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A Tragic Loss

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#181

Post by extrapickles »

curiousgal wrote: post #82
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…

Would an infrared camera have picked up the trailer?

Sunlight swamps infrared and thermal cameras as well.

The only way to see it would be lidar (it might have issues too) or radar. Ultrasonics don't have the range.

They should have the autopilot refuse to operate when the sun is within X degrees of the road in the direction of travel.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#182

Post by sago »

georgecmu wrote: post #25
simonsarris wrote: post #2

> What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. Tragic no doubt, but I'm relieved that this was not a "Autopilot did something very very wrong" story. Autopilot has the p…

Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. How is this not an "Autopilot did something very very wrong" story? Tesla autopilot drove the vehicle full-speed into a tractor-trailer, which wasn't registered by its sensor systems. It'…

> Tesla autopilot drove the vehicle full-speed into a tractor-trailer

The tractor trailer drove across the divided highway without seeing an oncoming car. I've seen this accident happen in front of me with a fatality, no auto-pilot involved.

A vehicle moves in front of you when you're sufficiently close and you've no time to react. Anything (like glare) that makes such a vehicle harder to spot reduces your available reaction time.

Making it sound like there was a static obstacle in front of the car, and it drove into it at high speed is very tendentious, and not warranted by the report, I feel. It is exactly the kind of 'omg AI kills driver' fearbait that we don't need.

If self-driving systems were ten-times safer than people, then there'd still be a lot of people being killed in them. We need to get a sane perspective on their risk.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#183

Post by Nadya »

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?

That is a massive assumption to be making. That the driver can see and react to every obstacle. Not to mention there are videos where the Tesla reacted before and on behalf of the driver, saving them from an accident.

The "lane assist" (what it should be and is called by other manufacturers) spots any number of obstacles that the driver failed to see - takes over - and saves the driver from an accident. Or reacts faster than the driver could react - thus saving the driver. That is what it is doing. It is not driving your vehicle. It is assisting in driving your vehicle.

It is still possible to drown with a life vest on. That doesn't mean you shouldn't wear one because "if I'm expected to stay above water - what is the life vest doing?"

Re: A Tragic Loss

#184

Post by gpm »

kafkaesq wrote: post #172

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. Given that Autopilot is generally activated under safer, more routine driving scenarios -- decent weather, regular suburban traffic and so on; for which we can naturally expect significantly lower fatality rates -- it doesn't sound like it's off to a…

Agreed, but to be fair it isn't exactly statistically significant yet.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#185

Post by marvin »

scythe wrote: post #38

> Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, So this got me wondering: are there areas where retinae still do better than cameras at certain kinds of discrimination problems? Nature still has human technology beat on hardware in a few categories (particularly joints), but I didn't expect eyes to be one of them. When I look at or near a bright light, I ca…

Cameras are obviously worse in situations where there is very high contrast (e.g. when you are facing the sun), because the digital representation of color/luminosity has a far more narrow range than that of the eye. Uncertain on whether this has any practical consequences, but it seems likely.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#186

Post by vkou »

angusb wrote: post #178
vkou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could defend the public's perception of autonomous vehicles in general by not rushing to market a beta that is less technically capable then other autonomous systems being worked on by their competitors.

Are you saying that just based on the fact that they've been developing it for less time than Google, or is there a more in depth case for that somewhere? I would be very interested to read about that if there is.

1. Tesla makes it clear that Autopilot is a beta.

2. From the rest of this thread, it sounds like their long-range cameras/radar has very limited FOV.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#187

Post by refulgentis »

prodmerc wrote: post #90
dangrossman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long to they plan to keep doing this? So long as every Tesla accident makes the homepage of CNBC, unlike the millions that occur in other makers' vehicles. Tesla puts out an immediate PR, and the breaking news that went up on all the financial sites included quotes from it nearly as fast. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-t...

Yeah no kidding, thousands of people die every year in Fords and no one gives a shit, 1 guy dies in a Tesla and "these cars are unsafe, run for your lives, hide yo kids and yo wife, sell your stock, return your car!". I fucking hate modern media.

Did anyone actually say any of those things? Or anything coming close to those things? Or did you just invent a strawman to beat up on the media?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#188

Post by Retra »

mdorazio wrote: post #128
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

This is just factually incorrect. Google is developing self-driving tech just fine without releasing it to consumers as a "beta". So is Delphi. So, presumably, is Uber now. Personally I am also of the opinion that releasing autopilot in its current state (especially with the weak sensors) was not a good move in terms of safety for drivers. Great move for PR and gaining data, yes, but we can now make a very plausible…

And you think when Google, Delphi, and Uber start selling cars, everything is going to work perfectly?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#189

Post by ceejayoz »

Retra wrote: post #177
mdorazio wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some PR firm-level explaining. First, autopilot is not just lane assist, it's lane assist + adaptive cruise control + additional features (it can change lanes if you tell it to). Other OEMs have purposely shied away from enabling an autopilot-like feature set together, even though it's technically possible, because they are absolutely terrified of something exactly like this situation happening. Second, you're…

This autopilot is very new and fairly experimental technology. You're basically demanding that this not be true somehow.

Very new and fairly experimental technology that can kill you tends to be fairly heavily regulated. New drugs, rockets, aircraft, etc. don't generally get released via software update to the general public. They go through very regimented, restricted, contracted trials.

Tesla risks getting regulators to crack down on new car features across the entire industry if they're not careful.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#190

Post by semi-extrinsic »

prodmerc wrote: post #90
dangrossman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long to they plan to keep doing this? So long as every Tesla accident makes the homepage of CNBC, unlike the millions that occur in other makers' vehicles. Tesla puts out an immediate PR, and the breaking news that went up on all the financial sites included quotes from it nearly as fast. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-t...

Yeah no kidding, thousands of people die every year in Fords and no one gives a shit, 1 guy dies in a Tesla and "these cars are unsafe, run for your lives, hide yo kids and yo wife, sell your stock, return your car!". I fucking hate modern media.

Ford sells 6-7 million cars each year, so there's going to be close to 100 million Fords driving around globally. There's a little over 100 000 Teslas. So since there is 1000x as many Fords, and assuming every Ford is just as safe as a Tesla, you quite literally get thousands of fatalities a year.
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