Tesla Autopilot Crashes into Motorcycle Riders - Why? 

Since this video was filmed, Ingrid Noon was rear ended and killed by a 2020 Tesla Model 3 at 2:11am in Boca Raton, FL. She was riding a Kawasaki Vulcan S cruiser. The Sheriff’s Office confirmed driver impairment and has yet to release any information pertaining to Autopilot. [Update: CNN reports Autopilot was engaged during this crash.]

Part of the excellence of this channel is that F9 knows when to treat a subject with humour, jokes, and innuendo; and when to treat it with reverence, sincerity and seriousness. This is a perfect example of not only knowing what you need to say, but how you need to say it. I applaud the whole team at F9 for their work.

RIP to those poor souls who went out for a ride and never came home. Thank you, FortNine team, for giving their sacrifice some meaning by educating us all.

I am a 72 year old Australian man with no car. I get around by either walking or cycling or public transport . Am thinking about buying a moderately sized motorcycle for occasionally traveling further distances. Your videos have given me great information on keeping me alive if I do buy a motorcycle. I do have a motorcycle license.

"Telsa are selling future features today, but today 2 motorcyclists are dead" That was a really well written, hard hitting line

The taillight theory reminded me of an old Fortnine video about the dangers of using high beams which could end up being mistaken as a distant car when it's actually a motorcycle up close

This is anecdotal, but I ride 20 miles to/from work daily in Los Angeles while lane sharing. It has become more evident to me that Tesla drivers are not paying attention. My S1000xr has 4 clearwater lights up front making me extremely visible, and I still notice more Tesla's than other cars not moving over. I can also see them either looking at their phones or playing with the touch screen as I pass. I'm not looking forward to trucks and SUVs having this technology abused.

How governments allow this to be tested on the road by customers is beyond me.

Airplane autopilot technology relies heavily on having redundancy because technology can fail. If you have something else to fall on you still have a chance of getting to your destination. When that fails you have two pilots.

So a similar thing happened with my Dad recently. He bought a Mercedes and said he needs to find out if he can turn off the mirror Blind Spot monitoring feature. Basically it lights up on the mirror if someone is in the blindspot. He used to ride motorcycles and noticed that sometimes it doesn't pick cars and particularly motorbikes up in the blindspot. If this safety feature that people come to rely on sometimes doesn't work. Its potentially worse than not having it at all. I guess the question we need to ask is what number of acceptable "glitch" fatilities are better than the poor driver actions on the road currently. There will be a balance point in a spreadsheet that insurance companies and goverments find acceptable.

I ran into a similar, but inverted issue when riding my motorcycle at night. I saw two headlights, close together, high up in my field of view on a narrow country road. I interpreted it as a car far away, and continued at the same speed. Only when the tractor was less than 150ft away did I realize I was riding at a high rate of speed at an immovable object. I was lucky. The tractor had slowed down, my bike had anti-lock brakes, and I managed to slow, and evade the tractor in time. It did scare the shit out of me...

I used to teach bicycle safety and commented to my students that they had to be triply observant: 1) For pedestrians, 2) For themselves, 3) For cars. Human drivers often will see pedestrians but miss cyclists (just a few years ago, I was nearly hit while turning left by a speeder who didn't see me, the bike I was on with multiple flashing lights and reflectors); we're pretty small objects on the roads (and sadly, not all roads have defined bike lanes). A problem I often have to so-called self-driving cars is that they respect those bike lanes (which typically only have a thin stripe separating them from the main road) even less than human drivers do. It's only a matter of time before some Tesla driver decides to use the "auto-pilot" in areas with bicycles and kills one. Frankly, I can't say I'm a big fan of Teslas or self-driving cars right now, and Musk's cynical and callous defense of his vehicles and company only demonstrates his lack of compassion if not lack of intelligence. (a truly intelligent person would have at least simulated compassion for those his vehicles have hit and killed, and Musk never has any)

One safety feature I add to my commuter bicycle is a downward-firing light to make a 'glowpool' that seems to give drivers a much better reference of where the hell I actually am. Ground-effect lighting does indeed have a place on our streets, particularly for bikes and scooters.

