Federal investigators are looking into a crash that happened early Wednesday morning. A Tesla Model Y was reportedly operating in “Autopilot” mode when it crashed into a stationary police vehicle.
According to CNBC, Michigan state troopers were responding to the scene of an accident where a vehicle had struck a deer. The police cruiser was parked with emergency lights on, but was partially still in the right lane of the highway.
At 1:12 am, the Tesla struck the police vehicle. Neither the police nor the driver of the Tesla were injured in the crash. Police cited the 22-year-old driver for driving on a suspended license and for faijlure to move over for an emergency vehicle.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it has launched an investigation into the accident. It is currently believed that the Tesla was in Autopilot mode when the crash occurred.
This is the second high-profile crash involving a Tesla in Michigan this week. Just a few days prior, a different Tesla was involved in a crash with a tractor-trailer which put two people in critical condition. It is not known whether the vehicle was under manual control or in autonomous mode at the time of the crash. Authorities have retrieved the ‘black box’ from the vehicle which will allow them to determine if Autopilot was engaged.
Source: usatoday, detroitnews, cnbc, thehill
Image Source: Michigan State Police
I love technology but I will never agree with it being used in Cars or Trucks like they are trying to push because, “Driver Shortage”, no morons it’s a shortage of good pay! We are no where near advanced enough for autonomous free moving vehicles. How about we master it with trains first and then we can discuss it in cars and trucks!
Buy your own truck, pay for your own fuel, insurance, maintenance, then let me know how that pay is! It’s a shortage of people who know how to negotiate rates.
Amen brother!
Many times people are forced to accept crap rates because brokers are packing half or more from gross.
Never fuel surcharges revealed into the negotiated rate…..just an example.
And you are partially correct.
No shortage of drivers is the correct answer…..just short of pay.
“Forced to accept?” We can only control ourselves, so don’t take that lousy rate. Make a better or different choice or change your path, but you are not “forced”.
Buy your own truck. That would be great. If only I could get the same price on that truck as a big monster trucking company who purchases power units by the hundreds at a time for a discounted price.
Pay my own fuel. Owner operators who were dumb enough to sign on to these lousy deals get their fuel cost capped,at least. Monster trucking companies purchase millions of gallons of fuel from oil companies up front for the fiscal quarter at a greatly discounted price far below what is seen posted on the signs at fuel stops.Trucking companies aren’t paying the posted cost for diesel.
I could go on but there is no chance an independent trucker can compete in the general freight sector with the monster trucking companies. The Carter Administrations Deregulation spearheaded by monster trucking companies,like JB Hunt,made sure of that.
Until they blow the market out with excess electric use taxes, fees and everything else, building your own electric day cab truck (cause who can afford 250k for a new one plus the mandatory 50k or more battery replacements every couple of years) and driving local might be about the only way a person could make any money in this industry now as an owner operator. The company I work for pays it’s owner operators $300 a run is all and from what I understand, that’s slightly higher than normal.
we’ve been doing it in airplanes for decades
Airplanes are also required to have a hell of a lot more separation than the few feet automobiles have. Apples & oranges…
Planes have how many obstacles to negotiate? Pilots take over on takeoff and landing
Absolutely!!!
Technology is nice but this country was never designed to have automated cars and trucks
Also, people who assume that the autopilot (which is just a driver assist feature) being able to completely drive itself and they can sleep with a defeat device on the steering wheel. A Tesla requires you to constantly hold the steering wheel, otherwise it nags at you and shuts off autopilot (and safely stops on the side of the road) after not holding the wheel for about a minute.
No country was design to have it, but we need to lay better infrastructure for this type of technology.
Agreed!!! Technology has cost jobs!! We can not all work at Walmart and survive! Even Walmart now is doing away with people as it goes to self checkout. I miss the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
Honestly feel like self driving cars is an all or nothing endeavor. As long as somebody is controlling a vehicle manually self driving cars will be an issue. Actually the person driving the car manually will be the issue.
Although even now a self driving car is less likely to cause an accident then somebody driving manually. A human being will never be able to respond as fast as a computer. Just have to get the bugs worked out. Not to mention the computer won’t be looking at its phone, Eating a full course meal, Or just being an idiot in general.
Yeah while you are getting the bugs worked out kill about a half a dozen people while you’re at it
You’re worried about six people dying from an autonomous vehicle? Meanwhile nearly 40,000 die every year on roadways in the US from people actually in “control.” 99.6% of ALL collisions are preventable. Just maybe a computer can do a better job of paying attention.
Half a dozen is no where near the numbers that manual drivers kill every day.
I’m in no way saying we should switch by the way. No where close to ready but eventually it will happen.
JASON – Those are the “manual drivers” who should have been in jail or already dead.
Use your head and some discretion.
