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A Tragic Loss

teslamotors.com

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#501

Post by fucking_tragedy »

dangrossman wrote: post #56
Analemma_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm starting to get really weirded out by Tesla's immediate "not our fault!" blog posts every time a Tesla is involved in any kind of accident. I could see the necessity the first few times back when it was new technology to a lot of people (and Top Gear had it in for them), but with it happening over and over it seems whiny and a bit callous. How long to they plan to keep doing this?

> 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...

Look at a comparable example with software related car malfunctions. Toyota's unintended acceleration problem made headlines and made it before a judge.

It seems fair to me.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#503

Post by jsprogrammer »

jfrisby wrote: post #502
jsprogrammer wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is predictive, the other is retrospective.

Except that the retrospective IS predictive.

What evidence supports that position?

Crashes are anaomolus events that happen for very specific reasons. Reasons that do not have any seeming connection to any other crash. I don't see how a retrospective could predict anything about the success of future flights.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#504

Post by kartickv »

NamTaf wrote: post #409
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…

This is what I've now said 3 or so times in various autopilot threads. It has to be an all or nothing thing. Part of responsible engineering is engineering out the many and varied ways that humans can fuck it all up. Look at how UX works in software. Good engineering eliminates users being able to do the wrong thing as much as possible. You don't design a feature that invites misuse and then use instructions to try t…

I understand your point that it has to be all-or-nothing, but if you were asked to redesign the UX to make autopilot (as it currently stands) safer, how would you change it?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#505

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

>> And I will freely assert will accomplish, because humans are awful drivers.

If humans are such awful drivers and replacing them with automation is the moral thing to do, why is it not the moral thing to do to stop them from driving altogether, right now and for the time being, until we have automation that is better than "awful"?

If we're such rubbish drivers that we'll always kill others if we're driving, why are we allow ourselves to drive?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#506

Post by jfrisby »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #503
jfrisby wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the retrospective IS predictive.

What evidence supports that position? Crashes are anaomolus events that happen for very specific reasons. Reasons that do not have any seeming connection to any other crash. I don't see how a retrospective could predict anything about the success of future flights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate

Re: A Tragic Loss

#507

Post by mdorazio »

lsaferite wrote: post #225
mdorazio wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the same as blaming your car company for getting speeding tickets when you used cruise control. How many of those letters have you sent out?

No, it's not the same at all. With cruise control you are still fully in control of your car and necessarily aware of how fast you are going and what is going on in your surroundings. With Autopilot that is simply not the case - the technology virtually begs you to set it and then play with your phone or the touchscreen instead of paying attention to the road, text warnings be damned.

If you want an actually applicable analogy, I'll pull one I've used before. Say you buy an oven that has this great auto-baking feature that lets you just put some cookie dough inside it and then come back whenever you want, even hours later, to have fresh baked cookies waiting. That's how it's marketed - the AutoBake Oven. Except the manufacturer says that you're still supposed to watch the oven at all times in case something goes wrong. So you make some cookies with it and they turn out great, and nothing goes wrong. And hey, it's the AutoBake Oven, right? It says it will bake things automatically so you don't have to worry about them for hours at a time. So you logically decide to put some dough in there and then go the grocery store for a few minutes to get some items for dinner. And you come back and your house burned down because the AutoBake Oven lit itself on fire due to having subpar sensors and beta software in it. Now tell me you wouldn't file a lawsuit against the manufacturer.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#508

Post by mdorazio »

Retra wrote: post #331
mdorazio wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, but it will work a lot better than autopilot, with significantly lower accident rates. No system will ever be perfect, but there is a huge difference between privately testing something to the best of your abilities before releasing it, and turning on a beta feature easily capable of killing drivers via a software update protected by a disclaimer screen.

What reason do you have to believe that? What are you basing this on? Just because something is in development longer doesn't mean the quality is better. Furthermore, Tesla might be gaining some critical information with their early release. And whose to say Tesla didn't test this stuff to the best of their abilities? 'Significantly lower accident rates' compared to what, exactly? The highly accurate accident rates c…

I'm basing it on what those companies are actually doing right now in the real world. Both companies have paid drivers babysitting their "driverless" cars on real roads right now, and they will continue to test them this way, out of the hands of the public, for years, gathering data in a safe way over millions of miles driven. Because that's the way to gather data when real lives are at stake. Both companies are also adamant about having LIDAR and additional sensors in their vehicles that Tesla has decided aren't needed. Neither company has or will release a version to the public until they actually think it is safe to turn control over to the car entirely.

Now compare that to Tesla - beta software and sub-par sensors that can't detect stationary objects in the road (there was a recent case where a Model S on Autopilot hit a stalled car on the freeway despite plenty of time to stop), can't detect obstacles at windshield level (there was a recent case where a Model S hit a parked trailer when summoned), and apparently have trouble distinguishing between sky and lightly colored objects in full daylight (the most recent accident). This is a company that is prioritizing technology releases ahead of human lives.

Significantly lower accident rates compared to Model S Autopilot, if that wasn't obvious. In the future, you will take accidents per miles driven in autonomous mode and compare between Tesla, Google, Apple, Uber, etc. and then see which one has the lower rate. I am saying that Tesla will be the worst.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#509

Post by alxndr »

Animats wrote: post #227
npizzolato wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

Yes. Last time, their excuse was "but the driver should have known that in firmware revision 6.2 and later, tapping the brake disables automatic braking". This time, there's an interesting question. Did Tesla remotely access the crash data after the crash? Did they alter any data? Is that verifiable? The NTSB will probably explore that issue. The crash data record in an airbag controller becomes read-only when the ai…

Gives a new meaning to semver's term "breaking changes".

Re: A Tragic Loss

#510

Post by manicdee »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #483
manicdee wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The autopilot in planes works the same way: pilot is strongly recommended to keep hands on the controls, autopilot will release control if any conditions fall outside the autopilot's functional envelope.

Pilots are trained professionals in the field where autopilot is relevant, consumers are not.

and even though they are highly trained they still keep their attention on the plane's operation.

And pilots still make mistakes when adjusting to a context where the autopilot has unexpectedly handed control back to the humans.

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