Doesn’t Tesla offer it’s own insurance?
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Ok, that would explain it, although in the long run even Tesla may not be willing to subsidize Tesla drivers too much.
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Fair enough. I’ll agree to disagree on that one, with all due respect. What I see in that video is one car that probably couldn’t stop, and seven others that absolutely should have been able to. Multiple seconds passed between several of those follow-up impacts. All on a clear day with a bare dry road. I don’t give anyone back there a pass for that, even though I like to dunk on Musk as much as the next Boinger.
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I don’t think it’s required, just an offering. I could be wrong, I don’t have one and I’m just vaguely recalling an article.
You don’t think Musk would keep throwing money at things in an attempt to keep cachet?
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Completely fair. What I see in bad conditions is that traffic starts from a condition where each vehicle has sufficient stopping distance despite ice/snow, but then something changes, like a vehicle entering that lane without a wide enough opening. That causes a cascade of slowing, which compresses the “accordion” of following distances. If the car that initiated the condition then comes to a sudden stop, vehicles several cars back have insufficient room to stop, since there was not enough opportunity for each vehicle to recover to a safe following distance.
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Also notice the Tesla stopped just inside the tunnel entrance, and it looks to be pretty sunny out. The transition from full sun to tunnel lights may have caused some visibility issues for the people coming up on the crash.
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This is true. All those “defensive driving” courses people take, then ignore, teach us to pay attention and allow plenty of space between us and the vehicle ahead. That way we might be prepared to deal with some dumbass cutting into the fast lane ahead of a line of cars, then coming to a complete stop.
On the other hand, cutting into the fast lane ahead of a line of cars, then coming to a complete stop is a dumbass move. I grant that human drivers pull this sort of stunt every day, and the outcome depends upon how alert and skillful (and lucky) the other human drivers are. But I’d argue that if we’re going to hand our lives over to a self-driving car, that car should perform like the idealized motorists taught in driving school. Knowing that my AI car simply drives no worse than the average schmuck isn’t very reassuring.
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It’s a bigger problem than just with “self driving” mode. Driving my wife’s Model Y on rural interstate roads, I had a couple incidents of phantom braking. Every time it happened there was something on the side of the road, like the guard rails of a bridge, from an otherwise empty shoulder. This was just using cruise control, which is call “traffic aware cruise control” (a/k/a SQUIRREL!).
I reported it to the NHTSA. Until there is a fix, we won’t use cruise control.
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Yep. Tailgaters. I despise them. Not in the fast lane and driving at the speed limit, I’m often forced to slow down very, very slowly when a stop or slowdown is needed, and that just to prevent the jerk on my tail from slamming into me. Why can’t they just change lanes, for shit’s sake?
On my commute home, it’s normal to have what I call “lane inversion.” The slow lane is the fast lane and vice-versa. That’s due a combination of passive-aggressive drivers who sit in the left lane and go x miles under the posted speed and people who are on their phones and don’t notice when the traffic ahead of them has disappeared over the horizon.
As such, I’m often in the right lane - though I maintain a following distance that’s appropriate to the speed. I am always hunting for an opportunity to get ahead of and around one of the impediment drivers above.
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Because that would force the idiots doing it to engage their fleshy equivalent of self driving mode instead of blithely following you and hoping you move out of their way.
A friend of mine has a passive-aggressive way of dealing with bumper-crowding jackwagons- he just gradually slows down until the tailgater gets pissed off enough to change lanes. Can’t really say I approve of it, because that can wind people pretty fast. Getting brake-checked is never fun.
I’ve learned to drive very defensively, and to not be the agressor unless I’m forced into it, in which case I make damned sure people back off. (not necessarily brake checking, but a touch of weaving like I’m in NASCAR and getting the tires up to temperature while staying in my lane tends to force everyone in the three lanes behind me to back. the. fuck. OFF. (and I’ve only ever gotten pulled over ONCE for pulling that stunt, and the nice officer gave me a warning, probably because the person I pulled it on was being a Class A Jackass.)
