Tesla Autopilot Takes Driver Safely to Hospital

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
How about some GOOD news about Tesla's Autopilot feature for a change? Apparently some guy suffering from a pulmonary embolism drove to the hospital using Autopilot and was not involved in an accident on the way. :D

A man suffering from a pulmonary embolism was driven 20 miles to a hospital by the Autopilot system on his Tesla car, according to reports. Joshua Neally, a 37-year-old from Missouri, was driving home when he experienced the medical emergency. Deciding the best course of action was to get to a hospital in his car, Neally let the Autopilot system of his Model X take control on the highway. He was then able to finish the final section of the journey from the highway to the hospital by himself.
 
In before people complaining about Tesla not actually performing the surgery and life saving medical needs to the patient and merely taxiing him...
 
Being perfectly able and watching a DVD is bad, but having severe medical issues and letting the car drive instead of stopping and calling the ambulance should be praised? No, they're both retarded and have put other people in danger.
 
I don't know, if I was in a self-driving vehicle and it could get me to a nearby hospital quicker than waiting for an ambulance, I'd let it do so. The story does not say that the driver was completely incapacitated. Also, as far as risk to other drivers goes, haven't Tesla cars self-driven for several million miles now with only 1 fatality? Sounds to me like they're no worse than human drivers?

EDIT: He let it drive 20 miles? OK, that's probably too far. He must have been in the middle of nowhere to be that far from a hospital in the US. Maybe getting an ambulance to him really would have taken a long time.
 
He did the right thing. I wonder how many drunks get driven home by their Tesla every night?
 
We don't know the circumstances but if he was 20 miles away from a hospital, an ambulance would also be 20 miles away lol. A lot could happen while waiting, he could have died, ambulance could have been delayed, who knows. Guy was lucky to make it out alive.
 
My boss has one and we've played around a bit with it. It works far better than I figured and it alerts you if anything is awry. It's a long way from perfect, but I think those two cases of things going rogue will probably reveal more than meets the eye.
I still think it's a matter of any negative Telsa articles getting 100x the press as any from the big 3. When GM or Ford screw up it's "the cost of moving forward." If it's Tesla, it's always some supervillain-like kook trying to bring us closer to Skynet.
 
My boss has one and we've played around a bit with it. It works far better than I figured and it alerts you if anything is awry. It's a long way from perfect, but I think those two cases of things going rogue will probably reveal more than meets the eye.
I still think it's a matter of any negative Telsa articles getting 100x the press as any from the big 3. When GM or Ford screw up it's "the cost of moving forward." If it's Tesla, it's always some supervillain-like kook trying to bring us closer to Skynet.

Ever since Tesla's announcement not to use conventional car dealers, it feels like they pissed off every large corporation in the automaker industry. There's a serious agenda against Tesla and it's sad since all this will do is squander future technological advancements.
 
We don't know the circumstances but if he was 20 miles away from a hospital, an ambulance would also be 20 miles away lol. A lot could happen while waiting, he could have died, ambulance could have been delayed, who knows. Guy was lucky to make it out alive.
Why would the ambulance also be 20 miles away? Do ambulances seriously just sit around idle at the hospital where you live? Around here, unless they're dropping someone off at the hospital, that's typically the one location you won't find them(because there's no point in them sitting there).
 
This could be a good thing, as an ambulance could of been far away. What he should of done, was call and have an ambulance intercept him on his way, just in case he didn't make it. what if he was dead by the time the car showed up? This news article would be waaaay different.
 
This could be a good thing, as an ambulance could of been far away. What he should of done, was call and have an ambulance intercept him on his way, just in case he didn't make it. what if he was dead by the time the car showed up? This news article would be waaaay different.

"Man dead after using TESLA autopilot; have self driving cars gone too far?"
 
Why would the ambulance also be 20 miles away? Do ambulances seriously just sit around idle at the hospital where you live? Around here, unless they're dropping someone off at the hospital, that's typically the one location you won't find them(because there's no point in them sitting there).
In the suburbs of Kansas City, ambulances are usually stationed at various Fire Stations that are more common and much closer than the hospitals. I've noticed this also with various rural towns I've driven through here in Missouri and Kansas. I'm genuinely curious if this is done differently elsewhere in the country.

Inside Kansas City, the various ambulance companies and police both use the local gas stations as mini dispatch hubs. They just sit there listening to their radios waiting for calls. They tend to do this at the larger stations that have plenty of unused parking. Quiktrip, the biggest gas station chain in the area, actually gives perks for the police to do this as it's mutually beneficial.
 