Jason – if there are 100,000 manual drivers compared to to 10 autonomous cars on the road of course there will be more fatalities from manual drivers than autonomous. Switch the numbers and see what happens
E-X-A-C-T-L-Y
I was replying to steve
First what exactly is a full course meal… it’s called a four course meal…. (talk about educating) and second computers are hacked daily and computers are what is operating these automated vehicles… it’s only a matter of time until someone learns how to hack them and either hijack them for a ransom or even worse just for fun and play crash up derby!!
Well, I know my job is safe at least until I retire!
The single biggest problem here is the autopilot hasn’t been designed with one thing that would alleviate all these autopilot accidents. The car should be warning the driver that something is in the way, and if the driver doesn’t respond when warned, the car should just STOP! I can’t believe that Tesla hasn’t been sued out of existence over that single point. These cars will flat out run into a stationary object. I can’t believe that the NTSB hasn’t put a stop to allowing these computers do the driving without a serious software makeover. Can we say….Duhhhhh!
This was preventable, only if the police could get out of the traffic lane. Why not just get out of the way. His car is not that big, just saying.
He put it on AutoCrash
Just remember folks. According to Elon Musk and other techies pushing this stuff, the technology, especially in Semi Trucks, is by far safer than an actual human being and human beings need to be completely removed from the scenario. Just imagine if that had been an autonomous semi truck that struck that police cruiser. The officer in the first vehicle would not have walked away and its unlikely the second officer in the vehicle in front of him would have either. Confusing situation when someone who shouldn’t have even been behind the wheel in the first place was either just as dangerous or more dangerous than the computer? Yet society wants these things in 80,000 pound vehicles that are almost 100 feet long, traveling down the highway at almost 70 MPH with no one inside because we’re just a bunch of steering wheel holders and this isn’t a real skilled job according to society. Whelp whatever. Have fun.
I wanted to add that in manufacturing based on OSHA standards, every piece of automated equipment has an E-Stop or emergency stop button on it for safety.
Where’s the emergency stop button on these autonomous vehicles?
How do you stop them (and they will) when they are out of control?
In addition, based on this report how does any autonomous vehicle without a driver know how to take directions from a flagger or any other road hazard or incident?
Until these questions can be answered especially on large vehicles, there should always be a driver present and treat these devices the same way that you would cruise control.
Eventually, flaggers will have to be equipped with radio transmitters to give autonomous vehicles the information that they need, and that their sensors cannot reliably provide.
Road infrastructure will have to be upgraded to isolate traffic from unpredictable elements like suicidal deer, but if every truck were assessed a 10 cent per mile tax for this purpose (and if the money did not get diverted for political corruption), it would not take long to fund the upgrades. 10 cents is still lot less than average drivers make in this country.
Of course, hackers will inject false flagger signals, perhaps from drones, and it will ultimately be more economical for autonomous transportation to be airborne, where almost no infrastructure investment would be required, at all. And if autonomous transportation corridors prohibited humans, then even the worst accidents only cost money – not lives. Well… and jobs… but we all see that coming, already, right? Isn’t that really what is upsetting us?
No amount of infrastructure can eliminate the need for a human driver in all situations. This is a pipe dream that will never be fully realized. Not without an “acceptable” level of collateral damage and loss of life. That’s what is not being discussed, how the industry has factored in lives lost as just part of the cost of doing business. It’s all about money and the monetary value of human lives continues to decrease.
Of course infrastructure can make autonomous travel safer than manual travel. If you put the road inside an underground tunnel, you can completely control the environment – and if you don’t allow people into the tunnel, you can move automated freight more safely there, then on traditional highways with human drivers – and virtually no risk to human life, at all.
The problem is cost. Tunnels are expensive, and – as we all complain loudly about – human drivers are cheap. Robots will take over when robots become cheaper than humans, and at least equally safe – or at least cheap enough and safe enough that liability/insurance + cost of operation is a smaller number for robots than for humans.
This has been the formula for every other industry that has implemented automation, and we’re upset because the numbers are starting to get too close for our comfort. It just costs too much for us to go get qualified to do something else, given the average age of career truck drivers. We need our jobs, and that’s not a good enough reason for the industry not to automate us into abject poverty.
And we’re the only ones who care, but – in practical, pragmatic terms – there’s very little that we can really do about it. We’re hogs in the cattle carrier, on our way to the slaughter, and all we can do about it is squeal.
Can’t wait to see fully loaded semis destroying lives because the technocrats lobby for it.
Tesla should develop an autonomous deer that doesn’t jump in front of cars. None of this would have happened if that deer was on auto-pilot.
Thats a true fact
OMG, that was hilarious! You could call it an A.P.D (automated piloted deer)
🦌………………🚛
Imagine a rig hauling 80 000 lbs hitting that trooper or a school bus, there is no driver shortage people just don’t want to drive a rig to get a dishwasher salary.
