http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/31/technology/tesla-model-x-crash-autopilot/index.html
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Tesla Model X was in autopilot before fatal crash
This is an interesting article on Tesla's Model X which was involved in a fatal crash while it was in auto-pilot mode. Federal Regulators deemed this model to be highest in safety rankings for an SUV. It surprising to note that this incident happens just weeks after the autopilot Uber fatal crash which killed a woman on the highway in Arizona. It would be interesting to note what the future holds for these self-driving cars because already Tesla's stock has crashed 22 percent since the incident and Uber has also temporarily stopped its autopilot cars. Tesla issued a statement that the autopilot feature is not fully autonomous and the car issued several warnings before the crash for him to take the wheel which he didn't. More importantly, I'm more concerned about the future of the company which plans to roll out more models with the autopilot features.
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9 comments:
In my opinion, the automotive industry should wait before releasing self-driving cars onto the road, and the safety criteria should be raised in order to avoid more of these tragic accidents. The autopilot technology just isn't quite there yet, and there isn't even a real serious need for self-driving cars in the first place.
This article brings up a great point that although this model received the highest safety ranking, it was still able to cause a fatal crash in autopilot mode, consumers should still be alert and take charge of the car, as it is not fully autonomous. Your life is at risk every time you step in a car whether it is self driving or not and drivers need to pay attention at all times regardless of what new technology comes out.
I don't think this is quite the alarming situation everyone else does, in part because fatal crashes are caused by humans every day and we don't say "wait until the humans learn to drive better". What I do find disturbing is the idea that the person sitting in the self-driving car may or may not have been able to see the woman before the crash, and the question of whether or not they were able to gain control of the car or if they could have prevented the crash.
I agree 100% with Madeleine here. With regards to Tesla, I feel that it is a very interesting company based on their large R&D expenses, large amounts of debt, and stock price, which fluctuates very often. Events like this always have a negative impact on a company's stock price, but it seems like Tesla (and Elon Musk) is always in the news for something, which leads to these stock price fluctuations.
I also agree with Madeleine. I think it will be interesting to see what the future holds for self driving cars, because crashes will cause people to not trust this technology, which is a potential set back in innovation.
The consequences of an incident like this would be interesting to see. Is the driver responsible (even though he wasn't really driving), however neither did he regain control of the car, or whether the company gets charged for this- while it's still undertaking performance tests.
I think part of the problem is consumers perceptions versus what is reality. A lot of the accidents happen when individuals are in self driving mode and are not paying attention to their surroundings. The systems are not perfect and one of the biggest dangers while driving is the other drivers who are not in self driving modes. I think in the future all cars will ultimately be self driving.
It's sad that someone lost their life, but 34,439 fatal car accidents happened in the U.S. in 2016, and none of those included autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles have the power to greatly reduce that number, and even though Tesla might not be the company to do it, a company will eventually put out an autonomous vehicle consumers trust.
Tesla has to do more for the safety system. I believe that if there would be more autopilot car on the road, the possibility of crashing would decrease since the human's behavior is hard to predict. If all the cars on the road are controlled by the autopilot system and car information are shared, the chance to crash would be much lower. However, in the current stage, this is impossible thus the safety issue is the largest problem that Tesla needs to focus on.
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