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Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

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Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#71

Post by simion314 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #58
SeeDave wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind marketing puffery in the sense of "world's most innovative [X] ever," but I agree with your view that "Full Self-Driving Hardware" is dangerous, and branding the integrated system as AutoPilot™ only amplifies this. And I mean this without any gratuitous negativity about Tesla or Elon... but branding lane-following/collision warning/adaptive-cruise control as "AutoPilot" is far more dangerous and has far…

Musk is following the tried and true tradition "Move fast and break things". Only in this case "things" include people's lives :/

It is even worse since they have a good product without the hyped autopilot, when I read about Musk wanting to use only cameras then I was sure Tesla self driving is not safe.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#72

Post by ilyagr »

trimbo wrote: post #45
gknoy wrote: post #11

That kind of lane marking (or lack thereof) seems very unsafe. I realize that often this is due to construction / etc but the immediately-to-the-left lane's marker was Very Clear, and didn't have a visible split in it. I had to watch it a second time to make sure that I didn't miss the indications that the lane was splitting away (other than the highway signs). This kind of thing (lack of clear markings) can be reall…

> the road engineers should have made sure the lines were painted correctly If this is the intersection, they were painted correctly: https://goo.gl/maps/QuuRiixk6Y42 But in this video, the left solid white line was more visible than the right one. For whatever reason -- a trick of light, snowplows tore it up this winter, who knows. That kind of thing is going to happen and autonomous cars need to deal with it in ord…

I believe it's this intersection, judging by the signs in the beginning of video. Paint is not great.

https://goo.gl/maps/V9qnLYTL2tn

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#73

Post by jijojv »

EngineerBetter wrote: post #50
marcell wrote: post #13

I really dislike the marketing around "autopilot." The common defense of Tesla's autopilot is that there are disclaimers, and the driver should always be at 100% attention. Well, look at this, copied from Tesla's website: > Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially gr…

One does not buy something as expensive as a Model X without reading all the words on thr configurator page. Said with experience. This is not a whimsical purchasing decision.

Except one really wants to think that all the words on the configurator page are just Tesla's legal team's forced verbiage and really wants to believe Musk and the video at https://www.tesla.com/autopilot which starts with the claim that the person is only there for legal reasons...

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#74

Post by colechristensen »

mephitix wrote: post #43
colechristensen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think bugs and flaws in systems like this are normal at this stage I don't think you should be able to license a vehicle to drive on public roads with such "bugs and flaws". I don't have a choice, I have to interact with public roads. My local, state, and national government owes it to me to keep experimentation off of public roads that modern life is impossible without. The problem with robot cars is they fail in…

It's a good point about whether they should be on public roads. At the same time, it's crucial to their success that they are and experience outlier situations. The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again. Humans today don't have this kind of networked, massively parallel mind to avoid the mistakes of others. Again,…

> it's crucial to their success ...

I don't care about a company's success if it requires endangering members of the public who have no choice in the matter.

If we were talking about, say, astronauts and test pilots who know the risks they take and make the choice, I'd have no problem with them risking their lives. We're not.

>I think it'll be a long time before learning algorithms will take over the wheel completely

They did. A system called "auto pilot" drove a man at full speed into a barrier and killed him.

I have a limited trust of other humans on the road. The deal is that I understand them. They behave in a way that makes sense to me, even (or especially) the mistakes they make. As another driver or a pedestrian, I can communicate a lot with a car just by looking at the driver and interpreting body language and attention.

> The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again.

I think people are making a huge underestimation about the number and types of edge cases. If you have to teach a car not to drive into a static object at full speed, the issue sin't going to be about fixing this one problem, the issue is that if this problem exists 1000 others like it do too.

I come from cold climates and country roads, I think the fact that these vehicles are being designed and tested in the bay area (or Arizona) makes them incredibly dangerous because of the fair weather bubble that the people design them in are living. Make your engineers live and work in rural northern Minnesota and maybe you'll get a bit more trust from me.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#75

Post by WalterSear »

simion314 wrote: post #71
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is following the tried and true tradition "Move fast and break things". Only in this case "things" include people's lives :/

It is even worse since they have a good product without the hyped autopilot, when I read about Musk wanting to use only cameras then I was sure Tesla self driving is not safe.

