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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

#301
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really change my answer. If an object is almost directly in front of you, you either fine-tune your turning to avoid it, or you stop. There's no reason to ever ignore it.

You can't just slam the brakes on the highway. Just a question of time until you get rear ended.

There are other ways to stop than "apply full braking power until speed == 0".

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

#302
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Train drivers are the closest thing and they have a lot of equipment that forces them to stay alert. Except they sometimes fall asleep: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39457148

or play with their smartphone:

> http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/zugunglueck-von-bad-ai... (german only)

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

#303

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…

> 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?

Yes, not infallible, but I believe that to take our lives in the hands of machines, the technology must be at least on par with the best drivers. To be better than average, but for instance to be more fallible than a good driver, is IMHO still not a good standard to be ethically ok to sell self driving cars, even if you have 5% less death per year compared to everybody driving while, like, writing text messages in their phones. If instead the machine will be even a bit better than an high standard driver, driving with care, at that point it makes sense because you are not going to care about the distribution of deaths based on the behaviors.

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

#304
post #240
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the reason is obvious: the hardware and software tech is just not there yet. The hardware that may be actually required to make this work well may still cost tens of thousands of dollars, which means car makers will avoid using it and will use cheaper options like cameras and radar. While on the software side, we may be 80% of the road there, but the other 20% and solving every single edge case out of potenti…

Yup. "80% success" is seen as "It Works Great" by the same technooptimists who would throw a hissy fit over a network service with a mere 80% SLA.

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

#305

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…

I'm in central Europe, switched from a train to a car. Reduced commute time, increased comfort and reliability. Costs several times more though.

What about the fact you cannot do anything useful other than podcasts / music while driving? Btw your point sounds to me just that public transport needs to get better, not that in general is not a good idea to move towards this model.

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

#306
post #299
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).

I bet Tesla's are still safer without Autosteer, because the average car includes a lot of old cars and more young drivers.

I would also think that the average Tesla owner is less likely to experience constant stress, long commute hours, tiredness and possible mental health issues that can contribute to car accidents.

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

#307
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves . This reminds me when I was living in the Midwest and there was this one spot where I had to do a u turn in my commute which was very dangerous because of some tree branches obstructing view of oncoming traffic. One day I almost got into an accident and since it shook me quite a lot, I wrote an email to the city that the tree branch needed to be tr…

> Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves. Seems to work for Portland Anarchist Road Care: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-w...

Seems to. If this becomes widespread, cities could just abdicate attempts at road work- do it yourself, citizen. (But not the taxes, obviously, those still need to be paid in full.)

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

#308
post #89
post #82

Currently, the Tesla autopilot page has this as its top headline: > Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars Followed by this: > 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. http://web.archive.org/web/20180323054727/https://www.tesla.... Getting past the arguments of whether T…

> Getting past the arguments of whether Tesla should be calling this "Autopilot", is its claims about hardware true? Tesla actually hasn't called that Autopilot -- they refer to it as "full self driving" and not in the same category. But...is it true? It's vaporware right now, so we can't really say. Obviously, in a purely hypothetical landscape, even with cameras you should be able to emulate what humans can do and…

Humans don't have lidar and radar, but humans permitted to drive have optical hardware which is in all respects except simultaneity of inputs from different directions superior to that which Tesla is claiming is sufficient for full safe driving capability.

Much harder to imagine software surpassing alert human driving capabilities if it's not equipped with sensors offering better depth perception that could compensate for lack of general intelligence to process unfolding situations, visual anomalies etc. Harder still if the optical sensors are objectively worse than human ones in many lighting conditions.

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

#309

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…

A lot of human-driven car accident victims have done nothing wrong at all. Almost every driver thinks they're better than average. Even when it's a stupid person dying from their stupidity, it's still a tragedy. I really think data driven analysys is the way to go. If we can get US car fatalities from 30000 a year to 29000 a year by adopting self-driving cars, that's 1000 lives saved a year. Agree with your point #3.…

OK but if by saving 1000 lives a year required as a side-effect that you personally be among the fatalities, would that be OK for you? I hope not. Think of this as a technical corner case; so, the question is the soundness of the analysis—for example, the distribution of deaths and what that means for safety—and not letting various facile logic get in the way of that work.

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

#310
post #251
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants, plane crashes, terrorism, school shootings, even some rare diseases (the mad cow disease led to the slaughter of millions of cattle, having killed in the UK less than 200 people cumulatively, whereas the flu can easily kill 10,000 people in a single year just in the UK). I don’t think it has anything to do with technology and automation. People are just very bad at reasoning with probabilities.…

Funny, Nassim Taleb, a worldwide (if controversial) risk probability expert, would say that you are the one which is being very bad at reasoning with probabilities, because you are putting Ebola and terrorism in the same class of risk as falling off a ladder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dKiLclupUM

I would agree with flu (which is a fat tail risk, eg the spanish flu), but not terrorism (these are small local events) and ebola (ebola has a very low risk of transmission, it is just that it is very deadly once transmitted).

But classifying risks is one thing. Worrying in your daily life to the point of opposing a public policy is another. An asteroid wiping out life on earth is an even fatter tail risk, but the probability is so low that it is not worth worrying about. People have not rational reason to worry about ebola, terrorism, or plane crashes.

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