I still say Elon Musk is focusing on things that really don't serve mankind all that much: reusable rockets, autonomous self driving cars, huge battery factory, I mean come on.

Why not dump a few billion into Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors that can provide insane amounts of power with practically no nuclear waste material, a thousand years of power per facility, and multiple benefits such as water desalination, hydrogen and oxygen production, reduction of CO2 gas as well as not being capable of exploding under any circumstances and even the potential of using already spent nuclear material from older reactors as part of the fuel powering the reactor itself - that's something the world actually needs, real honest to goodness electrical power.

I can't believe someone that should be and is proclaimed to be so intelligent and smart (they're two very different things, actually) not to mention wealthy and wielding the kind of resources he's got access to really wastes so many of those resources on stuff like he's been doing and is about to dump a fuckton more capital into the Hyperloop project.

We need renewable energy, Elon, a lot of it, not the rest of the shit you're focusing on. It's not going to come from big ass windmills and turbine generators, it's not going to come from solar panels, it's not going to come from oil and coal and anything based on fossil fuels - it's going to come from nuclear power so get with the damned program.

</rant>
 
Last edited by a moderator:
"Deciding the best course of action was to get to a hospital in his car"

Not the right decision there, he could have killed a busload of school kids. But it's also not Tesla's fault is it?
 
In the suburbs of Kansas City, ambulances are usually stationed at various Fire Stations that are more common and much closer than the hospitals. I've noticed this also with various rural towns I've driven through here in Missouri and Kansas. I'm genuinely curious if this is done differently elsewhere in the country.

Inside Kansas City, the various ambulance companies and police both use the local gas stations as mini dispatch hubs. They just sit there listening to their radios waiting for calls. They tend to do this at the larger stations that have plenty of unused parking. Quiktrip, the biggest gas station chain in the area, actually gives perks for the police to do this as it's mutually beneficial.
I dunno, but even in major metropolitan areas ambulances are pretty much everywhere but the hospital unless they're dropping off a patient. Gas stations, shopping centers, fire stations, etc.
 
Staged damage control news to counter the guy that got driven into the broad side of a semi truck.
 
My boss has one and we've played around a bit with it. It works far better than I figured and it alerts you if anything is awry. It's a long way from perfect, but I think those two cases of things going rogue will probably reveal more than meets the eye.
I still think it's a matter of any negative Telsa articles getting 100x the press as any from the big 3. When GM or Ford screw up it's "the cost of moving forward." If it's Tesla, it's always some supervillain-like kook trying to bring us closer to Skynet.
Sort of have that backwards. Tesla is the king of the special media treatment.
 
I still say Elon Musk is focusing on things that really don't serve mankind all that much: reusable rockets, autonomous self driving cars, huge battery factory, I mean come on.

Why not dump a few billion into Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors that can provide insane amounts of power with practically no nuclear waste material, a thousand years of power per facility, and multiple benefits such as water desalination, hydrogen and oxygen production, reduction of CO2 gas as well as not being capable of exploding under any circumstances and even the potential of using already spent nuclear material from older reactors as part of the fuel powering the reactor itself - that's something the world actually needs, real honest to goodness electrical power.

I can't believe someone that should be and is proclaimed to be so intelligent and smart (they're two very different things, actually) not to mention wealthy and wielding the kind of resources he's got access to really wastes so many of those resources on stuff like he's been doing and is about to dump a fuckton more capital into the Hyperloop project.

We need renewable energy, Elon, a lot of it, not the rest of the shit you're focusing on. It's not going to come from big ass windmills and turbine generators, it's not going to come from solar panels, it's not going to come from oil and coal and anything based on fossil fuels - it's going to come from nuclear power so get with the damned program.

</rant>
While I agree that investing into those types of reactors could be beneficial, I don't believe you can make the statement that reusable rockets and battery factories don't benefit mankind much.

Our planet consumes energy at a crazy rate, and it's impossible to always be plugged in. Advancing battery tech, even if its simply making larger capacity batteries more affordable, benefits everyone. That battery powering a Tesla today could be powering a new pair of legs for a victim of a landmine tomorrow.

As far as the reusable rockets, this too will benefit mankind. Getting to space is an insanely expensive endeavor today. Just like everything else, it needs someone to invest in it and get the economies of scale moving. Imagine massive space colonies that can house thousands of people, or a massive station that is nothing but a giant hydroponic greenhouse growing food for our massive population. This kind of thing won't happen unless we make space transportation cheaper.

