Live data from Hacker News

Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

abc7news.com

71–80 of 348 posts

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#71
post #62
post #61

"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road." Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually…

Heisenbugs in AI are also interesting. As computers approach sentience, it will become progressively harder to explain their behavior. Why did you eat a bagel instead of eggs this morning? Usually there isn't a scientific answer. In the present, AI models are already so complicated that it seems hard to get reproducible diagnostic results, short of just saving every frame of data that the car's sensors pick up. And f…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophic_interference

>Catastrophic interference, also known as catastrophic forgetting, is the tendency of an artificial neural network to completely and abruptly forget previously learned information upon learning new information.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#72
post #67
post #61

"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road." Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually…

As someone who writes software (haven't ever worked for Tesla), I think this statement does provide some credibility. It probably means that the visualization system does understand such scenes and is able to navigate it. Ofcourse, this statement by itself doesn't absolve Tesla's software of any error. It's important to know the actual root cause before saying who/what is wrong or not, something which the HN communit…

Serious question, but how does working for "FAANG" companies provides any credibility in this specific context?

That must be like half the bay area. I get that it's written as a token of pride for you, but maybe worth to take a step back?

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#73

One of the things you learn in flying is not to force it. If conditions are not safe. Just forget about it. It almost seems the same type of judgement needs to be made for auto-pilot. If your auto-pilot acts up at all. Just turn it off and don't use it till it's resolved. All you need is one incident to be dead, so if you get a chance to observe any abnormalities, consider it a blessing. Something that will also be g…

> Something that will also be great will be a sort of "crash dump/bug report" button for these cars. Good point, and it isn't just vehicles with auto-pilot perhaps all vehicles. The 2017 and 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Minivan kept on randomly shutting off[0] and loosing all electrical power at freeway speeds. You had to put the vehicle back into park, on the freeway, to restart it. There are several stories of near death…

Various sources put the current SLOC count in modern vehicles in the hundred-million range: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39559/does-the-...

A lot of that is for the infotainment systems, but regardless, we're probably going to be seeing automakers struggle more and more with all of the problems that have plagued the software industry for its entire history.

On the one hand, I want to say that situations like this Tesla crash and your minivan example get so much attention because that's rare, so the manufacturers are mostly getting it right and we'll all be fine. On the other, knowing what I know of the software industry plus my past experience as a shadetree, the prospect of that much code running in 65-mile-an-hour murder machines gives me the shivers.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#74
SW/HW Bugs happen - fact of life. More concerning is that Tesla denying this was ever reported to them...

I had my driver side view mirror stuck issue fixed and they put in the notes that they re-filled all my tires during repair service allegedly as reqd. by some CA law. Later that week I got an alert that my tire pressure was low and had to get it air pumped so obviously they didn't do that despite having claimed to have done just that...

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#75
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it. Somewhere between 7-10 iterations of the same dangerous failure mode, it's time to stop betting your life that the failure won't repeat. > Walter complained "7-10 times the car would swivel toward that same exact barrier during auto-pilot." This still doesn't diminish Tesla's obligation to make their autopilot system behave properly.

"The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it." But he wasn't operating it.

That's entirely speculation at this point. Tesla are the only ones who could confirm or deny that and it's possible that they will never be able to determine it depending on the condition of the computer hard ware.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#77
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but let's not blame the victim.

I'd definitely blame an airline pilot who crashed because he relied on autopilot in a situation he knew was not handled well by the autopilot. (I would also blame the autopilot.) I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system should be held to a lesser standard. It sucks that the driver died, and it sucks that the Tesla autopilot system had problems handing that kind of situation, but that…

Are drivers trained to use these semi-automated systems?

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who writes software (haven't ever worked for Tesla), I think this statement does provide some credibility. It probably means that the visualization system does understand such scenes and is able to navigate it. Ofcourse, this statement by itself doesn't absolve Tesla's software of any error. It's important to know the actual root cause before saying who/what is wrong or not, something which the HN communit…

Serious question, but how does working for "FAANG" companies provides any credibility in this specific context? That must be like half the bay area. I get that it's written as a token of pride for you, but maybe worth to take a step back?

[deleted]

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#79
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but let's not blame the victim.

I'd definitely blame an airline pilot who crashed because he relied on autopilot in a situation he knew was not handled well by the autopilot. (I would also blame the autopilot.) I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system should be held to a lesser standard. It sucks that the driver died, and it sucks that the Tesla autopilot system had problems handing that kind of situation, but that…

If a plane crashes, the survival rate is pretty low. Most likely everyone on the plane is dead. People get into car accidents often enough to feel that crashing one's car rarely leads to death. Walter probably felt safe enough to use autopilot knowing that if the car crashed, he could still walk away from it.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#80
Highway driving is supposed to be "easiest" problem for self driving cars to solve, since there are fewer edge cases, less turning, etc., but it's also the most dangerous type of driving. You are much more likely to die going at 65mph than 25mph.

I think deploying self driving cars at <=25mph speeds at first would be wise. Personally, I wouldn't risk letting a car take over at high speeds until there is a longer track record of safety.

Post reply on HN