Month: May 2018

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Getty/ Tesla)

Does Tesla's Autopilot software have something against emergency services? That's a flippant question, but there's something underneath it. On Tuesday, a Model S electric vehicle—with Autopilot engaged, according to the driver—crashed into a police car in Laguna Beach, California. The police car was unoccupied at the time, but the Tesla driver sustained minor injuries. Last month, another Model S, also under Autopilot, slammed into the back of a stationary fire truck in South Jordan, Utah, resulting in a broken ankle for the Tesla driver. And in January, a third Autopiloted Model S plowed into the back of another fire engine, this time in Culver City, California.

It's probably best to avoid the conspiracy theories, though. It's not some bug with Autopilot's sensors and flashing lights—it's more like inattentive drivers who should be paying attention to the road. As we learned last year, automatic emergency braking is only trained to work in a relatively narrow set of circumstances, typically in the case of a moving vehicle that's directly ahead of the car. So a stationary emergency vehicle on the shoulder of the road, particularly one at an angle, might not get classified properly to trigger the function.

It has been a rough couple of weeks for Autopilot. The suite of advanced driver assistance systems, which includes adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, has also been blamed for destroying a Model 3 in Greece last week. In that case, the facts are even murkier—the car was on an unsupported road trip at the time, and Tesla had warned the owner before he set off.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina—For various reasons, this article is long overdue. We've looked at motorsport at Ars on many occasions, in many different forms. But a look through the archives finds barely a mention of NASCAR, admittedly an error on my part. Stock car racing is more popular in the US than any other motorsport, but it also has a reputation—or a stereotype—as a technology-free zone. But as anyone who follows the sport closely knows, there's little justification for that stereotype these days.

Although we had an invite to check out last year's season finale at Homestead in Miami, somehow that didn't feel like the right way to take a proper look at the sport today. I'm not usually one to turn down a day at the track, but it felt like the resulting article could have ended up as a piece of cultural tourism. It would be easy to trade in stereotypes about NASCAR fans—just like every other racing fan, but different and more numerous—and offhand remarks about the visceral impact of 40-odd stock cars blasting past in a pack at speeds often well north of 160mph (257km/h).

I'd rather leave that to the lifestyle publications; people come to Ars to read about technology, after all. So luckily, a better opportunity presented itself. Instead of a warm weekend away in late November, how about a trip to Charlotte in the off-season for a proper look behind the scenes? Calls were made, meetings were lined up, and so it was I found myself driving the 400 miles from Washington, DC, down to North Carolina, a surprisingly easy road trip thanks to a Cadillac CT6 equipped with Super Cruise. After a day spent talking to people throughout the sport—including NASCAR's technology development team, its R&D Center, and some chaps at Ford—I'm now reassessing my ideas about which motorsport series is the techiest of them all.

Enlarge (credit: Paul Istoan / Flickr)

Rather than defend against a threatened trademark lawsuit, a California-based maritime-news website has now stopped selling T-shirts with the historic shipping icon known as the Plimsoll Line.

"Yes, we got feedback from a few lawyers, and they all agreed that while we have a very strong case, our profits on those items are a fraction of the cost of a legal defense," gCaptain's owner, John Konrad, emailed Ars. "They suggested we save the money and remove the items to comply with the request... so we did. "

He added that the company acceded to the demands brought on behalf of another company, Plimsoll Gear, which has a trademark on the Plimsoll Line for T-shirts and other items. gCaptain stopped selling its Plimsoll T-shirts on May 20.