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

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

#371

Post by Cshelton » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

andrewjw wrote: post #160

Cshelton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot. I've probably gone about 8,000 miles on autopilot in mine (AP1) and it is truly amazing. After a road trip stint of ~200 miles, I feel much more energized and less fatigued in the Tesla with autopilot 99% of the way than I do in previous non-…

Just curious - have you driven one in situations that became emergencies in which autopilot disengaged? What was that experience like and how does it compare to emergencies you have experienced without autopilot available?

Not sure exactly what you are asking, as in, an emergency happened while driving with autopilot and then it disengaged randomly? Or I was driving and had an emergency and I had to engage autopilot?

I've never seen autopilot disengage by itself. It will after 3 warnings to the drive where they don't touch the wheel, I've never done that though.

There was one time, not quite an emergency, but basically my contact fell out of my eye, into my lap somewhere, and because I had autopilot on, it allowed me to safely use a few extra seconds needed to look down to find it. Whereas without autopilot, the number of seconds it took to find it normally would be considered very dangerous to look away from the road that long.

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

#372

Post by Cshelton » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #152

Cshelton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot. I've probably gone about 8,000 miles on autopilot in mine (AP1) and it is truly amazing. After a road trip stint of ~200 miles, I feel much more energized and less fatigued in the Tesla with autopilot 99% of the way than I do in previous non-…

> Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot. Would you say the same after if you happen to get involved in a serious autopilot accident though? That's the question. It's very easy to be all roses before one sees any issues.

So from what I've seen, there have been a few occasions where an owner has used the autopilot as a scapegoat for their own faults, only to later admit they were at fault or wait for Tesla and third party investigators to conclude that autopilot was not even engaged, etc.

For instance, the one single fatality of autopilot to date in a Tesla, where the guy was coming up to a crest of a hill with a white 18 wheeler crossing perpendicular to the highway. Yes, the autopilot misread the 18-wheeler to be a sign above the road. (This issue is not fixed). However at the same time, the guy completely disregarded Tesla's instructions of keeping your eyes on the road at all times. Turns out, he was watching a show on his phone.

But yes, I would still say the same thing if I was using autopilot properly as intended. i.e., not watching movies while in the drivers seat of a moving car (which is against the law regardless.) I don't think there are any serious accidents to date where the driver was using it properly and following the rules. As Tesla states, autopilot is in beta (and most likely always will be), that's not to say it is unsafe, but that the driver must be aware and follow the rules and know what autopilot is and is not capable of.

I'd say it took me about two weeks of first using autopilot to understand its capabilities.

Also the best part, it keeps improving in my vehicle through updates. It's pretty impressive how good the updates from Tesla are.

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

#373

Post by kerbalspacepro » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

crocal wrote: post #341

maxcan wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the rail industry understands what safety means? Trains have literally one degree of freedom in their controls - speed up and slow down. In spite of the simplicity we still see high fatality train crashes with regularity. Some how sticking people in a paper thin aluminum tube 6 miles up going 600mph can be done with zero fatalities but we can't get trains to stop killing people. I'm ranting here, but you're…

No problem at all, I was half expecting such reaction. http://www.uitp.org/sites/default/files/Metro%20automation%2... There has been 1 accident in 30 years attributed to driverless rail mass transit control system, despite millions of kilometers travelled and a constant worldwide growth. Yes, rail has understood what driverless safety means. You may call it a high horse but driverless /is/ a high horse. That's my po…

Are we talking about metros or trains? Metros are built out of the way. They shouldn't kill people because there are a few stations of track that they can kill people.

The second you put the train in the open air where other people are, where weather is, where nature is, those things kill people on the regular.

Get out of your tunnel, and suddenly your "success" has nothing to do with the control system.

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

#374

Post by maxcan » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

crocal wrote: post #341

maxcan wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the rail industry understands what safety means? Trains have literally one degree of freedom in their controls - speed up and slow down. In spite of the simplicity we still see high fatality train crashes with regularity. Some how sticking people in a paper thin aluminum tube 6 miles up going 600mph can be done with zero fatalities but we can't get trains to stop killing people. I'm ranting here, but you're…

No problem at all, I was half expecting such reaction. http://www.uitp.org/sites/default/files/Metro%20automation%2... There has been 1 accident in 30 years attributed to driverless rail mass transit control system, despite millions of kilometers travelled and a constant worldwide growth. Yes, rail has understood what driverless safety means. You may call it a high horse but driverless /is/ a high horse. That's my po…

Fair point, I guess I was referring more to this comment:

> I don't think the majority understands what safety means in mass transportation.