Aaaaah a measured, researched and responsible response to an emotive argument. Who else but fortnine.

As a rider I've always been worried about bad drivers, but in the last few years I've been genuinely scared of the ones that think they're in a "self driving" car.

I once confused a motorcycle with dual headlights for what I thought was a car in the distance. Thinking I had plenty of time, I started to pull out but at the last millisecond I realized it was a motorcycle. Very close! I decided I would never own a bike with dual headlights after that. And I guess I can see how AI could make this mistake using vision only.

I've always been under the assumption autopilot should be used the same as cruise control, but like cruise control for the steering. You still need to brake and steer when needed! but people treat it like a personal driver..

Thank you Ryan, and thanks to your team. As a motorcycle rider, I find this both sad and scary to watch - but it is important and you’re getting the information out quickly to a wide audience. We love your humor and simplistic explanations of complex motorcycle matters, but these serious and informed topics are also highly valuable to us riders. Keep up the outstanding work.

The problem with labeling it as "autopilot" is to most people it implies they don't need to worry about driving. The car will just take care of itself. In airplanes however a good pilot knows how to use autopilot, what it's weaknesses are, and when to not rely on it. Also, any good pilot will approach a tool like this with a "what if it fails" mindset. Not in a paralyzing fear, but a preparedness sense. I took this mindset into every vehicle I drive. It's a good way to stay safe.

What gets me the most is that he said they got rid of the radar instead of investing in sensor fusion. That would have been the proper fix, but would have been more expensive

I absolutely love that you added your sources to the end of the video! hopefully more people follow your lead, it's way harder to BS when you have to cite your sources

Automated systems in aircraft are supplementary to the pilot in command, or driver of the vehicle in this instance. Nothing will ever be a true "auto-pilot" until vehicles are operating in a completely closed system without unknowns. In other words, never. Telsa should only be listing these systems as assistants, and not calling them "auto-pilot", because they don't fulfil the role of the pilot/driver automatically. I'm retiring from British Aerospace Engineering in the coming years and amongst my colleagues we all need facial reconstruction by virtue of the amount of facial carnage cringe induced every time we hear someone say their Tesla has "auto-pilot". Even trains aren't completely safe when using automated systems, and they have a one track mind.

I work in industries that use various scanners, sensors, and vision systems. Lighting, distance, and speed play a huge role in choosing the right one(s). It's hard to imagine relying solely on cameras when other technologies are nearly full-proof when used correctly in the right circumstances. Why Tesla doesn't use complementary sensors is a mystery unless you consider the added costs. Thanks to FortNine for creating this awareness for other riders.

Radar Engineer here. Radar's can detect four variables: 1. Distance (time it takes for radar chirp to come back to the sensor after reflecting off an object) 2. Speed (phase shift of chirp to tell how fast towards or away from the sensor the object is moving) 3. Size (Radar cross section tells how much power was reflected off the object to determine how big it is) 4. Angle of arrival (time of arrival difference between receiving antennas to tell if the object is in your lane or not) I believe radar, lidar, camera, and V2X are all necessary for accomplishing Vision Zero (eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries), profits be damned.

I was in my car recently that has adaptive cruise and it has never missed a motorcycle but then it did. I realized why it missed it quickly and I took control and slowed down. The bike was riding near the road line making it just outside the sight line of the car. The training we had as riders to ride to the side for oil and escape paths caused the car to not see the bike. This has made me realize I should ride a little closer to the center than I used to in the past.

You can really feel the sympathy and sadness behind his face Stay safe, fellow riders

In a situation like this where two sensors disagree, the accepted engineering norm is to default to the sensor which will give the most conservative outcome, the one which will most likely prevent equipment damage or operator injury. It is outright negligence to delete the sensor which creates the highest level of operator discomfort without considering the failure modes.

I appreciate you not allowing the world forget the 2 motorcyclists who died because of Tesla's flaws.

