2:32
- ABC News
- December 4, 2018
Police chased a Tesla S on Autopilot for 7 miles
Autopilot should require a driver to touch the steering wheel after one minute.
2:32
In a follow-up tweet, Musk said that Autopilot could not distinguish between different types of emergency vehicles, but that it would be able to in the near future. \"We’re adding police car, fire truck & ambulance to the Tesla neural net in coming months,\" he wrote.
We’re adding police car, fire truck & ambulance to the Tesla neural net in coming months
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2018
Redwood City CHP is familiar with the Tesla Autopilot feature in part because of a fatal crash the agency investigated in March. A 38-year old engineer at Apple died after he did not place his hands on the wheel in time when the car was in Autopilot mode, Tesla said.
The March crash is being investigated by the National Transportation and Safety Board.
Dan Edmunds, director of vehicle testing at Edmunds, an automotive research firm, has been reviewing partially automated vehicles, and called Tesla’s Autopilot a misleading term for an \"overhyped automated cruise control system.\" He said it was difficult to come up with an explanation for such a long car chase, and it underscored shortcomings with Tesla's safety features.
\"Certainly somebody could defeat the one minute timeout that allows you to put your hands on the wheel and the car could go longer,” Edmunds told ABC News. “Cadillac's Super Cruise system would not have allowed you to behave this way because Super Cruise does something that Tesla doesn't do and should do. It has sensors look at your head to see which way it's pointed to make sure your chin's up and not down against your shirt, and also looks at your eyeballs to see where they're looking. So even if you're head's up, and you look off to the side, it will warn you and eventually disengage.\"
\"The fact that it doesn't monitor the driver's head position and line of sight is really a major shortcoming,\" Edmunds said. \"Just because somebody has their hands on the wheel, maybe the guy's leaning on it, passed out, with just enough force to make it think that he's got his hands on the wheel. The car isn't really sure what the driver's looking at. It doesn't matter if you have your hands on the wheel or not, it matters if you're looking out the windshield at the cars ahead.\"
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