And inferring that you meant that rail understands safety, generally, better than any other mode of transportation which I took issue with. I believe you 100% when you say that only one accident in 30 years ahas been attributed to driverless trains.

What I find horrifying about rail is how simple PTC should be: "am I exceeding the maximum speed for this stretch of rail? is there a train in front of me? if yes to either, slow down" and yet Amtrak says it will take billions of dollars and decades to install. I'm thinking of accidents like the NE Corridor derailment in 2015.

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

#375

Post by maxcan » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #367

crocal wrote: post #81

The only industry to have produced truly driverless public transportation systems is the rail industry. Not aeronautics. Rail systems happens to be my business and what I read here makes me very worried. I don't think the majority understands what safety means in mass transportation. It's not about running miles and miles without accidents and basically saying "see"? It's about demonstrating /by design/ that the /com…

This is a good summary of modern risk culture. It has good sides and bad sides. On the good side, you have things like commercial aircraft and trains that, despite them being inherently dangerous, manage to achieve extremely low fatality rates. On the bad side, this risk culture destroys large scale innovation, and even safety in the long run. The problem is that we've adopted an attitude that safety is always first,…

> On the bad side, this risk culture destroys large scale innovation, and even safety in the long run.

So true. Its an issue in General Aviation where there has been huge progress in safety devices (electronic cockpit gauges, airbag seat belts, etc) but it has been illegal to install them in older aircraft because of the FAAs very slow, expensive certification process. Finally, in the last year or so, the FAA got serious about what's called "Part 23 reform" which will vastly streamline the process for safety upgrades in older aircraft.

Also, I don't want this comment to be interpreted as shitting on the FAA. I'm a libertarian leaning former liberal who generally has very low confidence in our government but I consider the FAA, with their insane safety record of which I'm a massive fanboy, to be a exception.

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

#376

Post by chc » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

Vik1ng wrote: post #368

chc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as precise as I'd like, but there has been an independent investigation of the safety of Autopilot. After the first fatality while on Autopilot, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wanted to determine whether (as many fear) Autopilot posed a danger to drivers, and found that Autopilot was safe enough to keep on the roads and that Autopilot led to a 40% reduction in crashes: https://techcrun…

Of Autopilot or Autosteer?

One is a part of the other, so "both" seems like the natural answer.

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

#377

Post by jdmichal » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

mhenr18 wrote: post #299

lathiat wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this was meant to be a response to this sibling post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15095626

Probably did not wait long enough for the reply button to appear.

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

#378

Post by jdmichal » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #327

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…

> I've never liked the common cruise control in the US -- where you set a target and it applies the gas for you -- because I didn't like how removing my foot from the gas pedal moved my foot fractions of a second further from the brake in an emergency. It's not even just that, it's worse at managing the use of the gas overall than a human with regards to cars as of 2015, it seems like the system is worse at managing…

I wouldn't be surprised if you were allowing speed to fall on those hills, while the cruise control systems were downshifting to get the power to maintain speed.

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

#379

Post by djrogers » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #187

sbierwagen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Additionally to what Jtsummers said, quoting on desktop can drastically reduce the line length compared to the rest of the lines in the comment, which is both ugly and annoying, especially since it makes it more difficult to read since your eyes are whipping back and forth. There are a multitude of mobile apps for consumption of HN, most of which solve the code-block-line-overflow problem by adding a horizontal scrol…

> There are a multitude of mobile apps for consumption of HN, most of which solve the code-block-line-overflow problem by adding a horizontal scroll,

HN does that natively - just drag the code block around with your finger. Still sucks to use though, so > quoting is the way to go.

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

#380

Post by andrewjw » Fri, Aug 25, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

Cshelton wrote: post #371

andrewjw wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious - have you driven one in situations that became emergencies in which autopilot disengaged? What was that experience like and how does it compare to emergencies you have experienced without autopilot available?

Not sure exactly what you are asking, as in, an emergency happened while driving with autopilot and then it disengaged randomly? Or I was driving and had an emergency and I had to engage autopilot? I've never seen autopilot disengage by itself. It will after 3 warnings to the drive where they don't touch the wheel, I've never done that though. There was one time, not quite an emergency, but basically my contact fell…

I meant a situation where an emergency happened outside your car and autopilot required you to take control (not without warning). Did you feel like you were more or less capable of dealing with an emergency on the road when you had been using autopilot, than you would have had autopilot not been previously engaged?