Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Striking Motorcyclists More Than Any Other Brand: New Analysis
(fuelarc.com)
from KayLeadfoot@fedia.io to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 06:58
https://fedia.io/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/1997571
from KayLeadfoot@fedia.io to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 06:58
https://fedia.io/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/1997571
TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5
Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:
- The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
- This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
- The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.
Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.
Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.
threaded - newest
Tesla self driving is never going to work well enough without sensors - cameras are not enough. It’s fundamentally dangerous and should not be driving unsupervised (or maybe at all).
Accurate.
Each fatality I found where a Tesla kills a motorcyclist is a cascade of 3 failures.
Taking out the driver will make this already-unacceptably-lethal system even more lethal.
... Also accurate.
God, it really is a nut punch. The system detects the crash is imminent.
Rather than automatically try to evade... the self-driving tech turns off. I assume it is to reduce liability or make the stats look better. God.
Yep, that one was purely about hitting a certain KPI of ‘miles driven on autopilot without incident’. If it turns off before the accident, technically the driver was in control and to blame, so it won’t show up in the stats and probably also won’t be investigated by the NTSB.
Hopefully they wised up by now and record these stats properly…?
If they ever fixed it, I’m sure Musk fired whomever is keeping score now. He’s going to launch the robotaxi stuff soon and it’s going to kill a bunch of people.
NHTSA collects data if self-driving tech was active within 30 seconds of the impact.
The companies themselves do all sorts of wildcat shit with their numbers. Tesla's claimed safety factor right now is 8x human. So to drive with FSD is 8x safer than your average human driver, that's what they say on their stock earnings calls. Of course, that's not true, not based on any data I've seen, they haven't published data that makes it externally verifiable (unlike Waymo, who has excellent academic articles and insurance papers written about their 12x safer than human system).
Fascinating! I don’t know all this. Thanks
Any time :)
WITH a supervising human.
Once it reaches a certain quality, it should be safer if a human is properly supervising it, because if the car tries to do something really stupid, the human takes over. The vast vast vast majority of crashes are from inattentive drivers, which is obviously a problem and they need to keep improving the attentiveness monitoring, but it should be safer than a human with human supervision because it can also detect things the human will ultimately miss.
Now, if you take the human entirely out of the equation, I very much doubt that FSD is safer than a human at it’s current state.
.
Even when it is just milliseconds before the crash, the computer turns itself off.
Later, Tesla brags that the autopilot was not in use during this ( terribly, overwhelmingly) unfortunate accident.
There’s at least two steps before those three:
-1. Society has been built around the needs of the auto industry, locking people into car dependency
That’s a good thing, because the alternative would be flipping the notion of property rights on its head. Making the owner not responsible for his property would be used to justify stripping him of his right to modify it.
You’re absolutely right about point -1 though.
You two don’t seem to strongly disagree. The driver is liable but should then sue the builder/seller for “self driving” fraud.
Maybe, if that two-step determination of liability is really what the parent commenter had in mind.
I’m not so sure he’d agree with my proposed way of resolving the dispute over liability, which would be to legally require that all self-driving systems (and software running on the car in general) be forced to be Free Software and put it squarely and completely within the control of the vehicle owner.
I would assume everyone here would agree with that 😘
I mean, maybe, but previously when I’ve said that it’s typically gone over like a lead balloon. Even in tech forums, a lot of people have drunk the kool-aid that it’s somehow suddenly too dangerous to allow owners to control their property just because software is involved.
Lemmy is super pro FOSS.
Most frustrating thing is, as far as I can tell, Tesla doesn’t even have binocular vision, which makes all the claims about humans being able to drive with vision only even more blatantly stupid. At least humans have depth perception. And supposedly their goal is to outperform humans?
Tesla’s argument of “well human eyes are like cameras therefore we shouldn’t use LiDAR” is so fucking dumb.
Human eyes have good depth perception and absolutely exceptional dynamic range and focusing ability. They also happen to be linked up to a rapid and highly efficient super computer far outclassing anything that humanity has ever devised, certainly more so than any computer added to a car.
And even with all those advantages humans have, we still crash from time to time and make smaller mistakes regularly.
A neural network that has been in development for 650 million years.
Ok, maybe project managers are good for something.
Anyone who has driven (or walked) into a sunrise/sunset knows that human vision is not very good. I've also driven in blizzards, heavy rain, and fog - all times when human vision is terrible. I've also not seen green lights (I'm colorblind).
Bro I’m colorblind too and if you’re not sure what color the light is, you have to stop. Don’t put that on the rest of us.
I can see red clearly and so not sure means I can go.
I've only noticed issues in a few situations. When I'm driving at night and suddenly the weirdly aimed streetlight turns yellow - until it changed I didn't even know there was a stoplight there. The second was I was making a left turn at sunset (sun behind me) and the green arrow came on but the red light remained on so I couldn't see it was time/safe to go until my wife alerted me.
Human vision is very, very, very good. If you think a camera installed to a car is even close to human eyesight, then you are extremely mistaken.
Human eyes are so far beyond it’s hard to even quantify.
And bullshit on you not being able to see the lights. They’re specifically designed so that’s not an issue for colourblind people.
