In the US, the company is recalling almost all of its vehicles to fix a fault
Are Autonomous Full Self Driving Compatible with Tesla’s Recall System? A Comment on NHTSA’s ‘Inadequacy of the Autopilot System’
While the NHTSA safety recall report states that the update already issued to some vehicles will limit where the Autosteer can be used, it’s not clear how that will relate to the ongoing roll out.
“If the driver attempts to engage Autosteer when conditions are not met for engagement, the feature will alert the driver it is unavailable through visual and audible alerts, and Autosteer will not engage,” the recall documents said.
The agency says its investigation found Autopilot’s method of ensuring that drivers are paying attention can be inadequate and “can lead to foreseeable misuse of the system.”
The documents say the software update will encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility.
Autopilot includes features called Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control, with Autosteer intended for use on limited access freeways when it’s not operating with a more sophisticated feature called Autosteer on City Streets.
The driver monitoring system should be stronger in order to detect whether a driver is on the steering wheel.
Tesla says on its website that Autopilot and a more sophisticated Full Self Driving system cannot drive autonomously and are meant to help drivers who have to be ready to intervene at all times. The test of full self driving is being performed byTesla owners on public roads
In its statement Wednesday, NHTSA said the Tesla investigation remains open “as we monitor the efficacy of Tesla’s remedies and continue to work with the automaker to ensure the highest level of safety.”
“It’s progress, but little progress,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings, a robotics expert who wrote a 2020 paper evaluating the risks of Tesla’s autopilot system.
But Cummings, who served for a year as a senior advisor for safety at NHTSA, isn’t convinced this will be enough to prevent future incidents. “It’s very vague,” she said.
“This has all the earmarks of a compromise to get the remedy out and avoid another year of negotiation between NHTSA and Tesla,” he said. “So the remedy will likely not be as robust as NHTSA would like to see.”
Tesla’s driver monitoring system, which includes torque sensors in the steering wheel to detect hand placement and an in-cabin camera to track head movements, is inadequate and can be easily fooled, Abuelsamid said. The torque sensors are prone to false positives, such as when drivers try to trick the system by adding a weight to the steering wheel that counteracts automatic movements, and false negatives, like when the wheel fails to detect a driver’s hands if they are holding it steady.