If dishwashers made the same money I do, I’d be a damn dishwasher.
The driverless trucks are all for one thing! Cutting driver pay and giving ceos more money. They don’t give a crap about anyone’s lives!
And worse to come with automated rigs.
As someone else related, we can’t even get autonomous trains – and they run on tracks. How can we get autonomous cars and/or trucks? Besides, I LIKE to drive. I won’t even let my wife drive!
I have to question the practice of cruisers partially blocking a lane during a stop, ESPECIALLY at night. During the day its much easier to see a vehicle sticking out in the driving area and be able to slow/stop in time, but at night, it may not be apparent that there’s an obstruction until its too late to avoid it. This is especially true if you have headlights in your face, and even more so if some idiot has his high beams on and won’t put them down. Auto-drive or not, I just can’t agree with partially blocking a lane like that. If you can’t pull someone over in an area where this is plenty of room to get fully off the road and have room to *somewhat* safely get out and conduct the stop, then don’t pull the vehicle over.
partially blocking the lane is to add a level of safety to all persons in the stopped vehicle. Try this: park your vehicle two feet right of the shoulder lane marker, then stand outside the driver door and bend over to see clearly inside. Your butt is hanging over into the land and until you’ve stood there with traffic whizzing by you at high rates of speed, you won’t understand.
We’re supposed to move over a lane to give a safety cushion to the emergency vehicle.
Just give them some room.
Agreed
I can answer this, not just as someone who spent 15 years in Law Enforcement but as an individual who doesn’t drive with his head up his ass.
First, LEO’s, (Law Enforcement Officers) do this for safety, not just for themselves, but others as well. There are enough videos online, and far more they can’t release due to the images being too gruesome. Men and women dying or being severely injured because a vehicle slammed into a driver outside of their vehicle, even while stopped completely inside the fogline. Having the vehicle just outside of the fogline, thus partially in the roadway, adds a layer of protection to give an added layer of protection and a fighting chance of survival.
Second, every state has laws in place for all drivers (not just professional drivers). MOVE OVER OR SLOW DOWN TO ALL EMERGENCY VEHICLES WHEN FLASHING LIGHTS ARE ACTIVATED. Some, states have expanded these laws to include tow trucks and other non-emergency vehicles performing tasks on side of roadway. These vehicle are also equipped with flashing lights. The lights on these vehicles can be seen from more than a mile away, giving ANY and ALL drivers, ample notice they are there and to make adjustments to their driving speed or lane.
Finally, if any driver, has issues where they are blinded by oncoming traffic and unable to function as a operator of the vehicle, GET OUT FROM BEHIND THE WHEEL BEFORE YOU KILL SOMEONE. Find a job working strictly daytime hours or learn how to save your night vision by looking at the fogline.
Now the common sense. Interstates have more than 2 lanes in a single direction, get over to left as soon as you see the lights and safe to make lane change. Just, because I know this question will come up, what if you can’t get over? Then slow down to a crawl if need be and pass the obstruction safely.
On rural roads, a.k.a. two lanes. Look up to the last sentence. Or, SLOW DOWN TO A CRAWL IF YOU HAVE TO AND PASS WHEN SAFE TO DO SO. Just in case you need to be shouted at to understand.
If any of this is too difficult to understand, go back to driver’s training. Training for driving both autos and trucks, take a Defensive Driving course or find someone who trains the Smith System Driving course. Or, again, get off the damn road as you are a danger to everyone else on the roadway and give professional drivers a bad name, similar to what SWIFT drivers have done for years now.
My apologies to all of the SWIFT drivers who aren’t menaces on the road. But you do work for the company that landed itself on so many videos to both make us laugh and cringe for so long. These videos have also taught us a great deal in the ‘Don’t ever do this’ way of driving. Thank you SWIFT for all your hard work in making these videos, they’ve been highly informative and very entertaining for the rest of us. Please, keep up the good work. But, please choose a point where I or my family are nowhere near you when you decide to make your videos. I don’t want to be an extra in your film.
Soapbox is now gone, along with the hostility I have when it comes to the safety of others. This is especially true for the 95% of LEO’s who are out there everyday doing a dangerous, thankless and underpaid position that most of us take for granted. Thin Blue Line supporter until the day I die.
Let all those who have a problem with what I wrote, I really don’t care. I’m a professional and can take anything thrown at me. I drive OTR because I like what it gives me. Freedom from being caged in office jobs the chance to see this country on someone else’s dime. We all have bad days or incidents where we question our career choices, but these tend to be only a short period of our overall time on the road.
Apologies for the length. Stay safe out there.
I wanted to add to that – I was driving a tank are fully loaded came up over a blind hill to merely stumble on top of a accidents with two cops blocking the lane of a two lane road and traffic control very poorly set up, I had to do an emergency stop and fortunately nobody was coming in the other lane else I’d have to go over the edge.
