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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#131

Post by Retra »

studentrob wrote: post #85
yes_or_gnome wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tens of thousands of people either walking or driving the streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale where Google is testing its self-driving cars. So, the members of the public are at risk. But, I understand that you mean behind the wheel. Which is fun because the Google cars do not have a wheel. As I'm sure you may know, instead of a traditional steering wheel they have horizontally mounted, valve wheel with…

> There are tens of thousands of people either walking or driving the streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale where Google is testing its self-driving cars. So, the members of the public are at risk. There is a huge difference between Google operating a handful of cars in certain areas and Tesla selling 10-20 thousand vehicles per month that can be operated by untrained consumers anywhere in the US. Tesla is using its…

>untrained consumers

Licensed drivers. Drivers who have a license that indicates that they will take responsibility for the actions of any vehicle they control and understand how to operate any features which may put themselves or others at risk.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#132

Post by HNaTTY »

greendestiny wrote: post #121
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…

I agree; I think it's despicable that Tesla is acting in such a defensive manner.

-- "No force was detected on the steering wheel for over two minutes after autosteer was engaged," said Tesla, which added that it can detect even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel.

"As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel," said Tesla. "He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway." --

Bruh-slow the car down then. If you're storing information that points to the fact that that the driver is not paying attention, and you're not doing anything about it, that's on you 100%.

We are in the midst of a transition period between autonomous and semi-autonomous cars, and blaming the driver for the fact that the car, in auto-steer mode, steered into obstacles, is counter-productive in the long term. You need to make auto-steer not work under these conditions. The driver will quickly figure out the limits of your system as their car decelerates with an annoying beeping sound.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#133

Post by ars »

wvenable wrote: post #119
ars wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise control is to keep the car at an even speed when going up/down hills. What does that have to do with safety?

Feet aren't on the peddles. Which is slight more dangerous than feet on the peddles. Kinda like hands on the wheel is less dangerous than hands off the wheel (at least until automation becomes better at driving than humans).

It's not like your foot is on the brake anyway - it's on the gas.

So keep your foot "active" and ready for use, even with cruise control.

Personally I lightly rest it on the gas. (Not hard enough to actually do anything, but in the right position to react to things.)

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#134

Post by NEDM64 »

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #126
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?

Yeah, Tesla make sure that OTA is applied in every car.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#135

Post by snowwrestler »

ars wrote: post #89
sergiotapia wrote: post #52

Really irresponsible of Tesla to name it autopilot. My wife calls me crazy for not even using cruise control on our car.

Cruise control is to keep the car at an even speed when going up/down hills. What does that have to do with safety?

To maintain speed up a hill, cruise control applies gas to accelerate the car against the increased component of gravity. This is to maintain a steady speed, but in a geared car (i.e. no CVT), what sometimes happens is that the car starts to lose speed as the revs in top gear drop out of the power band, and then it downshifts and hits the gas hard to accelerate and recover the lost speed.

Meanwhile, many humans who are NOT using cruise control do the opposite: they don't push their foot enough to counteract gravity and force a downshift, and just accept that they lose speed going up a hill.

If the traffic is dense enough, what can happen is that all of sudden your cruise control is downshifting and jumping forward just as you are overtaking a car that is itself losing speed. Potential for a rear-end collision at highway speeed.

Of course this isn't an issue if cruise control is only used in very low densities of traffic. But unfortunately it seems to be used wherever people feel like their feet need a break.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#136

Post by kbart »

turbohedgehog wrote: post #20
cloakandswagger wrote: post #14

> "No force was detected on the steering wheel for over two minutes after autosteer was engaged," said Tesla, which added that it can detect even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel." Why doesn't the "autopilot" turn off if no hands are detected on the wheel?

Maybe the driver is medically incapacitated?

You have to pass a medical examination to get a driving license. Driving while medically incapacitated is irresponsible and illegal the same as driving drunk or on drugs. Unless we have a real self driving car, which Tesla is clearly not.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#138

Post by tmptmp »

It's sad. I am a big fan of Tesla and had/still have very high hopes from them, but it's decreasing. It seems Tesla is hell-bent on committing suicide. This way, they don't need the fossil-fuel car lobby to destroy them. The BMW, Volkswgen and the likes of dirty-gas-guzzlers-producers would be chuckling now.

Why the hell are they so bullish on auto-pilot? I cannot see any sense in it. They must just concentrate more on the battery, charging-stations and efficiency/performance part of the equation. Instead, I am seeing more efforts are being thrown in not-so-relevant areas and that too aggressively.

Semi-automatic auto-pilot is the idea rejected even by Google. Tesla should learn fast and get back to its core business: battery powered electric cars, period and not the battery powered automatic electric cars.

I'd be happy if they prove this wrong.

edit: many typos and grammatical mistakes, sorry.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#139

Post by raldi »

the_common_man wrote: post #7

Nobody reads manuals and follows instructions . I feel Tesla is going to learn this lesson that hard way. From the article: "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads," it said. Tesla states clearly in its owner's manual that drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel to avoid accidents when the Autopilot feature is engaged.

> "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads"

You don't have to advise; you could mandate. The car knows how fast it's going and where it is, and with a little help from its Internet connection, can know when it's on an undivided road.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#140

Post by wyldfire »

cperciva wrote: post #110
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…

The Pennsylvania Turnpike crash is disturbing, because it's the case the "autopilot" is supposed to handle - divided limited-access highway under good conditions. The vehicle hit a guard rail on the side of the road. That may have been an system failure. Too soon to tell. This is the one I'm very interested to hear more about. From what I've heard, Tesla's self-driving is very aggressive in swerving to avoid obstacle…

> or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve?

Reasoning about what's legitimate can be a really fine line. Oncoming car, raccoon, fawn, human, doe, coyote, elk: some of these obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around [perhaps depending on speed].

I'd be really curious if any of the autopilots have a value system that tries to minimize damage/loss of life. And how does it value the exterior obstacle against the passengers in the car?

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