The US urgently investigates the Autopilot system after 11 Teslas crashed into an ambulance

Tram Ho

US government regulators are opening an investigation into Autopilot (Tesla’s Autopilot) after electric cars using this feature tend to crash into rescue vehicles. Emergency has stopped on the way.

The investigation, conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), covers 765,000 Teslas sold in the US, a significant portion of the electric car maker’s total sales in the country. The agency said the probe would include 11 crashes since 2018, collisions that left 17 people injured and one fatal.

Mỹ gấp rút điều tra hệ thống Autopilot sau khi 11 chiếc Teslas đâm vào xe cứu hộ - Ảnh 1.

The scene where a 2014 Tesla Model S crashed into the back of a parked fire truck while Autopilot was activated.

NHTSA is looking at Tesla’s entire product line, including the Model S, X, 3 and Y models from 2014 to 2021. It is also working on both Autopilot and Traffic Aware Cruise Control, a subset of features. Autopilot system, which does not control the vehicle, but allows it to control the vehicle’s speed on the road.

In 11 collisions with ambulances or ambulances, Teslas hit parked vehicles and were marked with warning lights with flashing lights, super bright headlights, arrow boards or warning cones placed on them. on the road.

The investigation will cover the full scope of the Autopilot system, including how it monitors and enforces driver attention and interaction, as well as how the system detects and reacts to objects. and events on or on the road.

Mỹ gấp rút điều tra hệ thống Autopilot sau khi 11 chiếc Teslas đâm vào xe cứu hộ - Ảnh 2.

It seems that the Autopilot system does not recognize warnings from rescue vehicles.

Tesla has long faced scrutiny for how its Autopilot system verifies a driver’s attention while the system is on. In the European New Energy Vehicle Assessment Program’s Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) assessment, Autopilot received only a middling score. The reason is that this system has a very poor ability to maintain the driver’s concentration on the road.

Like many other ADAS systems, Autopilot requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel, but it is easily fooled by placing a considerable amount of weight on one of the steering wheel’s frame sections. A recent Car and Driver investigation found that Tesla vehicles take about 25 to 40 seconds for the vehicle to issue a flashing warning when the driver takes their hands off the wheel, depending on the model. If the driver fails to react, the vehicle will continue to drive on its own for another 30 seconds before braking begins. And at high highway speeds, this period can result in the system operating on its own for about 1 mile (1.6 km) without driver intervention.

In a January 2018 crash in California, a 2014 Model S crashed into the back of a fire truck that was parked in a freeway passenger vehicle (HOV) lane in Culver City. The Tesla driver had Autopilot on and was following another vehicle in the HOV lane, but when the vehicle in front changed lanes to avoid the parked fire truck, the autopilot didn’t change direction or brake. , leading to a collision. According to the accident report, the Tesla crashed into the fire truck at 50 km/h.

Mỹ gấp rút điều tra hệ thống Autopilot sau khi 11 chiếc Teslas đâm vào xe cứu hộ - Ảnh 3.

When the number of unusual crashes becomes too much, the error may come from the software system.

Tesla recently began changing the way Autopilot works, removing the radar sensor in the Model 3 and Y series in favor of additional cameras. The Model S and X series will replace radar sensors in the near future. When testing Tesla vehicle crashes, NHTSA also found that radar data did not guarantee that the ADAS system would properly sense road obstacles. Because the data from the radar and lidar sensors is essentially a series of measurements that help determine the distance between the vehicle and an object. However, compared to other ADAS systems, they require less complex computational requirements, which can cause confusion.

Many recorded videos show many cases of Tesla vehicles only braking after passing a vehicle stopped in the support lane, or suddenly turning right into another lane before turning left. In another video, the tram rushed to the intersection despite the heavy traffic, sometimes it almost tried to crash into a hole under construction in the road, surrounded by traffic cones. construction newspaper. Sometimes, the system doesn’t know if the driver is in control of the vehicle, and it will drive itself for more than a minute, between prompts to confirm the driver’s attention.

Refer to Arstechnica

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Source : Genk