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

#241

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #238

cm2187 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good point. Not just airbags. It starts to be common to have cars that apply the brakes automatically when they anticipate a collision. I think some research has been done on cars being designed to do less damage to a pedestrian in a collision, I don’t know if it has lead to design changes. Self driving cars may end up being only marginally safer than other new cars. But safety is not in my opinion the main…

If we do not push for safety then the manufacturers would invent some bad statistics and cheap out on sensors and engineering after they pass the bad statistics percentage. The traffic issue it won't be actually solved with this kind of self driving cars, you would need new infrastructure, like modern metros/trains. The dream of fast moving self driving cars, like a sword, I don't think is possible without a huge inf…

You will increase traffic without material change to infrastructures if you have no car parked in the street (particularly in Europe where streets are typically narrow) and you have better traffic flow management (coordinating self driving cars), variable speed limits, etc.

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

#242

Post by buvanshak » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #222

antirez wrote: post #200

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analy…

How can anyone take a company serios that sells features such as "Bio-Weapon Defense Mode". It almost sounds like snake oil and not far from something like the ADE 651. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

Had to look it up [1]

>"We’re trying to be a leader in apocalyptic defense scenarios," Musk continued.

Is this guy serious?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bio...

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

#243

Post by quotemstr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #188

worldsayshi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One solution would be to make the autopilot worse within the realm of safe driving. Make it so that it continuously makes safe errors that the driver has to correct. Like steering off into an empty lane. Slowing down. Etc. Defining safe errors might be a challenge though.

Make the steering wheel vibrate and beep every few seconds and constantly switch with the driver, like Mercedes is doing with theirs.

That behavior merely guarantees that I will never buy a Mercedes.

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

#244

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:01 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…

I have been a consistent critic of Autopilot; so much so that my last post with that very same video got nuked hard for awhile.

The same suggestion as before, autopilot needs to be turned back into learning only. It never should have left. There were way too many videos just on youtube showing how bad it could be. It should simply be recording what it would decide to do versus what the driver did and flag every exception. It certainly can see barriers and its routines could save every instance where it might have hit something.

The NHTSA really should demand that Autopilot features be disabled. There are even cases of it failing to park without hitting objects.

Musk should be lauded for his EV push, it opens doors to all sorts of new technologies being incorporated in cars and will one remove the need for gasoline/diesel as the primary drive in all cars. However he needs to learn to step back on technologies that are clear cutting edge and not ready for prime time.

At this time features like "AP" should be used not to take over for the driver but instead assist the driver by keeping them from being unsafe. This means doing similar to what blind spot monitors to and lane drift systems work on.

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

#245

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:04 AM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #222

antirez wrote: post #200

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analy…

How can anyone take a company serios that sells features such as "Bio-Weapon Defense Mode". It almost sounds like snake oil and not far from something like the ADE 651. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

"Not only did the vehicle system completely scrub the cabin air, but in the ensuing minutes, it began to vacuum the air outside the car as well, reducing PM2.5 levels by 40%. In other words, Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. You can literally survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in your car."

https://www.tesla.com/blog/putting-tesla-hepa-filter-and-bio...

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

#246

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

alkonaut wrote: post #175

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, it's still a huge relief. A day and night difference. Try it on a long drive, like LA to San Francisco and you'll see what I mean. It kind of feels like you're in the passenger seat rather than the drivers seat, but you can still grab the controls if you need to.

If it allows the driver to e.g. reply to a text message on his phone, then it's dangerous. Either it requires the driver to occasionally take over and handle a situation on short notice, then the driver should have hands on the wheel and eyes forward (and the car should ensure this by alerting and slowing down immediately if the driver isn't paying attention). Or the driver isn't required to pay attention and take ov…

Regular manual automotive controls, in practice, "allow[] the driver to...reply to a text message". Illegal or not, it's done by millions of people every day, and for the most part, they don't crash. You'd have to actually add control instability to the car to force the kind of attention you want out of drivers, and nobody would buy a car with this deliberately annoying handling.

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

#247

Post by pja » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:06 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 problem is that Autopilot is simultaneously too good and not good enough.

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

#248

Post by Piskvorrr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:06 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #161

sho_hn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be surprised if Musk coldly responded that this is a known problem with no solution, but autopilot still lowers the death rate on average. In other words, for the proponents it's a trade-off. And also the idea that an automatic driver is easier to improve over time (skewing the trade-off better and better) than human drivers. Which of course will snowball when reliance on automation keeps making drivers w…

> And also the idea that an automatic driver is easier to improve over time (skewing the trade-off better and better) than human drivers. Which of course will snowball when reliance on automation keeps making drivers worse than better, and at some point you're past the point of no return. I really hope it does get to the point were all drivers are automatic and interconnected. Cars could cooperate to a much higher ex…

"Hello, fellow robot car, I am also a robot car, not a wifi pineapple notatall nooosir, and all lanes ahead are blocked. But hey, there's a shortcut, just turn sharp to the right. Yes, your map says you're on a bridge, but don't worry, I have just driven through there, trust me." Nothing could possibly go wrong and the idea of evil actors in such a network is absurd - right? Your idea reminds me of the 1990s Internet - cf today's, where every other node is potentially malicious.

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

#249

Post by melling » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:08 AM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #233

antirez wrote: post #200

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analy…

4. There is another completely unknown variable - how many times would the autopilot have crashed if the human hadn't taken over. So Tesla's statistics are actually stating how safe the autopilot and human are when combined, not how safe the autopilot is by itself.

I thought the autopilot was always supposed to be combined with the human.

It’s not a self-driving car. It’s really an advanced cruise control.

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

#250

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

buvanshak wrote: post #242

sschueller wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anyone take a company serios that sells features such as "Bio-Weapon Defense Mode". It almost sounds like snake oil and not far from something like the ADE 651. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

Had to look it up [1] >"We’re trying to be a leader in apocalyptic defense scenarios," Musk continued. Is this guy serious? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bio...

Scenarios, indeed. Hollywood-grade threat models - riveting yet improbable. As opposed to such mundane threats such as "not driving into massive stationary objects".