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

361–370 of 447 posts

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#361

Post by rdiddly »

amelius wrote: post #352
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.

The defensiveness, narcissism and lack of true leadership stamped all over this press release scream Musk to me.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#362

Post by OrganicMSG »

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…

I want electric cars to succeed as I am am long bored of breathing in vehicle fumes. Automated driving is cool sci-fi tech, but holds nowhere near the same sense of necessity, as far as I am concerned.

So, I thought it wasn't all that clever in the first place to try and marry the risks of getting electric cars into the market with the risks of telling the extremely wealthy that they didn't need to hold the damn steering wheel.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#363

Post by Someone1234 »

utnick wrote: post #323
chaboud wrote: post #83

"The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." This seems to be trying to suggest that the driver had 6 seconds of clear driving-toward-death time to correct for the car's actions without explicitly making such a ridiculous statement (while also throwing in the crushed crash attenuat…

Yup this also mean that Tesla's radar and camera systems had 5 seconds to realize it was driving straight into an unmoving concrete barrier and did nothing...

What's really odd is, in my Subaru which has eyesight, if I drove straight towards that barrier the breaks would engage. Eyesight uses two visual cameras, about two feet apart, and uses the parallax between them to judge depth/distance (in the same way human eyesight judges depth).

So even if Tesla's autopilot steered the vehicle towards that divider, shouldn't the auto-braking system have engaged to avert the accident? Tesla vehicles also have visual image cameras as well as radar based ones, so the information density is even higher than Subaru's system.

I guess what I am getting at is: Is auto-braking disabled while autopilot is on? Wouldn't leaving auto-braking enabled (particularly using the visual cameras) offer a second layer of safety is autopilot made an error?

I raised the same issue when a Tesla with autopilot on drove straight into the side of a truck and the driver was decapitated. The discussion was all about "well radar couldn't distinguish it from road signs!" while ignoring that a Tesla has visual (optical) cameras front and center.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#364

Post by dlp211 »

houqp wrote: post #103

The thing I don't understand is the driver has complained about AP not working on this same location multiple times in the past yet still kept the hands off the wheels for more than 5 seconds?

We don't know that is what happened. Tesla is using weasel wording to confuse.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#365

Post by intopieces »

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…

>I don’t understand why it is so impossible for these companies to act humbly and with a sense of dignity around all this.

Because humility requires you to admit wrongdoing, which from a legal standpoint is not advisable in a public statement.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#366

Post by pooya13 »

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…

>> That is Not acceptable of a self driving system.

Yes. But as we all know autopilot is not the same as self-driving.

>> And no, you can't get out of culpability by claiming statistical superiority.

In fact no one has found Tesla culpable for the accident. You can however defend the safety of your system by referring to statistics. (In fact that is the ONLY way to measure safety level) And your analogy does not hold. It it more like a parachute company saying their parachutes are safer than other brands because it fails less often than the other brands. Which brings me to my final point. Even if it turns out Tesla was culpable and negligent in this accident, it would not be a complete judgment if we leave out the inherent risks in car manufacturing and the incidents attributed to other companies.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#367

Post by dlp211 »

rkagerer wrote: post #176

If the driver had "five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider", then didn't the car, too? I'm not disputing their statistics, but reading past the first two paragraphs of this article left a sour taste in my mouth. Feel like a better message ought to have been "we're going to learn from this, and won't stop improving until the crash rate is 0".

You should dispute the use of statitics here. They make no attempt to control for various factors and compare apples to apples.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#368

Post by buvanshak »

narag wrote: post #230
Rapzid wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's pretty crafty PR. The CPC must be green with envy, while Uber is still ruing their reputation. Such a difference in conversation; so many people laying the blame squarely on the driver(he is ultimately the PIC tbh, but Tesla and particularly CalTrans messed up bad), however Uber is being raked through the coals when somebody literally walked in front of their car.. Just Say'n EDIT: While I believe Tesla an…

While I believe Tesla and the driver are the ultimate source of the accident, I believe CalTrans messed up worse with that barrier. When reading something like this in sci-fi, I always thought that the stories where over the top and tongue in cheek, to make some other point. Now I see they were real. Companies are allowed to create robots that kill people. Then we sit around here and discuss how much of the killing i…

> Then we sit around here and discuss how much of the killing is on the the robot's manufacturer, the robot's owner, the street lights and the victim.

You forgot one entity and I think it is a major one.

The people of the world who just stood by and let sdv's on the street with no sort of regulations and tests.

I posted this [1] after the Uber incident, Look at the awesome response from HN community that I have received.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696681

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#369

Post by rootusrootus »

vizzah wrote: post #252
barnabes wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it seems that they may be, statistically speaking, right. The fears that surround self driving cars may be unfounded, and if they are unfounded, then it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They're right when they say we don't speak of the accidents that didn't happen, and I bet there's a ton of them. As someone who's been in multiple car crashes, as a passenger, I really on longer wan…

Exactly. It's very important to ensure negative (and unjustified!) publicity do not affect technology perception, adoption and growth. There are so many Luddites who take every chance to hammer another nail.. It's understandable that any tech pioneer can easily sense being attacked and has to quiveringly rebuff any hysteria attempts.

But is it really unjustified? The statistics we have so far suggests that with the current state of self-driving cars they are significantly (about an order of magnitude) more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.

Maybe what we need is to put the brakes on the notion that self-driving cars are nearly ready for prime time and in a few years they will be all over the road. A level-headed review of the state of the technology suggests that is extremely unlikely. Except for people hanging around /r/futurology and to some extent here on hacker news, who are perhaps too close to technology to really appreciate it's limits in the practical world.

It would probably be for the best if the enthusiasts and the companies rushing headlong towards this new driving paradigm put forth some effort to tone down the hype.

Post reply on HN