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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#291

Post by [deleted] »

dayaz36 wrote: post #239
NamTaf wrote: post #163

This is going to keep happening until Tesla change their approach from a move-fast-and-break-things startup philosophy to sound engineering one that puts safety in design front-and-centre. Traditional real-world enigneers have been drilled in this for longer than living memory. When the software guys decide to bring their software appraoches to the real world, this is what happens. From 12 days ago: https://news.ycom…

You do know Tesla has the highest safety rating of any car ever rated in history right? https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best...

[deleted]

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#292

Post by michaelmior »

konschubert wrote: post #220
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tesla's sensor suite is inadequate." To me this seems to limit what is possible by software updates. Does that mean that existing Tesla owners will never get 'real' autopilot capabilities by software upgrades, although I assume most expect to get them?

I think that was pretty clear before that the sensors do not cover that. Maybe autonomous highway driving in good conditions will be possible with these sensors. (With the last days information, even that seems unlikely.)

Isn't autonomous highway driving in good conditions the only thing AP is trying to do?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#293

Post by jakobegger »

newjersey wrote: post #288
jacquesm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I can't imagine the gymnastics involved in this feat either. A baby doesn't belong on the front seat without some modifications to the car as far as I know. I absolutely agree. There is absolutely no excuse for the driver to take their eyes off the road to assist a baby in the car. How would you assist a baby in the back seat while driving with a seat belt on anyway? As I read about people using these features, I'm c…

Pretty much every modern car has a way to deactivate the passenger airbag specifically so you can place a baby seat in the front.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#294

Post by kuschku »

tmptmp wrote: post #138

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…

> The BMW, Volkswgen and the likes of dirty-gas-guzzlers-producers would be chuckling now.

Funnily, all of those are investing heavily in automated electric cars already, or even have products for semi-automated electric cars on the market.

Just less hype around those.

If Tesla just continues, they'll be dead in a year, and Volkswagen, which also got further encouraged by the EPA to develop electric cars, will just take over their market share.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#295

Post by gkya »

meddlepal wrote: post #116
a3n wrote: post #86

I don't understand why Tesla is allowed to release a safety critical system on to the roads when it requires buyers to acknowledge its not-finishedness. They're putting beta systems into an uncontrolled environment. No driver in the nearby lanes has been given that choice.

This a thousand times. Why is this allowed? And then going the extra mile and calling it autopilot which has all kinds of connotations about not needing to give a fuck about what the vehicle does. Bad bad bad. Recall and remove the feature until it's ready for actual use. Don't put everyone else on the road at risk so you can beta test.

Well, what I fail to understand (but do not find unbelievable) is how people dare leave their car's control to software just released. I'm sorry for all the incidents, think Tesla is to blame here, and would like electric to replace gas, so no cynicism intended, but that's just madness to me, the openness of people to alpha-test sth. that may easily cost them their lives. It's called autopilot, so what, while I admit it's bad naming, one should be responsible for their safety, before anybody else.

On the other hand self driving vehicles should be a different class of vehicles that's aptly moderated by the govts. A road is a complex thing to be in as an AI backed vehicle, especially considering the lack of the communication and organisation systems used in naval and aerial vehicles.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#296

Post by [deleted] »

dayaz36 wrote: post #239
NamTaf wrote: post #163

This is going to keep happening until Tesla change their approach from a move-fast-and-break-things startup philosophy to sound engineering one that puts safety in design front-and-centre. Traditional real-world enigneers have been drilled in this for longer than living memory. When the software guys decide to bring their software appraoches to the real world, this is what happens. From 12 days ago: https://news.ycom…

You do know Tesla has the highest safety rating of any car ever rated in history right? https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best...

[deleted]

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#297

Post by base698 »

duerrp wrote: post #289
base698 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

Also, are they counting all previous versions of the software instead of just the latest? Moreover, I wonder how the human drivers in the statistics fare if you correct for drunk driving / using cellphone, etc. In my opinion, any autopilot worth it's name should be an order of magnitude better than the average human driver.

Averages are a bad way to look at the overall risk.

An example:

  Every time the auto pilot encounters a truck turning in front results in a fatality.
  1 in 10 times a drunk driver fails to avoid the truck turning in time.
The average overall for drunk driver could be 1 in 50 million miles and the auto pilot 1 in 90 million, but you are certain to die in a few instances with the auto pilot, but the human could possibly save himself in the same situation. I imagine the Tesla has lots of these bugs that haven't been found yet.

I would trust a drunk driver over Tesla's autopilot at this point. Don't die for Elon Musk's dream--being one of the first auto pilot fatalities isn't that big of an accomplishment.

Also, I'd give "Technopoly" a read.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#298

Post by Draiken »

a3n wrote: post #86

I don't understand why Tesla is allowed to release a safety critical system on to the roads when it requires buyers to acknowledge its not-finishedness. They're putting beta systems into an uncontrolled environment. No driver in the nearby lanes has been given that choice.

Am I the only one that thinks people should be held responsible for their own choices?

This argument is completely bogus. No driver in the nearby lanes is aware the other driver is drunk, a bad driver or emotionally unstable.

The entire idea of beta testing is to have your system on an "uncontrolled environment". The system has bugs, as any beta system does, and whoever uses it should be fully responsible for it. Yes, fully responsible.

Tell me what's the difference between using a beta system and not caring (leaving hands off the wheel, etc) and drunk driving? On both situations the driver is choosing to put everyone at risk, nobody knows about the fact until after an incident and if there is an incident, who's fault is that? The beer company? The car company?

If the driver assistance made cars crash because it ignored a command from the driver or something like that, then sure... it's 100% Tesla's fault. But clearly on all of these accidents the drivers were careless to the extreme by leaving hands off the wheel for several minutes.

We can discuss if they should try to improve how they handle people that remove their hands from the wheel, but that doesn't change the fact that ultimately the choice to be careless was made by the driver, not the car manufacturer.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#299

Post by ekidd »

wyldfire wrote: post #140
cperciva wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aga…

> elk

I'm pretty sure that hitting a full-grown elk is a poor choice, and often a fatal one. A large, full-grown elk can weigh 600 pounds and stand 5 feet tall at the shoulder, which means it will probably go over the crumple zone and directly strike the windshield.

This happens commonly with moose in New England, which run up to 800 pounds and 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder. A car will knock their legs out from under them but the body mass strikes much higher and does an alarming amount of damage to the passenger compartment. You can Google "moose car accident" and find some rather bloody photos.

The standard local advice is to try really hard to avoid hitting moose, even at the cost of swerving. I would prefer that an autopilot apply a similar rule to large elk. Even if you wind up striking another obstacle, you at least have a better chance of being able to use your crumple zone to reduce the impact.

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