Tesla's "miracle"(any opinions from mech./software engineers?

Not quite as big as parting the Red Sea, but pretty impressive is the news video from 2 days ago or so of a Tesla Model X in Holland proceeding on freeway when the dash beeps and the Tesla begins braking (not sure if that was automatic or if the BEEP signaled the driver of danger and he applied the brakes) At any rate the car ahead or the car ahead of the Tesla impacts another vehicle and one of the two flips but the Tesla driver is safe, having stopped short.The miracle to me is that the Tesla car sensed an accident was imminent at least ten seconds before the accident happened! So that makes up, in my mind, for the accident of the show-off Tesla driver who hit the white tractor trailer that cut him off, with the Tesla cameras failing to delineate the truck from the white sky.(that was a fatality) Just a damn shame the Tesla driver in Holland, once he or she knew, couldn't warn the car ahead--most civilian cars don't have loudspeakers and who knows if the driver of the car ahead would have listened to a voice coming out of the blue telling him to hit the brakes hard.

Even if Tesla never made another car I think this feature could be sold to every automaker (NOTE I am not a Tesla stockholder...)

 

this accident avoidance thing in Holland is close to deserving the word "miracle." The guy in Florida was show-boating, known for sending videos to his friends of him driving his Tesla "hands off."

The Tesla in Holland may have been a model X, I don't know if that has more "reach" than the Model S.

I would compare this incident to like a Secret Service man guarding POTUS anticipating someone in a crowd is going to draw a gun and eliminating the threat before the assassin's gun clears the holster

 

I think in cross traffic your autonomous car could see all the players, and either retard speed or speed up to clear them all. But let me paint a much darker scenerio.

You are in your autonomous-mobile doing 50 mph on a two laner (one lane each way) and ahead of you about 30 ft. is a garbage truck with a heavy loaded dumpster that is poised over the rear and the dumpster suddenly falls to the pavement. You don't have enough time to come to a full stop. The autopilot's mission I presume is to, protect the car it's in and the driver and passengers if sny. On the sidewalk to the left is a mom with three toddlers trailing behind her. To the right , on the sidewalk, is an elderly lady with a cane. Who does the autonomous car take out? Or does it just say "No good choices" and hit the loaded dumpster?

Don't say "Well. my autonomous car would never follow so close that the space between is always enough to stop safely." I think they go the prevailing speed of the car ahead but don't build wide gaps between them and the vehicle ahead to the tune of one car length for every 10 mph...

 

You say, in 60 years, autonomous hasn't come that far but compare it to the changeover in photography--as a former film user, I was astonished how fast digital took over from film--at Costco now, I never see people ordering prints from film anymore, only digital. I was one of the hold-outs , caught with my pants down with a film camera when the rest of hte world switched over to digital, (I had hard time selling my Nikon F3. Like trying to sell a typewriter...) There are teenagers today who have never shot a picture on film. Plus it' s happening all over with phones replacing cameras (camera sales down 28%). So I think the pace of acceptance of autonomous is occurring even more rapidly than the digital takeover of photography and the only roadblocks to full acceptance of autonomous cars across the board will be major lawsuits when an autonomous car goes into the crowd, kills a major celebrity, etc. I'm talking a Supreme Court decision (which the robots will win)

By the way one good quote (maybe I saw it here?) was "at least there will be a fun period when we have sex with robots before they kill us."

Lest you get the idea I am not an enthusiast, back when I had a GTC/4, one of my thrills was to blast through the Malibu tunnel at 7,500 rpm in third....in the future the robots won't permit such excess displays of speed...

 

Trying to get the drivers more attentive is the focus of a new
California law that takes effect Jan 1 2017 says you can't hand hold phone but square that with the fact Detroit is selling cars based on how much interactive technology you can project on the computer screen or else people won't buy the car. The car with the most toys wins. The modern generation doesn't want to be weaned away from their electronic goodies, but insists on reading their e-mail, etc. while driving, so it's only when laws are passed forbidding any activity for the driver not driver related , or the next step will be the cars themselves lock out availability of those extraneous distractions so we can began to get the driver back to the business of driving.

Also drivers who are distracted have to know, their cars might be keeping records as to what distractions were going at the time of an accident and thus the awards in lawsuits knocked down, such as the Tesla driver who hit the tractor trailer, wasn't there a video player connected to the dash playing a video when the police arrived? If his relatives were suing Tesla for failure of their autopilot to save him, that might come into reducing the judgement against Tesla --that he was distracting himself instead of paying attention to driving (but why should he be bothered with steering, he was on "autopilot" right?)