I was nearly rear ended while sitting stationary at a red light on my bike about a year ago. It was a Tesla. I heard the sudden panic brake and the Tesla came to a stop about 15 feet behind me. The 'driver' told me that they were on autopilot and that they intervened to panic stop. This means that the Tesla did not notice either me or the actual intersection that it was approaching. I had just changed the handlebars on that bike earlier in the day and hadn't yet installed the mirrors so I was oblivious to the car hurling towards me at 80 km/h from the rear. Luckily the driver was half paying attention because I likely would've been killed.

as a software engineer, I really appreciate the description given about what AP is actually doing, not in terms of accuracy but in terms realism, rather than describing it as some magical black box savior, I also wish they weren't allowed to use any wording or phrasing that implied the feature had anything to do with the car being capable of driving itself without any user intervention, and also also, wish the general public viewed self-driving vehicles in general the same way we tend to discuss commercial nuclear fusion power plants, always 5-10 years away with numerous challenges currently to overcome, I don't expect to see 'real' self-driving vehicles widely commercially available in the 2020's at least, I would argue there are more problems that need solved than what any individual car manufacturer can accomplish, 'real' self-driving vehicles will likely require a corresponding paradigm shift in infrastructure design and engineering

I work in a machine shop running a 5-axis mill to make medical grade implants. For all the money they put into this amazing machine, it still has an error tolerance. The programs made on hypermill (another expensive piece of software) can have problems. And this is on a precision machine that, for all intents and purposes, runs in a completely controlled environment. Imagining a machine that has to navigate a constantly changing outside world in unknown and dynamic conditions? It's not a surprise to me that there are times when the Autopilot is more dangerous than a person driving. If anything, I'm surprised there haven't been more problems like this. I love machines, I love automation, I do not trust vehicles to drive themselves on the road with people.

This is terrifying. Brilliant reporting & I was not aware Tesla had removed the radar!

May everyone be careful out there. Thx again for the content and my sincere condolences to the families 🕊️

The way he phrased that "He's selling future features to customers today. But today two motorcyclists are dead." Hit very hard..

Rest in peace to both of the men that lost their lives while doing what they love…

As a Tesla owner, how Tesla removed radar in favor of camera systems that don't have two (for depth perception/paralax and redundancy) is beyond me. Totally agree about the Autopilot thing. Just call it AI Assist or Cruise Control+ or something

As someone who works as a developer in automated driving for a very large automobile supplier in Europe, I can say that Teslas decision to abandon radar has been a shock. As many others mentioned redundancy, I too can only affirm the absolute need for reliable sensor fusion in form of graph algorithms and similar, since the margin of error tolerance is just so small.

This is a really well made video that doesn’t apply to just motorcycle riders, but people who drive on the road in general.

Thank you for having the courage and eloquence to critique a company and leader that often seems exempt from criticism.

You make some seriously solid content. Keep up the strong work.

AI is so often used as the solution to all problems when most people who shill it dont understand its limitations.

The wiggle he mentions at the end of the video is something I've started doing at night in general. When I slow down to make a right turn into my driveway at night, many times I've almost been rear ended. To help make it more obvious, I'll wiggle while I slow down and swing to the outside some. This is to be more noticeable to humans but I imagine it should help with AI as well.

There's a much rounder satisfaction that I get from watching FortNine productions compared to the hundreds of other channels I watch. Sure, the dopamine hit that comes from new knowledge is present (in spades), but the right side of my brain gets equally delighted from the movie-grade camerawork, tight scripting, fluid delivery, and tasteful effects. It's the most complete "meal" on RU-vid, for my money. My hat's off to you and your team.

Great video! (as usual) A couple important notes regarding cameras and radars: - The are modern radar sensors which are capable of imaging, so it’s not just a depth sensor. - There are modern cameras capable of depth measurement, stereo cameras, for example, work a lot like human eyesight (which is of course 3D)

The one downside to LiDAR is low reliability in inclement weather, but redundant systems are almost always a better/safer answer.

