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

#291

Post by arcticfox » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 10:50 AM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #223

brfox wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sort…

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

I agree with all the holes you poked in their stats, but then with the last sentence you just went way off the deep end. What does "death trap" mean to you? To me, it seems likely the Autopilot engaged is about as dangerous as disengaged.

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

#292

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 10:50 AM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #177

I love Tesla to death and in most cases will defend them beyond the point of reason. But I took a test drive in a model S for the first time earlier this year and almost immediately noticed autopilot’s extremely unreliable behavior— it would swerve out of lanes in ordinary situations that should have been easy to handle. The second I saw that, hat was it: I would never use it again before many years of testing and im…

I have a 2015 Tesla model S and I have never seen the behaviour you describe. I use autostart a lot on the ground that it's good to have two of us paying attention.

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

#293

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 10:52 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #292

aerovistae wrote: post #177

I love Tesla to death and in most cases will defend them beyond the point of reason. But I took a test drive in a model S for the first time earlier this year and almost immediately noticed autopilot’s extremely unreliable behavior— it would swerve out of lanes in ordinary situations that should have been easy to handle. The second I saw that, hat was it: I would never use it again before many years of testing and im…

I have a 2015 Tesla model S and I have never seen the behaviour you describe. I use autostart a lot on the ground that it's good to have two of us paying attention.

Damn autocorrect. s/autostart/autosteer/

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

#294

Post by Asooka » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 10:54 AM UTC

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.

But it's a solid white line, so you can't cross it anyway. Unless there's a place where the line is dashed earlier on, there's no way you can enter that "lane".

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

#295

Post by arcticfox » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 10:57 AM UTC

herbst wrote: post #37

nxc18 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the United States. Rail coverage is terrible. If you can get to your destination, good luck doing that without switching trains.

To be fair. I used trains on any continent other than America. My comment is a passive critique to any system who aren't able to build such a transport system yet.

You're almost certainly from an area with a population density much higher than the US.

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

#296

Post by makomk » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 11:04 AM UTC

rowyourboat wrote: post #275

otalp wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but most cars in the luxury-sedan segment (and quite a few compact cars) can do that, so this is not autopilot-specific.

Yeah, and automatic emergency braking is a clear-cut enough win for safety that there's been talk of making it mandatory on all new cars in a few years' time. Tesla seem to have adopted a deliberate strategy of conflating the safety benefits of an uncontroversial feature many cars have with the much more questionable safety of their autopilot mode in order to promote the latter. The big example Elon Musk was pushing of Autopilot preventing an accident and likely saving someone's life was the result of automatic emergency braking in conditions very far from those autopilot mode could be used in (heavy rain in an urban area at night, if I remember correctly).

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

#297

Post by drawkbox » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 11:09 AM UTC

SteveCoast wrote: post #117

utopcell wrote: post #69

Why call something "auto-pilot" when it is clearly not remotely ready to do what its name implies ?

Unless someone has ever used an auto pilot in something like a Cessna, that person would probably have a wildly overoptimistic idea of what an autopilot does. Even on a passenger jet it's really not that smart, there's just lots more volume to explore so it's hard to kill everyone. A better analogy would be cruise control. It controls essentially one variable. As does lane keeping. You combine a couple of these thing…

Yeah autopilot is similar in airplanes to what autopilot is on Teslas. Not sure what else you could call it without it also being confusing. Autopilot is a tool to stay in your lane and prevent common scenarios like keeping speed, avoiding obstacles and keeping distance, though there are still possible edge cases like this one appeared to be that can be more dangerous than not using it as the systems are not fully autonomous.

Even with airplanes, if something gets in the way, autopilot won't always save you and can only alert you when the situation gets bad i.e. oncoming airplane or obstacle, altitude, speed etc. We fly in planes with autopilot and we are safer for it, but pilots/drivers still need to be alert and operating the plane. Teslas aren't fully autonomous and probably can't truly be until everything is connected and more cars on the road are autonomous for expected behavior. I trust autopilot in planes but still want a pilot. Most likely autopilot will be more useful in large buses, trucks, shipping, boats, airliners than individuals as you will still need a driver most of the time. Even the Uber crash could have possibly been avoided with a more alert driver.

One area that may cause more crashes in the interim is trusting the software too much, autopilot that does work six sigma 99.999999% of the time may lead to a possible issue of driver comfort with the technology that may still have edge cases that can endanger them. This issue was a factor in the Tesla crash and the Uber crash

I think a huge overlooked part of the failure here was the previous accidents at this part of the road and the lack of repair. We have a serious infrastructure issue with disrepair, non automated/untracked driving of humans probably ends up badly in these areas but goes unnoticed or is suppressed as road design can be a big factor, this automated crash highlighted an issue here at this offramp/fork that probably would go unnoticed and cause more issues. If nothing else, automated driving will have the data to fix these bad areas of our infrastructure and double down on safety and protections.

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

#298

Post by merb » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 11:13 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…

Well I found the comment of tesla, odd as well. but it is also odd that the driver still kept driving the same road WITH autopilot activated, besides he KNEW it was broken.

It's a strange accident, especially because of the strangeness of tesla and the whole background story (broken safety barrier). I'm looking forward to the outcome of the whole story.

At the end I guess more than one party could've been a bad actor. Tesla, The guy itself and even that the road had no kind of warning (safety barrier not replaced or some kind of other warning sinces that it will be replaced soonish)

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

#299

Post by Qwertious » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 11:15 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…

> The Tesla statement is the equivalent of "works in my laptop" at a bigger scale.

Erhem: https://i.imgur.com/sY3Eeln.png

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

#300

Post by FLUX-YOU » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 11:36 AM UTC

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.

Relying on painting quality and accuracy is going to hurt autopilot systems. Cities and car companies aren't prepared to work together to solve that and there probably isn't an fast and easy solution to it.