It’s a modern-day high-tech road warrior’s worst nightmare: Your autopilot vehicle crashes your auto-piloted self into another car, or truck, or wall.
It’s happened again, this time on Monday morning on Interstate 405 near Culver City. The Tesla Model S, while reportedly on “Autopilot” mode, smashed into the rear of a fire truck parked at a freeway accident scene.
No injuries were reported. But the thing was flying along at 65 miles-per-hour and the crash scared the heck out of the men and women assigned to Engine 42.
While working a freeway accident this morning, Engine 42 was struck by a #Tesla traveling at 65 mph. The driver reports the vehicle was on autopilot. Amazingly there were no injuries! Please stay alert while driving! #abc7eyewitness #ktla #CulverCity #distracteddriving pic.twitter.com/RgEmd43tNe
— Culver City Firefighters (@CC_Firefighters) January 22, 2018
It happened shortly before 9 a.m. while crews were responding to an accident on the 405 Freeway near Washington Boulevard.The union representing Culver City firefighters tweeted that the southbound Tesla driver said he had been using Tesla’s Autopilot system, which performs automated driving tasks. Of course, as Tesla quickly noted, Autopilot (despite the name) is a driver assistance system that is no substitute for an attentive, er, human pilot.
We wondered: What’s an autopilot crash, or almost-crash, look like from inside the offending vehicle?
Here’s what we found:
This compilation, published last year by Just Seven, offers a sampling of near-misses and gives you a bird’s-eye view of what it’s like to almost run into something while ”driving” something you’re not really driving. And, sorry, but we can’t confirm that ”no animals were harmed in the making of this video.”
GB Times posted this video of a Tesla reportedly slamming into the back of what looks like a parked truck on the side of a highway in China, killing the 23-year-old man behind the wheel. The driver’s father has sued Tesla, which reportedly said they had no way to confirm whether the car was on autopilot at the time of the crash.
This video, from Zombeast, shows several instances where a Tesla on Autopilot ”predicted” a crash in its path and safely avoided it.
This report from the Bay Area’s CBS affiliate presents a good snapshot of what happened with the 2016 crash in Florida involving Tesla’s Autopilot system. The driver was killed after his vehicle, according to a Tesla blog post, struck a white semi truck that had cut across the highway he was traveling along.
Finally, from Tested’s YouTube tutorial, we get an excellent up-close look at how Autopilot works on a Tesla Model X:
