241–250 of 511 posts
But what disappoints me the most is how the "tech" crowd will defend Tesla every time.Someone lost their life because Tesla can't put out a decent semi-autonomous driving systems and we are supposed to brush it aside?
This is on the road to being off topic, but still relevant given some of the commentary in this thread: It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars, to the point of pre-emptively expressing disdain at ordinary people reacting negatively to such news. I sense it's going to become harder and harder for us to…
You might scoff and say that's hyperbole, or scaremongering, and you might be right, but I took it as a warning. It is our responsibility as ethical engineers to ensure that people aren't harmed by the technology we create. It's true that self-driving cars will likely be safer than human-driven cars, but that doesn't absolve us of responsibility. In fact, it makes it all the more poignant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1/94 million is very close to 10/1000 million, which is what I said.
Close is not the same and neither is the same as 1/134 million. Of course I have no idea if the differences are statistically significant, and it's likely impossible to tell given the lack of data on Tesla autopilot at the moment (new).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding of the Asiana crash was that the autopilot would have landed the plane fine, and that it was the humans turning it off that caused the problem. Your point is still valid, but perhaps we approach a time when over-reliance is better than all but the best human pilots (Sully, perhaps).
The Air France 447 accident is a better fitting example of pitfalls that may obtain in complex "humans-with-automation" types of systems. There, automation lowered both the standard for situational awareness and fundamental stick and rudder skills. Then, when a quirky corner case happened, the pilots did all manner of wrong on the problem: so much so, they amplified a condition from "mostly harmless" to fatal for all…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace "autopilot" with "cruise control" -- would you have the same situation? Autopilot is basically advanced cruise control plus steering assist. From what I make of this story, this same accident would have happened with any other car with cruise control turned on.
I disagree. In a car with normal or even advanced cruise control, the driver would still be paying attention to the road and ostensibly would have seen the truck ahead and applied the brakes. Autopilot makes it very easy to not pay attention at all and let the car drive itself for minutes at a time. I'm sure you'll say, "yes but that's a driver attention problem, not a technology problem", but to me they're the same…
Especially after hearing about incidents like this, you won't find me going through my email while letting "autopilot" do its thing. I don't think I would before this, but there's certainly a lower probability that I would now. I'm being trained.
Other premium automakers have automatic braking and pre-collision systems that take effect regardless of whether the (enhanced) cruise control is engaged. We have seen from other incidents that Tesla's autobraking will not engage when autopilot is disabled (potentially by tapping the brakes), which is contrary to widespread user expectation -- disclaimers notwithstanding. However, in this particular case, it was the…
Which manufacturers use eye-height radar-based systems?
Mercedes-Benz uses two different radar sensors: "the DISTRONIC radar is configured to monitor three lanes of a motorway to a range of up to 150 metres with a spread of nine degrees, the new [DISTRONIC PLUS] 24-Gigahertz radar registers the situation immediately ahead of the vehicle with aspread of 80 degrees and a range of 30 metres." [1]
Volvo has a combination of grill-mounted 15° FOV radar and a 48° FOV greyscale camera behind the top of the windshield [2].
Volkswagen uses radar [3], but not sure where it's mounted. Honda's CMBS is a radar in the grill [4]. Subaru uses two cameras mounted behind the top of the windshield [5], and no radar, albeit radar is used with some of their other safety systems.
[1] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0103-O.pdf [2] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0450-o.pdf [3] http://en.volkswagen.com/en/innovation-and-technology/techni... [4] https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/om/JA0606/JA0606O00... [5] http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a6852/subaru-camer...
This is on the road to being off topic, but still relevant given some of the commentary in this thread: It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars, to the point of pre-emptively expressing disdain at ordinary people reacting negatively to such news. I sense it's going to become harder and harder for us to…
Everyone is on the side of less death, but since there are some inherent dangers in zooming along at 120km/h, the losses can only approach zero and will never reach it. The fact that cars are used at all shows that we make something like a utilitarian decision already. They are very, very useful, with a small possibility of personal catastrophe. Same with air travel, drinking beer, or leaving the house ever, all to different degrees.
If the autocars are less likely to kill me than human drivers, I'm for the autocars.
This is on the road to being off topic, but still relevant given some of the commentary in this thread: It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars, to the point of pre-emptively expressing disdain at ordinary people reacting negatively to such news. I sense it's going to become harder and harder for us to…
Yes, this is another thing that makes me so angry about this situation.
Back in the day, I worked on a project to give autonomy to power wheelchair systems. In order to get it to market, we had to go through FDA approval, which involved testing the equipment in every conceivable scenario. We had to show how it performed in rain, snow, dust storms, sunlight, etc. and it had to be incredibly rigorous, defining all limitations, and how the user would be impacted if the systems failed.
If we came the FDA and said "Our system works in many scenarios, but we've found a pathological case where on certain sunny days it will crash into certain brightly colored objects, resulting in almost certain death for the user" we would have been summarily rejected. Non starter.
And yet we're willing to put a system with the above disclaimer (which should have been known to Tesla engineers. This is sensors 101.) on the market with absolutely no oversight? Seriously?
" Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. " Now that's blaming the user for a design flaw. There is no excuse for failing to detect the side of a semitrailer. Tesla has a radar. Did it fail, was its data misprocessed, or is the field of view badly chosen? The single radar sensor is mounted low on the front of the vehicle,…
Tesla is under a regulatory requirement to report all relevant mishaps to the NHTSA, even if they occur outside the US.
[0] http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/hig...