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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#441

Post by bmer »

lsaferite wrote: post #313
jacquesm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Except for that one case where there is no shoulder, just a 500 foot drop to death.

Restrict auto-steering to very specific roads which have sufficient information. That's basically the vast majority of roads.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#442

Post by tdaltonc »

freyir wrote: post #286

Autonomous vehicles will require engineering that's more like NASA and less like weekend hackathon. Given Musk's association with SpaceX, I was hopeful we'd get the former, but it's starting to look like an autopilot solution was released half-baked. The current SV engineering climate -- youth beats experience, move fast and break things, release early and often -- works great for photo sharing apps but not great whe…

Actually I think SpaceX and NASA do think quite differently about things. NASA has to engineer toward maintaining their national mandate. Every launch is a PR game targeting the American public and congress. SpaceX instead has to worry about keeping customers happy. I think SpaceX has a simpler job there. Sourcing, manufacturing, deployment, insurance, etc. all seem simpler for a private company. They're shown that they're not shy about breaking their toys once the customers payload is off if they think they have a good chance of learning something.

SpaceX hasn't had people in their vehicles yet. Maybe they're be more careful when they do. Or maybe not. I can't find the quote right now but I think it was Sagan who said that part of what makes exploration so captivating is that it is dangerous, maybe we shouldn't make safety the number one priority because it might slacken our awe.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#443

Post by studentrob »

lsaferite wrote: post #316
studentrob wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a report on electrek.co somewhere showing a google map of the crash site and where the car ended up. The car ended up a quarter mile down the road and had passed through a fence or two and some grass. There's also a report somewhere of a driver who says he made the same turn as the truck and followed the car as it continued down the road. Seems like it was under power. NHTSA, NTSB or Tesla could confirm with…

Does being under autopilot that disengages disable the accelerator? Otherwise, a foot from a disabled driver could have caused the vehicle to continue under power. Obviously Tesla probably has all this telemetry already.

> a foot from a disabled driver could have caused the vehicle to continue under power

I imagine NHTSA, NTSB, or Tesla will report on that when ready.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#444

Post by studentrob »

nix0n wrote: post #399
studentrob wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As outsiders, we can only know what the company, regulatory agencies, and reporters tell us.

> we can only know what the company ... [tells] us. Tesla tells us "it's the driver's fault that he died while using our Autopilot". Either Musk approved this message, or he didn't bother to read it before it went out, and didn't bother to apologize afterwards. I think we can draw some conclusions from that.

There are pending investigations by the NHTSA and NTSB. We'll know more when they are ready.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#445

Post by darpa_escapee »

staunch wrote: post #100
aresant wrote: post #29

I wrote this on a previously buried thread: Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility. The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required." And yet Tesla's disclaimer states: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Aut…

If it's a good enough name for airplanes, it's a good enough names for cars. Both require users to be ready to take control at any moment.

Autopilot for planes came from a culture where failures weren't denied because of profits. Public safety and being surer than sure that incidents never happened again were and are the utmost concern. Pilots are professionals who went through training and certification.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#446

Post by kempbellt »

etendue wrote: post #431
Vraxx wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Tesla warnings remind me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where one of the brats were about to do something disaterous and Gene Wilder would in a very neutral tone protest "no, stop, you shouldn't do that". From a risk management standpoint, Tesla's design doesn't strike me as sufficient. Warnings without consequences are quickly ignored.

The car crashed. Sounds like a pretty strong consequence to me.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#447

Post by darpa_escapee »

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.

I had to pass a 20 question multiple choice test, drive at 15mph on a short course and parallel park to get my license at 17 years old. That was my only certification process. Unless laws change, I will never have to go through a training or certification process again in my life.

Comparing pilot certification to that of a driver's is disingenuous.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#448

Post by undersuit »

TetOn wrote: post #411
Vraxx wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

>and Autopilot then pulled to the side of the road

"It's a winding road going through a canyon, with no shoulder"

So going from a dangerous situation to another dangerous situation.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#449

Post by studentrob »

phaemon wrote: post #415
studentrob wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What do you think?

I think it's not safer based on existing data. Musk was pretty quick to tout that autopilot is safer over 100 million miles driven. It turns out his statistic was not as useful as it could have been. There was no mention of conditions in which autopilot is not likely to be engaged such as adverse weather or non-divided roads. Plus some deaths are from motorcycles, which, it seems, should somehow be excluded from the comparison.

On top of that, it might make more sense to compare the Tesla models' safety records to cars in a similar pricing class. Comparing a Tesla to a beater from 1990 isn't so useful. So there are different degrees of comparison. Tesla's headline-ready numbers do not tell the full story.

I don't feel badly about drawing different conclusions from the same data Tesla used in its response to the incident. I think they overlooked a few things. You're certainly free to intuit what you like.

> 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.

Tesla does not make this information available, so I don't think it is worth speculating. Effort would be better spent encouraging regulators to demand more detailed reports from companies that sell vehicles equipped with driver-assistance systems. Until all companies are required to report such information, Tesla is unlikely to do so. We can turn the screws on Tesla too, and I think they would be served by lobbying for tighter regulations to create a level and safe playing field for car companies and drivers alike, but I wouldn't count on them to spend much extra effort on holding themselves accountable in such a fashion. They're already having a tough time meeting their production demands, and Musk is still setting aggressive targets for complete autonomy that no other car company, including Google, is even close to. I think Musk has said full autonomy is 2 years out, whereas Google says it's between 3 and 30 years. Mobile Eye has a 5-10 year plan.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#450

Post by Nadya »

foolfoolz wrote: post #429
TetOn wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

so far we have been lucky the accidents have only impacted the driver. is it going to take the first accident where an autopilot car kills another innocent driver before people see the problem?

When autopilot kills more innocent drivers than other drivers you can point me to a problem. Time will tell if it is better or worse and the track record up until May/June was going pretty well.

I'd rather 10 innocent people die to freak autopilot incidents than 1,000 innocent people die because people in general are terrible at operating a 2,000-3,500lb death machine. Especially because everyone thinks of themselves as a good driver. It's fairly obvious not everyone is a good driver - and that there are more bad drivers than good.

Maybe I only see things that way because there have been four deaths in my family due to unaware drivers which could have easily been avoided by self-driving vehicles. All of them happened during the daytime, at speeds slower than 40mph, and with direct line of sight. Something sensors would have detected and braked to avoid.

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