Some lights are, but not all of them are. I often say I go when the light turns blue. However not all lights have that blue tint and so I often cannot tell the difference between a white light and a green light by color. (but white is not used in a stoplight and I can see red/yellow just fine) Where I live all stoplights have green on the bottom so that is always a cheat I use, but that only works if I can see the relative position - in an otherwise dark situation I only see a light in front of me and not the rest of the structure and so I cannot tell. I have driven where stoplights are not green on bottom and I can never remember if green is left/right.
Even when the try though, not all colorblind is the same. There may not be a mitigation that will work from two different people with different aspects of colorblind.
Why are you trying to limit cars to just vision? That is all I have as a human. However robots have radar, lidar, radio, and other options, there is no reasons they can't use them and get information eyes cannot. Every option has limits.
Please read my comments before you respond to them.
These fatalities are a Tesla business advantage. Every one is a data point they can use to program their self-driving intelligence. No one has killed as many as Tesla, so no one knows more about what kills people than Tesla. We don’t have to turn this into a bad thing just because they’re killing people /s
they originally had lidar, or radar, but musk had them disabled in the older models.
They had radar. Tesla has never had lidar, but they do use lidar on test vehicles to ground truth their camera depth / velocity calculations.
On a quick read, I didn’t see the struck motorcycles listed. Last I heard, a few years ago, was that this mainly affected motorcycles with two rear lights that are spaced apart and fairly low to the ground. I believe this is mostly true for Harleys.
The theory I recall was that this rear light configuration made the Tesla assume it was looking (remember, only cameras without depth data) at a car that was further down the road - and acceleration was safe as a result. It miscategorised the motorcycle so badly that it misjudged it’s position entirely.
Whatever it is, it’s unacceptable and they should really ban Tesla’s implementation until they fix some fundamental issues.
I also saw that theory! That's in the first link in the article.
The only problem with the theory: Many of the crashes are in broad daylight. No lights on at all.
I didn't include the motorcycle make and model, but I did find it. Because I do journalism, and sometimes I even do good journalism!
The models I found are: Kawasaki Vulcan (a cruiser bike, just like the Harleys you describe), Yamaha YZF-R6 (a racing-style sport bike with high-mount lights), and a Yamaha V-Star (a "standard" bike, fairly low lights, and generally a low-slung bike). Weirdly, the bike models run the full gamut of the different motorcycles people ride on highways, every type is represented (sadly) in the fatalities.
I think you're onto something with the faulty depth sensors. Sensing distance is difficult with optical sensors. That's why Tesla would be alone in the motorcycle fatality bracket, and that's why it would always be rear-end crashes by the Tesla.
At least in EU, you can’t turn off motorcycle lights. They’re always on. In eu since 2003, and in US, according to the internet, since the 70s.
I assume older motorcycles built before 2003 are still legal in the EU today, and that the drivers are responsible for turning on the lights when riding those.
Point taken: Feel free to amend my comment from "No lights at all" to "No lights visible at all."
In that case, you wouldn’t happen to know whether or not Teslas are unusually dangerous to bicycles too, would you?
Surprisingly, there is a data bucket for accidents with bicyclists, but hardly any bicycle crashes are reported.
That either means that they are not occurring (woohoo!), or that means they are being lumped in as one of the multiple pedestrian buckets (not woohoo!), or they are in the absolutely fucking vast collection of "severity: unknown" accidents where we have no details and Tesla requested redaction to make finding the details very difficult.
Thanks!
Any time :)
Still probably a good idea to keep an eye on that Tesla behind you. Or just let them past.
The ridiculous thing is, it has 3 cameras pointing forward, you only need 2 to get stereoscopic depth perception with cameras…why the fuck are they not using that!?
Edit: I mean, I know why, it’s because it’s cameras with three different lenses used for different things (normal, wide angle, and telescopic) so they’re not suitable for it, but it just seems stupid to not utilise that concept when you insist on a camera only solution.
That seems like a spectacular oversight. How is it supposed to replicate human vision without depth perception?
Little known fact: the Model S (P) actually stands for Polyphemus Edition, not Plaid Edition.
The video 0x0 linked to in another comment describes the likely method used to infer distance to objects without a stereoscopic setup, and why it (likely) had issues determining distance in the cases where they hit motorcycles.
Are you saying Harley drivers are fair game?
This video proposes that theory.
Ah, thanks for jogging my memory
I’m wondering how that stacks up to human drivers. Since the data is redacted I’m guessing not well at all.
If it were good, we'd be seeing regular updates on Twitter, I imagine.
Lidar needs to be a mandated requirement for these systems.
Or at least something other than just cameras. Even just adding ultrasonic senses to the front would be an improvement.
The range on ultrasonics is too short. They only ever get used for parking type situations, not driving on the roadways.
Honestly, emergency braking with LIDAR is mature and cheap enough at this point that is should be mandated for all new cars.
No, emergency braking with radar is mature and cheap. Lidar is very expensive and relatively nascent
How about we disallow it completely, until it’s proven to be SAFER than a human driver. Because, why even allow it if it’s only as safe?
As an engineer, I strongly agree with requirements based on empirical results rather than requiring a specific technology. The latter never ages well. Thank you.
It’s hardly either / or though. What we have here is empirical data showing that cars without lidar perform worse. So it’s based in empirical results to mandate lidar. You can build a clear, robust requirement around a tech spec. You cannot build a clear, robust law around fatality statistics targets.
We frequently build clear, robust laws around mandatory testing. Like that recent YouTube video where the Tesla crashed through a wall, but with crash test dummies.