Who knows, maybe he will make a few more billion with these current endeavors then get into the reactor game. Something tells me he is going to need more money than he has now (due to development AND politics) and that's why he isn't doing that already.
 
Last edited:
Our planet consumes energy at a crazy rate, and it's impossible to always be plugged in. Advancing battery tech, even if its simply making larger capacity batteries more affordable, benefits everyone. That battery powering a Tesla today could be powering a new pair of legs for a victim of a landmine tomorrow.

While that might be true, the purpose of that factory is making batteries for electric cars, which I really don't have a big issue with even in spite of pointing it out in my rant.

But here's the thing: we are going to need electricity to recharge those batteries when they're in use, and solar just won't cut it - not even scratch the surface of what's required, and people aren't going to have windmill turbines in their backyards or in major cities (on the outskirts potentially). Those two particular sources just do not provide enough actual useful energy, especially from the distances they're set up at from population centers and suffer quite a bit of energy loss from the transmission cables (in excess of 10-15% typically on top of them being dreadfully inefficient energy sources in the first place) because of those distances.

I got no beef with electric vehicles, just beef with the autonomous aspects. I got no beef with battery factories, just beef with the need to provide the power to charge them. Reusable rockets? I see no practical purpose for them aside from restocking the ISS and that's about it and NASA can handle that just fine if we'd just provide them the funding they require (yes, it's available, it's just going to waste in too many other programs like the defense budget but that's another thread entirely).

We have some issues that have existed for decades and oddly enough answers and solutions to those problems have existed for about the same amount of time, go figure, but for stupid dumbass reasons (usually greedy people looking to screw over everyone in their path for money and profit and power - and I don't mean electrical power obviously) those answers and solutions get buried and sometimes just never see the light of day. Luckily sometimes they do, as is the case with the Thorium MSR situation that only recently came into the serious limelight and is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

All the talented folk that Musk hires and works with, surely they could do something with that kind of tech.
 
I still say Elon Musk is focusing on things that really don't serve mankind all that much: reusable rockets, autonomous self driving cars, huge battery factory, I mean come on.
Reusable rockets means more space stuff for cheap, which is good for humanity.
Self driving cars also means less accidents and more free time for people.
Huge battery factory means more batteries in cars, homes, and everything in between.

Why not dump a few billion into Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors that can provide insane amounts of power with practically no nuclear waste material, a thousand years of power per facility, and multiple benefits such as water desalination, hydrogen and oxygen production, reduction of CO2 gas as well as not being capable of exploding under any circumstances and even the potential of using already spent nuclear material from older reactors as part of the fuel powering the reactor itself - that's something the world actually needs, real honest to goodness electrical power.
He's for solar power and I agree with him. Unlike thorium, the Sun will last for billions of years. Why move from one dependency to another with thorium? The first commercial thorium reactors won't be finished until sometime in the 2040's. You can build a lot of solar panels before the first thorium reactor is finished and running.

musk said:
That’s why at least for now and I think maybe even in the long-term, I’m a proponent of using the big fusion power plant in the sky called the sun. The sun is a giant fusion explosion and it shows up every day. If we have photovoltaics, solar panels, we can capture that fusion energy. It also needs to be stored in a battery so we can use it at night. Then we want to have high power lines to transfer solar energy from one place to another.
 
Why would the ambulance also be 20 miles away? Do ambulances seriously just sit around idle at the hospital where you live? Around here, unless they're dropping someone off at the hospital, that's typically the one location you won't find them(because there's no point in them sitting there).

Obviously you haven’t ever been to Missouri and any of the Great Plan States. There sometimes is nothing around for miles, and I mean nothing. If this guy was smart enough to know he was having a pulmonary embolism (Blood clot in the lungs). Then he was smart enough to know that time is against him and needed to get to a hospital ASAP.

Some of us that live in highly populated area's take this kind of stuff for granted and think you call an ambulance and it magically appears few minutes later. Not always the case and in some places the ambulance can take 30mins or more to get to you. When I lived in Ohio, I was not that far from three towns but our house was out in the boonies. My mother had a stroke and it took the ambulance 25mins to get to our house because that was closest one around at the time. Now I live in Southern California, and god help you if you need an ambulance during rush hour.

