Literally as written, this sounds like a medical emergency.
From the article: "It had its right turn indicator on, but it drifted slowly to the left, into my lane, before slowly going back into its own lane."
For this to have happened, the vehicle could not have had autosteer engaged. At most, it would have had regular traffic aware cruise control on, which would not have been monitoring for wheel input at all anyway. This strongly implies to me that the operator was at least operating the vehicle intentionally to a significant degree.
In any event, calling 911 is an appropriate response to an unresponsive driver.
What happens with Teslas on autosteer when an emergency vehicle approaches from behind? Will it safely get out of the way for flashing blue lights (US police), red lights (fire, ambulance). Amber lights - tow trucks? If a police car with lights on pulls in behind and waits, will autosteer pull you over? I am wondering how to safely stop a car with autosteer ON and driver OFF.
With just regular autosteer, absolutely nothing. Generally speaking, I'd expect the same response out of Nav on Autopilot with the "Enhanced AutoPilot" or "Full Self Driving" features.
When AP looses the lane lines, and then re calibrates (usually due to very poor markings), it starts beeping rather insistently that you take over immediately.
If you have lane detection on, Teslas will steer you back into the lane, if you start drifting off, even if auto-pilot is off. (This alone is a huge safety feature).
Sure, but there's two issues here. The turn signal is on in the other direction. Activation of the turn signal in base autosteer will disable autosteer. Activation of the turn signal in more advanced modes (Nav on Autopilot) will result in a lane change in the direction of the signal.
There might be a way to trigger a scenario like this in an FSD equipped car with all FSD related features turned off, and a really careful sequence of events with the turn signal, I guess? I'd have to try it to be sure, but I think it'd actually take some work to do.
But that last part does have me thinking it might be possible. The weird slowdown that he reported at the end could be consistent with AP finally giving up on alerting the driver and trying to "make safe" by slowing aggressively and probably going crazy with audible alerts. Maybe then the driver perked up and took off the ramp?
But tbh, it all reminds me of a driver that I ran into (thankfully not literally) a while back. They were in an older car, so obviously not on ADAS... just driving that badly and probably under the influence. It happens a lot.
Sure, if there's a blizzard or heavy rainstorm that blocks the cameras. Happens in Florida all the time. Rain so heavy the cameras can't see anything but a gray wall of water. In that case AP will emit an annoying audible alarm and disable itself, at which point you are steering the car manually.
In these conditions, human drivers will "follow the taillights" but I don't think Tesla allows for that yet. If AP can't see outlines of objects due to heavy rain/snow, it cuts out.
Exceedingly unlikely unless the lane demarcation is extremely bad. Lane-holding tech is really standard and reliable now (and even if you don't think AP is great, it's not stupider than what ships in mass-market cars).
I remember a story in Germany the other way around were a Tesla driver detected a car on the highway with an unconcious driver. He set himself in front of the other car, braked and stopped slowly until both cars came to a halt. Both insurances did not want to pay for the damage (voluntarily induced damage and such crap) and Tesla paid the bill for the Tesla driver's repair. [1]
Happened on the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007. No Teslas involved, naturally, but people sometimes do honorable things to stop an otherwise runaway vehicle.
> Beatty took bold and immediate action. He drove his Ford F-350 Super Duty utility truck in front of the Jeep and allowed it to essentially crash into the back of his vehicle so it would latch on, according to bridge officials. He then "slowly and safely" guided the Jeep across the bridge's southbound lanes and brought it to rest in a safe area, away from the flow of traffic.
edit: This was pre-divider, so a runaway vehicle on the GGB could have made quite a mess by crossing into oncoming traffic.
In 2007, a Piper Seneca plane crashed into a condo building in Richmond, BC, Canada. Right over fairly busy intersection, too. The elderly pilot had a heart attack or something.
> It had its right turn indicator on, but it drifted slowly to the left, into my lane, before slowly going back into its own lane. Then it started to slow down considerably.
Autopilot won't let you signal in one direction while changing lanes in the opposite direction. The only way to do that is by driving manually.
My guess is the Tesla was under manual control and the driver was intoxicated, extremely sleep deprived, or having a medical issue.
Something sounds fishy here. The car changing speeds without anything prompting it and swerving in and out of lanes is not behavior that would be seen if it was driving on Autopilot.
The torque required to cause it to swerve out of its lane would also be enough to disable Autopilot. This story isn't newsworthy if Autopilot isn't on.
