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

#451

Post by wilun » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #385

ldesegur wrote: post #271

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.

That sentence is just saying that the _hardware_ (not the software) is sufficient for "full self-driving capability". The current _software_ doesn't support that. The point being that in the future the car _could_ get "full self-driving capability" via a software update. In contrast, a car that doesn't have the necessary hardware will never be fully self-driving even if we do develop the necessary software to accompl…

And yet that is quasi criminal (from an ethical pov) that they have worded it that way for 2 reasons:

a. When you buy a car why should you even care about that hw/sw distinction, and more importantly do you have the distinction in mind at all time, and are advertisement usually worded that way, stating that maybe the car could become self-driving one day (but without even stating the maybe explicitly, just using tricks)

b. It is extremely dubious that the car even have the necessary hardware to become a fully autonomous driving car. We will see, but I don't believe it much, and more importantly competitors and people familiar with the field also don't believe it much...

People clearly are misunderstanding what Tesla Autopilot is, but this is not, ultimately, their fault. This is Tesla's fault. The people operating the car can NOT be considered as perfect flawless robot. Yet Tesla's model consider them like that, and reject all responsibility, not even considering the responsibility that they made a terrible mistake in considering them like that. We need to act the same way as when similar cases happens for a pilot mistake in an Airplane: change the system so that the human will make less mistakes (especially if the human is required for safe operation, which is the case here). But Tesla is doing the complete opposite! By misleading buyers and drivers in the first place.

Tesla should be forced by the regulators to stop their shit: stop misleading and dangerous advertisement; stop their autosteer uncontrolled experiment.

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

#452

Post by nradov » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #157

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…

I don't think that's the correct answer. Flight autopilots have lowered accident rates tenfold, but every time there is a crash while on autopilot Boeing/Airbus will ground every single plane of that type and won't allow them to fly until the problem is found and fixed. If I know that my car's autopilot is statistically less likely to kill me than I am to kill myself, I would still much much rather drive myself.

That's really not how it works in aviation. Aircraft manufacturers and the FAA don't automatically ground every plane when a crash occurs when autopilot was in use. They conduct an investigation first. And even if the investigation finds an autopilot fault they're likely to just issue an airworthiness directive warning pilots about the failure mode rather than immediately grounding everything.

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

#453

Post by whichdan » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #406

Ajedi32 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point he's making is that it's worse if a person dies because of something they have no control over (self-driving car malfunction) than if a person dies because of their own stupid choices (driving drunk, driving too fast for conditions, running red lights, etc). This, of course, ignores the fact that stupid choices drivers make tend to affect other people on the road who did nothing wrong, so the introd…

No, that conclusion completely ignores the fact that the kind of people who buy Teslas are generally not the kind of people who drive unsafely anyway and die in terrible wrecks. If you give every shitty driver a self driving Tesla maybe you would do something to make roads safer, but if you’re just giving it to higher net worth individuals who place greater value on their own life, you haven’t even made a dent in tra…

Well, this is pretty classist...

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

#454

Post by omarforgotpwd » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:28 PM 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…

Newsflash: People are replying to text messages with and without AutoPilot. AutoPilot just makes doing so safer

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

#455

Post by quotemstr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #450

quotemstr wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk's central point is that if humans can drive with two cameras, so can a machine. And he's right . Why wouldn't we do just as well as the visual cortex?

But isn't the whole point of autonomous cars that humans are pretty shitty drivers? If I could augment my vision with a 360º setup of cameras and LIDAR you better believe I would!

I'd say people are actually pretty good drivers. I'm more interested in autonomous for the time savings than I am for the potential safety improvements.

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

#456

Post by foolfoolz » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #442

ajross wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like your first two paragraphs are amenable to analysis. Surely there is data out there that splits traffic accident statistics on income, or some proxy for income. Is a Tesla on autopilot more accident-prone than a BMW or Lexus? The numbers as they stand certainly seem to imply "no", but I'd be willing to read a paper. The third paragraph though is just you flinging opinion around. You assert without evidence…

Drunk drivers, recklessly fast drivers, redlight runners, stop sign blowers, high speed tailgaters... those are the demographic you have to compare the Tesla drivers to. Do people who buy Teslas engage in those kinds of dangerous activities?

yes

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

#457

Post by StefanFrost » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

So aside from the fact that I can not afford these cars I would also give these at least 10 years to mature and get further than (what really does seem) at least the beta.

Right at the start I was very much wondering how these even allowed this feature on the road. Just from a regulatory point of view. It very much sounded and looked like a complete auto-pilot.

That said, people go through a drivers test, get their license and then are allowed to drive any vehicle really. Can you just solve this by giving the driver assistant a test and seeing if it passes? This needs some kind of filter or regulator to make sure it is safe.

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

#458

Post by paul7986 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #444

awakeasleep wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't we all the crash test dummies if we're sharing the road with them?

We are nothing like crash test dummies. Crash test dummies are intentionally slammed into barriers at 60+ mph. Testing of vehicle safety features, and safety features of many products, is most often done in mass markets. Automatic safety features are being rolled out in essentially every single auto brand. Automatic emergency braking (AEB) is set to be standard in numerous makes in a couple years. Lane control, lane…

So are you rushing out to be a Musk guinea pig or already are?

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

#459

Post by pkulak » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

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 product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention

So, cruise control? If people got confused and thought that cruise control was more than it really was in the 80s, or whenever it came out, what would we have done?

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

#460

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #331

ccalf wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s imagine that auto-driving tech saves 2001 gross lives per year and kills 1001 people who wouldn’t have died in an all human driving world, for a net of 1000 lives saved. I think that’s a win, even if I now have an even statistical chance to be in the 1001 and no chance to be in the 2001. Requiring that I be in 1001 is not ok, no more than requiring I donate all my organs tomorrow. Allowing that I might be in th…

>> Let’s imagine that auto-driving tech saves 2001 gross lives per year and kills 1001 people who wouldn’t have died in an all human driving world, for a net of 1000 lives saved.

You're saying that auto-driving would save the lives of 1000 people who would have died without it, by causing the death of another 1001 that wouldn't have died if it wasn't for auto-driving?

So you're basically exchanging the lives of the 1001 and the 1000? That looks a lot less of a no-brainer than your comment makes it sound.

Not to mention, the 1001 people who wouldn't have died if it wasn't for auto-driving would most probably prefer to not have to die. How is it that their opinion doesn't matter?