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

Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 184 posts

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#91

Post by sowbug »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #17

You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the govern…

Tesla autopilot is more capable than an airplane autopilot. An airplane on autopilot will crash into stationary objects in its path, by design. Thus, airplane autopilots require full pilot attention as well.

This thread happens with every Tesla crash, by the way:

1. Tesla crashes

2. Driver says autopilot was engaged

3. Long debate on HN about exact meaning of word "autopilot"

4. 9 times out of 10, Tesla log says autopilot wasn't on before the crash, or that obstacle was visibly in the path for more than enough time for the driver to take action (usually half in the lane and half out)

The other one time out of 10 the driver says the Tesla suddenly accelerated and drove through most of a strip mall.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#92

Post by sp332 »

wpietri wrote: post #36
rootusrootus wrote: post #2

I wonder if it is imprudent to create too many vehicles that have partial self-driving capability before we have ones that can do 100% of it. Instead of to the point where you can take your attention away from the road, but not to the point where it can reliably avoid accidents on your behalf. Too many people aren't wise enough to use the partial autonomous technology without abusing it.

Yeah, the quote about the NTSB on a similar accident is telling: "the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that Autopilot contributed to the crash by allowing lengthy disengagement from the driving process." In my view, driving is already boring enough that it's insufficiently attention-grabbing for safety's sake. That's why, e.g., the "naked streets" model is removing lane marking. Decreasing (false) certainty…

Didn't Tesla respond to the NTSB report by requiring much more frequent interaction?

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#93

Post by manicdee »

ucaetano wrote: post #51
sidcool wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Elon's interview, he mentioned that 'autopilot' was a name akin to the flight autopilots. Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. This crash is unfortunate and should be investigated. But autopilot naming is something I don't think is the problem.

> Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. Pilots do so all the time, because airplanes aren't flying in a congested 2D space. Airspace is mostly empty, with very large distances between planes and features, allowing for plenty of early warning. And an airplane's "autopilot" has nothing to do with Tesla's Autopilot. Their purpose and working mechanisms are completely different. The airplane analo…

The aircraft autopilot is pretty much the same thing. It steers on the designated lane, maintaining attitude, and relies on the pilot to be aware of conditions.

It operates the controls but relies on the human operator for supervision. Pilots talk about “flying in the magenta” and exactly the same thing applies to Tesla Autopilot.

Believing that autopilot means something different is the bullshit attitude that has to change.

Warren Van Der Burch gave a classic presentation, Children of Magenta: https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#94

Post by CPLX »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #27
CPLX wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe. I believe your definition of keeping everyone safe differs from the common usage.

I believe parent is referring to the survivability of a 65 MPH head on crash into a heavy object.

It's also the survivability of the things that are being hit by two ton "autonomous" objects at 65mph that are at issue here.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#95

Post by mikerathbun »

jread wrote: post #81

As a current Tesla owner and frequent autopilot user I can attest to this being a scenario where autopilot has not worked for me - traveling at high speed and approaching a stopped vehicle from a distance. I now always take it off autopilot when this occurs because it will not brake in time.

Same here. There is rarely a day that I don't have to disengage because of a car moving into my lane a little too close and Autopilot doesn't see it. It's great in bumper to bumper traffic, but at highway speed there are too many blindspots.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#96

Post by Zombieball »

kg5key wrote: post #18
c0nducktr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they could take some ideas from the rail industry, which have been dealing with this issue for quite some time now. Engineers are required to to make some kind of input to verify that they're still alert, or the train stops[1] if they haven't done anything in X seconds. Obviously you wouldn't want the car to just stop in the middle of the road, but there could be something like that designed. [1] https://www.qu…

Tesla does have a sensor in the wheel that "feels" for resistance on the wheel. In my experience, it's more than sensitive enough to be able to detect a hand being on the wheel, but is easily defeated by idiots. I'd imagine Tesla wasn't thinking about how the driver alertness feature could be countered unfortunately. Perhaps we'll see Tesla adapting the eye tracking tech that Cadillac Hypercruise is using. https://ww…

Never knew about the Cadillac. Very cool, thanks for calling it out.

I wonder how to truly tell if a driver is attentive? The Cadillac indicates it uses head tracking technology. I wonder if that is sufficient? Seems you probably need even eye-tracking: an attentive driver keeps looking around or something.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#97

Post by taneq »

As I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the automatic emergency braking (AEB) system is separate from the autosteer system on a Tesla. It seems to me that this kind of incident is a result of AEB failure, not of autosteer failure.

I wonder how Tesla's AEB stacks up against similar systems on other vehicles? There are a lot of vehicles on the road now with automatic braking, but we don't see every single frontal collision on such cars reported as some kind of systemic failure.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#98

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Autopilot saves lives. There is no evidence of this.

NHTSA says it does (autopilot reduced crash rates by 40%). http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...

This is a common misinterpretation. The data only shows that TACC + Autosteer reduced crashes by 40% vs TACC alone. There is no comparison to complete driver control.

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#99

Post by dreamcompiler »

Firefighter here. This kind of collision happens all the time -- although it's usually a manually-driven car. This is why we park the BRT* behind the accident and we try to stay in front of the truck. A moving 4000-lb car is no match for a stationary 30,000-lb fire truck.

*Big Red Truck

Re: Tesla ‘on Autopilot’ slams into parked fire truck on freeway

#100

Post by ebbv »

hndamien wrote: post #29
ebbv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I am a big fan of Tesla and I used to make excuses for them on this but I think it’s b.s. they didn’t rename it after the incident where the guy died. Cool marketing names do not outweigh being totally honest and up front. If I made rat poison that looked like candy and named it “Yummy Candy Rat Poison” and some kid died coz they ate it, I’d deserve some blame regardless of parents keeping poison away from ki…

It isn't called full self driving, it is called auto-pilot. In aviation, auto-pilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators but assist them in controlling aircraft, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operations.

This is the same argument people use every time, and that Tesla uses. The general public does not know that. It's an irresponsible name for the system and they know it.
Post reply on HN