As always, well thought out. I especially appreciate always trying to offer solutions to a problem that exists today. Fixing things at Tesla, or any major company, takes time which leaves the onus, today, on drivers and riders.

Woof. Way to go Ryan! No substitute for vigilance on the roadways

Another rider’s life was taken by a Tesla on autopilot in Washington on April 19, 2024. It happened during the day on Route 522. RIP Jeffrey Nissen

I'm always paying attention behind me when riding either of my bikes or my car. In my opinion you can still get rear ended by both AI and people. Years ago my father told me, you don't just have to drive for yourself. You have to drive for everyone else too.

True journalism! Ryan and your team have made a very serious and informative video. Thank you

Driving aids in cars are dangerous in general, as it allows people not to pay attention. Things like lane-assist and adaptive cruise control mean that people start doing other things, as they feel like the car is doing all the work for them. The biggest problem with AutoPilot is that is extremely incomplete in its data-set and cannot recognise enough different things to act properly. It cannot see far enough ahead or to the side to anticipate, so it cannot prevent anything from happening, just react to it and hope it reacts in time. EDIT: Two examples from Europe, where driving aids were a problem: - In Belgium a guy drove for 25 km's (16ish miles) while unconscious because his lane assist and adaptive cruise control kept him on the road, but the sensors to see if he was still alert failed. Even worse, it turns out some systems stop the car in the lane, on a highway. That is lethal. This is a choice by the manufacturer. - A car crashed and the passenger was killed because the driver was speeding and swerving through traffic, until at one point lane assist intervened with a sudden lane change, the driver fought it and crashed the car. The passenger was his girlfriend. These systems are far from complete and need a lot more time on the road with a paid employee from the manufacturer present at all times to take control and assess the performance of the system.

There's so much heart, brain and honesty behind this; the conclusion almost made me cry. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.

short answer: yes

I have a few 3M reflectors stuck to the rear and sides of my helmet. Although I haven't seen any Teslas on the dirtroads of Paraguay, I feel like the high up and irregularly moving reflectors are quite a cheap and effective safety feature, especially in dusty conditions.

My condolences to the two motorcyclists family :'(

My sister was seriously injured when she was rear ended on her motorcycle by a human driver and could have died. This is very scary to think how many Tesla’s are out there that could repeat this tragedy.

Please make follow up videos about this. As a rider, this affects me. As someone who knew Landon, its personal. Hundreds died in Ford Pinto crashes before Ford was held accountable. We cant let Tesla do the same. The flaw is glaringly obvious and the autopilot needs to be shut down until there is a solution.

Really grateful how you have always blended academic data with media glitz. Seeing the credits roll with sources was a proper *chefs kiss*.

The last part where you (the rider) has to take action is a key takeaway here. As a motorcyclist, you always gotta protect yourself. Yes it sucks. Yes, it shouldn't be like this. Yes, a lot of the time the other party is to blame. But in all cases, you suffer the most. Which is more important, your life or your "rightness"?

I am a Tesla Model 3 owner and I found your video to be pretty much right on the money when it comes to decisions made by Musk/Tesla. There are decisions made that effect safety that are solely financially based. At least, it seems that way from this owner's perspective. However, the most critical part of driving is, as with any other car, the driver. A properly functioning car of any type has never, in and of itself, killed anyone. Drivers kill people, cars don't. If there ever comes a time when a vehicle is marketed and sold as being completely autonomous, then a vehicle can be held responsible for an accident. Personally, I hope complete autonomy never happens.

As a motorcyclist and also an owner of a Tesla, I can absolutely agree that the 'autopilot' feature is far from complete and nowhere near reliable. It stuns me how its even passed certification to be enabled on a road vehicle. Numerous times it has phantom braked on the highway nearly causing cars to rear end me. I no longer use this feature as its just not finished or safe, so I have an expensive car that I can not even use any form of cruise control on. My bike as a better cruise system and that just a rudimentary system.

We should not allow Tesla to risk our lives in the process of working bugs out of their system.