Those are ways to gather empirical results, though they rely on artificial, staged situations.
I think it’s fine to have both. Seat belts save lives. I see no problem mandating them. That kind of thing can still be well founded in data.
You mean like this Euro NCAP testing, where Tesla does stop and most others don’t including some vehicles with lidar?
youtu.be/4Hsb-0v95R4
This sounds good until you realize how unsafe human drivers are. People won’t accept a self-driving system that’s only 50% safer than humans, because that will still be a self-driving car that kills 20,000 Americans a year. Look at the outrage right here, and we’re nowhere near those numbers. I also don’t see anyone comparing these numbers to human drivers on any per-mile basis. Waymos compared favorably to human drivers in their most recently released data. Does anyone even know where Teslas stand compared to human drivers?
There’s been 54 reported fatalities involving their software over the years in the US.
That’s around 10 billion AP miles (9 billion at end of 2024), and around 3.6 billion on the various version of FSD (beta / supervised). Most of the fatal accidents happened on AP though not FSD.
Lets just double those fatal accidents to 108 to make it for the world, but that probably skews high. Most of the fatal stuff I’ve seen is always in the US.
That equates to 1 fatal accident every 125.9 million miles.
The USA average per 100 million miles is 1.33 deaths, so even doubling the deaths it’s less than the current national average. That’s the equivalent of 1.33 deaths every 167 million miles with Tesla’s software.
Edit: I couldn’t math, fixed it. Also for FSD specifically, very few places have it. Mainly North America, and just recently, China. I wish we had fatalities for FSD specifically.
Hey guys relax! It’s all part of the learning experience of Tesla FSD.
Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Regards
Elon Musk
CEO of Tesla
P.S. Volunteers needed for the Mars mission as well.
Is musk going, because I vote to be on whatever planet he isn’t.
If there are only fElon fan boys going I’ll take the hit and go to open the airlock halfway through.
News on the first mission: Meteoroid crashes into full flying SpaceX rocket, killing all aboard.
.
+1 for you. However, replace “Regards” with the more appropriate words from the German language. The first with an S, and the second an H. I will not type that shit, fuck Leon and I hope the fucking Nazi owned Tesla factory outside of Berlin closes.
Yes I’m not writing that shit, even in a sarcastic post. Bu I get your drift.
On the other hand, since you are from Germany, VW group is absolutely killing it on EV recently IMO.
They totally dominate top 10 EV here in Denmark, with 7 out of 10 top selling models!!
They are competitively priced, and they are the best combination of quality and range in their price ranges.
Stop dehumanizing drivers who killed people.
Feature, wrongly called, Full Self-Driving, shall be supervised at any time.
If you’re going to say your car has “full self driving”, it should have that, not “full self driving (but needs monitoring.)” or “full self driving (but it disconnects 2 seconds before impact.)”.
I think it’s important to call out inattentive drivers while also calling out the systems and false advertising that may lead them to become less attentive.
If these systems were marketed as “driver assistance systems” instead of “full self driving”, certainly more people would pay attention. The fact that they’ve been allowed to get away with this blatant false advertising is astonishing.
They’re also obviously not adequately monitoring for driver attentiveness.
as daily rider, i must add having a tesla behind to the list of road hazards to look out
I’m on mine far more often than I’m in a car. I think Tesla found out that I point and laugh at any cyber trucks I see at red lights while I’m out and is trying to kill me.
I feel like that as a driver. Tesla’s do not move at a consistent speed, which drives me mad
You’re not wrong, but good luck watching out for a vehicle approaching you at a 30 mph differential (which is what I recall from fortnine covering the topic years ago) from behind.
LIDAR vs Tesla.
I had ignored the video, as I didn’t expect Mark to expose Tesla
This is news? Fortnine talked about it two years ago.
TL;DR Tesla removed LIDAR to save a buck and the cameras see two red dots that the 'puter thinks it’s a far away car at night when indeed it’s a close motorcycle.
It could be two motorcycles side by side.
It’s helpful to remember that not everyone has seen the same stories you have. If we want something to change, like regulators not allowing dangerous products, then raising public awareness is important. Expressing surprise that not everyone knows about something can be counterproductive.
Going beyond that, wouldn’t the new information here be the statistics?
I include human drivers in the list of dangerous products I don't want allowed. The question is self driving safer overall (despite possible regressions like this). I don't want regulators to pick favorites. I want them to find "the truth"
Sure, we’re in agreement as far as that goes. My point was just the commenter above me was indicating it should be common knowledge that Tesla self driving hits motorcycles more than other self driving cars. And whether their comment was about this or some other subject, I think it’s counterproductive to be like “everyone knows that.”
.
It can’t even perceive the depth of the lights?
Not with cameras alone, no.
Why not? It’s got multiple cameras so could judge distances the same way humans do.
However there have been both hardware and software updates since most of those, so the critical question is how much of a problem is it still? The article had no info or speculation on that
The argument is that humans can drive with just 2 eyes, so cameras are enough. I disagree with this position, given that the limitations of a camera-only system. But that’s what it is.
Different sensors excel at different tasks and different conditions, and cameras are not always it.
Why is self-driving even allowed?
Because muh freedum, EU are a bunch of commies for not allowing this awesome innovation on their roads
(I fucking love living in the EU)
Bribes to local governments and police, mostly.
Because the march of technological advancement is inevitable?
