A Tragic Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: A Tragic Loss

#461

Post by ec109685 » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:50 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #320

emitstop wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. Additionally, 92 people are killed in fatal car accidents in the US every day. So it's not as though this is some uncommon occurrence that autonomous vehicles would be unlikely to improve.

> This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. It most definitely is not above that bar! The autopilot is combined with a human operating the car. How many accidents were avoided by the human rather than the autopilot? I suspect a ton of accidents (i.e. the autopilot has a high error rate). How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not…

"How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not have? Probably not that many, if any."

Or probably it avoided 100,000 accidents!

Unfortunately, we are both just guessing.

So please keep your math out of this.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#462

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 7:02 AM UTC

archagon wrote: post #444

threatofrain wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't find your perspective persuasive because I don't see why I'm not any more of an individual at risk when another human hits me, and society won't hold that human liable due to absence of mens rea. Many people get hurt or killed in a situation with no criminal element. I don't see how it's any more or less personal if I'm maimed or killed by a machine versus a bounded human mind. I also don't care to blam…

I agree that many people would prefer living in more utilitarian society where machines have a hand in making these kinds of decisions. "Abstracting out" the damage caused by driving strictly into the domain of algorithms is surely a tempting prospect for the tech-minded, especially given that human behavior is so unpredictable and uncorrectable. But this shift into the world of semi-intelligent machines would affect…

[deleted]

Re: A Tragic Loss

#463

Post by sago » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 8:49 AM UTC

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…

It's also unrealistic to assume that an attentive driver would have avoided the crash.

Driving at speed, you have to make assumptions that other people will do the right thing. You pass cars all the time. If you assume that the car might side-swipe you, you wouldn't get far, and you'd be a hazard yourself.

You drive on undivided highways all the time without driving as if the oncoming car might cross in front of you. And so on. We have to assume that others are minimally competent. That's the point of road laws, not just to control you, but to let you assume things about others.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#464

Post by informatimago » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 8:51 AM UTC

iofj wrote: post #451

Shivetya wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For one thing, it lookslike the car kept driving after the crash, hit 2 fences and a pole, then tried to get back on the road before it shut down. Sounds like pretty big screwup. https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2016/0...

Well again, the Tesla autopilot is not a google car AI pilot system.

IMO, human (customers') expectations require more than a mere autopilot.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#465

Post by informatimago » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 8:55 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #448

userbinator wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In aviation, autopilots became successful because the human-machine handoff latency required is relatively large --- despite how fast planes fly, the separation between them and other objects is large and there is usually still time (seconds) to react when the autopilot decides it can't do the job ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XxEFFX586k ) On the road, where relative separation is much less (and there's even bee…

In other words: The driver might have needed to react before the auto-pilot realized it needed to react (let along could humanly respond). There are two things that I take away from this. * Auto-pilot should probably just keep going (or bring to a as controlled stop as possible). * It should also collect more data to hopefully warn the driver more in advance.

My conclusion is that "autopilot" is insufficient in this context, and that a fully automatic AI driver is needed.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#466

Post by M4v3R » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 9:17 AM UTC

malz wrote: post #297

prodmerc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems newsworthy that the world's first robotic car, specifically designed to see and react to road conditions, drives into the side of a truck.

It was the other way around - the truck drove into the side of Tesla, which didn't react because it didn't saw the truck with its cameras because of combination of brightly lit sky and truck white color.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#467

Post by dgudkov » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 11:02 AM UTC

It's a big mistake to allow autonomous driving with speeds that are potentially fatal -- the technology is still not tested enough. It should've been a good decade of autonomous driving with speeds strictly not more than 10-20mph(15-30kph), and only then gradually increasing it. It was clearly a marketing rush for sensational features to ensure sales.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#468

Post by mariust » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 11:16 AM UTC

I think that the radar is broken in terms of the angle that it does it scan, it should be 180 per 180 degrees from left to right and from road surface to top. I have a hunch that now it's just 180 left to right and somewhere around 30-45 road to top.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#469

Post by ForHackernews » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 11:27 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #94

This is why driving AI is 'all or nothing' for me. Assisted systems will lead to drivers paying less attention as the systems get better. The figures quoted by Tesla seem impressive but you have to assume the majority of the drivers is still paying attention all the time . As auto-pilots get better you'll see them paying attention less and then the accident rate will go up, not down for a while at least until the bug…

Toyota is taking the opposite approach to Tesla: they are introducing automated features as a backstop against human error, rather than a substitute for human attention. Your Toyota (or Lexus) won't drive itself, but it might slam on the brake or swerve to avoid an obstacle you couldn't see.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20160321/OEM11/160329991/toy...

Re: A Tragic Loss

#470

Post by DKnoll3 » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 11:28 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #94

This is why driving AI is 'all or nothing' for me. Assisted systems will lead to drivers paying less attention as the systems get better. The figures quoted by Tesla seem impressive but you have to assume the majority of the drivers is still paying attention all the time . As auto-pilots get better you'll see them paying attention less and then the accident rate will go up, not down for a while at least until the bug…

As someone very excited about this space, I unfortunately have to agree that Tesla is playing fast and loose with autonomous safety (and more importantly, public opinion!) to be first to market. You can't be half in and half out, which is what these "assist" features are.

They're adding new features to inadequate/improperly configured hardware for what they're asking the car to do, and waiving away all liability for stupid peoples' actions with disclaimers (always be ready to take over).

Whether that's right or wrong is really subjective, especially when you take natural selection into account.

Tesla's (only!) radar sensor is located at the bottom of the bumper, if I'm not mistaken. Compare this with Google's, which is located in the arguably correct position, the roof. Also compare other manufacturers' solutions that are utilizing 2-3 radar sensors, as well as sonar.

https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-will-be-...