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Tesla’s Autopilot two contrasting cases

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Autopilot saves life

teslaX

Joshua Neally a 37-year-old attorney from Springfield claims that his new Tesla Model X saved his life thanks to its autopilot feature.

One day he was in a hurry from work to be on time for his daughter birthday. Suddenly he felt something like steel pole going through his chest. By that time, he didn’t know that he had a pulmonary embolism. Neally had problems with concentrating on the road but calculated that it is going to be much faster to drive on his own rather than waiting on the side of the road for an ambulance. Thanks to built-in autopilot he was able to let his Model X take the steer for more than 20 miles of highway ride. He took over the steering on the final stretch when he reached off-ramp near the hospital in Branson. After reaching hospital he made his way to emergency room.

He survived and it might be partly thanks to autopilot as pulmonary embolism kills 50 thousand people a year with seventy percent of those deaths coming within an hour from first symptoms.

Neally says “I’m very thankful I had it for this experience,” and expresses that he is unsure how this story would end if he didn’t buy a car with autopilot a week prior the incident.

 

Fatal accident 

In June Joshua Brown a 40-year-old from Canton, Ohio was killed in an accident while using autopilot of his Tesla Model S.

Before accident brown used to say “I do drive it a LOT,” as he was using Autopilot feature to drive on highways to his work. During first 9 months he has put more than 45 thousand miles on his car. During that time, he uploaded to YouTube several videos of him driving long distances on autopilot.

accident

The fatal accident happened when Brown’s Tesla on autopilot crashed into track later hitting a fence and a power pole. By the time of an accident, he was supposedly watching harry potter on a D.V.D. player (found later by police in his car).

Why did accident happen:

  • Brown was not paying any attention to road
  • car’s sensor system failed to distinguish truck against a bright sky (similar color of a truck to sky color)
  • tesla is using cameras, radar(microwaves) and ultrasonic sensors. The emergency braking is used when both radar and vision system agrees that there is an obstacle.

It any of the mentioned points will not be present accident would not happen. As for the third point adding or exchanging to laser scanner should trigger emergency breaking even in such a situation (this technology with name Lidar is used by Google in their cars).

 

Are you a supporter of autopilot in cars?

Sources:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/05/man-says-tesla-autopilot-saved-his-life-by-driving-him-to-the-hospital.htmlhttp://tvn24bis.pl/moto,99/autopilot-w-tesli-dowiozl-kierowce-na-pogotowie,666778.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/joshua-brown-technology-enthusiast-tested-the-limits-of-his-tesla.htmlhttp://www.ky3.com/content/news/Self-driving-Tesla-SUV-saves-the-day-389392262.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/01/business/inside-tesla-accident.html?_r=0

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