Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 399 posts

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

#291

Post by ams6110 »

6nf wrote: post #277
dantillberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a cruise control ish system I heard about on a car (a Mercedes, iirc) in Germany when I was a kid: instead of a target speed, you set a maximum speed, such that pressing normally down on the gas allowed the car to accelerate up to that speed. It trims down the excess gas to avoid exceeding the maximum speed. If you released the gas, the car would coast; and if you pushed the pedal down close to the floor (i…

This is called a speed limiter and I LOVE it in my Mercedes. I set the limiter to match the road's speed limit and I can just drive without worrying that I'll get caught speeding. No need to constantly look down at the speedo.

Except you should be checking your dashboard instruments every few seconds. Temperature, oil pressure, speed, fuel. I'm constantly doing this while driving. Road ahead. Mirrors. Instruments. Road ahead. over and over.

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

#292

Post by slowmovintarget »

snark42 wrote: post #236
aetherson wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About six years ago, I would drive from San Mateo to Oakland at least twice a week, after work, to meet my then-girlfriend. So that's down 92, across the bridge, and up to Oakland. It's about 30 miles, all on freeway, and at that time of day all in heavy (though not all stop-and-go) traffic. I don't think I ever saw three separate rear-ends in a single drive. I can't say for certain that I ever saw two. I didn't driv…

>I don't think I ever saw three separate rear-ends in a single drive. I can't say for certain that I ever saw two. I didn't drive it every day, but I probably did 100 such commutes. I drive 30 miles through Chicago traffic on the Interstate everyday. I see at least 3-4 accidents per week (people pulled over to the side of the road, out of the way, or at the accident investigation sites.) Most of these are minor fende…

Every single day of this work week so far there has been at least one and as many as 5 accidents on the same 5 mile stretch of I95 headed in to Waltham, MA.

Every morning and at least two of the evenings. And the weather has been reasonable. I typically see 4 to 5 Teslas a day during my commute... driving sedately, and they aren't they ones involved in the accident.

Maybe we'll break the streak tomorrow and have no accidents.

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

#293

Post by lathiat »

6nf wrote: post #277
dantillberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a cruise control ish system I heard about on a car (a Mercedes, iirc) in Germany when I was a kid: instead of a target speed, you set a maximum speed, such that pressing normally down on the gas allowed the car to accelerate up to that speed. It trims down the excess gas to avoid exceeding the maximum speed. If you released the gas, the car would coast; and if you pushed the pedal down close to the floor (i…

This is called a speed limiter and I LOVE it in my Mercedes. I set the limiter to match the road's speed limit and I can just drive without worrying that I'll get caught speeding. No need to constantly look down at the speedo.

Pointless in most reasonably modern cars which will chime alert you for any such problems (oil, fuel, etc). Much better paying attention to the road itself.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

stevenwoo wrote: post #175
revelation wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't exactly an isolated incident, YouTube has lots of videos of autopilot steering wildly off course. The biggest problem is that Tesla allows turning on autopilot on roads that are not a highway and feature significant turns and hills obscuring "perfect lane vision", and the system is not prepared to handle that at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaolsFyD9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnuKrzCLYc

Wow, if I were a passenger in the second video, I would insist on taking over if a human were driving. I don't know anything about the technical issues, but this is so not ready for prime time, it seems from that test autopilot drive to be super amateurish.

[deleted]

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

#295

Post by johansch »

rohit2412 wrote: post #286
johansch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon's goal is to get humanity to another planet. The Tesla thing is just a way to get money to do that. I thought this stuff was commonly known? I do agree with his goal. And maybe its worth some percentage of Tesla buyer's lives? Let's not talk too much about this, okay?

I think you are being sarcastic, and people don't get it.

Actually not.

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

#296

Post by terravion »

contingencies wrote: post #242
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Everybody who's looked at this seriously agrees. The aviation industry has looked hard at that issue for a long time. Watch "Children of the Magenta".[1] This is a chief pilot of American Airlines talking to pilots about automation dependency in 1997. Watch this if you have…

Wiener's Eighth and Final Law: You can never be too careful about what you put into a digital flight-guidance system. - Earl Wiener, Professor of Engineering, University of Miami (1980) It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 4…

That said, aviation accident rates have been falling asymptotically while this "troubling trend" has been going on. In the US we've had no fatalities on domestic commercial flights since like 2009, and only the two at SFO a couple of years ago on international flights to the US. This is on a couple of billion flights with hundreds of billions of passenger departures.

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

#297

Post by [deleted] »

aetherson wrote: post #255
speakingmachine wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You drove 30 miles up 880 twice a week and never saw a rear-end accident? You should play the lottery. I don't know if I see three every day, but I do see one every week. This week's was some clown in the #2 lane, _staring_ down at his phone, rear-end into a stopped car at ~20 MPH. His car was completely totaled with one of the wheels spinning off to the shoulder. A few months ago I saw a guy, face-down in his phone,…

I didn't say I never saw a rear-end accident, I said I never saw three in a single commute and am not sure whether I saw two in a single commute. The guy I was replying to said that he saw at least 2 every commute, often more. (Edit: Actually, sorry, 2 every day, not every commute).

[deleted]

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

#298

Post by cosmie »

mikejharrison wrote: post #217
kbenson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently drove an Accord with lane-following and speed adaptive cruise-control recently. It completely failed (but thankfully by refusing to try) in the one instance that I wanted to use it (stop-and-go traffic), but it was nerve wracking when it was on as it kept losing the lane. People naturally alter the throttle and speed when going around corners and up slight inclines. It feels alien when that doesn't happen.

I've got the new Hyundai Ioniq with adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Last weekend I drove 160 miles with both enabled for the first time. I just found it shifted my focus. I was much more aware of what was going on outside the car. Setting the max speed to 75 mph enabled it to follow the car in front very effectively and overcame the incline and corner speed issue. Only problem was having to intervene to prev…

I second the effectiveness and pleasantness of Hyundai's implementation. My 2015 Sonata has those features (its standard now, but was introduced that year for the Limited trim). It, combined with auto-hold to apply the brakes when the car stops, made road trips and slow going commutes so much more pleasant. It sucks for stop and go traffic, since it disengages when the car completely stops. But I can't fault a cruise control system for sucking at a scenario that doesn't actually involve cruising.

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

#299

Post by mhenr18 »

lathiat wrote: post #293
6nf wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called a speed limiter and I LOVE it in my Mercedes. I set the limiter to match the road's speed limit and I can just drive without worrying that I'll get caught speeding. No need to constantly look down at the speedo.

Pointless in most reasonably modern cars which will chime alert you for any such problems (oil, fuel, etc). Much better paying attention to the road itself.

Clearly you don't live somewhere where speed limits are rigorously enforced. Setting a limiter frees you up from having to match the limit yourself and allows you to pay more attention to the road.

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

#300

Post by kuschku »

boznz wrote: post #282
kuschku wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem Tesla has is that their system only has ~ 40 meters visibility to back or front. That means if you're on the Autobahn, at say 130km/h in the right lane, and a Porsche is coming from behind at 300km/h, the Tesla will not be able to see it, and consider the lane free.

Remind me never to drive on a German Autobahn.

It’s quite interesting, because obviously an entirely different class of issues becomes apparent when the speed between two lanes on a highway can differ by a factor of 4.

This is what you get when the speed limit actually is "unlimited".

Post reply on HN