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That’s something I never do even when the tailgater is so close that I can see all their windshield and almost nothing of the rest of their car in my rearview. I keep imagining that such drivers can be angry enough to go into you, or – if traffic stops – get out of their vehicle and run up to you in a rage.
Many years ago on a very early morning commute (less than “light” traffic) one moron decided to draft me even after I changed lanes. That’s when I heard a loud. “Back off!” Then I heard it again. It was a CHIP motorcycle cop on his loudspeaker; he saw what was going on and scared the moron off who immediately backed off as if in emergency mode and crossed two lanes of traffic to get to the exit. Last time I actually felt respect for a cop.
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:: giggles ::
I was driving a rental in San Jose one fine morning many years ago and accidently cut off a police car when someone cut me off. Said cop proceeded to whip around me and pull over the other guy.
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Completely right outcomes should be relished like a fine wine.
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I went back and watched it a few times. Mostly because I was trying to tell if the pickup truck left the scene as a hit and run or if it managed to avoid any impact. We have some roads with relatively fast speed limit and stop lights. I always worry about the scenario where the car following swerves around me instead of slowing and then the car behind them who was previously following a fast moving car is now approaching a stopped car it couldn’t see at all.
That pickup truck looked like it swerved instead of stopping behind the stopped cars. My first thought was that the car following them couldn’t see the stopped cars and that dramatically impacted the following/stopping distance vs the truck having just left. However, watching the video two things appeared to happen. First, the car behind the pickup actually rear ended the pickup before it swerved. Meaning that car didn’t have a safe following distance behind it already. Second, the pickup did just drive on, at least out of frame, even though it had just been rear ended enough to see on video.
The first car behind the Tesla was almost able to stop, but not quite. That’s easily the Tesla fault for cutting him off. The second car did stop without hitting the first car. That looks like the end of the initial chain reaction. The third car was the pickup. Might have had the distance to stop, might not have. It swerved to avoid the stationary vehicles. I would have said this removed some fault from the fourth car, except the fourth car hit the pickup before it swerved. The chain of 4, 5, 6, and 7 were clearly all following to close. It looks like car 8 was able to stop prior to hitting 7, then the video ends.
I love the adaptive cruise control on several of our cars, but there’s two things they are really bad at. They don’t do well when overtaking cars not previously in range that are also going substantially slower. The distance closes to fast when you need to slow down before they’re in range. The other is when set at a safe following distance, other drivers seem to think that’s a free spot for them to merge into.
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Ha, talk about burying the lede.
For anyone expressing a bit of righteousness about following distances, they simply aren’t practical for most urban driving (and some busy rural stretches like the I-5 through the Central Valley). If you leave enough space, someone will slip in that spot. Then you back off from that person, after which someone else slips in. It’s simply impossible. No one is at a safe distance and most of all no one will let you drive at a safe distance; you simply have to trust that everyone will behave in a predictable manner. And predictability is always key, I think that’s the factor that trumps all others. And that’s what the Tesla violated.
I’m not proud but I confess I tailgate when I’m in the left lane in a long line of cars passing and some jerk off decides the line isn’t going fast enough and zooms up to the slow vehicle in the right lane and tries to cut in (this is endemic to the aforementioned I-5 in the central valley). I’m working on not doing that anymore.
I lived in the Bay Area and Los Angeles for 25 years, commuting hours a day on the busiest roads. I never had a problem maintaining a safe following distance. Many many times people slammed on their brakes in front of me for no apparent reason and with no warning, but I never rear ended anyone.
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Hearted for “safe driving distance”. 
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This is going to be the foundation argument for why it’s unethical for humans to drive in an automated car world where we can prove with math that humans are less effective than the machines, even when they have mid-to-massive clusterfucks like this. One day we will have to Drive manually on closed courses or private roads.
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