience of UK Tesla cars working on EU roads (we’ve done roadtrips on the continent and it’s worked great).