A Tragic Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: A Tragic Loss

#141

Post by return0 » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #86

return0 wrote: post #8

Tesla should not allow autopilots. They have nothing to gain by the negative publicity they will get from cases like these. Regardless of how bad luck the driver had, tesla can always be blamed for relaxing the driver's reflexes by giving a false sense of safety. It doesnt matter if it was by default turned off or hidden in menus. What other companies use this kind of driving assist system? The ones i know are only h…

>Tesla should not allow autopilots. They have nothing to gain by the negative publicity they will get from cases like these. This is literally the only way to develop such systems. And regardless of incidents like this, these systems will be developed sometime in the fairly near future and whichever company is on the leading edge of them will command a massive new market that will probably start growing incredibly ra…

They should at least let the drivers sign a contract that they 'll be putting themselves in danger.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#142

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #132

mikeash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's realistic to rampantly speculate about a situation where so little information is available. And I absolutely think it is nasty to talk ill of the dead when there is zero evidence for what's being said. For all we know the driver had half a second to react before he died. Or maybe he had five minutes. The point is, we don't know. To start from that position and say it's "likely... the driver was sc…

I'll admit that the word "screwing around" was unfair and judgemental, but I'm gonna be honest: I would never want to own a car with this sort of "autopilot with driver fallback" feature because I'd totally fall asleep at the wheel. Completely. So I didn't mean any judgment by it. I could have made the same mistake. In fact, I'm judging the software, if anything. Any autopilot software that doesn't force the driver t…

And how many times do human drivers fall asleep in cars with no automatic driving features of any kind, and get themselves killed in a situation where Tesla's Autopilot would have saved them?

I'd recommend trying it before you knock it. I had similar reservations, but after using it for nearly a year, I find that I'm more attentive and more awake with it than without it. A couple of weeks ago the system refused to engage (broken sensor somewhere) and I had to drive 80 miles home manually. It was exhausting! The mental effort of staying between the lines and maintaining a safe distance from the next car is pretty significant. Getting rid of that frees up more of your attention for the bigger picture. Now, I'm sure for some people it just frees up more of your attention for texting or sleeping, I'm sure I'm not representative of everybody, but I think it can easily be a net win for many.

I always pay attention while Autopilot is engaged, but I'm able to look farther down the road and take more care when checking out traffic to the rear and sides than I can when I'm doing it all myself.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#143

Post by ejk314 » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #71

yardie wrote: post #54

Wow. I'm speechless. I do hope they are able to learn more from this. This is just a bad coincidence of environment meets chance and someone died because of it. I do think computer vision still has a but further to go. A white trailer and a white sky shouldn't be a problem. But everyday I'm impressed with how human sight can find and lock into the most obscure details. Like I've been sunblinded before and yet I knew…

> I do hope they are able to learn more from this. This is just a bad coincidence of environment meets chance and someone died because of it. Nope, this is completely expected when unproven technology is packaged as a push-button feature and shipped on consumer technology. I don't work for Tesla, but I am a robotics engineer who has worked on exactly this technology, and I saw this coming from a mile away. Tesla shou…

Oh they know. It's just that the expected value added to their car sales, even factoring in the negative PR and potential lawsuits, is >0

Re: A Tragic Loss

#144

Post by twinkletwinkle » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

jackpirate wrote: post #11

mathattack wrote: post #3

Tragic. Good that they own it, though I'm not thrilled with this: It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled. When drivers activate Autopilot, the acknowledgment box explains, among other things, that Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hand…

This statement is also disengenuous: This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. The wording implies that these numbers are directly comparable, but they are not. I would guess that Autopilot is much more likely to be activate…

Wouldn't it be hilarious if they were being really tacit about something like this? In an exceptional scenario, the autopilot disengages and tells the human user to take over. So maybe the autopilot drives into an untenable situation, disengages, the car crashes and kills the "driver", and then the statistics say "Well, Autopilot drove X miles and it was fine. The crash occurred while under human control..."

