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Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

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

#71

Post by Aeolun »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43
twblalock wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agai…

I am human, and any product built for me will have to take into account my idiosyncrasies. This includes my unwillingness to drive on the same road with a car that might at any moment swerve into me because of weird software.

It may be irrational, but I can forgive a human, I cannot forgive an AI.

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

#72

Post by njarboe »

jackvalentine wrote: post #66
njarboe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the current climate of "all new things must be super extra safe to be used, even if it displaces much worse technology", I think machine driving cars will have a hard time being accepted. Imagine the autopilot is 100 times safer than human drivers. Full implementation would mean about a fatality a day in the US. It does not seem this would be acceptable by the public even though 30,000 annual human car fatalit…

> Imagine the autopilot is 100 times safer than human drivers. Is it? Can it be proved controlling for all variables?

No it is not. But might be someday. Will that be good enough? My dad would spend 100k on a car that was 10 times less safe, if it let him keep using a car. I'm sure others would as well.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #71
toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agai…

I am human, and any product built for me will have to take into account my idiosyncrasies. This includes my unwillingness to drive on the same road with a car that might at any moment swerve into me because of weird software. It may be irrational, but I can forgive a human, I cannot forgive an AI.

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by mdorazio »

mirimir wrote: post #47
dangero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's mostly due to limited sensors and immature algorithms.

If you think about a sharp left turn with a wall on the right side of the road, there is a "stationary object" (the wall) in front of the vehicle throughout the turn that will be detected by radar and cameras. In order to navigate a situation like this, an autonomous vehicle has to have additional decision-making in place to effectively override "stationary object in front of me = stop" logic. But once you do that, it gets tricky to determine when you should ignore the "stationary object" and when you shouldn't.

On top of this, Tesla opted not to include LIDAR as a sensor in its vehicles, so it does not get a 3D point cloud to help identify what an object is and what to do with it. Instead, there's a high reliance on the cameras and radar, but these have some limitations. For example, it's difficult for a camera to distinguish between two objects of similar brightness and color, so for example if there's a white semi-trailer in front of a white wall 100ft away, the camera might not "see" the trailer. This can create situations where sensors are reporting conflicting data, which is bad - for example in the trailer situation, the camera would be saying "there's nothing in front of me until a wall 100ft away", but the radar would be saying "no there's something right in front of me". Or the radar might not "see" an obstacle that is a few feet off the ground while the camera is saying "there's something in front of me". Resolving these conflicts is hard.

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

#75

Post by Aeolun »

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…

> that it shouldn't drive into

I love you qualified this ;)

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

#76

Post by m_mueller »

stickfigure wrote: post #64
m_mueller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it currently really reduce fatalities if you control for car cost, age group and area driven? I‘m unconvinced of the current statistics.

I think you could have just stopped that sentence after does it currently really reduce fatalities? .

why? got better data than me? please share.

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

#77

Post by jackvalentine »

njarboe wrote: post #72
jackvalentine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine the autopilot is 100 times safer than human drivers. Is it? Can it be proved controlling for all variables?

No it is not. But might be someday. Will that be good enough? My dad would spend 100k on a car that was 10 times less safe, if it let him keep using a car. I'm sure others would as well.

> No it is not. But might be someday. Will that be good enough?

I'm cynical enough to want to wait for it to actually be that good before bestowing the marketing goodwill on the company.

"Might be someday" doesn't really cut it for me any more.

Let's wait until we get there, then evaluate the situation.

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

#78

Post by buvanshak »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #60
doe88 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why are they allowed to put beta software on public roads where third parties that never consented to their EULA are put at risk. If they want beta software on a private track, that's their (and their insurance company's) problem.

Because no one is stopping them from. Even here, in HN, which is supposed to be filled with tech people, this is rarely asked. Then it is not surprising the common people and non-tech savvy authorities are complacent...

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

#79

Post by cma »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43
twblalock wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agai…

Wasn't that with the old, better, auto pilot?

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

#80

Post by omarforgotpwd »

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…

Please. You should see me when the car isn't on AutoPilot. I speed excessively, weave through LA traffic switching lanes frequently and generally exhibit unsafe driving behavior. I can't help it, it's like I get bored or something. I'm a decent driver and have never gotten in a crash but have gotten a lot of tickets. When I use AutoPilot, the car automatically maintains a reasonable distance at a fixed speed. You need to trust people driving other cars today, just as you always have -- that hasn't changed yet. AutoPilot related accidents are new, but accidents aren't. So yes people will die using AutoPilot but the solution is to know the systems limits and also maybe enhanced attention detection systems in the car, not banning AutoPilot or anything like that. I do believe AutoPilot can already reduce the number of crashes today.
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