So lets look at this from his possible situation. I need to get to a hospital as quick as possible. Should I take the time to call 911, deal with person on the phone and get an ambulance on the way. Then sit there waiting for the ambulance to take the time to drive to my vicinity. Then the time of them trying to find me on the highway and then the time it takes to get me loaded up and on the way to the closest hospital. Yeah no.

He made the choice that gave him the highest possibility of survival. Was it the smartest or safest? No, but it was the choice that he knew gave him the best odds of living. Does this mean I think everyone should do what he did if you have a Tesla? No. This guy was in a serious situation with his life and took a gamble on the odds. The gamble paid off this time, but that doesn't mean the next time someone tries to use autopilot like this. That it will work out in their favor.
 
Last edited:
I still say Elon Musk is focusing on things that really don't serve mankind all that much: reusable rockets, autonomous self driving cars, huge battery factory, I mean come on.
</rant>

Putting humans into the space will either be the most futile thing we ever tried to do or it will be the single most important thing we ever tried to do. No one knows the answer. And when the answer presents itself, it will be too late to try.
 
He's for solar power and I agree with him. Unlike thorium, the Sun will last for billions of years. Why move from one dependency to another with thorium? The first commercial thorium reactors won't be finished until sometime in the 2040's. You can build a lot of solar panels before the first thorium reactor is finished and running.

Like I said, solar is not the answer - the sheer inefficiency of it at this point and even over the next 20 years with potential advancements in photovoltaic technologies - is not something that will provide anywhere near the levels of power the world needs even with it being spread further and further all the time. As for the Thorium MSRs and another 24 years till one comes online, I'd say it'll happen much sooner, perhaps in the next 10-15. The research necessary to create one was done decades ago by Oak Ridge National Labs and the science is sound, now it just needs to be actually brought to reality.

That comment by Musk is riddled with problems but he's on the wrong path in my opinion so whatever. Maybe someone needs to clue him in on TMSR tech reactors and not the horrible LWR tech that we've been using since the 1950s and continue to use today.
 
But here's the thing: we are going to need electricity to recharge those batteries when they're in use, and solar just won't cut it - not even scratch the surface of what's required, and people aren't going to have windmill turbines in their backyards or in major cities (on the outskirts potentially).

Chicken and egg problem. Generating all that power, and nothing to store it in?
 
That comment by Musk is riddled with problems but he's on the wrong path in my opinion so whatever. Maybe someone needs to clue him in on TMSR tech reactors and not the horrible LWR tech that we've been using since the 1950s and continue to use today.

It's a business opportunity for him. He can't get into the nuclear reactor sector, the players are already established in that market (as well as the regulation). He found an open market and he's going all in. He will get in and established before the incentives dry up and regulations kick in.

In other words, he doesn't care about anything else.
 
He's for solar power and I agree with him. Unlike thorium, the Sun will last for billions of years. Why move from one dependency to another with thorium? The first commercial thorium reactors won't be finished until sometime in the 2040's. You can build a lot of solar panels before the first thorium reactor is finished and running.

Ya but in a thousand years (when Thorium goes away based on the other poster) we will have something totally different.....like generating energy from Matter/Anti-Matter differentials or something unheard of.
 
(when Thorium goes away based on the other poster)

I didn't say Thorium was "going away in a thousand years)" I said that one TMSR is capable of providing clean sustained power for roughly 1,000 years - that's just one of them because when properly designed the TMSR is almost self-sustaining: it doesn't leave behind most anything and doesn't really require you "keep feeding it" like LWR tech does which is why there's so much fucking nuclear waste but even that amount if nowhere near what anti-nuclear fanatics would have you believe).

Thorium is practically everywhere on the planet, in the dirt under your feet if you're outside, in the rocks, etc, we'd never ever run out of it. We literally can make electricity from dirt and rocks with a TMSR and it'll leave practically nothing behind. But anyway...

Thorium itself will be here long after we're gone, and based on how things are progressing, that won't be anywhere near 1,000 years. ;)
 
I still say Elon Musk is focusing on things that really don't serve mankind all that much: reusable rockets, autonomous self driving cars, huge battery factory, I mean come on.

Why not dump a few billion into Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors that can provide insane amounts of power with practically no nuclear waste material, a thousand years of power per facility, and multiple benefits such as water desalination, hydrogen and oxygen production, reduction of CO2 gas as well as not being capable of exploding under any circumstances and even the potential of using already spent nuclear material from older reactors as part of the fuel powering the reactor itself - that's something the world actually needs, real honest to goodness electrical power.

