The placement of those taillights on both bikes involved—a Yamaha V-Star and a Harley-Davidson Sportster—matters if both cars were relying on Tesla Vision to tell them where the next vehicle on the highway was. Tesla Vision relies on a system of multiple cameras and AI, which interprets the visual data gathered by the cameras.
At night, it’s difficult to make out vehicle silhouettes—but you can usually see taillights. If the AI perceived those close-together taillights as being faraway car headlights instead of a much closer motorcycle—well, there’s the problem. Had a radar been involved, perhaps the problem could have been avoided—but we can’t know for sure.
What we do know is that two riders are dead—and also, that NHTSA data released in June, 2022 revealed that “Tesla’s vehicles have been found to shut off the advanced driver-assistance system, Autopilot, around one second before impact,” according to the Washington Post. That observation came from analysis of 273 previous Tesla Autopilot-involved crashes.
What can riders do? Apart from reaching out to your local legislators to demand action, the most immediate suggestion that Ryan F9 has is that if you’re riding on a highway at night, and you see headlights behind you—move from side to side in your lane. Hopefully, that movement will alert the possible AI behind you that you’re a vehicle that’s much closer than it might expect. It’s a frustrating bandaid on a serious problem, but at the same time, it might not be terrible advice to keep in mind.
