Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by richardknop » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #103

thaumaturgy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 situatio…

I think this is a key point. SLOC is going way up. It's sort of natural - it's "why not". We can afford to have more SLOC than ever before. Why bother to try to reduce it, that's not a priority, our priorities are features and fixes. It becomes too much to really understand and manage, and then it's all automated checks and automated tests. It's very hard to get the average/common developer to spend time thinking abo…

Exactly my thoughts. You have explained in words what I have been thinking for a very long time.

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

#252

Post by taneq » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:22 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #224

throwaway2048 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oooh, adversarial scenario generation! I think there's something to that.

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

#253

Post by otalp » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:30 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #231

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.

> 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. That's very curious wording. The important number would seem to be "millions of miles per fatality while Autopilot is enabled ", not "millions of mi…

I think there's automatic collision avoidance always on that uses the autopilot sensors. So even if you're not actively using autopilot, the car can avoid hitting an obstacle it sees on the road.

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

#254

Post by cup-of-tea » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:40 AM UTC

jijojv wrote: post #202

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak-doesnt-... "Man you have got to be ready — it makes mistakes, it loses track of the lane lines. You have to be on your toes all the time," says Wozniak. "All Tesla did is say, 'It is beta so we are not responsible. It doesn't necessarily work, so you have to be in control.' "Well you that is kinda a cheap way out of it."

Unlike people like Elon and Jobs, you can safely calibrate your bullshit meter with Woz. He's not as famous because the press don't generally like that.

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

#255

Post by Bombthecat » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:41 AM UTC

Side story, I have an open with crash warning.

On a highway I think it even detects crashes ahead of you ( had once two cars in a three lane almost crashing while one car tried to switch Lanes)

Well, back to story. I have a street where cars park left and right of the street like a zick Zack. There is one spot where it always warns me about a crash..

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

#256

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:42 AM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #19

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…

> I was so excited about auto-pilot and dreamed of getting in my car and sleeping while it made cross-country trips. So much for that, that seems way far out.

If it's any consolation that's not how autopilot on an airplane works. Pilots are expected to remain alert and ready to intervene in case of trouble.

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

#257

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

ghfbjdhhv wrote: post #88

Piskvorrr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be. Obviously people get their notion of "autopilot" from science fiction, not from aviation.

It’s a car, not a plane. Why is the definition from aviation more relevant than the definition from science fiction (which also happens to be closer to the plain English understanding of the phrase)?

Because the technology is more similar to that of aviation than science fiction.

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

#258

Post by taneq » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

stevep98 wrote: post #157

vvanders wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If at any time your car does something unsafe, you can hit that button. Tesla actually has that, it's not widely documented but you can do a voice command of "Report bug" followed by a brief audio description and it's uploaded to Tesla. No idea how it gets triaged but I wish more products had a similar feature.

Really they should have some kind of flag when they get a high number of autopilot disconnects ( or steering overrides) happening in the same place. I had to disconnect every day because it ignored temporary lane stripe markings, and it never improves, despite Tesla’s claim of fleet learning. Seems an obvious way to improve: look at where your drivers are overriding your system.

That's disappointing - I'd assumed that every single disengagement would have been logged and uploaded for analysis and use as a regression test. That's what I'd be doing.

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

#259

Post by taneq » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:54 AM UTC

dixie_land wrote: post #203

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.

looks like that would trick a human driver under certain lighting conditions. between Seattle and Bellevue a stretch of freeway looks just like that and trips me over every time

From the article, it sounds like people crash pretty regularly in exactly that spot.

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

#260

Post by dengnan » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:58 AM UTC

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…

Let's play with statistics:

Scenario 1: 100 human drivers drive some distance. 2 bad drivers caused 150 accidents and both died in their last fatal accidents.

Scenario 2: 100 self-driving/autopilot-enabled cars drive the same road for the same distance. Everyone has one accident and one of them is fatal.

Statistical numbers: Self-driving/autopilot-enabled cars cut both the accident rate and death rate by half. Death rate per accident is reduced from 2/150 to 1/100.

Conclusion: self-driving/autopilot is better.