I can't believe someone that should be and is proclaimed to be so intelligent and smart (they're two very different things, actually) not to mention wealthy and wielding the kind of resources he's got access to really wastes so many of those resources on stuff like he's been doing and is about to dump a fuckton more capital into the Hyperloop project.

We need renewable energy, Elon, a lot of it, not the rest of the shit you're focusing on. It's not going to come from big ass windmills and turbine generators, it's not going to come from solar panels, it's not going to come from oil and coal and anything based on fossil fuels - it's going to come from nuclear power so get with the damned program.

</rant>

It's simple, Tesla, SpaceX, and solar city are all propped up one way or another by the government, no government subsidies and Musk isn't interested.
 
was this guy paid off by elon musk ? lol

He was luckly a tractor trailor from the other tesla was not on the road the day he let auto pilot drive itself
 
Stupid move on the part of the driver. He got lucky, THIS TIME but he could have easily died. Paramedics are more than just a shuttle service to the hospital; they also have the ability to provide life-saving pre-hospital treatment and a PE is something that needs treatment immediately.
 
Yea and he could have just given them his tesla as payment for the ambulance ride too, since those are stupidly expensive...
 
Yea and he could have just given them his tesla as payment for the ambulance ride too, since those are stupidly expensive...

You seem to forget that the guy was driving (and owned) a Tesla electrically powered autonomous-capable automobile.

Paying for an ambulance ride that could potentially have saved his life (if the other possibility had happened where he wouldn't have survived) would probably be done with the loose change in the seats of the Tesla electrically powered autonomous-capable automobile he apparently can afford to own/drive. ;)
 
OK, how many here have had a heart attack or pulmonary embolism 20 miles away from a hospital, while being in a Tesla that can drive them to the hospital? By the time help arrives, you can be halfway to the hospital, or more. Also, count in the time it takes to argue with the 911 operator to get them to have paramedics come immediately. Bingo, you're at the E.R. doors.

Why would the ambulance also be 20 miles away? Do ambulances seriously just sit around idle at the hospital where you live?
Most paramedic trucks don't cruise around, nor do basic EMS trucks. The vast majority are stationed until they're called out. If you don't know how long your help is from you, and you can't breath, you don't ponder about your options, you take action as soon as you can. Until you've found yourself suddenly very short of breath, you cannot know what state of mind you will be in. Breathing is our #1 priority, and if you can't breath, you're not going to be able to think about much of anything else.


"Deciding the best course of action was to get to a hospital in his car"
then
Not the right decision there, he could have killed a busload of school kids. But it's also not Tesla's fault is it?
Again, when you're short of breath, all you care about is breathing. You're not always able to sit calmly and make complicated decisions.
If this guy was smart enough to know he was having a pulmonary embolism (Blood clot in the lungs). Then he was smart enough to know that time is against him and needed to get to a hospital ASAP.
Diagnosing a pulmonary embolism in the field without any monitoring devices is close to impossible. If he's an E.R. or pulmonary physician, and can think clearly in a situation where he can't breath, he MIGHT be able to narrow it down.

So lets look at this from his possible situation. I need to get to a hospital as quick as possible. Should I take the time to call 911, deal with person on the phone and get an ambulance on the way. Then sit there waiting for the ambulance to take the time to drive to my vicinity. Then the time of them trying to find me on the highway and then the time it takes to get me loaded up and on the way to the closest hospital. Yeah no. He made the choice that gave him the highest possibility of survival. Was it the smartest or safest? No, but it was the choice that he knew gave him the best odds of living. Does this mean I think everyone should do what he did if you have a Tesla? No. This guy was in a serious situation with his life and took a gamble on the odds. The gamble paid off this time, but that doesn't mean the next time someone tries to use autopilot like this. That it will work out in their favor.



Stupid move on the part of the driver. He got lucky, THIS TIME but he could have easily died. Paramedics are more than just a shuttle service to the hospital; they also have the ability to provide life-saving pre-hospital treatment and a PE is something that needs treatment immediately.
Yes, but this is not like TV where the paramedics arrive in seconds, stuff an IV in you and immediately give you thrombolytics because they think you might have a pulmonary embolism. Nobody in real life does that.
Even in the E.R. we send them off for a catscan asap if we think it's a pulmonary embolism. Other than oxygen, there's not a lot of things a paramedic can do for it until it's diagnosed as such.

And for anyone who thinks you can just rule out a heart attack by doing an EKG, you're wrong; the changes don't always show up until the myocardium starts to die. So you can't just give thrombolytics on a hunch.
 
Back
Top