Technology

They call it the Model 3 because the Tesla Organ-Harvester didn't translate well to Chinese

Accurate.

Each fatality I found where a Tesla kills a motorcyclist is a cascade of 3 failures.

1. The car's cameras don't detect the biker, or it just doesn't stop for some reason.
2. The driver isn't paying attention to detect the system failure.
3. The Tesla's driver alertness tech fails to detect that the driver isn't paying attention.

Taking out the driver will make this already-unacceptably-lethal system even more lethal.

Most frustrating thing is, as far as I can tell, Tesla doesn't even have binocular vision, which makes all the claims about humans being able to drive with vision only even more blatantly stupid. At least humans have depth perception. And supposedly their goal is to outperform humans?

P.S. Volunteers needed for the Mars mission as well.

Or at least something other than just cameras. Even just adding ultrasonic senses to the front would be an improvement.

Honestly, emergency braking with LIDAR is mature and cheap enough at this point that is should be mandated for all new cars.

It's helpful to remember that not everyone has seen the same stories you have. If we want something to change, like regulators not allowing dangerous products, then raising public awareness is important. Expressing surprise that not everyone knows about something can be counterproductive.

Going beyond that, wouldn't the new information here be the statistics?

If you’re going to say your car has “full self driving”, it should have that, not “full self driving (but needs monitoring.)” or “full self driving (but it disconnects 2 seconds before impact.)”.

On Reddit perhaps

I also saw that theory! That's in the first link in the article.

The only problem with the theory: Many of the crashes are in broad daylight. No lights on at all.

I didn't include the motorcycle make and model, but I did find it. Because I do journalism, and sometimes I even do good journalism!

The models I found are: Kawasaki Vulcan (a cruiser bike, just like the Harleys you describe), Yamaha YZF-R6 (a racing-style sport bike with high-mount lights), and a Yamaha V-Star (a "standard" bike, fairly low lights, and generally a low-slung bike). Weirdly, the bike models run the full gamut of the different motorcycles people ride on highways, every type is represented (sadly) in the fatalities.

I think you're onto something with the faulty depth sensors. Sensing distance is difficult with optical sensors. That's why Tesla would be alone in the motorcycle fatality bracket, and that's why it would always be rear-end crashes by the Tesla.

Whatever it is, it's unacceptable and they should really ban Tesla's implementation until they fix some fundamental issues.

The ridiculous thing is, it has 3 cameras pointing forward, you only need 2 to get stereoscopic depth perception with cameras...why the fuck are they not using that!?

Edit: I mean, I know why, it's because it's cameras with three different lenses used for different things (normal, wide angle, and telescopic) so they're not suitable for it, but it just seems stupid to not utilise that concept when you insist on a camera only solution.