One of Tesla’s most innovative proposals is that referring to the set of driving assistance systems, a pack that the company insists on calling with terms that invite us to think that they make their vehicles fully autonomous, when in fact this is not the case. We already talked about it when the company opened the beta of its Full Self-Driving to more users, and that it actually came from before, with its highly promoted Auto Pilot.
As I have mentioned on more than one occasion, I think there is an important difference between the professionals who work on the design of driver assistance functions for Tesla vehicles, and those responsible for marketing (besides Elon Musk himself) when it comes to selling what their vehicles are capable ofwhat can we expect from them and, of course, what we should not do if we appreciate our lives and those of others.
As we can read in The Verge, Recently there have been two accidents with fatalities, in which two Tesla vehicles would have been involved in the use of automatic driving functions. Both incidents would be being investigated by the US federal agency responsible for highway safety, which means that this agency currently has 16 investigations related to Tesla open.
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One of the two accidents took place in Florida, where a Tesla would have fatally run over a pedestrianthe other, in Florida, where a Tesla with two occupants would have collided with the back of a truck with a trailer that at that time was parked in a rest area. In both cases there are open investigations and, according to the investigators, Tesla would be collaborating in both investigations.
The doubts, in both cases, have as much to do with whether the vehicles were circulating autonomously as, whether they were or not, whether the emergency systems of both cars should have acted to avoid the collisions both with the pedestrian and with the trailer of the truck. We will still have to wait until we know the result of both investigations, as well as part of the rest of those already opened by the US federal agency.
Still, it is becoming increasingly clear that Tesla should rethink communication regarding its assistance systems. It is unquestionable and therefore indisputable that the company has made enormous progress, and that it is currently at the forefront. However, the mix of misleading communication and a few accidents can be devastating even in the face of generally good results.