You are such a fantastic filmmaker. Truly it’s quite a talent.

Hi Ryan, I've been away, almost all the way but medical science brought me back and I'm convalescing. I've missed your videos and now watching all I've missed. Excellent analysis of a serious and deadly problem, thank you for the time it took me away from my physical and mental woes.

As both rider of 40yrs and a Tesla owner, i agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. My 2020 Model3LR came with radar and I've noticed more and more things being deleted quietly (passenger side lumbar support, etc,,) in the pursuit of money.

Y'all have some of the best data displays and graphics on youtube. Love the research and writing that goes into your content!! Great work team!

Your taillight theory reminds me of, I think it was the early 2000s, when Saturn made a car that had the headlights close together. At night they looked like they were much farther down the road. I must've pulled out in front a half dozen of them, not realizing they were that close until I looked in the rearview. Friends and coworkers said they had the same issues with those cars.

I was driving past doing Uber shortly after the accident in Utah occurred. I saw the body, covered by a blanket, in the middle of the road. I saw a woman sitting against the median, absolutely distraught, realizing she just killed someone. Watching this video brought back a flood of memories.

No, it isn't. The meatbags in the seat behind the wheel killed those motorcyclists. Having a toy like Autopilot doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of driving.

Autopilot is a false sense of security that causes drivers to forgo their obligation. Unless such a feature is proven to be reliable as fully autonomous then it should be completely banned from sale. It needs to be all or nothing.

The more I learn about Elon…the more I relate him to the monorail guy on the Simpsons.

Holy cow the quality of the footage you take is incredible!

Wow, thanks for bringing this stuff into light

And out of the blue, Fortnine produces one of the most important videos ever. I could not believe you actually put the video of the Tesla ramming the truck on it's side in the video. 4:26 That Tesla had radar in it. This incident as well as another just like it where the camera angle at the back showed a real flaw in the Tesla autopilot system. In that other accident, the truck wrecked near a bridge, the top of the truck was the same color as the view in front of the area under the bridge and the angle of the metal roof on the top of the truck bounced the radar signal perfectly away from the car's reciever unit. Essentially the car never saw the truck even though any human could easily see it on the road way. In these two motorcycle accidents , radar should have saved their lives. I am always banging on at people that motorcycles disappear at night when they are riding motorcycles with tail/brake lights at the same level of cars they are following. In these cases, motorcycles actually blend with the car in front of them. They disappear. This is truly terrifying when stopping at any stop light especially on a rain slicked road at night. And this is with humans. They only real way to address this is to make the back of the bike look like carnival ride of lights and some cruiser touring bikes do just that and I think thats wild looking but really safe too. Reflective tape on backpacks and helmets...ANYTHING...that makes following vehicles see you can help save your life. Motorcyclists have a default love for the color black which looks bad assed as they put you in the coroner's estate wagon because you just got run the hell over because no one saw you until they were over your motorcycles front tire. I am horrified that Tesla did away with their radar as it seems to be a matter of ignoring the safety issue. With a binary detection system, the default position ....once a conflict has been identified ...should be to /first/ notify the driver and then /two/ disengage the autopilot and then /three/ if the driver has'nt responded in a second .....sound a tone and start to slow the car potentially engaging the emergency flashers so cars behind know to react. You don't just take one half of a binary detection system out without replacing it with something else. The Tesla was apparently designed from the start to use a binary detection system. People have always NOT SEEN motorcycles. Now Tesla has made their autopilot human.

In my opinion, twin headlights are as dangerous as twin taillights. They both potentially give the impression that it's a car far away to the quick-glancing inattentive driver...

THE SOURCES AT THE END!!!! thank you for giving such us such high quality content

Insane thing that happened this week - Teslas equipped with radar had them disabled in a software update for Tesla Vision only.

Great informative video. Not completely bashing tesla but properly laying out the facts and asking the right questions. Also completely tossing aside the jokes and puns out of respect for the cyclists that were killed. Incredible video once again!

