Please stop posting paywalled articles. Especially WSJ. This community represents the future of the internet. I don't know what the answer is for making sure content providers get paid, but the WSJ model isn't it. So let's vote with our attention (or lack there of) and kill this annoying practice before it makes the internet an even more walled and unpleasant place.
Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
61–70 of 399 posts
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#62What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it re…
There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.
Yeah that validates his point. If the arguably most highly trained vehicle operators around lose situational awareness and fail to recover after automation fails, what do you think will happen with untrained drivers?
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely disagree. It can't be better than humans. It needs to be flawless. Any problems where people get killed will delay public acceptance of the technology by decades, even if "statistically it's safer than humans". People don't give a damn about statistics, they give a damn about tabloids shouting "self driving cars kill another innocent person!!!". We literally can't afford that.
If the aim is to have a technology that's 100% fail-safe, we can stop pursuing self-driving cars now. We can in fact stop pursuing any kind of technology because the economic cost of making anything completely fail-safe are usually prohibitive. Also, isn't history ripe with counter examples to your argument? Planes have crashed, people died, tabloid headlines were written about it, and people still fly, probably beca…
Also, demonstrably safer than driving, by time or by distance.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me What are you measuring? The current autopilot already appears to be materially safer, in certain circumstances, than human drivers [1]. It seems probable Level 2 systems will be better still. A refrain I hear, and used to believe, is that machine accidents will cause public uproar in a way human-mediated accidents don't. Yet Tesla's au…
That's not what the concern is based on. It's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's switches in trains. Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human would be. There's a cost to regaining situational awareness…
If the automation prevents more accidents than it causes, is it still that much of a concern? The results so far say no.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that level 2 isn't an ideal position, but it has also proven to be better than human drivers in preventing fatalities. In all the miles that Tesla's level 2 cars have driven there has been what 1 fatality? In that instance there was the exact question of responsibility that you suggested, but that still seems preferable to the status quo if lives are saved.
Do you have the numbers on how many miles Tesla's level 2 cars have actually been driven while using the feature? I see this sort of argument a lot in regards to Google's self-driving tests, and while it seems convincing to me, it doesn't seem realistic to me that's there a big enough pool of data to make that claim definitively.
From Wikipedia [1]
>According to Tesla there is a fatality every 94 million miles (150 million km) among all type of vehicles in the U.S.
>By November 2016, Autopilot had operated actively on hardware version 1 vehicles for 300 million miles (500 million km) and 1.3 billion miles (2 billion km) in shadow mode.
Those numbers are 9 months old and only apply to Autopilot v1 and not the Autopilot v2+ introduced late last year. I wouldn't be surprised if the current number is in the 500+ million mile range with only a single fatality. The sample size is obviously small, but there seems to be a clear improvement over manual control.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot
EDIT: With chc's and my post we have 3 numbers and dates for reported Autopilot miles. Projecting that forward at a linear rate (which is conservative given Tesla's growth) would put us at roughly 750 million miles today.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#66The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for…
I agree that level 2 isn't an ideal position, but it has also proven to be better than human drivers in preventing fatalities. In all the miles that Tesla's level 2 cars have driven there has been what 1 fatality? In that instance there was the exact question of responsibility that you suggested, but that still seems preferable to the status quo if lives are saved.
We need independent numbers on this. Comparing with the same population, the same price range of vehicles, the same road sections. Age, level of education, price of the vehicle, absence of hands-free cell interface, lack of seat-belt alarm seem to be way better predictors in USA of fatalities than having autopilot.
Comparing autopilot Tesla fatalities versus average fatality rate on one road section is dishonest.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#67What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it re…
>or don't trust the instruments Thankfully this isn't as big of an issue with driving on the ground. Airplanes don't have sensors that give them the same precision as a car's wheel rotation or proximity to nearby objects.
On the contrary, this is a much larger issue on the ground. A commercial airplane spends most of its flight time in clear air, in an airway assigned to it by 24/7 air traffic control, safely separated from large objects with which it can collide, and largely safe from disruptions which necessitate sudden control inputs to avoid an immediate crash.
Cars don't operate in a comparable problem-space.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law is one thing, but if a system works most of the time, can you really blame a driver for drifting away and doing something else. It's asking a lot for a driver to remain focused on baby sitting a robot. I'd rather just drive.
True but if it does reduce the overall accident rate, it might still make sense. Better experience for the driver and better safety are still welcome features. If you'd rather just drive then you're increasing the chance for accidents. Everyone thinks they're a great driver.
I'd rather not drive but if my choices are driving or staring out the window with nothing to do I'd rather just drive to help pass the time. Safety is a factor, but it isn't the only factor. I'd be incredibly safe sitting at home in an empty room staring at the walls, but I choose to do things that are less safe than that so that life isn't miserable.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#69Honestly, I don't understand why the automobile industry doesn't learn from the airline industry. Airplanes have worked out how to balance autopilot capabilities with the need for pilots to remain engaged and attentive for years. Simply implement a Drive-By-Wire, similar to Airbus' Fly-By-Wire systems. A driver's inputs to the controls would still be required, but the autonomous systems could prevent or limit certain…
Many of the current cars are 100% drive by wire (ECU/power brakes/electric power steering), but that doesn't mean anything.
Probably quite a good part of the $hundred of millions price of a passenger plane is the autopilot (even 1% means $1M). And even at $1M/plane, 99% of a plane's autopilot works because it assumes that the current plane is the only one in a large vicinity of a point in space. This is assured by a centralized third party (control tower) that is not really automated but a very stressful human job (that's why the air traffic controllers are well paid). This is not the case with cars - in this case, most of the work being done is having each of the individual cars detect, with complex but not very good sensors and software, what is around them, in a swarm of other moving objects that do not communicate.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#70Good for the engineers having more ethics than VW, and resigning when they are asked to go farther than the technology allows.
* having more ethics than
As we now know, all of them are cheating.
(Also, "having more ethics" sounds really strange in my ears. "... being more ethical than those at "?).