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A Tragic Loss

tesla.com

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: A Tragic Loss

#81
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underrun guards are a good idea but not yet practical for trailers in the US. The reason is that loading dock approaches have far too much variance in ground height, and the empty space under the trailer is essential to have. If guards were in place, they would come into regular contact with the ground and either damage the trailer or the truck would be 'high centered' and stuck, resting on the guards. I suppose the…

I don't know if this excuse holds water. If 28 disparate states with different freight profiles can pull it off, surely the US can too. It's all about will.

I don't think it's a question of willpower. The contiguous US is 48 states, each with the autonomy to calculate and set max axle weight / distance rules and many do. Sliding tandem axles under a 53-foot trailer are not something you just re-architect overnight.

The span under the trailer behind the rear drive axle(s) and the forward trailer axle is much longer than you find on European trucks. That means you need a much longer underride guard. You also have to convince trucking company execs that all that extra weight is a good thing even though they know it's cheaper to pay the occasional settlement after a gruesome accident.

Also, putting the trailer axles further forward to shorten the gap is not possible until Indiana changes their minimum axle length regulation (40 feet trailer kingpin to rear axle centerline) because I believe that while they are the only state to have such a rule, you can't do much interstate commerce with a fleet of trucks and avoid travelling through that state with its central location.

Trucking in the US is massively regulated and bureaucratic and you are going to need a lot more than will to get it to change. I'd love to see safer trucks too but I am not optimistic about seeing underride guards in the US anytime soon.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non for profits that buy semi trucks also do not install safety skirts. Neither do any government trucks I've seen. I don't think capitalism is the issue.

Capitalism is the issue because the money is being saved by cutting corners on safety. In case of non-profits and the government people might actually sue for wasting of money because money is spent on stuff that is not required by law.

Capitalism is the issue because the money is being saved by cutting corners on safety.

Saving resources by skipping on safety features is not exclusive to capitalism. If anything, the correlation seems to run backwards - capitalist countries are generally safer (mostly, I'd say, because they're rich enough to spend extra resources on safety).

In case of non-profits and the government people might actually sue for wasting of money because money is spent on stuff that is not required by law.

Can you give an example of such a lawsuit ever having succeeded?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#83
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underrun guards are a good idea but not yet practical for trailers in the US. The reason is that loading dock approaches have far too much variance in ground height, and the empty space under the trailer is essential to have. If guards were in place, they would come into regular contact with the ground and either damage the trailer or the truck would be 'high centered' and stuck, resting on the guards. I suppose the…

I don't know if this excuse holds water. If 28 disparate states with different freight profiles can pull it off, surely the US can too. It's all about will.

"Will" in this case, though, is basically a euphemism for "cost of (retro)fitting trucks and loading docks with guardrails" vs "cost of lives lost by failing to do so." I'm not sure how those two numbers would compare.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#84

> It is important to note > It is important to emphasize I am getting so disappointed by how widespread this wasteful use of the English language has become. The phrase is just filler and means nothing, yet it is used everywhere, nearly every HN thread has someone who uses it. If you need to note something, then note it. By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it." Further sa…

> By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it."

But you have not said this is important enough for you to read, right now, nor especially important enough to remember every detail. If everything written were important to read, we'd spend our lifetimes failing to work through the backlog - of every word ever written since the dawn of writing. There are key points to remember, and then supporting facts to be forgotten after they've done their job of arguing for those key points, and this language emphasizes their key points (in defense of Tesla, naturally, rather than the mundane statistics.)

> Further saying that it is important is a crutch.

Perhaps. But remember - crutches are legitimate medical devices built to serve a need, they have purpose! I tend to use the terser "IMPORTANT:", "NOTE WELL:", "N.B.:"[1], "NOTE:", etc. to call attention to high priority stuff. I'll especially use this style of emphasis in code, where I can't make my text bold, underlined, large-fonted, red, blinking for emphasis, embedded into a modal dialog you can't dismiss for the first 10 seconds, just to make sure you read the damn thing. These are the notes I deem to have e.g. a 100:1 time saved/spent ratio, where I need my fellow programmers to stop skimming as a thousand inane comments before have perhaps trained them to do, and to instead save us all a lot of time and energy by reading the important thing.

