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A Tragic Loss

teslamotors.com

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#471

Post by therestisgone »

mozumder wrote: post #240
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.

There are entire car models that have had zero driver deaths: http://www.freep.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/29/study-chan... The Tesla Model S will now never be one of them, and in fact, is now among average for fatality rates that includes motorcycles, drunks, and other dangerous factors. It's now not even among the class of luxury cars that have very low driver deaths. Right now self-driving cars are far too dange…

>The Tesla Model S will now never be one of them

Which version? There is 60, 60D, 70, 70D, 75, 75D, 80, 80D, 85, 85D, 90 and 90D so which one are you talking about? Tesla calls their cars Model S the same way Apple calls their laptops Macbook.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#472

Post by daveguy »

rasz_pl wrote: post #453
daveguy wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely need to know more than just "3d blob at position x" because your expectations and avoidance will be different for car, truck, motorcycle, road sign, human and especially for things like "grocery sack" vs "cinder block". Less relevant on the hwy, but it definitely isn't simply an "easier" visual task. It is convoluted with things that make it easier (multiple cameras) and things that make it more diffic…

I dont think so. Walk before you run. There is no difference between a human, bale of hay or a deer when it comes to objects entering your trajectory. Braking in front of all 3d elements obstructing the way is preferable over Tesla decapitation(TM). Real time is not difficult, we got there 10 years ago for primitive 3d reconstruction at 30Hz on ordinary laptop, today its doable on a phone. It would definitely be bett…

Well, the fact that no one has a product despite billions of dollars in research and at least 5 years directed serious effort (in the latest generation) across every major tech and auto company would indicate that it is a more difficult problem than you think.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#473

Post by cs2818 »

chdir wrote: post #441

If autonomous cars can lead to a significant reduction in road fatalities, then we aren't we in the right direction ? I was hoping that the discussion here would consider the outcome of autonomous vs non-autonomous cars in totality instead of having an emotionally charged outburst against a big corporation. Yes, maybe this is not the right time for Tesla to go all defensive but that's expected & that's how almost any…

I too expected the discussion to be more about the overall gain or loss of safety provided by autonomous driving features.

My personal thinking is that if these imperfect autonomous systems can create a net reduction in road injuries and fatalities they are worth consideration. However, I would also want to take into consideration any incidents where an autonomous system protected the safety of its own occupants, yet caused injury to those in other vehicles.

The type of analysis necessary for this would be complex as it would be dependent upon wider scale deployment of these vehicles and large amounts of unbiased data (which is rarely available in most traditional road incidents). I would imagine that currently only manufacturers of these vehicles have access to the majority of the necessary data and it seems unlikely they would release it for third parties to evaluate.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#474

Post by cs2818 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #88

Very sad. I once designed a robot that used infra-red collision detection to avoid obstacles, my home built, and painted flat black, stereo cabinet registered as open space and the robot drove right into it at full speed. It was a quick lesson on sensor fallibility for me. I've also observed human pilots on busy roads nearly colliding with obstacles when driving toward the setting sun, the visor pulled down and still…

I have had similar experiences working in robotics and I would imagine anyone else who has worked with designing navigation, mapping, or obstacle avoidance for robots would also be well aware of the shortcomings of each type of sensor.

Even in the confines of indoor environments with simple problems like transparent surfaces, specific problematic fabrics, and acoustic panels it is necessary to fuse several types of sensor data to provide reasonably reliable detection of the environment.

I would hope that as sensors and output analysis techniques continue to be developed and costs decrease, creators of autonomous systems would incorporate a wider variety of sensors into their products.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#475

Post by ceejayoz »

fdsaaf wrote: post #436
ceejayoz wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's going to depend on the feature. Slightly improved UI on the radio's touchscreen is a bit different from Tesla's autopilot. In the case of autopilot, I'd say similar to a drug study, as it's something that can cause serious harm or death to the human subjects involved. Tesla should have an IRB for ethical monitoring, there should be a small trial group initially (and very gradual rollouts to larger groups),…

Your small-group drug study would have reported zero incidents in this instance.

That's highly unlikely.

Deaths aren't the only incidents you'd report in a drug study. Other adverse events are important, too. Tesla's one-in-130M-miles number isn't dealing with the fact that there are likely to be many, many more near misses, non-fatal accidents, times the car can't handle stuff and hands over control, etc.

With a proper trial, Tesla would have to document and report the number of times the radar missed semi trailers, the number of times the driver had to disengage and brake sharply, etc.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#476

Post by copperred »

Dr_tldr wrote: post #398
mevile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.

Yeah, but that's not how people's emotions usually work. Although US foreign policy and intelligence decisions were more or less directly responsible for 9/11, you don't lecture people at Ground Zero about the dangers of blowback and not being aware of your government's activities. There's no such thing as "condolences, but...", and Elon Musk has shown a pattern of this kind of tone-deafness before. Not to say he's n…

"There's no such thing as "condolences, but...", and Elon Musk has shown a pattern of this kind of tone-deafness before. Not to say he's not brilliant and not to say autonomous cars won't ultimately save many lives, just that he should either listen to his PR department if he overruled them, or fire his PR department if they did this without him."

Excellent, Doc. Further to the point about these statements and Musk's leadership: not too long ago Tesla would include the fact that nobody has been killed in a Tesla in their public statements. I found it completely inappropriate since we all knew it was just a matter of time, sadly. Again they play with fire, as another death with autopilot will really wreck their statistics.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#477

Post by ceejayoz »

fdsaaf wrote: post #434
ceejayoz wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exactly what standard do you hold beta features before release? With stuff that could easily kill you? If it were a drug, there'd be an ethical review and progressively larger trials in carefully selected groups of people receiving informed consent. Something like that might be more appropriate than "your car just updated! enjoy!" beta software.

First of all, given the number of miles Teslas have driven before this incident, any study would have seen zero accidents. Second, drug studies are also too cautious, and many useful drugs are denied to the public on the basis of rare and tolerable side effects. (For example, look at weight loss drugs.)

Zero fatal accidents, but I suspect such a trial would've revealed a lot of near misses and other "adverse events" with the autopilot. There are certainly plenty of YouTube videos - I recall seeing one where it tries to jerk into oncoming traffic.

I'd be interested in specific weight loss drug examples. There are a number of them available on the market right now.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#478

Post by lttlrck »

mevile wrote: post #77
loceng wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.

They should not be using a blog post to convey critical safety information to their customers.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#479

Post by ringwalt »

lttlrck wrote: post #478
mevile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.

They should not be using a blog post to convey critical safety information to their customers.

There's a warning that makes it clear that you need to maintain your full attention on the road, when you enable Autopilot and every single time you take your hands off the wheel. If anything, giving users specific scenarios where Autopilot may fail would take away from that fact, and make it seem like there are other cases where it's ok to take your eyes off the road.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#480

Post by ringwalt »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #229
xiphias wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the same fatality statistic was not enough for Google to bring autonomous driving into production. Many people think that it should be at least an order of magnitude safer than manual driving

Sure. The problem with this is statistics: you need to have your autonomous cars travel at least 100 billion miles before you can confidently say they're an order of magnitude safer. A normal car drives about 100 000 miles in 10 years. You then need one million autonomous cars driving around for a decade before you even know whether they're safer!

You don't need an equal sample size to determine if autonomous cars are safer. But if you're comparing to all the cars on the road today, you need quality data that matches the distribution of cars today. Google isn't going to prove that autonomous cars are safer if they only test in Palo Alto in ideal weather conditions.
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