I suspect that the trend for having twin rear lights built into the indicators, thus presenting the image of a big thing far away is a contributory factor. Much like the problem with twin headlights side by side as opposed to over and under. Both create well documented confusion for other road users.

As an engineer and someone who has been in the tech industry for decades, I enjoyed this vid. I’ve been thinking for ages that Tesla autopilot will ultimately be the end of the company due to liability lawsuits. The msm certainly hasn’t highlighted these recent motorcycle deaths...

I reckon this is the most important video Ryan and his team has made to date (and I've been following them for years). The research, the insight and recommendations at the end. This deserves more views and attention, particularly from Tesla and legislators around the world.

Who could have foreseen that an autonomous automotive vehicle that only uses cameras and no depth sensors would have problems detecting things in poor light conditions.

This is the kind of Ryan video that is awardworthy. Well researched, well stated, not corny, moments of humour in good context, and informative. Every opportunity to remind motorcyclists to be more conspicuous is always smart. Most importantly, thanks for taking these sad situations and putting them in the public realm for debate and discussion. I agree that it is not appropriate to call it autopilot but I'm also cautious about how often humans driving with distractions make the exact same life changing errors.

This channel has such an underrated production. Pure gold

The only autopilot I trust is the one in my RV when I'm riding with my three news co-hosts, some bowling balls, my terrarium of scorpions, and a Cornballer.

So, I had the opportunity to stay next to a Tesla on my ZX6R at a stoplight. I remember looking at the screen. One thing I noticed was that the icon that represented me on the road disappeared for a few seconds with about 15-20 seconds between disappearances. It is indeed unnerving given how much of the Tesla is held back by its safeties; those need to be rock solid.

This is the only channel I’ll stop what I’m doing to watch when it releases something new and this is another example of why. Elon isn’t a genius in the way people think he is and that can lead to very misplaced trust. AI is still very, very stupid.

This is one of the very best videos highlighting the dangers of computer vision without radar/lidar imposes on other traffic.

Ryan, you and your team are truly amazing, putting out literally the MOST VALUABLE content for motorcyclists on the internet. God bless, brother!!! 🤘🏽🏍

Honestly, if someone truly needs to use this “feature” in their car, they shouldn’t be driving on the road. It doesn’t make for a more attentive or better driver when they need to take quickly take control and/or when things go wrong. These systems completely take the driver’s head out of what’s going on around them because they make the act of driving too passive of a job.

Thanks for bringing this to riders attention and hopefully Tesla drivers too. Good stuff F9.

Great video gentlemen. Well said, well illustrated, documented. Thank you.

Great work as always. Thank you for raising these issues and doing it so competently and eloquently.

I could never digest Tesla's decision to ditch the radar. I may never buy a Tesla. But their decision may influence other companies also. Hats off for raising it.

When Telsa has been confronted by government agencies about their claim and advertising on their supposed full self driving system they have had to acknowledge that it is in fact a level 2 system. This means that it is now where near full self driving as they advertise. In fact fully self driving is level 5 as set out in the standards set by SAE. Tesla should be required to change the name and their marketing of it. Tesla should not be allowed to have this system used by Telsa fans in a manner that it has no capability to support. Tesla is collecting data for a system which is endangering everyone that is driving on the road when it is used. This is being done without the other drivers knowledge or consent. We are participating in Tesla's experiment and data collection without our consent. This is irresponsible and unethical not to mention lethal in far too many instances.

Tesla should be held responcible for their actions.

As a first responder, I can say without revealing too much information that the Autopilot feature has been used as a crutch for individuals who are driving impaired. Which has lead to serious vehicle collisions and possible deaths (can't legally attest), unfortunately.

So well made and well researched. I love this channel.

As motorcyclists we need to watch our six. That being said, Elon Musk's true genius appears to be the ability to convincingly state a half-truth (or half-lie) as gospel. Also, those drivers relying on "autopilot" are morons that deserve to be thrown in jail for a good, long while.

Your content is just amazing. I teach algorithmic ethics and will be using this in class.