In light of recent (and let’s face it, long ago cases) Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” needs to be downgraded to level 2 at best.
Pretty much the same level as other brands self driving feature.
The other brands, such as Audi and VW, work much better than Tesla’s system. Their LIDAR systems aren’t blinded by fog, and rain the way the Tesla is. Someone recently tested an Audi with its system against a Tesla with its system. The Tesla failed either 3/5 or 4/5 tests. The Audi passed 3/5 or 4/5. Neither system is perfect, but the one that doesn’t rely on just cameras is clearly superior.
Edit: it was Mark Rober.
youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ
It’s hard to tell, but from about 15 minutes of searching, I was unable to locate any consumer vehicles that include a LIDAR system. Lots of cars include RADAR, for object detection, even multiple RADAR systems for parking. There may be some which includes a TimeOfFlight sensor, which is like LIDAR, but static and lacks the resolution/fidelity. My Mach-E which has level 2 automation uses a combination of computer vision, RADAR and GPS. I was unable to locate a LIDAR sensor for the vehicle.
The LIDAR system in Mark’s video is quite clearly a pre-production device that is not affiliated with the vehicle manufacturer it was being tested on.
Adding, after more searching, it looks like the polestar 3, some trim levels of the Audi A8 and the Volvo EX90 include a LiDAR sensor. Curious to see how the consumer grade tech works out in real world.
Please do not mistake this comment as “AI/computer vision” evangelisim. I currently have a car that uses those technologies for automation, and I would not and do not trust my life or anyone else’s to that system.
The way I understand it, is that Audi, Volvo, and VW have had the hardware in place for a few years. They are collecting real world data about how we drive before they allow the systems to be used at all. There are also legal issues with liability.
Mercedes uses LiDAR. They also operate the sole Level 3 driver automation system in the USA. Two models only, the new S-Class and EQS sedans.
Tesla alleges they'll be Level 4+ in Austin in 60 days, and just skip Level 3 altogether. We'll see.
Yeah, keep in mind that Elon couldn’t get level 3 working in a closed, pre-mapped circuit. The robotaxis were just remotely operated.
Because the only thing worse than self driving is human driving.
Humans are terrible drivers. The open question is are self driving cars overall safer than human driven cars. So far the only people talking either don't have data, or have reason cherry pick only parts of the data that make self driving look good. This is the one exception where someone seemingly independent has done analysis - the question is are they unbiased, or are they cherry picking data to make self driving look bad (I'm not familiar with the source so I can't answer that)
Either way more study is needed.
Humans are terrible. The human eyes and brain are good at detecting certain things though that allow a reaction where computer vision, especially only using one method of detection, fails often. There are times when an automated system will prevent a problem before a human could even see it. So far neither is the clear winner, human driving just has a legacy that automation has to beat by a great length and not just be good enough.
On the topic of human drivers, I think most on the road drive reactively and not based on prediction and anticipation. Given the speed and possible detection methods, a well designed automated system should be excelling at this. It costs more and it more complex to design such a thing, so we're getting the bare bones of the best minimum tech can give us right now, which again is not a replacement for all cases.
I am absolutely biased. It's me, I'm the source :)
I'm a motorcyclist, and I don't want to die. Also just generally, motorcyclists deserve to get where they are going safely.
I agree with you. Self-driving cars will overall greatly improve highway safety.
I disagree with you when you suggest that pointing out flaws in the technology is evidence of bias, or "cherry picking to make self driving look bad." I think we can improve on the technology by pointing out its systemic defects. If it hits motorcyclists, take it off the road, fix it, and then save lives by putting it back on the road.
That's the intention of the coverage, at least: I am hoping to apply pressure to improve rather than remove. Read my Waymo coverage, I'm actually a big automation enthusiast, because fewer crashes is a good thing.
I wasn't trying to suggest that you are biased, only that I have no clue and so it is possible you are somehow unfairly doing something.
Perfectly fair. Sorry, I jumped the gun! Good on you for being incredulous and inspecting the piece for manipulation, that's smart.
Robots don’t get drunk, or distracted, or text, or speed…
Anecdotally, I think the Waymos are more courteous than human drivers. Though waymo seems to be the best ones out so far, idk about the other services.
Don’t waymos have remote drivers that take control in unexpected situationsml?
They have remote drivers that CAN take control in very corner case situations that the software can’t handle. The vast majority of driving is don’t without humans in the loop.
So they say
They don’t even do that, according to Waymo’s claims.
They can suggest what the car should do, but they aren’t actually doing it. The car is in complete control.
Its a nuanced difference, but it is a difference. A Waymo employee never takes control of or operates the vehicle.
Interesting! I did not know that - I assumed the teleoperators took direct control, but that makes much more sense for latency reasons (among others)
I always just assumed it was their way to ensure the vehicle was really autonomous. If you have someone remotely driving it, you could argue it isn’t actually an AV. Your latency idea makes a lot of sense as well though. Imagine taking over and causing an accident due to latency? This way even if the operator gives a bad suggestion, it was the car that ultimately did it.
I’m not sure how that’s possible considering no one manufactures self-driving cars that I know of. Certainly not Tesla.
Five years ago, you could not have brought this up without Musk simps defending it.
There seems to be people/bots down-voting critical takes up and down this very thread. What chumps.
On Reddit perhaps
Musk = POS Nazi. Who couldn’t care less about people being killed by his shit companies.
