The U.S. government’s road safety agency is again investigating Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system, this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust.

In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said.

Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”

  • aramis87@fedia.io
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    18 days ago

    What pisses me off about this is that, in conditions of low visibility, the pedestrian can’t even hear the damned thing coming.

    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      I hear electric cars all the time, they are not much quieter than an ice car. We don’t need to strap lawn mowers to our cars in the name of safety.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        18 days ago

        I think they are a lot more quiet. I’ve turned around and seen a car 5 meter away from me, and been surprised. That never happens with fuel cars.

        I think if you are young, maybe there isn’t a big difference since you have perfect hearing. But middle aged people lose quite a bit of that unfortunately.

        • idunnololz@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          I’m relatively young and it can still be difficult to hear them especially the ones without a fake engine sound. Add some city noise and they can be completely inaudible.

          • spacesatan@lazysoci.al
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            18 days ago

            ‘city noise’ you mean ICE car noise. We should be trying to reduce noise pollution not compete with it.

            • idunnololz@lemmy.world
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              18 days ago

              It’s not safe for cars to be totally silent when moving imo since I’d imagine it’s more likely to get run over.