Tesla's China Scrape

[Randy W]

The auto-pilot doesn't "see" a car stopped on the roadway in Beijing. From the video, you can see that the Tesla didn't even try to swerve around the obstacle.

Watch on other sites is disabled - watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE

https://youtu.be/rJ7vqAUJdbE

The link could not be embedded because youtu.be does not allow embedding of that video.

Sorry, but when you're faced with an emergency situation, wondering what to do about the auto-pilot is simply one more, albeit VERY big, distraction.

If it turns out to be a situation that the auto-pilot can't handle, it will simply ADD seconds to the reaction time.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

It seems to me that they may as well hand the drivers a cell phone, and tell them, "Here - play with this instead of driving the car". An alert driver would easily avoid this crash. Someone relying on the auto-pilot wouldn't notice in time to do anything.

 

Autopilot Cited in Death of Chinese Tesla Driver

 

The crash took place on Jan. 20 and killed Gao Yaning, 23, when the TeslaModel S he was driving slammed into a road sweeper on a highway near Handan, a city about 300 miles south of Beijing, according to a report broadcast on Wednesday by the Chinese government news channel CCTV.

The report includes in-car video looking through the windshield as the car travels in the left lane at highway speed just before ramming into a parked or slow-moving orange truck. The video, apparently shot by a camera mounted on the rearview mirror, recorded no images, sounds or jolts that would suggest the driver or the car hit the brakes before impact. At that point, the in-car video ends.