Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Update on Last Week’s Accident

tesla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 447 posts

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#351

Post by yashap »

I can’t help but feel that Tesla, Uber and others are being crazy reckless with their self driving technology, maybe even criminally so. Google have put massively more effort into their self-driving tech, AFAIK massively more engineering and QA hours (by probably better engineers and ML people), and they still don’t consider their tech ready for sale to the general public. Tesla seem to be shipping an MVP, which is insane for safety critical software.

Tesla claim “Tesla’s equipped with autopilot have a 3.7x lower fatality rate compared to the average car,” but that’s a very weak claim. It doesn’t say anything about the safety of the autopilot tech itself, as it’s lumping in “normal driver” stats. Also, do new, expensive cars simply have lower than average fatality rates in general?

I think self-driving cars will be great for society, but we need to be super cautious about shipping them. Google seem to be very cautious, Tesla seem to be very reckless. If it’s found they shipped autopilot without strong evidence that it’s much safer than human drivers, and it’s out there killing people, IMO Tesla execs should go to jail.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#352

Post by amelius »

jVinc wrote: post #159

I really hate the whole Tesla angle of "technically we are not lying but we know people are going to mis-remember and misrepresent what we are writing". Take for instance: > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive... What this means is that during this incident there were No visual or audible clues that a crash was about to happen What they are saying is that while…

I also dislike how Musk is synonymous with Tesla, except in cases like this.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#353

Post by kneel »

cowkingdeluxe wrote: post #278
sweden wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's widely known that RADAR systems are not able to detect stationary objects, only moving ones. Actually, they are are to detect them but just not where they come from, so a barrier in the middle of the road and a traffic sign on the side of the street, they would look like the same to the RADAR system. But to be honest, I am more worried with the markings of the road rather than the inability of the autopilot of n…

I think at least 50% of the blame should be placed on the maintainer of the road. The crash attenuator was 'used up' from a previous accident and might have prevented death if it was in working condition. I see this all the time where I live. Crashed attenuators or disfigured guard rails go months and months without repair.

If we are moving towards a future with self driving cars there needs standardization of road markers so that cars can recognize what's going on.

This crash is looking to be the autopilots due to the strange lane markings.

Have you ever driven down a road the lines grinded away and replace by new ones? Sometimes you can still see both sets, it can be pretty confusing for a human.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#354

Post by jakewins »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #347
jakewins wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't tell us how safe Tesla's are compared to the entire US driving population: Tell us how safe they are compared to equivalent vehicles from other manufacturers. I'm having a hard time to find an exact number comparison, but: - Tesla claims 1 fatality per 320M miles Compared to - A 2015 study of 2011 model year vehicles showed, for instance, Volvo XC90 had never been involved in a driver fatality (1) - There are…

Eh, you can't cherry pick specific (model, year) combinations after the fact without overfitting. You expect some variation in deaths per (model, year) and by searching for the least deadly ones, you'll dramatically influence your estimate simply because you used a maximizing search instead of a broad survey of a-priori safe models.

This is totally true, and I agree; I tried to guard against this at the end with the "I think this is enough to state a hypothesis, which would then need to be tested.." paragraph.

However - the same is true for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 model XC90s, and they are just one of 10 models that had no fatalities in those four model years in the study. I just picked that year and model to get one data point for mileage to compare; the other model years of XC90 have similar sales, so the same applies.

So, while you're right, I don't think it's an entirely useless comparison; it indicates there could be something here, which could then be used to state a falsifiable hypothesis, something like: "Similar cohort drivers would be safer in than in a Tesla.".

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#355

Post by davewritescode »

Arnt wrote: post #297
pja wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no, you can't get out of culpability by claiming statistical superiority. Quite. Tesla is deliberately comparing their modern vehicle design & wealthy driver base (statistically one of the safest cohorts) with the entirety of the U.S. driving population. This is bad statistics: We expect Tesla vehicles to have far fewer accidents than the mean US vehicle per mile, because Tesla's are expensive modern vehicles wit…

Do you expect 370% above average for any cohort? That's amazingly amazing. That must mean that some other cohorts are correspondingly far below the average, what are they?

Have you seen some of the drivers out there? Next time you’re in a parking lot take note of all the cars in terrible condition with scrapes and dings all over.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#356

Post by sp332 »

userbinator wrote: post #82
sp332 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore it long enough, the autopilot will disengage entirely. The car will drive in a straight line and coast to a stop.

The car will drive in a straight line and coast to a stop. In this case, it would be more like "drive in a straight line and... collide to a stop." Perhaps braking to a stop at a reasonable rate would be the right thing to do, given that it surely should've detected it was going to hit something?

But according to Tesla, the autopilot was engaged. The car's behavior when disengaged is not the question here.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#357

Post by gfodor »

obeattie wrote: post #224

To me there is a stunning lack of compassion and decency in the response to these incidents by both Tesla and Uber. Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant. They’re trying to bamboozle the reader in an effort to improve their images at the expense of victims who…

What you are saying here is: "I really wish the PR person who wrote this chose words that would cause readers to feel as though the company empathized more with the victim."

Ultimately companies don't have feelings, their employees do. PR statements and the words chosen (unless written by an individual like the CEO) don't somehow make a company into a person and don't reflect the feelings of their employees: they are a crafted tool to create a certain outcome by instilling thoughts in the mind of the reader and/or providing legal cover.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#358

Post by api »

pja wrote: post #175
jVinc wrote: post #159

I really hate the whole Tesla angle of "technically we are not lying but we know people are going to mis-remember and misrepresent what we are writing". Take for instance: > The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive... What this means is that during this incident there were No visual or audible clues that a crash was about to happen What they are saying is that while…

And no, you can't get out of culpability by claiming statistical superiority. Quite. Tesla is deliberately comparing their modern vehicle design & wealthy driver base (statistically one of the safest cohorts) with the entirety of the U.S. driving population. This is bad statistics: We expect Tesla vehicles to have far fewer accidents than the mean US vehicle per mile, because Tesla's are expensive modern vehicles wit…

They should (on closed tracks) test self driving cars with drunk and deliberately stupid drivers. Do they do this? Because if you mass market such a car you will get people using it to drive themselves home drunk.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#359

Post by Someone1234 »

psychedelic wrote: post #248
Donald wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was clearly vetted (or written) by a lawyer who is interested in changing the narrative for his future wrongful death defense rather than exercising empathy.

It reads like it was written by a company who has a lot of scientists working there is all. They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files before the incident and then reminding the public that it is still safer.

> They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files

I must have missed the part where they explained why their autopilot system drove into a concrete divider at high speed. Please can you quote the explanation you're referring to.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#360

Post by dlp211 »

mrb wrote: post #160
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #5

Really not much additional info here aside from the number of warnings the driver had. Also, the standard "Tesla is 10x safer" metrics that get pulled out each time a crash gets sensationalized. What I think they fail to address, especially in this case, is that the autopilot did something a human driver who was paying attention would never do. Autopilot does a great job of saving people from things even a wary drive…

« the autopilot did something a human driver who was paying attention would never do » I'm sure that out of the 1.25 million annual automobile-related deaths, plenty of drivers were paying attention and still did stupid things similar to this accident.

Using global statistics greatly skews your argument. While all these deaths are tragic, many of them could be prevented through law and regulation of human drivers.
Post reply on HN