As they say, it's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#145

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #136

alkonaut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The autopilot doesn't drive the car, the driver does. The autopilot is a help just like cruise control. Tesla are very clear (apart from the naming of the feature) that the driver must still drive the car. The autopilot will avoid obstacles it can detect and the driver is expected to avoid others (since he has eyes on the wheel and eyes on the road the whole time). I think they misleading thing about Teslas Autopilot…

>The autopilot will avoid obstacles it can detect and the driver is expected to avoid others I'm sorry, how is that supposed to work, exactly? How does the driver know? Sounds like the driver has to avoid every obstacle - to avoid the case where the autopilot fucks you, like this one - and in that case, what is the autopilot doing?

The driver has to be aware of every obstacle and observe the autopilot avoid them, or intervene should it fail. Yes.

Have you driven a car with a distance-keeping cruise control? It's very comfortable to let it do that and just watch it and take over when it fails (it's limited in the braking and acceleration it is allowed to do). I can't take my eyes of the road or my hands off the wheel for even a second but it's still useful because it removes all the micromanagement of throttle and brake and just lets me supervise.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#146

Post by twinkletwinkle » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #139

gjem97 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only that, you'd expect drivers in the higher-income demographic of US auto customers to have less fatal accidents. What? Why?

Because they can afford cars with stronger safety features.

They can also afford cars with stronger danger features, like turbochargers.

They also might be more sheltered from the consequences of their actions and likely to be reckless while driving.

Your assumption may even be correct, but I don't think it's obvious.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#147

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #16

Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, I'm intrigued that the color is relevant in the car's case - wouldn't it be using some sort of radar to detect and map objects rather than vision? I appreciate I am probably missing something.

Well it certainly makes me wonder how well it will do in snowy conditions, let alone any low sight conditions.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#148

Post by TylerE » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

XCSme wrote: post #78

mikeash wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's Autopilot uses a radar unit, a front-facing camera, and twelve ultrasonic sensors on the front and back bumper. The ultrasonic sensors are short range and are for detecting adjacent cars and obstacles while parking, the camera is used for detecting lanes, and the camera and radar work together to detect cars. The radar is low to the ground and probably doesn't pick up a trailer that's high off the ground. The…

Yeah, the height seems to be the problem. There was a "similar" accident a few months ago where a Tesla was summoned out of the garage and it hit a trailer because it was to high for the radar to get it. http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2016/05/T...

Seems like a pretty clear case for adding a radar at the top of the windshield

Re: A Tragic Loss

#149

Post by mandevil » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #117

Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. It appears to me like this is a case that shows the limitations of stereo vision as the main sensor system guiding the Tesla autopilot. I would even venture to say that it could have possibly been avoided using LiDAR technology. According to various interviews however Elon Musk is n…

LIDAR puts pretty severe limits on top speed. Basically, LIDAR has range limitations which means it can't detect anything further than away reliably (I last worked on a driving robot project a decade ago, forgot the exact distance). But the range, versus human-comfortable braking distance, works out to a top speed of roughly 30kph. Go faster and your car will detect the obstacle too late to avoid hitting it. Since Autopilot is trying to solve a problem at highway speeds (100kph+), I don't think it's a good fit for what Musk is trying to do.

Now whether what Musk is trying to do is a good idea is a different question...

Re: A Tragic Loss

#150

Post by gordon_freeman » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

Nobody is talking about whether it is safe to put Beta software of such an advanced autopilot system in real world? I mean they are giving choice to people to turn on this Autopilot functionality as if it were just another driver assistance safety feature like 'Honda Sensing' but in reality it is much more advanced system and it seems Tesla is doing this to use the data to feed to it's upcoming autonomous technology. But at what cost!

UPDATE: Just read this news on NYTimes:

"The traffic safety agency is nearing the release of a new set of guidelines and regulations regarding the testing of self-driving vehicles on public roads. They were expected to be released in July."

Good and much needed step from NHTSA here.