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

#361

Post by AlexC04 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #291

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…

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.…

US National Safety Council estimated that there were 40,100 fatal car crashes in 2017 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/02/15/nationa...

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

#362

Post by qaq » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #355

qaq wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you point at FB marketing that has this message?

I don't see any (although "FB is free and always will be" has plenty of wiggle room). Also, I don't see any explicit mention that Tesla's Autopilot is actually an autonomous Level 5 system - and yet people assume that. Are you saying that people should only be angry about things they were promised explicitly? (If so, I would agree - but 1. people are not 100% rational, 2. expectations are important for PR, even if no…

" Are you saying that people should only be angry about things they were promised explicitly?" I am def. in no position to direct how people should feel about something. To me expecting something beyond what is actually promised just sounds unrealistic. If I hired you to write software and you promised to write software but I was also expecting you to clean my pool that would pretty weird.

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

#363

Post by nabla9 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #245

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

"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...

This claim is still wrong.

HEPA filters capture particulates. PM2.5 means particles above 2.5 micrometers in diameters. Good 0.2 - 0.3 micrometer HEPA filter is fine enough to catch bacteria like anthrax. Smallpox, influenza virus are smaller. You need carbon absorber to be safe.

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

#364

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #258

cam_l wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

slowing down should be the first thing a car does in these scenarios. the confidence factor matters less as speed approaches zero. seriously, i slow down when i am unsure of the conditions, i surely have never evaluated every last scenario, and i have never run into a concrete barrier.

OK so you have a speeding loaded truck behind you that would not be able to break for whatever reason still want to slow down?

> OK so you have a speeding loaded truck behind you that would not be able to break for whatever reason still want to slow down?

Mental experiment: which is preferable - colliding with a static barrier at an unchecked 70MPH or getting rammed from behind by a truck at a relative speed of 30MPH (assuming that's how much you've braked by)?

That said - slowing down =/= emergency stop - that truck behind you should leave enough room in front of it to come to a complete stop - unless you've cut in front of it. I'm probably ranting, but I'll repeat this as I've witnessed it far too many times: do not cut in front of loaded semi-trucks. The gap in front of them is intentional and it wasn't meant for you - it's their braking distance - they have ridiculous momentum and they can squash you!

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

#365

Post by return0 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

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...

That's a bit disconcerning, i mean, obviously not all roads are going to be painted properly so you would assume that they have a myriad other ways to figure out that this is a road bifurcating and not far away there's a huge (1m+) obstacle. I 've been researching driving car literature but i find there's surprisingly little detail about the kind of data used and safeguards taken. Makes you wonder if the entire field is really as mature as it claims to be. I mean , if it fails in the perfectly large american roads, how is it going to perform in chaotic traffic in some old european cities and beyond where almost nothing can be taken for granted? Does anyone know of a comprehensive review of the technology that goes in an AV from the past 1-2 years ?

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

#366

Post by base698 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #282

simion314 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or maybe having a population with no hard challenges in their youth, like learning to drive and surviving. Seems to lead to people incapable of handling adulthood or developing judgement about risk.

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

#367

Post by Piskvorrr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #362

Piskvorrr wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any (although "FB is free and always will be" has plenty of wiggle room). Also, I don't see any explicit mention that Tesla's Autopilot is actually an autonomous Level 5 system - and yet people assume that. Are you saying that people should only be angry about things they were promised explicitly? (If so, I would agree - but 1. people are not 100% rational, 2. expectations are important for PR, even if no…

" Are you saying that people should only be angry about things they were promised explicitly?" I am def. in no position to direct how people should feel about something. To me expecting something beyond what is actually promised just sounds unrealistic. If I hired you to write software and you promised to write software but I was also expecting you to clean my pool that would pretty weird.

Indeed. But if it would make a clickbaitable story, would it seem more lucrative to cover this vs. yet-another-corporate-embezzlement cause? In other words, media attention is also eyeball driven, to the point of sensationalism.

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

#368

Post by danso » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #194

danso wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 3 Autopilot deaths so far involved 3 relatively young men, both in relatively elite professions: former Navy SEAL and an Apple engineer -- the third was a son of a Chinese business owner [0]. They fit the profile of men fairly confident about driving and tech, perhaps too confident. 3 fatalities over 320 million miles for Teslas equipped with Autopilot hardware is not much better than the 1.16/100 million miles f…

What about non-fatal accidents though? Where Teslas (and other assisted driving vehicles) prevent stuff like hitting pedestrians, random bikers, animals, parked cars etc.?

Tesla hasn't provided those numbers.

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

#369

Post by base698 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:35 PM 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…

My first drive with auto pilot tried to follow into the back of a stopped car in a turning lane and randomly had phantom breaking issues like going under overpasses.

Not to mention there are things most people do defensively while driving that autopilot doesn't: anticipate a vehicle coming into my lane by both looking at the wheel position and the lateral movement. Autopilot ignores those pieces of information and data until it's in basically in your lane.

Personally I feel I have to be more on guard and attentive with it on because I know their are fatal bugs.

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

#370

Post by patcheudor » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #312

davej wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 don't even have the hardware equivalent of a human driver. People's eyes can detect individual photons, at much higher resolution and dynamic range than a typical camera.

It's amazing how many "basics" Tesla is missing with the statement that their cars have all the tech to be fully self driving. I have an Infiniti QX80 with the surround camera system, lane stay, and collision warning system. Unlike Tesla, they've not gone as far as to implement an autopilot feature and from what I can tell, for good reason. In the less than a year I've owned it, the side warning collision sensor / camera combination have falsely identified phantom threats due to road dust and debris and entirely missed real threats. The sensors simply don't have a self cleaning mechanism like our eyes which is one fairly obvious problem that's lead to a few issues with my QX80. In looking through Tesla's marketing white papers and what-not I see no mention of how they keep their sensor system clean. It seems like that should be a pretty basic concern.