Autopilot
technology drives Teslas but comes with warnings
July 21, 2016 by Abosede
peter
In this Sept. 29, 2015
file photo, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors Inc., introduces the Model X car at
the company's headquarters in Fremont, Calif. A Tesla in Autopilot mode can
drive itself but it's not a "self-driving" vehicle, at least …more
A Tesla in Autopilot
mode can drive itself but it's not a "self-driving" vehicle, at least
as far as safety regulators are concerned.
So, instead of coming
under heavy government scrutiny before being sold to the public, Tesla can
mass-produce cars that automatically adjust speed with the flow of traffic,
keep their lane and slam the brakes in an emergency.
Tesla tells its
customers to stay alert while driving, only use the technology on divided
highways, keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over should the
technology fail. Some clearly don't—online videos, including some with the
"driver" in the back seat, show people taking the very risks Tesla
warns against.
Still, the
disclaimers—and a few regulatory wrinkles—are enough for the government.
Tesla made sure of that
before going to market with the technology in October, approaching the
Department of Motor Vehicles in its home state of California to check whether
officials would throw up any roadblocks.
The department was neck
deep writing rules for "autonomous vehicles" that one day will be
able to drive themselves without human control. But California's DMV had no
authority over Tesla's Autopilot, which was not "autonomous" because
of the need for human backup.
If officials at the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had any safety concerns about
Autopilot, they too had no basis for tapping the brakes on the technology
before its debut.
It's not a loophole—it's
the way automobile regulation works in the United States. Automakers can add
what they call an advanced driver-assistance system, such as Autopilot's
lane-keeping, as long as the technology meets broad federal safety
requirements. It's only if there are problems once the technology is on the
road that regulators swoop in.
That is happening now as
NHTSA investigates whether Autopilot has a defect that failed to prevent a
fatal crash in Florida in May. The driver, an Autopilot enthusiast, was killed
when his Model S did not detect a truck that had turned left across oncoming
traffic on a divided highway.
NHTSA's reactive
approach is the opposite of how the Federal Aviation Administration treats autopilot that
commercial airplane pilots rely on for most flights.
"We wouldn't dream
of putting a new automated technology on a plane without testing it first to
the FAA's satisfaction," said Missy Cummings, who as director of Duke
University's Humans and Autonomy Lab has studied the limitations of
machine-aided operation in planes and cars.
In a nod to those
concerns, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Tuesday that
government regulators and the auto industry need to engage in a more rigorous
review of self-driving technology before it enters the marketplace to assure
consumers it is "stress-tested."
After testing Autopilot
for about a year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the system last fall with
characteristic flair. He played up the technology but also cautioned drivers
"to keep their hands on the wheel just in case" because "the
software is very new." Since the Florida crash and subsequent federal
investigation, Musk has said Tesla is working to improve Autopilot.
Tesla is not the only
high-end automaker that has introduced advanced driver-assistance systems.
Mercedes sedans, for example, can keep their lanes. Audi plans to introduce
what it says will be the most advanced self-driving system on the market in its
A7 sedan in 2018, though the technology will be limited to low-speed,
commuter-style traffic at first.
Tesla is, in the
parlance of Silicon Valley, a disruptor of established automakers.
Traditionally, a company tricks out test cars with a new technology and
recruits hundreds of research assistants and other people familiar with the
system's limitations to test drive them to understand unanticipated ways they
crash, said Jim Sayer, a research scientist at the University of Michigan's
Transportation Research Institute.
Recognizing the side of
a truck—the deadly circumstances in Florida—is a common crash scenario that
"should have been thoroughly tested," he said.
In a blog post
Wednesday, Musk defended the company's decision to market partial self-driving
technology now rather than waiting until Autopilot has greater road test
experience that might reveal other problems not anticipated by engineers.
"When used
correctly," he wrote, "it is already significantly safer than a
person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to
delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of
legal liability."
By enlisting its
fiercely loyal owners as test drivers, Tesla says it has almost 90,000 cars or
SUVs gathering Autopilot data, giving the company a tremendous competitive
advantage because driving data lets Tesla improve the technology with software
updates beamed directly to cars.
Tesla's fleet has driven
a combined 140 million miles on Autopilot since October. By contrast, the
company that has done by far the most extensive testing of truly self-driving
car prototypes—Alphabet's Google—reports driving 1.7 million autonomous miles
in several dozen prototypes since 2009. Trained safety drivers are behind the
wheel, paid to stay alert.
The Google car is trying
to solve a much harder problem—how a car can drive itself without even a
steering wheel for a person to grab. The mileage gap illustrates how fast out
the gate Tesla has been.
The owner-as-test-driver
model is unprecedented in the auto industry, according to Daniel V. McGehee,
an expert in auto crashes and advanced safety technology at
the University of Iowa.
"It's an
interesting psychology," McGehee said, "and it's been useful to
them."
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