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-   -   Tesla owner switches on Autopilot and chills in passenger seat; court suspends his driving licence (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/198210-tesla-owner-switches-autopilot-chills-passenger-seat-court-suspends-his-driving-licence.html)

Bhavesh Patel, a resident of Nottingham, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving in a court on April 20, 2018. He was recently caught on video sitting in the front passenger seat of his Tesla Model S with the Autopilot on.

According to the eyewitness who recorded the video, Patel was seen sitting on the front passenger seat with his hands behind his head. There was moderate traffic on the road at the time and vehicles were moving at about 64 km/h.

The local police issued a notice to the driver after the video went viral showing Patel, the sole occupant of the car of the driver seat on the M1 highway. His driving license was suspended for 18 months and the court also ordered him to carry out 10 days of rehabilitation in addition to 100 hours of unpaid work and levied a fine of GBP 1,800. Police issued a statement saying that he not only endangered his own life, but also of others on the highway.

Tesla has said that the autonomous features in their cars are designed to work in tandem with an attentive driver. Further, the driver must be able to take over the control of the car at all times.

Source - Herts Police Youtube channel

Link to the Team-BHP News

That is strange. I would expect Tesla to have a simple sensor to check if the driver seat is occupied. How did the auto-pilot engage without anyone sitting in the driver seat.

" His driving license was suspended for 18 months and the court also ordered him to carry out 10 days of rehabilitation in addition to 100 hours of unpaid work and levied a fine of GBP 1,800."

^ Just look at the punishment. No wonder why people in the developed countries drive so much better than India. Hope we will follow the same in the next 100 - 200 years.:Frustrati

Exactly my point.

If that is the case, how did the autonomous feature worked without the driver in his seat? I can predict only two answers:
1. Design flaw in the autonomous feature of the car.
OR
2. The driver cheated the sensors by some act such as fastening driver seat belt, placing some weight on the driver seat, etc.

Even if we assume that the driver cheated the sensors, I feel that the sensors of such an important feature must be foolproof.

Apparently, this is what he said when the cops pulled him over:

This is a guy who still thinks it is ok to do so, unless you get caught. How stupid can you be?

Jeroen

Stupid! This is the mantra nearly all of India lives with.

There was a dialogue in one Bollywood potboiler, Jism. A smalltimer who provides a bomb to the (anti) hero says to him - Jurm karneka pakde nahi Jaane ka (not the exact thing as I can't recollect, it translates as: better not get caught. It's ok then)

Where is Darwin's theory at work when you need it the most

But good point by Bh.P. Tesla can detect when the driver's hands are not on the steering wheel but can't detect when there is no driver? I guess they underestimated the ingenuity of laziness.

People like this chap should be banned for life from driving. Another example to prove that money can't buy common sense.

Well for those who are saying why can't Tesla add another sensing mechanism to check whether he is holding steering wheel or not, this may reduce such incidents but still, it won't be foolproof. Because those who want to indulge in such miserable acts can still hold the steering wheel and do careless driving. And people like him will always come up with some system to bypass such safety systems.

:OT
I will tell an example from my experience. During my last assignment, we had an accident in a small press due to operator's hand got stuck between the ram and the die. It had two push buttons and need to be pressed at same time to start the operation. This to ensure both hands are aways away from the ram travel path. One operator bypassed one push button from the inside (by keeping the push button element pressed and tied with a string). Though from outside everything looks normal. Which caused the accident.

After an investigation, we had to modify the machine by adding extra safety features to tackle this kind of smart guys. So we can keep doing enhancements for improving the safety. But there will be always some loopholes for those who want to trick the system.

A true idiot. No doubt he used his ingenuity to trick the car into believing he was still driving. The autopilot version of weighing down the seatbelt, perhaps.

In all this, I am puzzled that Tesla (and other autonomous car manufacturers) get away without even a reprimand. It's patently clear the autopilot technology is not failsafe. Surely their responsibility does end with putting a disclaimer that the driver needs to be attentive at all times?

What a spectacular idiot. How can someone lack such amount of common sense. Good on the authorities to award a significant punishment.

Perhaps Tesla, too is discovering the many ways of "jugaad" that can be done to trick their software. :Frustrati

While action by cops is good in current context but surely autonomous vehicles are going to loom large in near future. As the percentage of autonomous vehicle increases and vehicles start talking to each other more highway travel will become safe. Especially in mass transit systems.
Idiots are important elements in stress testing systems and weeding out bugs.

Definitely needs legislation & a fool-proof system. I don't know how Tesla's system works, but if it does without anyone in the driver's seat, that is a scary situation. Considering how this news has trended, it'll certainly give ideas to other Tesla owners. Imagine someone needs to send his car to his wife's office (as an example) - he'll just set the car up and have it drive itself with no one in the car!! If it works without someone in the driver's seat, it very well may without anyone in the passenger seat too :Shockked:.

Tesla can be summoned and also self park itself right? Maybe thats why it doesnt need to detect a driver to be driven? Even then this can be and should be restricted to crawling speeds.

How attentive can a driver be if he is not fully engaged in the driving to interfere in an emergency, the reflex time would be too high as he is not primed.:Frustrati

For the first time am glad our roads and infrastructure are not good enough for fully autonomous vehicles:D

Absolutely. Self parking/summoning and autonomous drivings are two different things. I would expect they have systems in place to ensure driver is in seat when auto pilot is turned on, and this guy some how managed to fool it. Tesla may do well to investigate and fix if something did not work as expected.

If I remember right, I was told during the test drive that the auto pilot periodically requires the driver to place a hand on the steering. If that is not done, the autopilot would disengage. Not very sure though.

Look at the positive side - Police took action on the basis of a viral video. We have hundreds if not thousand of videos from India which show people indulging in street racing, dangerous driving, wrong side driving, road rage etc and yet, no action ever happens. Or happens in very rare cases. I wish our law and order was just as proactive. Booking such people, making an example out of them is a great way to tame the masses. Wonder when it will happen.