Every captcha…can you see the motorcycle? I would be afraid if they wanted all the squares with small babies or maybe just regular folk…can you pick all the hottie’s? Which of these are body parts?
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/364bd702-0ff9-435a-ba98-87fc74bfdd52.png">
… the hottie’s what?
Sounds like NHTSA needs a visit from DOGE!
Gotta get rid of the evidence.
Elon needs to take responsibility for their death.
That’s why Tesla’s full self driving is officially still a level 2 cruise control. But of course they promise to jump directly to level 4 soon™.
Let’s get this out of the way: Felon Musk is a nazi asshole.
Anyway, It should be criminal to do these comparisons without showing human drivers statistics for reference. I’m so sick of articles that leave out hard data. Show me deaths per billion miles driven for tesla, competitors, and humans.
Then there’s shit like the boca raton crash, where they mention the car going 100 in a 45 and killing a motorcyclist, and then go on to say the only way to do that is to physically use the gas pedal and that it disables emergency breaking. Is it really a self driving car at that point when a user must actively engage to disable portions of the automation? If you take an action to override stopping, it’s not self driving. Stopping is a key function of how self driving tech self drives. It’s not like the car swerved to another lane and nailed someone, the driver literally did this.
Bottom line I look at the media around self driving tech as sensationalist. Danger drives clicks. Felon Musk is a nazi asshole, but self driving tech isn’t made by the guy. it’s made by engineers. I wouldn’t buy a tesla unless he has no stake in the business, but I do believe people are far more dangerous behind the wheel in basically all typical driving scenarios.
“Critical Thinker” Yikes. Somehow the right made that a forbidden word in my mind because they hide behind that as an excuse for asking terrible questions etc.
Anyway. Allegedly the statistics are rather mediocre for self driving cars. But sadly I haven’t seen a good statistic about that, either. The issue here is that automatable tasks are lower risk driving situations so having a good statistic is near impossible. E.g. miles driven are heavily skewed when you are only used on highways as a driver. There are no simple numbers that will tell you anything of worth.
That being said the title should be about the mistake that happened without fundamental statements (i.e. self driving is bad because motorcyclists die).
Did I ask a terrible question, or do you just not like anything being objective about the issue? I’m so far over on the left side ideologically that you’d be hard pressed finding an issue that i’m conservative on. I don’t fit the dem mold though, i’m more of a bernie… though I am very critical in general. I don’t just take things at face value. Anywho…
Saying that the statistics aren’t great just lends credence to the fact that we can’t objectively determine how safe or unsafe anything is without good data.
He may not be an engineer, but he’s the one who made the decision to use strictly cameras rather than lidar, so yes, he’s responsible for these fatalities that other companies don’t have. You may not be a fan of Musk, but it sounds like you’re a fan of Tesla
In Boca Raton, I've seen no evidence that the self-driving tech was inactive. According to the government, it is reported as a self-driving accident, and according to the driver in his court filings, it was active.
Insanely, you can slam on the gas in Tesla's self-driving mode, accelerate to 100MPH in a 45MPH zone, and strike another vehicle, all without the vehicle's "traffic aware" automation effectively applying a brake.
That's not sensationalist. That really is just insanely designed.
FTFA:
If the guy smashes the gas, just like in cruise control I would not expect the vehicle to stop itself.
The guy admitted to being intoxicted and held the gas down… what’s the self driving contribution to that?
I know what's in the article, boss. I wrote it. No need to tell me FTFA.
TACC stands for Traffic Aware Cruise Control. If I have a self-driving technology like TACC active, and the car's sensor suite detects traffic immediately in front of me, I would expect it to reduce speed (as is its advertised function). I would expect that to override gas pedal input, because the gas pedal sets your maximum speed in cruise control, but the software should still function as advertised and not operate at the maximum speed.
I would not expect it to fail to detect the motorcyclist and plow into them at speed. I think we can all agree that is a bad outcome for a self-driving system.
Here's the manual, if you're curious. It doesn't work in bright sunlight, fog, excessively curvy roads (???), situations with oncoming headlights (!?!), or if your cameras are dirty or covered with a sticker. They also helpfully specify that "The list above does not represent an exhaustive list of situations that may interfere with proper operation of Traffic-Aware Cruise Control," so it's all that shit, and anything else - if you die or kill somebody, you have just found another situation that may interfere with proper function of the TACC system.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2012_2020_models/en_us/GUID-50331432-B914-400D-B93D-556EAD66FD0B.html#:~:text=Traffic%2DAware%20Cruise%20Control%20determines,maintains%20a%20set%20driving%20speed.
So do you expect self driving tech to override human action? or do you expect human action to override self driving tech?
I expect the human to override the system, not the other way around. Nobody claims to have a system that requires no human input, aside from limited and experimental implementations that are not road legal nationwide. I kind of expect human input to override the robot given the fear of robots making mistakes despite the humans behind them getting into them drunk and holding down the throttle until they turn motorcyclists into red mist. But that’s my assumption.
With the boca one specifically, the guy got in his car inebriated. That was the first mistake that caused the problem that should never have happened. If the car was truly self driving automated and had no user input, this wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have gone nearly 2.5x the speed limit. It would have braked long in advance before hitting someone in the road.
I have a ninja 650. We all know the danger comes from things we cannot control, such as others. I’d trust an actually automated car over a human driver always, even with limited modern tech. The second the user gets an input though? zero trust.