But being that terse in a press release like this would come across as incredibly tone deaf and insensitive. Try replacing "It is important to emphasize that" with "NOTE:" and "It is important to note that" with "IMPORTANT:". The paragraphs themselves might read fine, but in the broader context of the press release it'd be cringe worthy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nota_bene

Re: A Tragic Loss

#85

> It is important to note > It is important to emphasize I am getting so disappointed by how widespread this wasteful use of the English language has become. The phrase is just filler and means nothing, yet it is used everywhere, nearly every HN thread has someone who uses it. If you need to note something, then note it. By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it." Further sa…

> By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it." But you have not said this is important enough for you to read, right now, nor especially important enough to remember every detail . If everything written were important to read, we'd spend our lifetimes failing to work through the backlog - of every word ever written since the dawn of writing. There are key points to remember,…

> Try replacing "It is important to emphasize that" with "NOTE:" and "It is important to note that" with "IMPORTANT:".

That would be an equal problem as the original and not how a good writer should solve the wording.

Compare this to, for example, the press releases by a major news organization when it admits it got something important quite wrong. There are many ways to use our language as it was designed without getting meta.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#86

> It is important to note > It is important to emphasize I am getting so disappointed by how widespread this wasteful use of the English language has become. The phrase is just filler and means nothing, yet it is used everywhere, nearly every HN thread has someone who uses it. If you need to note something, then note it. By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it." Further sa…

Compare these two versions of the first 2 paragraphs. The second version actually emphasizes the point better, without saying "it is important to emphasize."

Original:

We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. 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. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. 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. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.

Simple edit to one sentence:

We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. 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 NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. 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. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#87

The main problem with all of this, is that its not a true autopilot. In fact its the worst kind of autopilot. one that bails out at the last minute leaving you fuck all time to take action. telsa's autopilot is level 3, which means freeway driving only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification The thing I fear now is the toxic mix of fanboyism and excessive PR management reminiscent of the worst ex…

The thing I fear now, is fearmongering by people who dont drive Teslas, havent spent time with Autosteer/autopilot and ignore that this was a freak accident, that probably would have killed the driver regardless of using autopilot. This is the future of roadsafety.

Thank you for illustrating my point so clearly. There is no evidence that this is freak accident. There may be a systematic flaw in the firmware, or not using sensors, or any number of things that only come to light in situations like this.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#88
post #7
post #2

Not clear why did the car continue to travel after the impact. Didn't the systems detect the negative acceleration from the collision?

It wouldn't necessarily be cause to disengage the autopilot. Plenty of things could cause negative acceleration besides a collision. A hill, a patch of mud, etc. And presumably they didn't anticipate this kind of situation, so didn't include moderate slowing due to collision as a code path.

The car should still have started emergency braking at some close distance before the obstacle (when the radar data got very clear about that not being an overhead sign). Braking in case of an inevitable crash is useful to reduce severity of the crash. And it's a bad idea to release brakes after the crash either. So it still seems like wrong behavior to me.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this has anything to due with legality. A legal contract, for example, doesn't need this phrase anywhere for the words to be legally binding: after all, they are in the contract itself, therefore don't need any special modifier.

Some clauses and phrases are required to have extra attention called to them to be binding, which is why you see some paragraphs bolded, or all capitals.

Bolding and capitalization are not wasting words, however.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#90

What strikes me most is that the first paragraph is only dedicated to the benefit of Tesla, trying to downplay the event by comparing it to human drivers. After three more paragraphs to deflect damage from Tesla the last paragraph - like an afterthought - is about the tragedy of the death of a person. Perhaps this is just me. I at least would have wished the first paragraph would have followed the headline of "A trag…

There's a 10% of abandonement for each additional paragraph in the post so you need to put the most important facts first to ensure your message is conveyed. Their priority is to restablish confidence and there is nothing that can be done to bring that person back to life. They are trying to save other people's lives by pushing their idea for a safer driving.

For me they have tarnished their brand. They are just like all the others. Puff, magic gone with one press release. All of Musks talk, in the end he is not different than profit-above-all GM executives - a little more brilliant perhaps.
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