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A Tragic Loss

teslamotors.com

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#281

Post by sologoub »

daveguy wrote: post #203

A direct reply from Elon Musk on twitter about why radar did not recognize the white side of a trailer across the road when the camera missed it: "Radar tunes out what looks like an overhead road sign to avoid false braking events" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/748620607105839104 EDIT: When the "overhead sign" comes down below overhead clearance of the vehicle the signal should not be masked. There should have…

It also seems strange that the rest of the tractor trailer was not picked up by the radar when it was entering the road in the first place - the front part that is pulling the trailer is typically lower and should not have been mistaken for a road sign or otherwise.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#282

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

So, reading this made me finally realise what I don't like about autonomous cars.

tl;dr: stupid bugs can now kill you dead.

You know how AI systems, when they fail, they really, really fail? Like, when you ask Google Image Search for "unprofessional hair" and it returns images of black womens' hair because it doesn't have a clue? Or when you ask Google Translate to translate "swallows" to Greek and it comes back with the Greek work for "swallowing" (true story) because it has no idea what either word means, just that they're somehow similar, ish?

That sort of thing. When AI fails, it fails in ways that nothing with a brain will ever deign to fail. People don't crash into the sides of barns because they mistook them for the open sky. People don't run over old ladies because they thought they were flowerbeds.

Human drivers fail in situations where they don't have time to react- but even given all the time in the world there are situations where a program will simply derp, and derp and derp again until the end of time. And if this happens in the middle of a life or death situation, people die. The same happens with autopilots on planes.

So this is what, well, bugs me. I don't guess I get to choose how I die (unless I do it myself) but I'm pretty sure I don't want to die because of a dumb bug in a stupid machine. Therefore, I don't want no cars being "smart" around me. I don't want to be the one driving them and I don't want others driving them around me.

The current tech simply can't avoid completely brain-dead mistakes and no road vehicle should be given autonomy until that changes.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#283

Post by kmonsen »

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.

Since I have not seen any of these, can you actually point to large media outlets saying these things?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#284

Post by vlad »

daveguy wrote: post #203

A direct reply from Elon Musk on twitter about why radar did not recognize the white side of a trailer across the road when the camera missed it: "Radar tunes out what looks like an overhead road sign to avoid false braking events" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/748620607105839104 EDIT: When the "overhead sign" comes down below overhead clearance of the vehicle the signal should not be masked. There should have…

A reply to that tweet:

"our new Prius applied the brakes while driving under an overpass. I'm glad no one was following too close"

Re: A Tragic Loss

#285

Post by amalag »

fdsaaf wrote: post #262
amalag wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah i can't believe this is not bigger news. The Tesla AI was almost good enough to replace an attentive driver. But almost is not good enough.

> replace an attentive driver It's unrealistic to assume that human drivers are attentive all the time. Autopilot never gets tired, never eats, never applies makeup, never sneezes, and never gets distracted by screaming children. You have to compare autopilot to realistic humans, not your platonic ideal of what a driver should be. I'm sick and tired of people making statements about road transit predicated on the ide…

I read it more closely and they do try to enforce that a driver has his hands on the wheel, etc. I am not convinced of the benefits though. I think something that enforces people to pay attention when driving is a better solution.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#286

Post by Shivetya »

loceng wrote: post #48
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #21

I mean I understand Tesla has to make a statement here and I understand they want to ensure everyone that it's not really their fault but to title a post "A Tragic Loss" and then spend the majority of the post discussing all of your car's safety features and how it wasn't your fault just seems tone deaf and distasteful to me. Maybe they had to do it for legal reasons I don't know (I'm certainly not a lawyer) and I'd…

I feel 'A Tragic Loss' sets the tone for the remaining highly technical overview, instead of the technical breakdown seeming tone-deaf, it added tone until getting to the concluding paragraph. Unfortunately, fortunately, Tesla is having to educate people and being very clear to not allow room for panic and unwarranted fear mongering. I would say it is as to the point as it can be, and that it is heartfelt.

All that matters is, did the technology fail. I don't care about crash rates in other cars, if the impact had been different, the only fact that matters in this case is, did the tech fail. If so then is it safe to leave on or should it be disabled across the board until it cannot fail this scenario again.

one failure and they will take a minor publicity and money hit, two and its going to devastating

Re: A Tragic Loss

#287

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

archagon wrote: post #221

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…

>> The point is that humanity is not a herd to be taken as a whole;

That's a great point but the truth is that we already treat human lives as a resource to be spent: for instance, we allow planes to fly and automobiles to be driven even though their safety is not perfect. We allow that, out of say a million flights, one plane will fatally crash killing usually everybody on board (I don't know what the real number is- I made the 1/1mil up).

So basically we accept that in order for each of us to fly to our destination, 300 ish people must die every so often. Like a kind of sacrifice.

I don't see how any of this is going to stop any time soon, especially when people are always quick to tell you how safe flying is, or how, although road accidents are common and people get killed in them, "what can you do, stop driving?". It seems to me that at some level we all accept that in order for us to have our fast transport, some people must die.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#288

Post by jsprogrammer »

npizzolato wrote: post #173
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #21

I mean I understand Tesla has to make a statement here and I understand they want to ensure everyone that it's not really their fault but to title a post "A Tragic Loss" and then spend the majority of the post discussing all of your car's safety features and how it wasn't your fault just seems tone deaf and distasteful to me. Maybe they had to do it for legal reasons I don't know (I'm certainly not a lawyer) and I'd…

I half expected the final paragraph offering condolences to end with "but remember, this really wasn't Tesla's fault!" The third paragraph reads like Tesla is trying to wash their hands as much as possible. "Remember, he clicked all these buttons. He knew what he was getting into!"

It really makes you consider why you would even want such an autopilot. From the description in this eulogy, it sounds like you must work even harder with autopilot on than if you were driving manually. Not only do you need to have the same alertness as manual driving, you also have to be ready to take over at any moment and try to detect if the autopilot has made any mistakes that might guillotine you, or worse.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#289

Post by Twirrim »

stcredzero wrote: post #200
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

assuming every Ford is just as safe as a Tesla, you quite literally get thousands of fatalities a year. Which is about right.

According to wikipedia there were 32,675 fatalities in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i..., around 10 fatalities per 100,000 population.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#290

Post by archagon »

xoa wrote: post #275
archagon wrote: post #221

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…

>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 What. "Acceptable losses" is, and has always been the rule when it comes to accidents in all cars , ever. We've made absolutely massive safety improvements in the last few decades, cutting the death rate to around 1/3 of its historical maximum, yet even so tens…

> So personally, I find your appeal to emotion and thinly veiled "what about the children" shtick disgusting and immoral.

How do you counter a utilitarian argument without humanizing the situation? If my friend or loved one were killed by an ill-considered and poorly-implemented automated driving algorithm, no amount of statistics would convince me that the tradeoff was worth it. Who bears responsibility in that case? No one? I suspect that ordinary people won't accept that for a long time to come. At least with human drivers, the courts can decide culpability. At least with a human in the mix, we're all still operating within the same social and legal order.

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