Live data from Hacker News

Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

ktvq.com

331–340 of 530 posts

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#331

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 case hasn't been shown to involve autopilot yet. Tesla's logs have evidence to the contrary.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#332
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Suppose I'm driving a "normal" car. I have my hands on the wheel, but I am reading a book. I hit a tree. Is the auto-maker responsible? They advertised the car as having cruise control. Call me old, but I remember similar hysteria when cruise control systems started appearing. People honestly thought it would be like autopilot or better - and ploughed into highway dividers, forests, other traffic, you name it, at 55m…

It's a completely different conversation. Cruise control maintains speed only. It still requires positive driver control.

It's controls are such that it disengages gracefully. You notice a problem, instinctually hit the brake and disability cruise.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#333
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.

Why? Autonomous cars =/= electric cars

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#334
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Suppose I'm driving a "normal" car. I have my hands on the wheel, but I am reading a book. I hit a tree. Is the auto-maker responsible? They advertised the car as having cruise control. Call me old, but I remember similar hysteria when cruise control systems started appearing. People honestly thought it would be like autopilot or better - and ploughed into highway dividers, forests, other traffic, you name it, at 55m…

Cruise control is supposed to control the speed of the car. If you set it for 55 and the car accelerated to 90 it would be considered dangerous and defective.

The steering control is supposed to control the steering of the car. If you set it for "road" and it decides to steer for "hard fixed objects" how should we regard it?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#335
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In this situation, small-to-normal passenger cars are actually much safer than typical American trucks and SUVs. When the legs are taken, the mass of the body strikes the roof of the lower vehicle and bounces over the top. The larger vehicles direct the body through the windshield into the passenger compartment. I'm not sure about moose, but with more nimble animals, swerving is no guarantee of avoiding collision. A…

There is lots of ambiguity here. Depends on how you hit it, etc.

Roof landings don't always end well -- my Civic was trashed when a deer basically bounced up and collapsed my roof on the passenger side. My head would have been trashed as well had I been a passenger!

In general, if you cannot stop, hitting something head on is the best bet. Modern cars are designed handle that sort of collision with maximum passenger safety.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#336

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 case hasn't been shown to involve autopilot yet. Tesla's logs have evidence to the contrary.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#337
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.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the auto-maker responsible? Why would the auto-maker be responsible for your distracted driving, and what does it have to do with cruise control? Some of the uproar about these incidents is related to the fact that Tesla marketing is implying far more automation and safety here than the technology can actually provide. And apparently it can cost lives.

Exactly, they shouldn't be responsible for distracted driving. Autopilot can certainly get better, but you're being willfully ignorant if you don't believe that these Tesla drivers with their hands off the wheel don't fall under distracted driving. Could autopilot improve? Yes. Is the driver at fault here for not staying alert and responsible for the car they chose to drive? Absolutely. Please show me a source for th…

> Please show me a source for the claim that they're "implying far more automation"

It is literally called "autopilot."

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#339
post #194
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

This is where the current AI hype cycle will die.

You cannot codify some of the "dark" choices that are typically made today in split second, fight or flight situations. If we go down this road, it opens to door to all sorts of other end justifies the means behaviors.

There's a threshold number of dead hypothetical children that's going to trigger a massive revolt against tone deaf Silicon Valley industry.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#340

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…

It is about the driver you turn on a test feature (it warns you it's a test feature) and ignore all the procedures you must follow to use this not yet production feature it's your fault.
Post reply on HN