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Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

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Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#161

Post by Jtsummers »

sbierwagen wrote: post #153
pitaj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't quote with code blocks. It messes with formatting on both mobile and desktop.

It messes with formatting on both mobile HN has never been mobile friendly, (element spacing, upvote button size) so I'm not terribly worried about that. If YC wanted HN to work on phones, they would fix their CSS. and desktop Oh?

Block quoting can screw up desktop rendering on HN if the quoted line is too long. Say you put a 1000 character line in a literal quote:

  1.......1000
The whole page would render at the length of that line. So this text that I'm writing now, it'd normally wrap once or twice depending on your window's width. Instead, it'll only wrap after approximately 1000 characters. This is why when I block quote, I put in a line break every 60-70 characters (similar to what you did a few posts up).

I know this behavior happens with IE, I believe I've seen it in other desktop browsers but can't verify at the moment.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#162

Post by [deleted] »

delinka wrote: post #157
flavor8 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Remind me not to drive in your neighborhood. (This appears to be hyperbole.)

"neighborhood"? Who commutes across a neighborhood as the full extent of their commute? I suspect it's within a rounding error. Driving across a city, however, I definitely see this. Daily. And "accident" I expect to mean everything from a light tap rear-ending to a full fledged crash. People rear-end each other in my city every day. On my commute, I'll come across two a day. Wet days, a few more. The other five dire…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#163

Post by abalone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #124
nostrademons wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that in L2, the bar for the system as a whole is set by the low bar for humans, specifically their reactions in an emergency. If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that…

> If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that 1%, by decreasing their situational awareness in the remainder of time. Humans regularly mess up in supposedly-safe scenarios. Consider a…

> making the majority of travel safe in exchange for making edge cases more deadly to untrained drivers has a simple solution: a higher bar for licensing human drivers.

You are still misunderstanding the concern. The problem is not poorly trained drivers. The problem is that humans become less attentive after an extended period of problem-free automated operation.

I hear you trying to make a Trolley Problem argument, but that is not the issue here. L2 is dependent on humans serving as a reliable backup.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#164

Post by toss1 »

flavor8 wrote: post #144
albertop wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you never driven Tesla you do not know what a joy is to use the auto pilot in stop and go traffic. I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Your statement may be true for long haul rides, but I pretty sure the numbers will come ahead for the auto steerer for the normal commute.

> I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Remind me not to drive in your neighborhood. (This appears to be hyperbole.)

Just take any job that requires a significant highway commute, you'll see more than that.

Whenever you get full speed traffic occasionally interrupted by traffic jams (from whatever cause, other accident, tolls, weather, low angle sunlight, construction, etc.), you'll get a higher incidence of rear-enders. Especially when the tail of the slow/stopped traffic is at a point just past a hill or curve.

I got rear-ended myself some years ago in just such a situation, clear sky & dry road. The traffic ahead had slowed dramatically driving into a section where the bright, low winter sun was in everyone's eyes, we couldn't see that before the gentle bend & rise in the road, I saw the slowing traffic & had to brake hard, the person behind me braked late and hit me even though I'd tried to stretch my braking as much as possible to give her more room. There was another similar accident minutes later just behind us.

This kind of rapid-slowing situation in tight-fast traffic will likely even get out of hand even for automated cars, unless there is car-to-car communication. This is because of the slight delay for each successive slowing car in the accordion-effect accumulates to the point where eventually the required reaction time decreases and required deceleration rate increases past the performance envelope. At that point, a crash is inevitable.

With car-to-car communication and automation, the last car in the pack can start braking almost simultaneously with the first one and avoid this.

So, no, it's not hyperbole, it's ordinary.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#165

Post by archagon »

tlb wrote: post #53
cletus wrote: post #39

What 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.

> Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency.

Er, citation needed. I think the vast majority of drivers are good drivers — otherwise, vehicular transport would be a disaster.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#166

Post by crocal »

tyrw wrote: post #132
crocal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No personal opinion here. It's just facts from the only ones around who have done this before. Your argument is flawed. We have also been there. Here is the catch. You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. As soon as you release /total/ control to a machine, public authorities having authorized this become responsible for your life and those your car may threaten. Requirements for said author…

I'd disagree here too. Trains and planes have extremely catastrophic failure modes, while cars do not. Cars have the added benefit of being able to quickly come to a stop in most situations. An even bigger driving factor (pun intended) will be that the cost of a driver relative to operation is much, much higher in a car. A solution that is better on both safety and cost will be quickly adopted.

For the first paragraph, I don't understand the logic behind your comparison between a train failure mode and a car failure mode. However your assumption on braking capability is wrong and it is a crucial point.

It does not matter how well your car can brake. Can your autonomous driving system guarantee it will always brake as hard and as fast as required when you will need it? Can you guarantee that the system will not have a bug the day it needs to brake?

Trains brake very well. There are even rubber wheel metros that brake so well we have to limit them in order not to sent everyone flying in the wagons :).

But in the safety calculations, standards like IEEE 1474 assumes degraded braking capability, and also considers that the preceding train is at stop. In other words, to be declared safe for mass usage, you can't assume average case. You must assume adverse case. You will not have a driver to notice that the car brakes poorly or to be confident enough to drive very close to the preceding car.

For the second paragraph, again, this is certainly true for driving assistance, but will most likely not be enough for driverless, as it was / is not enough for trains. Of course you may disagree.

EDIT: this is a good reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/safe-braking-model-explained-...

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#167

Post by trhway »

empath75 wrote: post #8

The 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…

>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.

i heard that this is why autobahns are made with unnecessary curves/turns.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#168

Post by Nomentatus »

flavor8 wrote: post #144
albertop wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you never driven Tesla you do not know what a joy is to use the auto pilot in stop and go traffic. I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Your statement may be true for long haul rides, but I pretty sure the numbers will come ahead for the auto steerer for the normal commute.

> I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Remind me not to drive in your neighborhood. (This appears to be hyperbole.)

See meaning drive past, not "observe the collision."

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#170

Post by bllguo »

tyrw wrote: post #86
sbierwagen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues We know for certain that human brains can be assembled out of regular atoms, but raising funds for a company that manufactures brains would be getting rather ahead of our current level of technology. The same might be true of computer vision and autonomous vehicles.

So you believe the technology gap for assembling a human brain out of regular atoms is similar to that for navigating a road using cameras?

JFC. I don't get why otherwise rational people become so stupidly aggressive when faced with analogies.
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