Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#31

Post by aaron-lebo » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:09 AM UTC

otalp wrote: post #16

jijojv wrote: post #2

Week after the fatal accident Musk continues to promote Autopilot as safe by retweeting stuff like https://twitter.com/Teslarati/status/980476745106231297 Tesla Model S navigates one of Vienna’s ‘crappiest’ roads on Autopilot IIHS '17 study puts Autopilot at only reducing 40% accidents which is the same as their '16 study which had the same 40% reduction for any car with Auto Emergency Braking.

What does Musk have to do for him to be investigated for misleading consumers or fraud?

He definitely has a penchant for exaggeration if not outright dishonesty. It bothers me that people respect someone who can say so many blatantly false things and that an engineer can be so loose with the truth.

That's his shtick though, promise unbelievable things, then when you get halfway there, people don't care you were wrong and/or lying. He understands how to market himself and his ventures.

My guess is he's got too many fans and money behind him. If things ever go truly south, that's when they'll really go after him, because people really care about their money.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#32

Post by jijojv » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:09 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

The lag time is for it to know you're distracted is ~ every 1min when you have to jiggle the wheel.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#33

Post by nikofeyn » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #24

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

Brad Templeton has some very relevant discussion of this in https://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/levels.html including > There is additional controversy, it should be noted, about the proposed level 2. In level 2, the system drives, but it is not trusted, and so a human must always be watching and may need to intervene on very short notice -- sub-second -- to correct things if it makes a mistake. [...] As such, w…

i don’t see why it’s controversial. just look at drivers now. many are already on human autopilot checking their phone, eating, etc. if you give any amount of automation but that which still requires checking in from the human, humans will almost universally check out and crashes will be prevalent. autonomous driving will simply not work without full, unsupervised driving. i don’t understand why this is even a discussion amongst people.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#34

Post by danmaz74 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #22

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

You have to learn how to use it properly and pay attention. I use it a lot and it can drive from San Francisco to LA pretty much without stopping. But every once in a while it does mess up and you just need to make sure you're watching and ready to take over quickly. I agree that it's good enough that people might stop paying attention, but they just need to realize that they have to hold the software's hand in these…

It you have to pay attention as much as if you were driving, then, what's the point of autopilot?

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#35

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:11 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

Relevant quote from an article about the Air France 447 crash:

> To put it briefly, automation has made it more and more unlikely that ordinary airline pilots will ever have to face a raw crisis in flight—but also more and more unlikely that they will be able to cope with such a crisis if one arises.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-... (linked to from another HN post today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16757343 )

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#36

Post by twblalock » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:11 AM UTC

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #22

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

You have to learn how to use it properly and pay attention. I use it a lot and it can drive from San Francisco to LA pretty much without stopping. But every once in a while it does mess up and you just need to make sure you're watching and ready to take over quickly. I agree that it's good enough that people might stop paying attention, but they just need to realize that they have to hold the software's hand in these…

I don't trust you to be able to snap out of a distracted state and take control of a car in a situation you may or may not have been paying attention to. I don't trust you to do that, I don't trust the driver behind me to do that, and I don't trust the drivers to the left and to the right of me to do that.

I should not need to trust you -- if I trusted you, why would we need autopilot at all? Humans are either qualified to drive cars or they aren't. If they are qualified, we don't need autopilot. If they aren't qualified, autopilot should never require human intervention. What we have now is a half-measure that assumes that neither humans nor autopilots can be trusted, but that some combination of those two untrustworthy parties can somehow be trusted. It doesn't make any sense.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#37

Post by doe88 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:11 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

This. I don't know I feel ambivalent about autopilot right now, as most on HN I always crave for new technologies, but the fact that something very dangerous can be very good most of the time and very bad occasionally make me weary of using it altogether. I know that's irrational because most often then not it probably saves you from your own mistakes.

Also, if Tesla intends to shield itself behind a beta status for their autopilot system until it is perfect, I think this beta status will remain even longer then the time GMail was in beta. At least, in this case they should own this problem and somewhat hardcode a meaningful warning at such intersections or do something.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#38

Post by adrianmonk » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:11 AM UTC

petters wrote: post #9

bobsil1 wrote: post #3

Gore point stripe faded: https://imgur.com/a/xHq57 Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6346515,-122.104109,3a,75y,8...

But the car should still detect (i) That there is an obstacle fast approaching. (ii) That all cars in front of it is doing something else -- time to slow down.

(iii) That there doesn't seem to be a continuous path between where it is headed immediately and where it will have to go 2 or 3 seconds later. If your immediate future can't be harmonized with what will happen afterward, something is wrong.

(iv) That it has (literally) been down this road before and had to revise its estimate of what it thought it was a lane (i.e. jerk back into the lane once it realized).

(v) That other Teslas have been down this road and learned that.

(vi) That the lane is suddenly getting wider than a freeway lane should, and that doesn't normally happen.

(vii) That the paint is worn, which indicates poor road maintenance, which necessitates caution.

(ix) That it saw a freeway exit sign a short while back, which logically indicates there must be a V-shaped spot ahead somewhere that it shouldn't drive into, and this could be it.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#39

Post by icc97 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:14 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

As far as I can tell there is no way to resolve this that will be effective. Google spoke about this problem publicly and why they directly targeted level 4.

Train drivers are the closest thing and they have a lot of equipment that forces them to stay alert.

Personally I think that autopilot should only take over when the driver is unwell or that it thinks there will be a crash.

Even when driving full time drivers get distracted. So when the car is doing the driving humans will get bored and won't be able to respond in time.

Autopilot however is always on and never distracted but doesn't work in some cases.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#40

Post by ovao » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

daodedickinson wrote: post #20

z6 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No real excuse for Tesla, but seriously why are our roads so bad. This is one of the wealthiest areas in the world and a busy stretch of road.

When I lived in California, I was shocked at how bad the roads are and how poor the signage was (since many of the signs get stolen and are not replaced for months or years). A moderate thunderstorm knocked out power in some parts of LA for weeks. It really seems like there are some parts of the government and utilities that are sclerotic.

Alameda St, just north of I10, is in such poor condition that it’s practically third-world. I’m usually so concerned with damage to my suspension that I avoid it.

Los Angeles has a very interesting set of problems. Chief among them is the repercussions from closing roads/highways for repairs. It’s often times better, I think, to let them suffer in disrepair than it is to close them for any length of time. With semi-autonomous cars, however, I wonder if there will be greater pressure to keep them in repair.