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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

#281
post #274
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Tesla says but that's not how people are using it - and as people grow more comfortable with the autopilot, the less vigilant they'll become. I have this picture in my head where people are trying to recoup their commute time as though they're using public transport. I suspect we'll get there some day but today is not that day. While the Tesla spokespeople are good at saying it's driver assist, their mark…

"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." This is perhaps a case of purposely confusing marketing. All vehicles have the hardware for full self-driving capability but not yet the software . The full self-driving is to be enabled later on through an over-the-air software…

They can't even honestly claim they've got the hardware, when a "full safe driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver" is at this stage something in the realms of hypothesis, and the software which gets closest to doing so relies on far more hardware than a Tesla to achieve this.

It's not merely purposely confusing. It's at best, not an outright lie only because they hope it's true.

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

#282
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the minimum time you guess it would take to have a city with only self driven cars that could just drive by following lines and other specific signals? I do not think this will happen in an existing city for at least 20 years. I can imagine scenarios where a glitch or something else could cause tons of traffic issues in a city with only self driving cars. I am not against self driving cars, I don't like the f…

If all newly produced cars are self-driving cars in 10 years, I think it is reasonable to ban non self-driving cars 10 years after that. So 20 years sounds about right. It's not that long for such a fundamental change.

And yes it will create its own problems. Like if these cars get hacked, they will cause serious damages.

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

#283
post #269
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics also includes all the cases where drivers are not paying attention as they should, and it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).

Drivers not paying attention in non-autopilot vehicles is an increasing problem with the prevalence of smart phones. In places where it's illegal to text and drive I don't think you're going to get out of a ticket by telling the police officer "it's okay because Tesla was driving". I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused s…

I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused such a massive fire in this crash.

How does a Tesla get such good range? There's still a lot of energy in those batteries, and damaging them is far easier to cause a fire than leaking fuel --- the former can self-ignite just from dissipating its own energy into an internal short, while the latter needs an ignition source. In addition, the batteries are under the entire vehicle and thus more likely to be damaged; a fuel tank has a smaller area and is concentrated in one place.

It is extremely rare for fuel tanks to explode in a crash.

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

#284
post #16
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?

Break the law? One surprising thing to me there is a ton of media attention on the SV right now (almost all negative) and that does not look like a coincidence. I disapprove of what FB is doing but on the scale of problems that Big Pharma, Health Insurance, big banks are causing thats not even a blip and yet most media attention and good amount of public outrage is fairly skillfully directed toward tech and SV.

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

#285

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…

> 1. Ethical. One thing is that you do a stupid thing and die. Another is that a technology fails in trivial circumstances that in theory are avoidable. A doctor can make also errors, but a medical device is required to be very safe and reliable in what it does.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that because humans are known to be falible, but technology can be made nigh-infalible, that technology should be held to a higher ethical standard?

Those two statements don't connect for me.

I suppose that's partly because I am an automation engineer, and I deal a lot with inspecting operator-assembled and machine-assembled parts. If the machine builds parts that also pass the requirements, it's good.

It's nice if it's faster or more consistent, and sure we can build machines that produce parts with unnecessarily tight tolerances, but not meeting those possibilities doesn't feel like an ethical failing to me.

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high rate of road deaths isn't a fait accompli. Musk would have us believe that technology is the only answer. The UK has the 2nd-lowest rate of road deaths in the world (after Sweden). The roads in the UK are not intrinsically safe, they are very narrow both in urban and rural areas which means there are more hazards and less time to avoid them. However, the UK has strict driver education programme. It is not easy…

As someone that has been caught speeding, it's also worth mentioning that one of the big reasons why the UK has improved its road safety statistics is a reasonably new initiative where you get an option on your first offence to either take the points on your license or to attend a safety workshop. IIRC, the workshop was about three hours, but it was surprisingly useful. The instructors treated you like adults and not…

It's not too common to head to prison for a single DD incident. It's also worth noting that England&Wales and Scotland have different drink driving laws.

In Scotland, the BAC limit is lower than in England and the punishment is a 12 month driving ban and fine for being over the limit - no grey areas or points or getting away with it.

In England a fine and penalty points are common, repeat offenders can be suspended and jailed. The severity of the punishment can often depend on how far over the limit you are and other factors.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high rate of road deaths isn't a fait accompli. Musk would have us believe that technology is the only answer. The UK has the 2nd-lowest rate of road deaths in the world (after Sweden). The roads in the UK are not intrinsically safe, they are very narrow both in urban and rural areas which means there are more hazards and less time to avoid them. However, the UK has strict driver education programme. It is not easy…

As someone that has been caught speeding, it's also worth mentioning that one of the big reasons why the UK has improved its road safety statistics is a reasonably new initiative where you get an option on your first offence to either take the points on your license or to attend a safety workshop. IIRC, the workshop was about three hours, but it was surprisingly useful. The instructors treated you like adults and not…

Other innovations include an off road "hazard perception test" I'd be pleasantly surprised if derivatives of self driving software could reliably pass.

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

#288
post #14
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Tesla and Waymo are at too low an abstraction level for resilience. Cars need to understand roads/walls as concepts and make common sense inferences.

They're not comparable at all. Google/Waymo uses lidar and has been at it since 2009 and per https://waymo.com/faq they are "fully automated vehicle" but alas not for sale yet. Tesla's self-driving vaporware being sold since Oct'16 is camera only and should be activated any day now ? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969 " Yes, safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if reg…

The low sunlight is hard to deal with by humans and computer vision isn't better. In the meantime, Tesla's CEO doesn't believe Lidar is necessary (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-s...).

My advice to the company BOD & shareholders: have him take the Udacity's self driving car online course and after the first project, he'll clearly understand how limited detecting lanes by CV only can be. To Uber's ex-CEO's point: LIDAR is the SAUCE.

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

#289
post #269
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics also includes all the cases where drivers are not paying attention as they should, and it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).

Drivers not paying attention in non-autopilot vehicles is an increasing problem with the prevalence of smart phones. In places where it's illegal to text and drive I don't think you're going to get out of a ticket by telling the police officer "it's okay because Tesla was driving". I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused s…

It is the opposite, LiIon/LiPo batteries are inherently dangerous and can cause chemical fire for various reasons (overcharging, undercharging, puncture, high temperature, etc.). These things are monitored/controlled in any modern application in normal usage, but in a crash you have to remember that you are literally few inches away from a massive stored up potential chemical energy. The fire burns very hot, the smoke is toxic and assuming somebody gets to you in time, it can only be extinguished reliably using special dry powder fire extinguishers (Class D)...

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.tesla.com/autopilot : "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver" Why do we keep referring to something that we understand should require human supervision as "auto"? Stop the marketing buzzfeed and let's be real.

I'm not sure whether it's intentionally been worded that way, but that sentence makes only a statement about hardware, not software. So technically, it's correct that the hardware is more capable than that of a human ("sees" and "hears" more), but it's the software that's not up to par.

bizarre statement

is there any point in saying that a hypothetical brain-dead, comatose bodybuilder is stronger than a starving man?

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