Free Republic

Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars on US roads to limit the use of its Autopilot feature following a two-year probe by US safety regulators of roughly 1,000 crashes in which the feature was engaged. The limitations on Autopilot serve as a blow to Tesla’s efforts to market its vehicles to buyers willing to pay extra to have their cars do the driving for them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the Autopilot system can give drivers a false sense of security and be easily misused in certain dangerous situations when a Tesla’s technology may...

Tesla shouldn’t be calling its partially automated driving system Autopilot because the cars can’t drive themselves, the top US transportation official says. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he’s concerned about Tesla’s marketing of the system, which is under investigation by his department in connection with crashes that have caused at least 14 deaths. “I don’t think that something should be called, for example, an Autopilot, when the fine print says you need to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The Associated Press. The National Highway Traffic...

A Tesla driver was horrified to see another Tesla vehicle burst into flames after hitting a highway barrier in Los Angeles. The Tesla that was engulfed in flames was reportedly on Autopilot at the time of the crash. Josh Kaplan was driving his Tesla Model X on a Los Angeles freeway last month when he saw another Tesla ahead of him was stopped on the highway. As he got closer, he noticed smoke coming from the vehicle.

DARPA has managed to fly ‘smart’ black hawk helicopter without any pilot on board. The ALIAS technology has thus far cost $160 million.During an experimental project led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, the renowned Black Hawk helicopter flew totally unmanned for the very first moment.The initiative is known as ALIAS, which stands for “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System,” and it was victorious after a UH-60 Alpha-model Black Hawk chopper made its maiden flight without a human operator on board a few days earlier.Image via Lockheed Martin: Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk Optionally Piloted Aircraft leaves the...

According to a statement from the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), at the time of the incident, a trooper had stopped to assist a driver whose 2012 Mercedes GLK 350 was disabled at the side of the Interstate 4 (I-4) highway in Orlando. The trooper had already stepped out of his parked police vehicle, a 2018 Dodge Charger, by the time the Tesla Model 3 ran into it. The front right of the Tesla hit the left side of the police car and then hit the Mercedes SUV. According to emails to CNBC and a press statement from FHP on Saturday,...

Two men died after a Tesla 'on autopilot with no one driving' crashed into a tree in Houston before starting a huge fire that took 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish. The fully-electric 2019 Tesla Model S slammed into the tree in Carlton Woods at around 11.25pm on Saturday night before bursting into flames with the passengers still inside. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said an investigation had found that 'no one was driving' when the accident happened, with one man sitting in the passenger seat at the front and the second sitting in the back. Officials told...

Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk are no strangers to critics, and in the past, YouTube personality Steven Crowder of the “Change My Mind” series fame has counted himself among them. However, a search for the best Autopilot functionality to help his wife’s recent health issues led the conservative comedian to reconsider the merits of the all-electric carmaker’s products. “It’s not even close… It’s pretty damn cool. It is so fun to drive,” he expressed matter-of-factly on Tuesday’s Louder with Crowder episode. “That wasn’t the case back when I had a friend who had a Prius… [The Tesla] is more...

An Apple engineer who died when his Tesla Model X hit a concrete barrier on a Silicon Valley freeway had complained before his death that the SUV’s Autopilot system would malfunction in the area where the crash happened. The documents say Huang told his wife that Autopilot had previously veered his SUV toward the same barrier on U.S. 101 near Mountain View, California where he later crashed. Huang died at a hospital from his injuries. “Walter said the car would veer toward the barrier in the mornings when he went to work,” the Huang family’s attorney wrote in a response...

A Tesla on autopilot rear-ended a Connecticut trooper’s vehicle early Saturday as the driver was checking on his dog in the back seat, state police said. Police said they had responded to a disabled vehicle that was stopped in the middle of Interstate 95. While waiting for a tow, the self-driving Tesla came down the road. After striking the trooper's vehicle, the driver in the Tesla then rear-ended the disabled vehicle before stopping.

Link only

It’s worth noting that even in the Jetson’s future world of flying cars a driver was still required. That’s because the Jetsons lived in a world where technology may have advanced but the fundamental elements of human nature remained the same. Which is to say most humans like to be in control. Driving gives us that sense, we can’t control the other idiots on the road but we can control how we maneuver around their stupidity. And that may be why we may actually be closer to the flying car than the driverless car. Warning: the images in your rearview...

Police in the Northern California town of Redwood City arrested a man who was traveling on Highway 101 early Friday morning while sleeping behind the wheel of his Tesla Model S. Officers first spotted the electric luxury sedan driving south at about 70 mph around 3:40 a.m., California Highway Patrol Officer Art Montiel told Business Insider on Friday night. Montiel said the officers took action when it became clear that the driver, 45-year-old Alexander Samek, was sleeping. "The driver wasn't responding to lights and sirens," Montiel said. The officers believed the Tesla may have been operating on Autopilot, a semi-autonomous-driving...

Tesla said Wednesday that they have been able to recover enough data to confirm that autopilot was not engaged when a Bay Area driver veered off the road in a Model S and plunged into a pond. “We have been able to recover enough data from the vehicle to confirm that Autopilot was not engaged at the time of this accident," Tesla said in a statement.

Tesla owner who turned on car's autopilot then sat in passenger seat while travelling on the M1 banned from drivingA man who switched on his car's autopilot before moving to the passenger seat while travelling along a motorway has been banned from driving for 18 months. Bhavesh Patel, aged 39, of Alfreton Road, Nottingham, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at St Albans Crown Court on Friday, April 20. The court heard that at 7.40pm on May 21, 2017, Patel was driving his white Tesla S 60 along the northbound carriageway of the M1, between junctions 8 and 9 near Hemel...

The National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report and photo concerning the first known fatality of a Tesla car using Autopilot. And it’s pretty gruesome. Earlier reports had stated the a Model S struck a big rig while traveling on a divided highway in central Florida, and speculated that the Tesla Autopilot system had failed to intervene in time to prevent the collision. The crash killed 40-year-old Ohio resident Joshua Brown, who was the driver of the Tesla. The driver of the truck was not injured.

A second Tesla has crashed in Autopilot mode, though there were no fatalities this time. The accident took place about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The police report notes that a Model X was traveling east with two passengers on board when it crashed into a guard rail on the right side of the road. The force of the impact caused it to collide with the concrete median, and sent it across the eastbound lanes. It then rolled, and came to a stop on its roof in the middle of the road. Luckily, the two passengers walked away without...

Joshua D. Brown, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car’s cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn’t automatically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday. Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.” “It was still playing when he...

Joshua D. Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday. Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen" at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that "he went so fast through my trailer I didn't see him." "It was still playing when...

Video Only

Two pieces of new debris have been found in the Maldives and experts will determine if they are linked to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, said Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai (pix). He said one was a "honeycomb material" while the other had a flat surface. "It is very small, about the size of your hand," he said when asked to explain on the new finding on Sunday. "The first thing we have to do is to determine if it is actually of plane material," Liow said adding that the discovery was made two days ago. "Our team...