Posted on 06/30/2016 6:32:42 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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 he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road," Baressi told The Associated Press in an interview from his home in Palm Harbor, Florida. It was not immediately clear whether Tesla's systems would allow a movie to play while the car was being driven and there were no references to the movie in initial police reports.
Brown's published obituary described him as a member of the Navy SEALs for 11 years and founder of Nexu Innovations Inc., working on wireless Internet networks and camera systems. In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed Brown's work with the SEALs and said he left the service in 2008.
Brown was an enthusiastic booster of his 2015 Tesla Model S and in April credited its sophisticated Autopilot system for avoiding a crash when a commercial truck swerved into his lane on an interstate. He published a video of the incident online. "Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent," Brown wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Tesla owners are the lycra wearing cyclists of the four wheelers.
Early adopters are guinea pigs. Somebody has to be the experimental sacrifice. Better for the rest of us.
Sad but this is how technology works. You know, omeletes and breaking a few eggs and such.
It is just a cost, like R&D. They budget for it.
I’d take a four-wheeler driver over those effete @$$holes any day. And I drove a three-wheeler back in the day.
I guess there is some comfort knowing that many of the liberals will buy these vehicles. Conservatives know better than to trust something that is not under their own control. The’s a lesson to be learned there if the libs would only heed it.
< Calling it an Autopilot system is a bad idea. It is not an autopilot in any way, shape, or form.
Maybe they should rename it the Hastings remote control feature?
Yeah, I’m sure that’s the case. Probably self-insured.
Driverless cars can kill people
This link better explains the accident and has a photo of the road.
http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-driver-using-autopilot-killed-crash-tractor-trailer/
Blame is going to come down to how fast the Tesla was going...the truck driver can only see as far as line of sight will allow him.
This accident happened in May...and Tesla gets real time data from all its autopilot enabled cars...so they know how fast he was going. Seeing as they haven’t blamed the truck driver, I’d say the safe bet is the Tesla was moving fast. We shall see.
He was trying it out in his backyard...his house was built on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean.
James Heselden. The cliff was actually overlooking a river. He was riding his Segway and backed up to let a dog walker pass. Apparently he was riding in a difficult area but he may have been killed by politeness.
An article on him says that mourners at his funeral included American soldiers who said that his invention of a bomb-proof barrier (Hesco Bastion) saved their lives.
“Driverless cars can kill people”
Drinking too much water can kill people. Choking on a piece of banana can kill people. The question is whether or not something “can” kill. But the right question is how does it COMPARE with the alternatives?
I think he lost his head.
The Google prototype’s self-driving abilities are powered mainly by a LIDAR array on top of the vehicle, which — in simple terms — measures distance by pointing lasers at targets surrounding the car and analyzing the light that’s reflected. When questioned on whether future Tesla cars would need more sensors, potentially including LIDAR, Musk suggests that this technology “doesn’t make sense” and is “unnecessary” in the context of an autonomous car.
LIDAR would have sensed the tractor trailer as a solid body by the reflected signal. Passive optical failed in this circumstance.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Sorry, no sympathies for the gamer. He brought it on himself. Sympathies for the guy who actually had his hands on the wheel.
“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.”
Stupid is quite frequently lethal. This is as it should be.
L
“It can only be attributable to human error”
Surprise, surprise.....
“Tesla owners are the lycra wearing cyclists of the four wheelers.
Friends in the EBay have a daughter, who started driving last year and in a couple of months drove to a private school for 30 miles each way for the school term.
I got to talk to her after a year of successful driving on a tough road. I asked her what vehicles had the worst and most dangerous drivers.
Based on the kamikazi drivers in our area, I expected to hear BMW drivers and muscle car drivers like in our area.
Without hesitating, she replied said the worse drivers, were the high end Audi vehicle drivers and Tesla drivers. Next were the mothers driving luxury SUVs loaded with kids.
I’m reminded of a texting accident in which a car went beneath a trailer. The driver’s head was found in the backseat and his hand was still clutching his cellphone.
Are there no editors nowadays?
He wasn’t killed by the tractor trailer
he was killed by the Tesla!
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