This could’ve been easily avoided by one of the cops walking up the hill 50 feet and putting out a flare
they didnt pull it over. the article says the officers were on the scene of a car vs deer accident.
I would love to see a autonomous truck of any sort, making deliveries, checking into facilities, opening trailers doors, backing into tight and nearly impossible spots and best off all fuel on its own. Then the challenge come for on the highway driving etc. that fictional reality is decades away despite Walmart already has a hand full of them on a dedicated 60 mile str8 stretch of highway.. pretty neat but ultimately a human has to take control to not mention program it in the first place.
They will also need to create a countrywide fleet of autonomous Police Cruisers for all the autonomous traffic roaming around on its own 🧠
There will still be yard dogs and local drivers. It’ll be the highway runs that will go to robots. Automated Ubers don’t load your luggage or make pleasant conversation, either.
Automated vehicles aren’t the answer. The root of the problem is not teaching the drivers properly.
Thank you Michael S. You are so right there are owner operators out here running for fuel only. Stop running for nothing you are only bring rates down for the rest of the owner operators. It will only take about 2 months for you the realize you are working for nothing and God forbid if you have a brake down.
Fuel is 3.25 to 3.49 a gallon do the math idiots
If the car is self-driving, is nobody responsible?….. Can a drunk “passenger” be charged with drunk driving?….. Who gets cited/charged and owns the liability for the activities of a self-driving vehicle?….As far as I know there isn’t any law against being a drunk passenger….. If somebody licensed and responsible is required to be operating the controls, then the vehicle really isn’t driverless!
Its too bad it was not a driverless big truck that hit them
Prob a good thing it was a Police vehicle. They may carry more weight in the fight against autonomous vehicles lack of safety or responsibility.
What’s the use of having a self-driving car if you have to drive it? Now we know they hit police cars and don’t know how to move over, but do they also hit deer?
New technology like mRNA.
If you choose to use an autonomous vehicle and someone is injured or killed because of that choice you should be as liable as if you choose to use a chainsaw and someone is injured or killed by that choice. Even if the chainsaw merchant tells you the chainsaw can run itself.
Who hasn’t been let down by their tech, or seen it crash, or come to the wrong conclusion from the data it’s sensors give it? Or run amok and crash a stock? Or destroy the social fabric as a social media algorithm?
Yet there is a serious Gelman Amnesia Affect when some manufacturer tells you a car or truck’s computer is now immaculate enough to trust with one of the most complex tasks we daily undertake.
If your robot harms or kills someone I don’t care what some starry-eyed developer told you. You are just as responsible as the fool who thinks they just bought and own the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Effect” – not “Affect” – in this context
Just an FYI to anyone who doesn’t know what is going on with Autonomous Vehicles. The genie is out of the bottle worldwide. China is spearheading this and Tesla is trying to beat them. There is NO STOPPING this technology. It is here and it is going to happen. There will be some growing pains along the way and some deaths. Tesla has said flat out that they are NOT responsible for the Autopilot, that it is the responsibility of the driver to be in complete control of the vehicle at all times.
China is mandating electric vehicles and the only thing holding this technology back so far is batteries. They have solved that problem with solid state lithium batteries. With 5G rolling out worldwide and Tesla’s Starlink internet beaming down nationwide, everything will be connected. It’s happening right now, today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your lives. It’s here. NOW. Not by 2035. NOW.
TuSimple in Tucson, AZ has a $2 Billion valuation with 50 level 4 autonomous trucks which run routes with a driver required behind the wheel. Werner has invested in this company and Schneider has sent people there to work as well as former FMCSA agents are also there. They are there for a reason.
This will roll out FAST! And it will be everywhere. It might take to 2030 before it reaches to every town, but it’s coming.
What was it? 20 years ago people were talking about autonomous vehicles on the horizon? The horizon is here.
You think the NTSB and the NHTSA really give a flip about safety? The FMCSA? Safety? No. It’s about money and capitalism. EOBRs are and have always been about tracking, not safety.
Every vehicle manufacturer has an electric vehicle now. Next will be Artificial Intelligence added in and internet connectivity with 100X 4G speeds. We are there. Now. Today. It’s only a matter of how fast this will roll out.
Make no mistake, China can build a hospital in 10 days. They have a state funded electric car that has a 150 mile range and top speed of 62 mph that costs about $4500 USD. NIO, XPENG, and Tesla are all hitting the roads this year. Norway is 90% electric vehicles already. Europe is going to adopt this technology right after China.
It’s here. Lawsuits or not, this is happening.
I blame you “professional drivers”. Be better.
I know what happenned. The car got his Covid shot. aha. That explains it. Cars that get Covid vaccine crash into other cars. Yep. The proof you were looking for.
I want to know WHO was tested for drugs? 😂.
The shortage is fake as to keep more drivers than jobs so to keep pay low