The driver being drunk doesn't mean the self-driving feature should not detect motorcycles. The human is a fallback to the tech. The tech had to fail for this fatal crash to occur.
If the system is advertised as overrriding the human speed inputs ( traffic aware cruise control, it is supposed to brake when it detects traffic, regardless of pedal inputs), then it should function as advertised.
Incidentally, I agree, I broadly trust automated cars to act more predictably than human drivers. In the case of specifically Teslas and specifically motorcycles, it looks like something is going wrong. That's what the data says, anyhow. If the government were functioning how it should, the tech would be disabled during the investigation, which is ongoing.
Trucks in general have gotten so big they are pedestrian deathtraps
Good to know, I’ll stay away from those damn things when I ride.
Commuting in CA feels like I’m navigating a minefield 🤡
I already do. Flip a coin: Heads, the car is operating itself and is therefore being operated by a moron. Tails, the owner is driving it manually and therefore it is being operated by a moron.
Just be sure to carefully watch your six when you’re sitting at a stoplight. I’ve gotten out of the habit of sitting right in the center of the lane, because the odds are getting ever higher that I’ll have to scoot out of the way of some imbecile who’s coming in hot. That’s hard to do when your front tire is 24" away from the license plate of the car in front of you.
For me it depends which bike I’m riding. If it’s my 49cc scooter, I’ll sit to the very right side of the lane for a quick escape while watching my mirrors like a hawk. On my XR500, I’ll just filter to the front (legal in Utah).
I filter to the front on my leg powered bike, most traffic light setups here have a region for bikes at the front of the cars.
Good luck. They’re fucking everywhere, at least where I live.
.
WHY CAN’T WE JUST HAVE PUBLIC TRANSIT, FUCK! TRAINS EXIST!
Why? Crash rates for Self-Driving Cars (when adjusted for crash severity) are lower.
Removing sensors to save costs on self driving vehicles should be illegal
teslas aren’t even worthy of the designation “self-driving”. They use cheap cameras instead of LIDAR. It should be illegal to call such junk “self-driving”.
Shouldn’t be an issue if drivers used it as a more advanced cruise control. Unless there is catastrophic mechanical or override failure, these things will always be the driver’s fault.
I imagine bicyclists must be æffected as well if they’re on the road (as we should be, technically). As somebody who has already been literally inches away from being rear-ended, this makes me never want to bike in the US again.
Time to go to Netherlands.
*affected
Thank you for your service.
<img alt="" src="https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/5e8de575-1217-409b-9869-8cfde005fec7.png">
Affectively, does it realy mater if someone has slite misstakes in there righting?
I think i had a stroke reading that. Take your upvote and get out!
I’m not going to lie, I almost had a stroke writing it…
I upvoted every comment in this sub-thread shitshow and hated all of it.
You monster gif
Yer welcome!
human driving cars still target bicyclists on purpose so i don’t know see how teslas could be any worse…
p.s. painting a couple lines on the side of the road does not make a safe bike lane… they need a physical barrier separating the road from them… like how curbs separate the road from sidewalks…
I mean yeah, I just said above that someone almost killed me. They were probably a human driver. But that’s a “might happen, never know.” If self driving cars are rear-ending people, that’s an inherent artifact of it’s programming, even though it’s not intentionally programmed to do that.
So it’s like, things were already bad. I already do not feel safe doing any biking anymore. But as self driving cars become more prevalent, that threat upgrades to a kind of defacto, “Oh, these vast stretches of land are places where only cars and trucks are allowed. Everything else is roadkill waiting to happen.”
I live close enough to work for it to be a very reasonable biking distance. But there is no safe route. A high-speed “stroad” with a narrow little bike lane. It would only be a matter of time before some asshole with their face in their phone drifts into me.
I am deeply resentful of our automobile-centric infrastructure in the U.S. It’s bad for the environment, bad for our wallets, bad for our waistlines, and bad for physical safety.
Remember, you have the right to self-defence, against both rogue robots and rogue humans.
How you plan to self defend against a vehicle?
Propane cylinder. Mutually assured destruction.
Noice.
It will do nothing. By the time a propane cylinder would rupture, even if we assume it actually ignites too, it would add very little to a massive crash that killed everyone and desintegrated everything.
Don’t stop… I’m almost there
Claymore and trip wire?
The new "Start Seeing Motorcycles" merch just dropped!
The Arnold Method
1000 fake internet point to you sir.
If it’s a Tesla truck, I guess I could splash it with half a Dixie cup full of water…
Makes sense, statistically smaller sample to be trained on, relatively easy fix, just retrain with more motorcycles in the data.
For what it’s worth, it really isn’t clear if this is FSD or AP based on the constant mention of self driving even when it’s older collisions when it would definitely been AP, and is even listed as AP if you click on the links to the crash.
So these may all be AP, or one or two might be FSD, it’s unclear.
Every Tesla has AP as well, so the likelihood of that being the case is higher.
That’s not good though, right? “We have the technology to save lives, it works on all of our cars, and we have the ability to push it to every car in the fleet. But these people haven’t paid extra for it, so…”
Well, only 1 or 2 of those were in a time frame where I’d consider FSD superior to AP, it’s a more recent development where that’s likely the case.
But to your point, at some point I expect Tesla to use the FSD software for AP for the exact reasons you mentioned. My guess is they’d just do something like disable making left/right turns , so you wouldn’t be able to use it outside of straight stretches like AP today.
