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

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

#221

Post by oldgradstudent »

greglindahl wrote: post #180
oldgradstudent wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also provide numbers without any context. Is a crash every 85,000 times in that intersection means the Autopilot is safe or is it a death trap? There are over 200,000 cars a day driving at that stretch of highway, if a car crashes there once a week, then the Tesla Autopilot is an order of magnitude more dangerous than a human driver.

How is Tesla supposed to know, yet, if Autopilot actually made the maneuver? They're saying what they know. Edit: in a posting today, Tesla has said more: https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week’s-accident but at the time of the earlier blog posting, Tesla says they did not know yet.

They are trying to defend a themselves disingenuously, they provide numbers that sound impressive, but lack any meaning because context is lacking.

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

#222

Post by DrScump »

rrdharan wrote: post #190
skybrian wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what's wrong with what they wrote. This statement of course doesn't show that the software is safe, but it is evidence that if there is a bug, it probably isn't easily triggered. (Keep in mind that until they recover the logs, we don't even know if the autopilot was on.)

They have confirmed the autopilot was on: https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week’s-accident

But does "autopilot on" mean that "autopilot has exclusive control and driver inputs are ignored"?

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

#223

Post by mozumder »

brfox wrote: post #211
greglindahl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Tesla supposed to know, yet, if Autopilot actually made the maneuver? They're saying what they know. Edit: in a posting today, Tesla has said more: https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week’s-accident but at the time of the earlier blog posting, Tesla says they did not know yet.

From their blog: "In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident." Notice it says one f…

> In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers.

Also note that this includes trucks and motorcycles, which have much, much higher fatality rates than passenger cars. Motorcycles are around 10x-50x higher fatality rate than cars! So already Tesla's blog is doing a misleading comparison to more deadly vehicle classes.

Additionally, there could be all sorts of other variables that make it hide even comparison. Are Tesla drivers physically comparable to regular drivers? Are they older? Younger? Both elderly and young kids have a higher accident rates. Are Teslas driven in rural areas and urban areas the same as regular cars? Because rural areas have a higher fatality rate.

So we need to make sure that the Tesla driver matches driving conditions of typical cars to make autopilot comparisons valid.

Right now, it appears Tesla's autopilot is a death-trap.

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

#224

Post by nitrogen »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #215
ethbro wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a big note in the GTC keynote this year about Nvidia using virtual environments to debug their autopilot algorithms. Think "car" being driven in a high fidelity video game. Advantage being that if you can provide representative, simulated input then you can increase the training miles by orders of magnitude in the same amount of time, limited by computation rather than physical mileage.

The problem is the simulation by definition can only simulate things that are accounted for. Any number of completely arbitrary out of the blue things can happen in real life.

Simulations can make use of random number generators and could in theory, following the lead of a project like afl, adaptively find algorithmic weak spots.

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

#225

Post by bonestamp2 »

hcnews wrote: post #67
antirez wrote: 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…

> doesn't absolve Tesla's software of any error

As someone who works on software for one of the automakers, I also want to note that there seems to be a lot of focus on the software... but it's also very possible the problem was with the hardware: something in the vision or sensor system was incorrectly installed, defective, was calibrated incorrectly, lost calibration during use, etc.

I'm sure the software can always be improved, but if most cars are driving through this stretch without a problem and his always veers, that sounds like something unique to his vehicle which points to hardware in my opinion. In cars, the software can only ever be as good as the data it receives.

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

#226

Post by Robotbeat »

gnicholas wrote: post #91
MBCook wrote: post #2

If he had seen this issue multiple times before why would he keep using autopilot in that area? That seems like a very odd decision.

I imagine Tesla will make this argument in court. California is a comparative negligence state, so they can claim that some percentage of the negligence should be apportioned to him since he knew that the autopilot didn’t work great in this location. I’m not saying this is a winning argument, especially since he did so much to bring it to their attention, but just that Tesla would be expected to raise it. Of course,…

And CalTrans for not fixing the crash attenuator (the man did not die instantly, so if the crash attenuator had not been removed, he likely would've survived.) And for making a confusing lane-like path right into the crash site. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x

I mean, the crash attenuator had recently been used up, but the dangerous line situation that led to the crash which destroyed the attenuator had not been fixed.

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

#227

Post by r00fus »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #195

The path into the barrier looks a lot like a lane. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x And the old striping is lightly visible as well.

I'm amazed that the barrier doesn't have yellow reflective striping or any of those sand barrel thingies.

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

#229

Post by pmarreck »

IMHO, they need to get autopilot at least an order of magnitude better than human drivers statistically, before releasing this tech, because this sort of news is extremely bad public-perception-wise. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a Tesla driver to always have his hands on the wheel during autopilot
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