Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

ktvq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 530 posts

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#121

Post by greendestiny »

Animats wrote: post #109

With three accidents on "autopilot" in a short period, the defects in Tesla's design are becoming clear. 1. Tesla's "hands on wheel" enforcement is much weaker than their competitors. BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes have similar systems, but after a few seconds of hands-off-wheel, the vehicle will start to slow. Tesla allows minutes of hands-off time; one customer reports driving 50 miles without touching the wheel. Tesla i…

Once again Tesla have made the discussion about the driver. They have put an auto-control system out in the wild that steers the car into hard obstacles at high speed. Beeps to warn the driver at some stage in the preceding interval do not make this control systems failure any more acceptable. It still misjudged situation as acceptable to continue and it still drove into obstacles. Those are significant failures and a blanket statement of responsibility going to the driver isn't going to cut it.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#122

Post by DrStalker »

staunch wrote: post #100
aresant wrote: post #29

I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Aut…

If it's a good enough name for airplanes, it's a good enough names for cars. Both require users to be ready to take control at any moment.

You're far less likely to suddenly encounter unexpected conditions when flying though; the sky has a tendency to be nothing but air, while the ground has a tendency to be filled with things you have to avoid, many of which are moving.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#123

Post by jml7c5 »

staunch wrote: post #100
aresant wrote: post #29

I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Aut…

If it's a good enough name for airplanes, it's a good enough names for cars. Both require users to be ready to take control at any moment.

I would argue that the time frames involved are very dissimilar. In a Tesla, you need to be able to take complete control in under a second if the system fails. The closest I can think of in a plane is during an assisted landing, which is a relatively brief period where the pilot is fully engaged anyway.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#124

Post by base698 »

alogray wrote: post #102
iabacu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how many deaths happen due to car accidents, one would think that any car feature that decreases safety should be considered a bug (UX bugs included). The sad thing is that Tesla has been repeatedly blaming the driver, instead of improving its technology in an openly earnest manner -- an approach that eventually made air travel the safest. With so many sensors, car travel can eventually become safer than air tr…

Has this feature decreased safety? Tesla's first fatality came after 130 million autopilot miles whereas traditions in the US, we have one fatality every 90 million miles. If that continues to hold, this seems to be significantly safer with it's own set of caveats. Not altogether different than getting stuck in a burning car due to your seatbelt.

I actually worked out the math on this--Tesla is lying with statistics when they made this comment they did about 1 in 130 million miles.

Here's what I did:

  1 in 90 million rate: 1.1 x 10^8
  Probability of No accident in one mile: 1 - 1.1 x 108 = ~9.9999999 x 10^8
  Probability of No accident and driving 130 million miles: (9.99999999 x 10 ^ 8) ^ 130e6 = 0.24
  Probability AT LEAST ONE ACCIDENT in 130 million miles = 1 - 0.24 = 0.76
If you do the same for a rate of 1 in 130 miles you get: 0.63.

So the true rate could really be worse than 1 in 90 million miles and they just got lucky that no incident prevented itself, which would make it more dangerous than a regular car.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#126

Post by michaelmcmillan »

meddlepal wrote: post #111

Tesla needs (or is going to be forced) to issue a recall soon. Putting "beta" technology in a car isn't OK when it puts drivers and others on the road in danger. This is especially problematic because people have a preconceived notion of what "auto pilot" means and just because Tesla says it's not ready for prime time so therefore you should "keep your hands on the wheel" doesn't make it OK to put into production.

I thought the entire autopilot could be replaced with an over-the-air software update?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#127

Post by Retra »

aresant wrote: post #29

I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Aut…

Do you have any evidence at all that any accidents have been caused by misinterpreting the functions name? Do you think if it were called something different these accident wouldn't have happened? I see little reason seriously to believe that.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#128

Post by gaur »

Animats wrote: post #109

With three accidents on "autopilot" in a short period, the defects in Tesla's design are becoming clear. 1. Tesla's "hands on wheel" enforcement is much weaker than their competitors. BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes have similar systems, but after a few seconds of hands-off-wheel, the vehicle will start to slow. Tesla allows minutes of hands-off time; one customer reports driving 50 miles without touching the wheel. Tesla i…

> Tesla allows minutes of hands-off time; one customer reports driving 50 miles without touching the wheel.

How are these numbers compatible with each other? Was the car going at >1000 miles per hour?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#129

Post by Gustomaximus »

iabacu wrote: post #107
alogray wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has this feature decreased safety? Tesla's first fatality came after 130 million autopilot miles whereas traditions in the US, we have one fatality every 90 million miles. If that continues to hold, this seems to be significantly safer with it's own set of caveats. Not altogether different than getting stuck in a burning car due to your seatbelt.

That's 90 million miles among all cars. I'd wager that if you compare it with cars at Tesla price point -- mostly luxury cars -- Tesla would look pretty bad.

Really? Bringing guesses to a fact game. We can do better.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#130

Post by BigJono »

taneq wrote: post #28
jdoliner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the car bark it him though. The article says that Tesla claims the car repeatedly alerted the driver to take control of the vehicle and he didn't. I think you are wrong that this the first incident where autopilot was involved with an inattentive driver. In the fatal crash responders found a portable DVD player inside the car and seemed confident it was in use at the time of the crash.

The driver's response is moot. The larger issue here is that if autopilot doesn't provide for a safe stop under its own control when it encounters a situation it can't handle, any vehicle on autopilot becomes a lethal missile if the driver has some kind of medical problem. A traditional car won't get more than a few hundred meters if the driver on the freeway has a stroke, say. A car on autopilot could travel hundred…

Also going to play devil's advocate here. Sure the car only goes a few hundred metres, but a slight knock of the wheel as they pass out or a small corner in the road could easily send said car into a crowded cafe.

What is the chance that a Tesla car fails to continue safely and eventually pull over after the driver carks it? 0.1%? 1%? I doubt anywhere near 99% of strokes while driving end with the car just slowing down for a hundred metres and stopping safely in the middle of the road. I'd be surprised if the majority do. Not that it's a common occurance, but if I picture a typical stroke while driving alone, I'm picturing a car veering slowly off the road and hitting something at maybe 50-75% of the speed it was originally travelling.

Tesla's self-driving would have to be abysmally bad to not beat that, and given we're only discussing 3 accidents so far, I don't believe that to be the case.

Post reply on HN