This exact same thing happened to be in LA. I was driving behind a really slow Tesla (like 35mph on the freeway). I switched lanes to pass him and noticed he was just asleep at the wheel. Maybe he also had a medical emergency, but it seemed like he was just sleeping. Maybe I should have called 911.
When I was younger I would get road hypnosis, particularly at night.
Don't even have to be tired, just start "zoning out" completely despite doing things to combat that (roll down windows for fresh air in my face and blast music).
I feel like this lightened up a bit in my late 20s.
In any case, I love that I now live in a city where I don't have to drive and do not own a car.
A few years ago I nodded off on a 50mph thoroughfare. I was jet lagged from a transpacific flight a day earlier; I knew I was falling asleep, but there was nothing I could do to stay awake, and there was no exit I could take. Eventually I drifted into the lane on the left, hit a cargo truck, bounced off and hit another car on the right. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it could have turned out really ugly.
Don’t drive when you’re jet lagged — or fatigued, generally speaking.
I thought I am badass and would not start falling asleep while drivning ever but as I got older I noticed it gets worse for me so I get breaks after 3hrs of driving.
I thought you could not get sleepy on a motorbike, because it is loud and you get constant airflow. Got enough road at night and I also had to stop every 2hrs and do sit-ups get some water and only then hit the road back.
He could be dead, actually. I imagine a modern adaptation of "The headless horseman": a murdered driver rides in his electric vehicle, self-charging on charging stations and automatically riding between the locations frequented by the deceased owner. ...
See the short story "Road Stop" by David Mason, published 1963.
The car called the Traveler, rolling at the stately thirty miles an hour it
always held, was coming down the road now, and the two men stood, watching. The
woman, a little behind them, watched too, her face growing whiter. No one said
anything as the old fashioned car rolled by, straight and steady down the
highway, holding the center of the lane as sharply as it always did.
There was a film of dust inside the windows, though the Traveler was clean and
shining outside. But the film did hide the white bone faces, the despairing
hands that had long ago stopped trying to break through those closed windows.
The dead driver, his slumped body having fallen toward an "Accept" button on the car's touch screen just as an offer to drive for Uber appeared, now makes $200,000 / year going non-stop without bathroom or sleep breaks.
Oh what a beautiful idea for a short story. Would have been a great writing prompt over in the redditverse probably.
[Edit:]
Could be a crime novel. A classical who-dun-it, but with the need to trackback the route and stuff like this and things happening in between and the data of the car being tampered with or stuff like this.
There's a powerful sci fi short story I read in an anthology quite a while ago (I believe called The Flying Dutchman) describing a crewless bomber being repaired, fueled, taking off, bombing its target, landing, and then doing the same thing again. As it describes this repetition, you slowly realize that humanity has long since been wiped out and the bombing runs are automated systems repeating themselves. (That's my memory of the story, anyhow, I read it in the 80's :) ).
(Edit: found it, "Flying Dutchman" by Ward Moore, it's from the 50's and you can find its text online with those terms)
This actually happens more often than, I think, people think about. It makes sense when you stop and realize what percentage of their lives Americans spend in their cars (like the old rule "most accidents happen in the home," with an average daily one-way commute of 27.6 minutes, most Americans spend 2.9% of their lives in their cars, so all else being equal 2.9% of medical emergencies can be expected to happen in cars).
I don't have high-quality numbers, but a low-quality Google search tosses out that 20% of accidents are caused by a participant having a medical emergency and losing control of their vehicle (grain-of-salt: the number is from an injury law firm, so obvious incentive to bias the number).
I would expect fewer medical emergencies in a car than in some other settings. But people who've had a medical emergency are likely to get into a car to head to the hospital, and can then run into serious trouble.
In particular it is common for people suspect that they may be having a heart attack, try to drive to the hospital, and then lose control on the way.
This happens enough that standard advice from medical professionals for potential heart attack victims includes tips like, "Survive. Don't drive!" If you've got worrying symptoms, call 9-1-1 and NOT attempt to drive. See https://www.valleyhealthlink.com/blog/2017/february/survive-... for a random example.
That said, the average ambulance ride in California is close to $600. So people have a strong incentive to try to avoid the ambulance, no matter how bad an idea that may be.
It would be interesting to know what portion of medical events happen in a car. So many things are less likely (eg whole driving you aren’t using a knife to cut up dinner, or cleaning leaves out the gutter), but so many are worse (eg if you are going 100kmh and you faint).
