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

#41

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:17 AM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #39

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 ge…

Maybe force users back in either speeds above 30, crowded places, complex topologies.

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

#42

Post by mirimir » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:17 AM UTC

jijojv wrote: post #10

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your point is "Autopilot only works on perfect roads" then they might have well pull the plug right now. Dirt, snow, rain, fog, dark, and other common conditions could obscure even correctly painted lines, and it just isn't realistic to expect perfect roads throughout such a large network anyway (in particular as human drivers can infer the line is meant to be there from the neighboring lines). At its core, a syst…

Agreed. That was in Chicago. It also was reproduced exactly in CA crash location in https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier...

Indeed. His Tesla was clearly following the clearest left-side white line. Which unfortunately pointed the car right at the gore point.

But what amazes me is that Tesla autopilot apparently won't swerve or stop when it sees an unmoving object straight ahead. Whether it's a semi, a fire truck, or a gore point. But I gather that trying to detect that stuff generates too many false positives. And that overall, it would arguably cause more accidents net.

Edit: I have faced that ambiguity myself. When driving, perhaps foolishly, in fog so dense that I could only see the lines on the road.

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

#43

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #36

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qualif…

1.3 million people a year die in car crashes. Humans are woefully unqualified to pilot heavy machinery on a daily basis. Tesla’s Autopilot reduces crashes by 40% according to the NHTSA, so I can’t agree with your binary argument.

Whether you trust others is immaterial; statistics will be the final arbitor. If Autopilot still causes fatal accidents, but fewer fatal accidents than humans alone, how could you argue against such a safety system? What of the lives saved that wouldn’t have been if we demand an entirely fault proof system prior to implementation? Who are you (not you specially, but the aggregate) to take those lives away because of irrationality?

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

#44

Post by carlivar » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

doe88 wrote: post #37

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…

It's not irrational at all. I drive our family 2018 Honda Odyssey, and it's already "saving me from my own mistakes" by beeping angrily when I signal for a lane change and there's someone in my blind spot. Works really well. It also has a notification light on each side of the car to indicate blind spot object presence, so I have to miss that first.

The question seems to be which is better:

1) A car very intelligently helping a human drive better.

2) Or a car mostly driving well itself but needing humans to very rarely override fatal crashes.

I prefer 1)

I'm not sure there are any studies comparing these things, since "human driving but lots of extra tech help" is harder to quantify and doesn't have all the data going back to the mothership like Tesla.

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

#45

Post by oldgradstudent » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

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.

Wasn't the IIHS study relevant to the old Mobileye-based Autopilot? Any reason to assume it applies to Tesla's in-house Autopilot?

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

#46

Post by cheschire » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

z6 wrote: post #21

brandmeyer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but seriously why are our roads so bad. Degraded paint does not a bad road make. Roads are optimized for human drivers that can leverage additional context to make their decisions. Many countries don't even bother to stripe their roads at all.

Huh? Which developed countries don't have road markings on highways? Paint is just one aspect. There are also plenty of cracks and uneven pavement as you can see from the street view.

You said road, he said road. The additional caveat of “highway” wasn’t added until you realized his mental model was different than yours.

Now imagine trying to teach a car these things!

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

#47

Post by mirimir » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

dangero wrote: post #29

petters wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, I fail to see how an obstacle as large as a divider is not seen in time. If this is the case, then the system is inadequate to see many types of debris that could be on the road.

Well, it also apparently can't detect stationary semi trailers or fire trucks. So expecting it to detect a little gore point is iffy.

But why can't it?

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

#48

Post by Declanomous » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

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...

If your point is "Autopilot only works on perfect roads" then they might have well pull the plug right now. Dirt, snow, rain, fog, dark, and other common conditions could obscure even correctly painted lines, and it just isn't realistic to expect perfect roads throughout such a large network anyway (in particular as human drivers can infer the line is meant to be there from the neighboring lines). At its core, a syst…

Man, that's incredibly bad. I drive that route all the time and it's not even remotely difficult to follow the highway there.

Considering Tesla's must have driven through there hundreds of thousands of times, they should have data to make sure the car at least follows the highway. I don't crash in to a barrier when a paint stripe gets scuffed in between my Monday morning commute and my Tuesday morning commute.

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

#49

Post by firebones » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #38

petters wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(x) hey, but let's put this BS on the road anyway (xi) something, something "Fight Club" math anyway

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

#50

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

Vehicles with autonomous features will save lives. Fewer people will be injured or killed in cars that have these features. However, some people will still be injured or killed, and those people will comprise a different set than would otherwise have been harmed. They or their families will seek restitution and hence, the way forward will be determined by the courts.