… it’s a learning experience. {{ LOL }}
intercst
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I’m gonna guess that car is ruined. But I also have to wonder about sitting on top of that giant battery pack, while simultaneously sitting in water - and hoping to be able to swim away. That can’t be good.
Electricity and water. Seems that should be programmed in, somehow.
So the guy just charged into the water? After that, he was probably a little wired.
Who knew that driving a Tesla over a cliff was safer than driving through a flood. At least there’s no oncoming traffic.
If you watch the video or read the article, you find out that the driver want’s to sue the city AND Tesla. That’s hilarious.
The city put a warning sign up - which he ignored. And Tesla tells you very clearly that you have to be prepared at any moment to take over from FSD - which he didn’t do. Clearly looking to blame anyone but himself for his own mistake.
Man up and own it, buddy. Cause if you don’t learn from this, Darwin is waiting near by to clean up the gene pool.
–Peter
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Tourists drive a car down a boat ramp into the harbor under full human control:
And incredibly somebody did it again two weeks later:
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Pretty sure Tesla devs didn’t program it to detect water… and its never, still, been programmed to force override stupid drivers… just more sensationalist clickbait. In other news, a number of drivers drove their ICE cars into flooded road areas and totaled their cars. 110 years ago one of those newfangled cars blew up and killed the driver.
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All jokes aside, I think the Tesla AI system should definitely learn about water, and what depth of water to avoid. And they very likely will do so.
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Depth of water is hard to gauge, except by being in it.
The cars can all be equipped with a “musk-o-meter” ™. Whenever they approach water, they take out their musk-o-meter ™, and put it in head first. If the hair gets wet, the car stops and goes no further. Next, imagine rain on a parking lot full of Tesla cars…
How do humans decide whether or not to enter the puddle with their car?
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They know the roads they drive on. This is a fun issue around here. I drove through one fairly deep puddle across the road (dip under a bridge) but I already knew it was reasonably safe, as I had driven the same route for years. It is when you do NOT know that you need to be careful. AVs should be able to gauge water depth based on “cumulative/historic info” from the other cars taking the same route when there was NO WATER. If they can’t, then they are (by definition) not an AV.
From what I have seen, they do it poorly. We have a number of underpasses under the train tracks around here and they used to flood badly in any good rain. Amazing how many people would try to go through anyway. And, now that the drainage is much better, there are also a lot of people who won’t drive through.
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The data agrees. Most flood deaths are people in vehicles
Oh good grief.
From the OP article:
the car aquaplaned and the rear wheels lost traction, sending the vehicle sliding toward the left side of the road and plunging into deepwater.
I read that as the car LEFT THE ROAD, into a lower area off the side of the road.
Further, the car HYDROPLANED… As in " skidded out of control", due to no traction between the tires and the road surface.
If he’d slowed down and not hydroplaned, most likely there’d have been no there there.
$&$&—
Around me in central TX, especially the Hill Country, every couple years there will be heavy rains and flash flood and road flood warnings to not drive through water on the roadway.
And always somebody will be “in the news” being rescued from a flooded creek, off the roof of their car, etc. Occasionally it’s tragic.
Often accompanied by lurid tales of school busses washed off the road. Mother’s and children, etc. Anything to hype the story.
I don’t see the OP situation as being terribly difficult to AI train. Find a “water on road” situation, send a dozen Teslas to “experience” it real world, create some simulations, train the AI, OTA update, and voilá! Trained and 80% solved! A few more iterations … 90% solved.
Then … 99%. …
Then 99.999%
ralph.
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I’ve never owned an EV, but I’ve read that the tires the manufacturers put on them are to enhance the miles/range of the vehicle, not for traction and grip in less than ideal conditions. Not certain that is true.
A couple of winters ago, at the main ( paved ) xc ski trailhead parking area, I joined in with a few other guys to help a Prius get out of the parking lot on a somewhat icy day. There was a little, but steep, hill that everybody had to drive up to get out. Watched the Prius’s woeful couple of efforts to get up, then we pushed it up, as it was clear they were never going to make it up. Not sure if the Prius had bald or sub-par tires, but they were most definitely not getting any grip.
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It is true in my experience. We ended up selling our Volt after moving to Wisconsin.
DB2
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Neither my 2010 Prius nor my 2019 RAV4 hybrid had/have “EV” tires. The tires are regular car tires. The RAV4 has Costco Michellins. The Prius got Toyota and then Discount Tire “on sale”.
A few years ago, I declined to drive the Prius from my Ruidoso NM hotel to Ski Apache, to downhill ski.
I rented a 4x4 Jeep Grand Cherokee, instead.
Even that was dicey.
Point is that I drove the Prius as a “Reasonable Person” would.
ralph
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Good to know. I know from mtn-bike trail races that I want the max tire pressure that still gives me some grip. Too high psi, and it feels like floating on ice, not good.
I’d like an EV, but it is not a good mode of transport for the northern climate ( so far, keeping an open mind ). I’m outside in all kinds of weather, subzero is no big deal but I need the vehicle to start up when I get back to it. If it don’t, then it could get a little dangerous, or very uncomfortable. Too old for that.
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I’ve read that Tesla has a method that cars (only those models with adaptable suspensions, the S and the X models as I recall) detecting large potholes will report the location of the pothole to Tesla and later their mapping system can supply those locations to all the cars driving in the area so that the self-driving software can attempt to avoid those potholes. Maybe they can do similar with deep puddles?
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Badly, sometimes. But then there is a reserve of intelligence that should be able to distinguish between a half-inch of water covering a parking lot - and a lake or flooded road.
Not quite that easy, I suspect.
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