The initial cruise control software was an afterthought, that ran on spare cpu cycles taken from the door lock control system.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#76

Post by cup-of-tea »

jstanley wrote: post #7

This (video) is another instance where the lanes split apart but the part in the middle has absolutely no markings to indicate that you shouldn't drive there. This (photograph) is what it should look like: http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea81... Is this (bad line painting) common in the US? Edit: on a second viewing, I think it actually does have some chevrons, but they're very faint.

UK roads are some of the safest in the world. US roads are an outlier amongst developed countries and sit with the 3rd World when it comes to road safety.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#77

Post by PhantomGremlin »

Swizec wrote: post #19
mdekkers wrote: post #8

Fun fact - given the current implementation of Autopilot, it is insane to expect an autonomous vehicle. There should be some kind of common sense/intelligence test for would-be users of Autopilot. So far, every incident involving Autopilot that I have heard about or looked at can be summarised with "Driver was being a dumbass"

When most of your users have a problem it’s not PEBKAC, it’s bad UX. Just because a door says push, doesn’t mean it looks pushable. If it doesn’t look pushable, users will pull. If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name.

If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name.

The word "autopilot" originated in aviation, where it is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the aircraft.[1]

Most aviation professionals understand those limitations. You're complaining that the average Tesla owner ascribes a different meaning to that word?

Sadly, in aviation, over-reliance on autopilot has also led to very tragic results, the most prominent recent example being the crash of AF447, which killed 228 people.[2]

Musk is doing nothing worse than Airbus, which has pushed automation to the extent that many of their pilots no longer understand the basic principles involved in aviation. They aren't pilots, they're operators of a very complex machine which has a UX that is usable in benign conditions, but that is abominably bad under difficult conditions.

When faced with "temporary inconsistencies" from various sensors, the AF447 autopilot gave up and returned control to the pilots. But the pilots' inexperience in actually "flying" the aircraft, together with the awful Airbus UX, caused one pilot to say "We've lost all control of the aeroplane we don’t understand anything we’ve tried everything".

In reality AF447 was a perfectly flyable aircraft. "pitch and power" was all it needed: Holding the aircraft level with pitch at IIRC 6 degrees above the horizon and applying 85% power was all that was necessary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#78

Post by Swizec »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #77
Swizec wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most of your users have a problem it’s not PEBKAC, it’s bad UX. Just because a door says push, doesn’t mean it looks pushable. If it doesn’t look pushable, users will pull. If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name.

If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name. The word "autopilot" originated in aviation, where it is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the aircr…

> without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required.

This is exactly what the Tesla autopilot isn’t. It requires constant hands-on control. It in fact goes as far as flashing alarms when your hands are not on.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#79

Post by cup-of-tea »

Shank wrote: post #30

Part of me wonders whether or not we're going to see mutual improvement of infrastructure with self driving cars in the future. This seems like something that you could obviously fix by adding in some kind of passive or active flag that, to a self driving car, says "woah, you're /really/ not supposed to be here." I know we're supposed to be focusing on building systems that are as capable as humans are as drivers. Ho…

Self-driving cars lose their appeal if you have to build significant infrastructure for them. At that point you might as well build railways.

Re: Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video]

#80

Post by cm2187 »

Tepix wrote: post #28
jijojv wrote: post #2

Really sad to see Autopilot is a joke and nothing more than adaptive cruise control found in common cars, despite Musk claming it was a year ago [1] Any one who owns Autopilot knows the warning at :20 is NOT a crash warning at all and is just the usual warning every minute to jiggle the wheel if you don't hold the wheel firmly enough when it can't detect you holding it. 1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/82363259…

The bad state of the road plays a huge role. There should be a "report unsafe road conditions" function in these cars to get US roads up to Belgian standards. Doesn't Ttump want to spend money on infrastructure anyway?

Whatever state of the road, a self-driving car shouldn't run heads on into a large static obstacle.
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