Only if "has medical emergencies" is independent from "drives to work." My guess is more medical emergencies happen in hospitals than on the road, even though the average person spends a lot less time in the hospital than on the road.
Readit News
From the article: "It had its right turn indicator on, but it drifted slowly to the left, into my lane, before slowly going back into its own lane."
For this to have happened, the vehicle could not have had autosteer engaged. At most, it would have had regular traffic aware cruise control on, which would not have been monitoring for wheel input at all anyway. This strongly implies to me that the operator was at least operating the vehicle intentionally to a significant degree.
In any event, calling 911 is an appropriate response to an unresponsive driver.
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-autopil...
If you have lane detection on, Teslas will steer you back into the lane, if you start drifting off, even if auto-pilot is off. (This alone is a huge safety feature).
There might be a way to trigger a scenario like this in an FSD equipped car with all FSD related features turned off, and a really careful sequence of events with the turn signal, I guess? I'd have to try it to be sure, but I think it'd actually take some work to do.
But that last part does have me thinking it might be possible. The weird slowdown that he reported at the end could be consistent with AP finally giving up on alerting the driver and trying to "make safe" by slowing aggressively and probably going crazy with audible alerts. Maybe then the driver perked up and took off the ramp?
But tbh, it all reminds me of a driver that I ran into (thankfully not literally) a while back. They were in an older car, so obviously not on ADAS... just driving that badly and probably under the influence. It happens a lot.
In these conditions, human drivers will "follow the taillights" but I don't think Tesla allows for that yet. If AP can't see outlines of objects due to heavy rain/snow, it cuts out.
[1 German]: https://www.waz-online.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Tesla-ueberni...
> Beatty took bold and immediate action. He drove his Ford F-350 Super Duty utility truck in front of the Jeep and allowed it to essentially crash into the back of his vehicle so it would latch on, according to bridge officials. He then "slowly and safely" guided the Jeep across the bridge's southbound lanes and brought it to rest in a safe area, away from the flow of traffic.
edit: This was pre-divider, so a runaway vehicle on the GGB could have made quite a mess by crossing into oncoming traffic.
People die all the time even when stopped on the emergency lane (you should really step over the barrier to be safe).
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/1-dead-2-inj...
Autopilot won't let you signal in one direction while changing lanes in the opposite direction. The only way to do that is by driving manually.
My guess is the Tesla was under manual control and the driver was intoxicated, extremely sleep deprived, or having a medical issue.
I feel like this lightened up a bit in my late 20s. In any case, I love that I now live in a city where I don't have to drive and do not own a car.
Don’t drive when you’re jet lagged — or fatigued, generally speaking.
Surely there was a shoulder for use during emergencies. Why on earth didn't you pull over and turn on your hazards?
I get active cruise control. I don't get lane assist. Doesn't everyone else's mind just perform steering pretty much without thought anyway.
I thought you could not get sleepy on a motorbike, because it is loud and you get constant airflow. Got enough road at night and I also had to stop every 2hrs and do sit-ups get some water and only then hit the road back.
It is important to take breaks.
(Yes, it’s a concern and I’ll be a danger to others as well. I feel so comfortable and sleepy on moving vehicles)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...
[Edit:]
Could be a crime novel. A classical who-dun-it, but with the need to trackback the route and stuff like this and things happening in between and the data of the car being tampered with or stuff like this.
(Edit: found it, "Flying Dutchman" by Ward Moore, it's from the 50's and you can find its text online with those terms)
I don't have high-quality numbers, but a low-quality Google search tosses out that 20% of accidents are caused by a participant having a medical emergency and losing control of their vehicle (grain-of-salt: the number is from an injury law firm, so obvious incentive to bias the number).
In particular it is common for people suspect that they may be having a heart attack, try to drive to the hospital, and then lose control on the way.
This happens enough that standard advice from medical professionals for potential heart attack victims includes tips like, "Survive. Don't drive!" If you've got worrying symptoms, call 9-1-1 and NOT attempt to drive. See https://www.valleyhealthlink.com/blog/2017/february/survive-... for a random example.
That said, the average ambulance ride in California is close to $600. So people have a strong incentive to try to avoid the ambulance, no matter how bad an idea that may be.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc
All you need is a solar powered self driving car, and perhaps a programmed routine. (If occupied, to work in the morning and home at night).