In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance
I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed. While it’s important that know it had problems judging distance to a motorcycle, it’s more important to know whether it still does
I think it does matter, while both are supposed to follow at safe distances, the FSD stack is doing it in a completely different way. They haven’t really been making any major updates to AP for many years now, all focus has been on FSD. I think the only real changes it’s had for quite awhile have been around making sure people are paying attention better.
AP is looking at the world frame by frame, each individual camera on it’s own, while FSD is taking the input of all cameras, turning into 3d vector space, and then driving based off that. Doing that on city streets and highways is only a pretty recent development. Updates for doing it this way on highway and streets only went out to all cars with FSD in the past few months. For a long time it was on city streets only.
I think that’s why it’s important to make a real distinction between AP and FSD today (and specifically which FSD versions)
They’re wholly different systems, one that gets older every day, and one that keeps getting better every few months. Making an article like this that groups them together over the span of years muddies the water on what / if any progress has been made.
Fair enough!
At least one of the fatalities is Full-Self Driving (it was cited by name in the police reports). The remainder are Autopilot. So, both systems kill motorcyclists. Tesla requests this data redacted from their NHTSA reporting, which specifically makes it difficult for consumers to measure which system is safer or if incremental safety improvements are actually being made.
You're placing a lot if faith that the incremental updates are improvements without equivalent regressions. That data is specifically being concealed from you, and I think you should probably ask why. If there was good news behind those redactions, they wouldn't be redactions.
I didn't publish the software version data point because I agree with AA5B, it doesn't matter. I honestly don't care how it works. I care that it works well enough to safely cohabit the road with my manual transmission cromagnon self.
I'm not a "Tesla reporter," I'm not trying to cover the incremental changes in their software versions. Plenty of Tesla fans doing that already. It only has my attention at all because it's killing vulnerable road users, and for that analysis we don't actually need to know which self-driving system version is killing people, just the make of car it is installed on.
I’d say it’s a pretty important distinction to know if one or both systems have a problem and the level of how bad that problem is.
Also are you referencing the one in Seattle in 2024 for FSD? The CNBC article says FSD, but the driver said AP.
And especially back then, there’s also an important distinction of how they work.
FSD on highways wasn’t released until November 2024, and even then not everyone got it right away. So even if FSD was enabled, the crash may have been under AP.Edit: Also if it was FSD for real
(that 2024 crash would have had to happen on city streets, not a highway)then thats 1 motorcycle fatality in 3.6 billion miles. The other 4 happened over 10 billion miles. Is that not an improvement? (edit again: I should say we can’t tell it’s an improvement yet as we’d have to pass 5 billion, so the jury is still out I guess IF that crash was really on FSD)Edit: I will cede though that as a motorcyclist, you can’t know what the Tesla is using, so you’d have to assume the worst.
Edit: Just correcting myself that I was wrong about FSD in 2024. The change over to neural nets happened in November, but FSD was still FSD on highways when this accident happened. It was even earlier than that when FSD became AP when you transitioned to higways
Police report for 2024 case attached, it is also linked in the original article: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/15/tesla-may-face-less-accountability-for-crashes-under-trump/
It was Full Self Driving, according to the police. They know because they downloaded the data off the vehicle's computer. The motorcyclist was killed on a freeway merge ramp.
All the rest is beyond my brief. Thought you might like the data to chew on, though.
I’d say that means it’s a very good chance that yes, while FSD was enabled, the crash happened under the older AP mode of driving, as it wasn’t until November 2024 that it was moved over to the new FSD neural net driving code.. I was wrong here, it actually was FSD then, it just wasn’t end to end neural nets then like it is now.Also yikes… the report says the AEB kicked in, and the driver overrode it by pressing on the accelerator!
No shit on that yikes. That blew my fucking mind.
Half the time when your AEB activates, you are unconscious or dazed and you're just flailing around your cabin like a rag doll, because you've crashed. If your foot happens to flail into the accelerator, get ready for a very exciting (if short-lived) application of that impressive 0 to 60 time.
Okay, so I’m going to edit my earlier replies but replying again so you see, as I was wrong.
Version 11/12 in 2023/2024 wasn’t using the AP code, it just wasn’t using the neural nets. So it was legitimately FSD, but it was running different code on the freeways (non neural net) vs on city streets (neural net)
But it was indeed FSD. Version 11.x was the change where it stopped using AP when you left city streets.
This is another reason I’ll never drive a motorcycle. Fuck that shit.
It's like smoking: if you haven't started, don't XD
As a fellow meat crayon I agree
Bahaha, that one is new to me.
Back when I worked on an ambulance, we called the no helmet guys organ donors.This comment was brought to you by PTSD, and has been redacted in a rare moment of sobriety.
I also rammed 10cc spikes at the back of the bus, the world needs organ donors and motorcycles provide a great service for that. Hope your EMT career was short lived but rewarding.
My EMT career was both short lived and rewarding, right back at ya :)
I remember finding a motorcycle community on reddit that called themselves “squids” or “squiddies” or something like that.
Their whole thing was putting road tyres on dirtbikes and riding urban environments like they were offroad obstacles. You know, ramping things, except on concrete.
