Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
<i>Figure 7 depicts the movement of the Tesla and the two lead vehicles in the last 15 seconds before the  crash. In the left panel—covering 15 to 8 seconds before impact—the Tesla is accelerating from 9 to 18 mph while following a lead vehicle (red car) at  30 to 46 feet.In the middle panel—covering 7 to 4 seconds before impact—the Tesla is traveling at a constant 21 mph while following a lead vehicle (green car) at a  distance  decreasing from 148 to 108 feet. In the right panel—covering the last 3  seconds  before  impact—the Tesla is  accelerating from 21 to 31mph, with no lead vehicle and a forward collision warning half a second before impact.</i><p>...<p><i>About 0.49 second (490 milliseconds) before the crash, the system detected a stationary object in the Tesla’s path. The forward collision warning activated,  displaying  a  visual warning  and sounding an auditory warning to the driver. By the moment of impact, the Tesla had accelerated to a speed of 30.9 mph.</i><p>...<p><i>AEB did not activate during the event, and data show 
no driver-applied braking or steering before the 
crash. Tesla’s AEB is a radar&#x2F;camera fusion system that is designed for front-to-rear collision mitigation or avoidance. According to the company, the system requires
agreement from both the radar and the camera to initiate
AEB; complex or unusual vehicle shapes can delay or prevent the system from classifying vehicles as targets or threats.</i> [1]<p>Notice the last line. The system <i>still</i> has to recognize an obstacle as being visually car-like before braking to avoid hitting it. If it&#x27;s not recognized as a vehicle, the car will not stop.<p>This was in January 2018, but it was a 2014 vehicle, which would mean the old Mobileye vision based collision system, right? We know Mobileye works that way, trying to draw boxes around car rear ends, because people have bought them and made videos showing what they see. Did that get fixed? Can it be fixed with a vision-based system?  This is the big weakness of a no-LIDAR system.<p>Here, the driver had 3 seconds to react, because the car ahead turned out of the lane to evade the fire truck well before reaching it. Compare this 2017 video of a Tesla hitting a construction barrier. The car ahead didn&#x27;t turn until just before the barrier, only giving the driver under 1 second to react.[2] Same failure to detect a lane obstruction, but not enough time for the driver to do anything about it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ntsb.gov&#x2F;investigations&#x2F;AccidentReports&#x2F;Reports&#x2F;HAB1907.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ntsb.gov&#x2F;investigations&#x2F;AccidentReports&#x2F;Reports&#x2F;...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=VTdcWnGnnJQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=VTdcWnGnnJQ</a>