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

#311

Post by makintunde » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #302

sveme wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn‘t it possible to formally check Simulink autogenerated code using Polyspace? Or are you thinking of something else?

Oh god. You can check any C-code with Polyspace, I've done that. Most of the warnings Polyspace generates (at the time I did it) are not more significant than style - like checking for MISRA compliance doesn't guarantee a lack of bugs. To me formal verification has always meant proving correctness in a mathematical sense against some sort of formal specification. None of that really matters though because AFAIK you c…

"None of that really matters though because AFAIK you can't prove a neural net has been trained "correctly" and doesn't contain errors."

Progress is being made in this area. Here is an "old" paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01135

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

#312

Post by imtringued » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #237

WhompingWindows wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbers about error percentiles don't make sense. Ideally, you'd want an outcome measure like fatalities per million miles, accidents per 100k miles, not "% error" which is vague. Furthermore, look at the actual data we have right now. SDC makers actually put out data in California about their "disengagement rate" which is how many time the human drivers took over from the software. Waymo have steadily increased…

That's, actually pretty damn terrible. 1 disengage per 5.5k miles is roughly 1 accident per 5.5k miles if the driver is not paying attention. Look at the Uber accident cam video pointed at the driver. This is the attention levels of drivers in so-called "self-driving cars."

These cars have had far more disengagements than accidents. Why are you assuming that one disengagement is equal to one accident?

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

#313

Post by petilon » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:01 PM 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.

Would a LIDAR have correctly identified the barrier? Maybe Elon should rethink LIDARs. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-s...

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

#314

Post by taf2 » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

otalp wrote: post #253

taneq wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yup and this has saved me from at least 2 collisions! The first time was right after I got the car and I was totally not watching the road but instead playing around with the controls and suddenly the screen started flashing red. The second time was a car to my right as I tried switching lanes. I rarely let the car drive itself, but when I have it often alerts that I don’t have my hands on the wheel and I’m like uhh literally holding the wheel so I take the data that indicates the driver not holding the wheel with a grain of salt...

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

#315

Post by taf2 » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #306

lazyjones wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator So, clearly, the AP is not capable of avoiding such obstacles yet, even when unobstructed. It also seems like a mistake to not slow down to a survivable speed when hands are off...

From the image of the crash site, it looks like the driver was in a spot trying to merge left. That would require you to match the speed of the cars in the other lane. Also it looks like the software made the critical failure of assuming that it was driving in the left lane instead of the shoulder. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x

Similar center divide that killed princess Diana.

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

#316

Post by mikevin » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #127

JohnTClark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Tesla told him that the issue was fixed and he can use it again. Why do people trust auto pilot at such high speeds? It is still new technology. Let the autopilot park your car, if it makes a mistake the only bad thing that can happen is just a few scratches and in 5-10 years use autopilot on low traffic streets and then go to the highway. You can't expect new technology to be safe.

He took the car to the shop and Tesla said "Works for me, can't repro". > Let the autopilot park your car, if it makes a mistake the only bad thing that can happen is just a few scratches Or it can drive over a toddler or pin someone against a wall until they die.

> Or it can drive over a toddler or pin someone against a wall until they die.

There might be situations where this could happen but humans have such a bad track record when it comes to driving/parking/paying attention in general that i'd trust a good autopilot over the average person. There will be bugs but at least we're able to work on them. Improving human driving skills seems unfeasible with any other current technology.

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

#317

Post by IanCal » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

anonytrary wrote: post #189

WhompingWindows wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbers about error percentiles don't make sense. Ideally, you'd want an outcome measure like fatalities per million miles, accidents per 100k miles, not "% error" which is vague. Furthermore, look at the actual data we have right now. SDC makers actually put out data in California about their "disengagement rate" which is how many time the human drivers took over from the software. Waymo have steadily increased…

Then let's add some perspective. You must be referring this[0] paper. If the average person puts on 1,000 miles per month[1], then that means they'd have to deal with disengagement (a mishap) at least twice a year, which is not acceptable for fully autonomous driving. I'm going to define a "fully autonomous vehicle" as "a vehicle which should not ever require me to sit in the front seat and control it under any conce…

It is ludicrous I feel to worry about getting to a stage where nobody ever has any type of accident.

I'd like to know what the actual rate would be, the 5k miles figure is for conservative thresholds of when control should be handed over, and many problems may be safely solvable (if annoying) by simply coming to a halt or pulling over.

No, the current setup is not OK to release on a large scale, but it's not expected to be, and we're not 12 orders of magnitude from a reasonable point.

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

#318

Post by sah2ed » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #225

hcnews wrote: 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…

> 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 alway…

Precisely. Hopefully the NTSB's investigation will be thorough enough to explore the possibility of undetected manufacturing defects in the deceased's Model X when compared to other Model Xs that rolled off the line at the same time.

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

#319

Post by vasilipupkin » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

dotsh wrote: post #289

Why no one talks about other victims of car accidents and their is about 6k per month on average in US alone. But Uber and Tesla are on headlines when someone dies and there is like what 3-4 victims in total after all those years? It is not even worth mentioning.

Miles driven, genius. There are millions of other vehicles on the road and not that many teslas

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

#320

Post by ivan_gammel » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

robbrown451 wrote: post #132

asdsa5325 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is obvious. What do you think a plane pilot does when autopilot is on? He watches to make sure everything is alright, and intervenes when necessary.

Not really. He sure isn't expected to be able to jump in with less than a second's notice to override what autopilot is doing. And he typically isn't there to make sure the autopilot isn't doing something stupid. He's there to watch for conditions that the autopilot can't handle...and those typically have plenty of warning time in a plane. And a pilot is a trained professional. The expectation that the driver will ju…

When on a plane there's a "Ground" alert, pilot is supposed to act immediately to prevent a crash. He cannot be absent from the cabin and he cannot finish the game level on his smartphone first. The same is with the car, that is not sold as fully autonomous: if you are on the driver seat, you are responsible for making the final decisions on steering and braking, not a technology. Technology may help you and prevent from making mistakes, but it was not promised or advertised that it will help in 100% of the cases.

As we see in latest Tesla report, there were multiple warnings to which the driver should respond: this means, that the problem was detected with enough time to react and the autopilot was not able to solve it on its own. Thus, it does not make sense to blame the autopilot - the technology did behave as expected (when problem cannot be solved, report asap to the owner, that he should intervene).

What Tesla can actually be blamed for, is the misunderstanding of the autopilot capabilities by the drivers. It's not an algorithmic bug, but rather a usability one. Perhaps, the warning should be issued earlier or in a more clear way. Perhaps, the drivers should receive some training, to act as supervisors of the system, not as passengers, or there even should exist a special driving license for such types of cars.

Nevertheless, the main fault was not the driver's and not the Tesla's. The safety of this road should be guaranteed by the authorities in charge, the navigation should be made sufficient for the drivers, and they clearly failed to do so.