Tesla’s self-driving function was found to have fatal flaws

The Autopilot function on Tesla electric vehicles can be activated and used even without the driver’s seat.
In a test conducted by Consumer Reports (CR), a safety hole in Tesla cars is discovered when the Autopilot function can be activated even if no one is behind the wheel.

To do this, a Consumer Reports expert used a chain to hang a heavy object at the bottom end and tie it to the steering wheel to simulate the presence of a human hand on the wheel. At the same time, the seat belt is also installed pretending that someone is using the driver’s seat. Then, the driver moves to the extra seat and activates Autopilot driving assistance mode. As a result, the Tesla Model Y ran for hundreds of meters on the test track without giving any warning about no one in the driver’s seat. The Tesla Model Y is deceived that someone is behind the wheel and operates in Autopilot mode. Screenshots. Through this test, an expert from Consumer Reports found that Tesla’s system does not use seat sensors and small cameras to track the driver’s eye movement like other manufacturers. Such systems are recently introduced in some Subaru, Ford and General Motors vehicles. Instead, Tesla uses sensors at the steering wheel and seat belts to detect if someone is behind the wheel. Consumer Reports’ experiments have shown weaknesses of this practice. Last weekend, a 2019 Tesla Model S crashed into a tree in the Houston suburbs, Texas (USA), killing two people on the car. Police said they believed that one person was in the front passenger seat and the other was in the back seat at the time of the accident. Before this serious incident, Elon Musk, the CEO of the electric car company, explained on Twitter that the recovered data records showed that the Autopilot was not activated and the car that had crashed did not purchase the Full Self Driving feature. fully self-driving). Tesla believes the car’s Autopilot function won’t be activated without the driver’s seat. But according to Consumer Reports’ testing, it seems that the system is quite easy to be “deceived”. Police said that no one was in the driver’s seat when the Tesla crashed in Texas. Photo: Matt Dougherty. Currently, Autopilot only offers level 2 autonomous functionality, which only adds active safety features to limit collisions. The driver when activating Autopilot is always warned to put his hand on the steering wheel to intervene when the software does not work as expected. Still, many Tesla owners still find ways to make their cars drive themselves, putting their lives in danger.