Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#411

Post by TetOn » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

Vraxx wrote: post #405

TetOn wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In this incident, the driver was using autopilot in a fashion that it should not be; twisting road at high speed. The driver IS at fault. I disagree on this point. In any system that's supposed to be sophisticated enough to drive the car and but also carries a giant caveat like "except in these common driving situations..." failure is not instantly down to "user error." Such a system should gracefully refuse to take…

It's not lulling anybody into anything! The guy was given multiple warnings by the car that what he was doing was unsafe. The last of which was extremely pertinent to the crash. To quote the article, "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel". This is after the initial alerts telling him that he needs to remain vigilant while using this featu…

I just want to see "the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel" followed by "and Autopilot then pulled to the side of the road, turned on the hazard lights, and required the driver to take over."

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#412

Post by mononcqc » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #323

ekidd wrote: 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…

Moose or Elks don't 'bounce over the top' on a small vehicle. They crush it, rip the roof off, or go through it. It may depend on antlers, angles, speed, and so on.

I've tried to pick the least graphic images possible:

http://img.radio-canada.ca/2015/08/09/635x357/150809_kr04b_v... from http://ici.radio-canada.ca/regions/saguenay-lac/2015/08/09/0... -- which ended up killing the two occupants of the car.

This one is interesting because you may very well hit the moose facing forwards: http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/moose.asp

I don't think there is much to be gained in terms of safety. Let's not forget that while you may have large moose, there's a range where they can still be much smaller while growing and still damage smaller cars fairly easily.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#413

Post by eatporktoo » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

hanklazard wrote: post #387

The autopilot feature seems like one that should be taken through rigorous testing approved by the appropriate regulatory structure before being allowed out on the roads. The fact that Tesla has been able to simply update firmware to include this experimental new feature on their vehicles as they please feels very "wild west" and as much as I don't tend to prefer regulation, this feels like the proper place for it. B…

The real problem is, how do you actually design a test that will catch these issues. If you have 3 crashes in millions of miles, you are pretty unlikely to find those errors during testing.

I wish Tesla was more open about the way the actually test their Autopilot software.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#414

Post by cmurf » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #114

witty_username wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilots (require certification and extensive training) are different from car drivers.

Flying a plane is more difficult, therefore requires more training. But driving a car requires licensing (certification) and training.

Meaningful training is not required to get a driver's license in the U.S. In most states it is completely adequate for a parent to teach you to drive, with no minimum number of hours in a classroom, public or private.

Pilots also receive ongoing currency training. This doesn't exist for automobile drivers. Maybe some states require a written test every few years? But in the three states I've lived in, no written, oral, or in-car test it recurrency training required since the original was issued when I was 15 or whenever.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#415

Post by phaemon » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

studentrob wrote: post #172

dimino wrote: post #115

What the hell is happening in this comment thread? Do we not all realize that, per-mile-driven, Tesla's auto pilot is much safer than human driving? I thought we were prepared to deal with the inevitable crashes, but based on the chicken littles here, maybe I was wrong.

> Do we not all realize that, per-mile-driven, Tesla's auto pilot is much safer than human driving? Good question. It's not safer. Tesla's quoted statistic of one death per 94 million miles driven in the US is not as useful as it could be. That includes motorcycle deaths and roads and conditions in which the Tesla AP is not likely to be engaged. When you limit it to divided roads, the rate is more like 1 death per 15…

> Good question. It's not safer.

I think it is. Given the number of Autopilot miles driven, you'd only expect one death so far, so that we have one doesn't really tell us anything.

However, injuries from car crashes are (fortunately!) much more common - roughly 60 times as likely. So you'd expect to have about 60 Autopilot incidents resulting in injury by now. I don't really keep up with Tesla news but, based on the reaction to this story (where the guy wasn't even injured), I'm going to assume the actual number of injuries is tiny.

What do you think?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#416

Post by avs733 » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

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…

>3. Tesla's autopilot behavior after a crash is terrible. It doesn't stop. In the semitrailer crash, the vehicle continued under power for several hundred feet after sheering off the top of the Tesla driving under the semitrailer. Only when it hit a telephone pole did the car stop.

This is actually the most distributing part to me. In these situations, graceful failure or error handling is absolutely critical. If it cannot detect an accident, what the heck business does it have trying to prevent them?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#417

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #384

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not alone in that, but perhaps in a minority. A child cannot truly be 'at fault'.

Legally speaking children are found to be at fault all the time, and under certain circumstances even treated as adults. So no, they're not incapable of being at fault.

Hypothetical question: would you send the bill for bumper dent-repair to the parents of the child who died making that dent?

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#418

Post by cmurf » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #381

cmurf wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the manufacturer is permitting conditions that incentivizes distracting driving? Like not requiring hands on the wheel? It's also a problem if it permits driving faster than the speed limit.

Its normal to exceed the speed limit e.g. passing. No absolute limit can be arbitrarily set without tying the pilot's hands/limiting their options which could make the roads more dangerous.

It may be common to exceed to speed limit when passing, but it is illegal. The setting of these speed limits is meant to be objective, maybe are sometimes subjective, but it is wrong to call them arbitrary.

If the car autopilot software permits faster than legal speed driving, the manufacturer is taking on liability in the case of speed related accidents and damage.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#419

Post by a3n » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #298

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…

For drunk driving and nearby drivers, the drunk driver didn't sign an acknowledgement that he's aware of the hazards of driving drunk and did it anyway.

Signing an acknowledgement means there's something to acknowledge, like "we're not totally done with this." Any driver on the road can reasonably expect that any nearby car was sold fully functional.

The truck that the one Tesla crashed into was not (I believe) injured, although the truck's owner experienced property damage caused by Tesla (my opinion). The truck driver could have been injured or killed. If it hadn't been a truck, it could have been a white mini-van, and there almost certainly would have been injuries or deaths.

This think belongs on a test track, not crawling up my bumper.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#420

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #418

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its normal to exceed the speed limit e.g. passing. No absolute limit can be arbitrarily set without tying the pilot's hands/limiting their options which could make the roads more dangerous.

It may be common to exceed to speed limit when passing, but it is illegal. The setting of these speed limits is meant to be objective, maybe are sometimes subjective, but it is wrong to call them arbitrary. If the car autopilot software permits faster than legal speed driving, the manufacturer is taking on liability in the case of speed related accidents and damage.

No its not actually illegal. Here's an example regulation from Washington state:

http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.425