They loved to talk about how dumb & short-lived they were. I couldn’t ever find that group again, so maybe I misremembered the “squid” name, but I wanted to find them again, not to ever try it - fuck that - but because the bikes looked super cool. I just have a thing for gender-bent vehicles.
Calamari Racing Team. It’s mostly a counter-movement to r/Motorcycles, where most of the posters are seen as anti-fun. Their whole thing is that, not just a specific way to ride, they also have a legendary commenter that pays money for pics in full leather.
That’s the one! Thanks, that was un-googleable for me.
I guess the road-tyres-on-dirt-bikes thing was maybe a trend when I saw the sub.
Negative. I’m a meat popsicle.
Corbin?
As someone who likes the open sky feeling, this is why I drive a convertible instead.
Unless it’s a higher rate than human drivers per mile or hours driven I do not care. Article doesn’t have those stats so it’s clickbait as far as I’m concerned
The fact that the other self driving brands logged zero motorcyclist fatalities means the technology exists to prevent more deaths. Tesla has chosen to allow more people to die in order to reduce cost. The families of those five dead motorcyclists certainly care.
[Edit: oh, my bad, I replied to you very cattily when I meant to reply to Satan. Sorry! Friendly fire! XD ]
Thanks, 'Satan.
Do you know the number of miles driven by Tesla's self-driving tech? Because I don't, Tesla won't say, they're a remarkably non-transparent company where their tech is concerned. Near as I can tell, nobody does (other than folks locked up tight with NDAs). If the ratio of accidents-per-mile-driven looked good, you know as a flat fact that Elon would be Tweeting all about it.
Sorry you didn't find the death of 5 Americans newsworthy. I'll try harder for the next one.
You’re right, 5 deaths isn’t newsworthy in the context of tens of thousands killed by human drivers each year.
Is it worse than human drivers is the only relevant point of comparison, which the article doesn’t make.
Same goes for the other vehicles. They didn’t even try to cover miles driven and it’s quite likely Tesla has far more miles of self-driving than anyone else.
I’d even go so far as to speculate the zero accidents of other self-driving vehicles could just be zero information because we don’t have enough information to call it zero
No, the zero accidents for other self-driving vehicles is actually zero :) You may have heard of this little boutique automotive manufacturer, Ford Motor Company. They're one of the primary competitors, and they are far above the mileage where you would expect a fatal accident if they were as safe as a human.
Ford has reported self-driving crashes (many of them!). Just no fatal crashes involving motorcycles, because I guess they don't fucking suck at making self-driving software.
I linked the data, it's all public governmental data, and only the Tesla crashes are heavily redacted. You could... IDK... read it, and then share your opinion about it?
And how did it compare self-driving time or miles? Because on the surface if Tesla is responsible for 5 such accidents and Ford zero, but Tesla has significantly more than five times the self-driving time or miles, then we just don’t have data yet …… and I see an announcement that Ford expects full self driving in 2026, so it can’t have been used much yet
I don't think anyone has reliable public data on miles travelled. If it existed, I would use it. The fact that it doesn't exist tells you what you need to know about Level 2 ADAS system safety ;)
The only folks who are being real open with their data, near as I can tell, is Waymo. And Waymo has zero motorcycle fatalities, operating mostly in California, where the motorcycle driving culture is...
absolutely fucking nutsuniquely risk-accepting.Cybertrucks have 17 times the mortality rate of the ford pinto.
motherjones.com/…/report-cybertruck-safety-ford-p…
Completely irrelevant to whether or not FSD is safer than human drivers.
I wrote the original analysis Mother Jones is citing there. Hah, how about that! Delights me to see it cited in the wild.
nice work, worth feeling a bit of pride over.
Thanks! :j
the cybertruck is sharp enough to cut a deer in half, surely a biker is just as vulnerable.
I wonder if it’s happened yet
There was an article where he sliced a deer in half
I wonder if a state court judge could mandate its use as unsafe?
They are illegal in every developed country.
But muh innovation! How are genius CEOs supposed to innovate if they can’t use the public at large as guinea pigs??
What bike is that in the photo?
My partner and I were actually debating that exact question before I posted it!
It's just stock art, but of a rider in the Midwest. Custom exhaust, custom saddle and rack for that cafe racer look, and I just barely can't make out the model on the engine fairing.
Here it is all big, let me know if you can figure it out: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-riding-a-motorcycle-on-a-city-street-kPfwWyUWubA
Looks hot, that's why I picked it.
Found it! Thanks to your image.
It’s a 2016 - 2018 SYM Wolf Classic 150
It looks a great deal like a Royal Enfield, but I couldn’t tell you which model. A Bullet, maybe?
I think it’s a 2016 - 2018 SYM Wolf Classic 150
Cuz other self driving cars use LIDAR so it’s basically impossible for them to not realise that a bike is there.
unless it’s foggy, etc.
You mean they are providing organ donations more than any other car. Silver lining. /s
They call it the Model 3 because the Tesla Organ-Harvester didn't translate well to Chinese
It’s because the system has to rely on visual cues, since Tesla’s have no radar. The system looks at the tail light when it’s dark to gauge the distance from the vehicle. And since some bikes have a double light the system thinks it’s a car in front of them that is far away, when in reality it’s a bike up close. Also remember the ai is trained on human driving behavior which Tesla records from their customers. And we all know how well the average human drives around two wheeled vehicles.
if only there was a government department to investigate these kinds of things… Too soon?
Disbanded!
... for effieciency!