Tesla urged The Dawn Project to delete recordings of their cars hitting dummies


Tesla has asked The Dawn Project, an organisation devoted to getting Tesla’s “full self-driving” technology off the roads, to remove recordings of their self-driving cars hitting child-size dummies.

Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car firm, sent a cease-and-desist letter regarding the advertisement, which appears to show one of their cars in self-driving mode striking a child-size model at 20 mph to emphasise how dangerous the software reportedly is.

The video’s narrator, billionaire Dan O’Dowd, who founded The Dawn Project, asks for the outright banning of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta software, calling it “the worst commercial software I’ve ever seen.”

O’Dowd was accused of “disseminating false information to the public regarding the capabilities of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving” in the response letter.

While stating again that “independent safety agencies have evaluated Tesla’s safety at the highest levels,” the letter questions if the Tesla cars in the video had full self-driving turned on.

The letter relied on a story by Electrek, which claimed that the software was not used in The Dawn Project’s video but which The Dawn Project later refuted with facts.

The letter said that the “so-called tests” “misuse and distort the capabilities of Tesla’s technology, and neglect widely acknowledged testing undertaken by independent agencies as well as the experiences shared by our customers.”

O’Dowd was reacting to the letter, according to Elizabeth Markowitz, a representative for The Dawn Project, by allocating an additional $2 million for the promotion of the video.

Tesla urges drivers to be ready as the technology “may do the wrong thing at the worst time,” allowing Tesla drivers to have their cars automatically change lanes, steer, and brake in residential and urban settings.

Green Hills Software, which develops operating systems for cars and aeroplanes, is owned by billionaire O’Dowd.

He claims that the reason he is attempting to wrangle Tesla’s software is that it is simply subpar and that the nature of self-driving software necessitates that it be as faultless as is practical in order to prevent accidents.

Self-driving automobiles are one of the things that we have been working hard to connect and put computers in charge of, according to O’Dowd.

Over 100,000 drivers in America and Canada are testing and trialling the software, as O’Dowd mentions in the video.

After passing a safety inspection or after being chosen in some other way, those drivers are given permission to test the software, but installing it in compatible vehicles costs $12,000.

The argument between O’Dowd and Musk is the most recent chapter in a protracted conflict between Tesla’s supporters and detractors who cast doubt on the business and its software.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) research concluded that self-driving or driver assistance technology was to blame for over 400 car accidents in the US during a ten-month period.

Six people died and five people suffered serious injuries in those crashes, which took place between July 1, 2021, and May 15, this year. The vast majority of those crashes, 273 out of 392, involved Teslas.

In addition, the NHTSA has started 35 specific crash investigations involving Tesla vehicles where the use of ADAS was suspected.

In those Tesla investigations, 14 crash fatalities in total have been documented, including a crash in April in Washington that claimed the lives of three persons.

According to NHTSA administrator Steven Cliff, “These technologies hold enormous promise to increase safety, but we need to evaluate how these vehicles are operating in real-world scenarios.”

This will make it easier for our investigators to see any emerging probable defect tendencies.

In April, video showed a Tesla being’summoned’ across a Washington airstrip by its owner before colliding with a $2 million private aircraft.

After colliding with the Cirrus Vision at the airstrip, which is thought to be in Spokane, the errant Model Y continued to travel.

A guy who allegedly blew a red light and murdered two people in 2019 while operating a Tesla on Autopilot was charged by California authorities in January.

The 27-year-old Kevin George Aziz Riad entered a not guilty plea to two charges of vehicular homicide.

On December 29, 2019, according to authorities, the driver’s Tesla Model S departed a motorway quickly, passed a red light, and then collided with a Honda Civic. The Civic’s two occupants passed away at the site.

The Model Y went into the wrong lane and was struck by another car, according to the driver’s complaint to the agency.

According to the complaint, the SUV alerted the driver about halfway through the turn, and the driver then attempted to turn the wheel to avoid other cars.

But the driver said that the automobile suddenly took over and “pushed itself into the wrong lane.”

Tesla claims that while Autopilot enables the vehicles to automatically brake and steer within their lanes, it does not give them the ability to drive independently.

Additional fatal collisions related to Tesla’s autopilot feature

China on January 20, 2016:

The Tesla Model S Gao Yaning, 23, was driving collided with a road sweeper on a motorway in Handan, a city roughly 300 miles south of Beijing, and he was killed as a result. According to Chinese media, Autopilot was activated.

In Williston, Florida, on May 7, 2016:

Joshua D. Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, lost his life when the Tesla Model S’s cameras were unable to discriminate between the white side of a turning tractor-trailer and the bright sky.

The NTSB determined that the crash’s probable causes were a truck driver’s failure to surrender the right of way and a car driver’s inattention brought on by an overreliance on vehicle automation.

The Tesla Autopilot feature allowed the driver to become dangerously disengaged from driving, according to the NTSB. The automobile contained a DVD player and Harry Potter films.

Walter Huang, an Apple software engineer, was killed on March 23, 2018, in Mountain View, California, in a collision on U.S. Highway 101 while his Tesla’s Autopilot was activated.

Federal officials discovered that the car reached 71 mph just seconds before colliding with a highway barrier.

The Model X SUV did not brake or attempt to steer around the barrier in the three seconds prior to the disaster in Silicon Valley, according to data, the NTSB stated in a preliminary report on the collision.

On March 1, 2019, Jeremy Banner, 50, lost his life in Delray, Florida after his 2018 Tesla Model 3 collided with a semi-truck.

According to NTSB investigators, Banner activated the autopilot feature about 10 seconds prior to the collision, but the autopilot made no evasive attempts to prevent the collision.

Houston, Texas, on April 17, 2021

Two individuals died in a Tesla crash in Texas that hit a tree and caught fire: the driver, Doctor William Varner, and his friend Everette Talbot.

According to police, it was clear that no one was in the driver’s seat when the accident occurred on April 17 in Houston’s affluent The Woodlands suburb.

Tesla, however, had disputed the police’s assertions, claiming that the steering wheel’s deformity suggested that someone was probably in the driver’s seat.

When the Tesla Model S, which had been purchased used off of eBay in January, crashed into a tree and caught fire, Varner, 59, and Talbot, 69, both perished.

Los Angeles, California, May 5, 2021

On May 5, at around 2.30 am, Steven Michael Hendrickson, 35, lost his life when his white Tesla Model 3 collided with a semi-truck that had overturned.

The married father of two shared social media footage of himself driving the electric car without using the steering wheel or gas pedal before to his passing.

About 50 miles east of Los Angeles, on the 210 Freeway, close to Fontana, a collision occurred.

According to a preliminary inquiry, the Tesla’s Autopilot partially autonomous driving technology “was engaged” just before the collision.

A representative said that no definitive answer had been found about the precise reason of the tragic collision, which was the 29th involving a Tesla that the government agency the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had looked into.

A highway police investigation states that the Mack truck that the Tesla struck with had crashed and overturned just five minutes before, obstructing two lanes of the roadway.


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