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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#191

Post by mirimir »

HNaTTY wrote: post #132
greendestiny wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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," sa…

Right. When the AP detected road conditions that it couldn't handle, it should have reduced vehicle speed as much as necessary for handling them. Yes, it was dumb to trust AP at 50-60 mph on a two-lane canyon road. But it was also dumb to ship AP that can't fail gracefully.

I do admit, however, that slowing down properly can be hard. It can even be that hitting an inside post is the best option. Still, I doubt that consumer AP would have put the vehicle into such an extreme situation.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#192

Post by jacquesm »

HNaTTY wrote: post #132
greendestiny wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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," sa…

> 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.

That would seem to me to be reason to steer the car to the shoulder and disengage the auto-pilot.

Tesla is trying to take too big a step here and blaming the driver(s) of these cars is really really bad PR.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#193

Post by studentrob »

Twisell wrote: post #190
ethanbond wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a survey of how many Tesla drivers think Tesla advocates complete cession of control to Autopilot. My suspicion is zero.

Well sadly the first casualties was a man that made 3 millions view on YouTube with a video called "Autopilot saves Model S" months before his fatal accident... http://youtu.be/9I5rraWJq6E At that time I don't recall that Tesla made any statement about how dangerous it was to deliberately push the limit of the system to entertains viewers. This might have contributed to make him overconfident about autopilot. RIP

> At that time I don't recall that Tesla made any statement about how dangerous it was to deliberately push the limit of the system to entertains viewers.

Yeah who knows. I think Musk retweeted his video. Hindsight is 20/20. Tesla can still move forward and learn from this.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#194

Post by esteth »

laksjd wrote: post #164
wyldfire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aga…

Such a value system would be a nightmarish thing so I hope that it doesn't exist yet. Just imagine your car calculating that it should let you die in order to save a group of school children... except that the school children were in fact a bunch of sheep that the system mis-identified. The danger of AI isn't in paperclip optimizers (at least for now), it's in humans over-relying on machine learning systems.

I think such a value system is fine in as much as it preserves the safety of the driver.

I'd like my car to make value judgements about what's safer - braking and colliding with an object or swerving to avoid it. I'd rather it brakes and collides with a child than swerve into oncoming traffic, but I'd rather it swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid a truck that would otherwise T-bone me.

As long as the system only acts in the best interest of it's passengers, not the general public, it's fine by me.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#196

Post by qbrass »

taejo wrote: post #185
wyldfire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aga…

In some countries it's illegal to swerve to avoid an animal. I assume this means that they've judged it safer not to swerve.

It usually means if you swerve and cause an accident, it's your fault and you can't blame it on the animal jumping out in front of you.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#197

Post by Dylan16807 »

greendestiny wrote: post #186
Dylan16807 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust a computer much more than a human to keep a tiny gap at high speed for hours on end. Also if you have a nice clear barrier, it becomes easier to automatically manage steering.

Do you? Can I wire an old iphone into the control system of your car and fire up opencv and a bit of depth estimation and lane following send you off?

Aren't we talking about a plane?

And I said I trust a computer more, not that the presence of a computer is automatically enough.

I'm not getting in a manually-controlled plane that's flying centimeters from a hard surface. I will get in some computer-controlled planes doing the same.

(At the very least I want a real-time OS and dedicated range sensors. And the confidence of a plane owner who would lose millions of dollars if anything went wrong.)

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#198

Post by jacquesm »

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…

You'd hope the system has sensor, video and audio logs and some kind of black box arrangement to at least get the maximum value in terms of information out of those crashes that do happen. If so it should be possible to get a real answer to your question.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#199

Post by kybernetikos »

yladiz wrote: post #68
return0 wrote: post #39

Great, more data points.

That's kind of tone deaf, don't you think? Just because the crash might provide some useful data, doesn't mean it's something to look positively upon.

I agree completely. That you are gathering data that may help others in the future does not absolve you of deliberately setting up dangerous situations in order to get that data.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#200

Post by jacquesm »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #151
Chathamization wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it even useful if it's merely assisting the driver, though? I haven't used it, but actively steering a car while someone else is also actively steering it sounds pretty terrible. If you're not actively steering it but just waiting to take over if things go poorly, things also seem like they'd be difficult. Other than getting in an accident, how is a person supposed to know when autopilot is doing it's thing correc…

> but actively steering a car while someone else is also actively steering it sounds pretty terrible. My passat has most assist systems and I like how it steers. It tries very hard to get my attention and get my hands back on the steering wheel. It barely lets me keep my hands 15 seconds of the wheel but this is perfect for what it's designed to do: keep you in the lane if you are being distracted by something (eg: b…

> keep you in the lane if you are being distracted by something (eg: baby).

If you can't drive responsibly with a baby on board lane assist isn't going to save your ass. If something happens to your baby which distracts you ask someone else in the car to take care of it, if there is nobody to help pull over at the earliest opportunity.

Lane assist will not save you from anything else but lane departure and there are a lot of other things that can go wrong while you allow yourself to be distracted because you rely on lane assist to keep you safe. That's not the intended use of this feature.

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