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

#571

Post by mcny » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #541

ajross wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drunk drivers, recklessly fast drivers, redlight runners, stop sign blowers, high speed tailgaters. Wait, so you are willing to share the road with all those nutjobs, yet you're "staying the hell away from" Teslas you see which you claim are NOT being driven by these people? I think you need to reevaluate your argument. Badly. That even leaves aside the clear point that a Tesla on autopilot is significantly less li…

I stay away from all these people . I have no illusions that a self driving Tesla is significantly safer.

I don't think a self-driving car is safe today but the fundamentals of machine learning seem sound so arguably they will become safer with every mile they drive (and every accident they cause).

My only concern is that there should be somewhat responsible people working on it (this means for example no uber, Facebook, linked in, or ford self-driving car on public roads).

But thinking about bit more, what if competitors shared data? Would that get us "there" (level 4+) at all? Would it be a distraction?

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

#572

Post by allendoerfer » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #243

allendoerfer wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They market their assistant as one that is not intended to drive on its own. So if you let go of the steering wheel, it magically continues to drive and will alert you if you check out for too long.

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

#573

Post by kachurovskiy » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #387

kachurovskiy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Reduced commute time, increased comfort and reliability. Can the reason for these be that many other people use public transport instead and thus the roads are way less busier?

I'm sure that's a big contributor. I myself relied solely on public transport for years we lived close to the subway. Now that we moved outside of the city driving makes more sense.

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

#574

Post by kachurovskiy » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 12:30 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #305

kachurovskiy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What about the fact you cannot do anything useful other than podcasts / music while driving?

To be fair I rarely was doing anything useful on my 40 min train commute either :) Mostly reading Hacked News on my phone. Now I'm at least looking into the distance, taking some strain from the eyes.

I totally agree that public transport has to get better, it's just that there always has to be a mixture of transportation options.

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

#575

Post by blurbleblurble » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

bendauphinee wrote: post #563

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…

> because of something they have no control over Expect in this case, the driver has 100% control.

The driver's not the only one on the road.

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

#576

Post by ksk » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

mike10010100 wrote: post #565

ksk wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps. I reject this argument though. A death is a death. A death caused by shitty engineering (e.g. Tesla in this case) is not the same as a death caused by gross negligence on ones own part. >And if you prevent lifesaving technology then you are responsible for a whole lot of deaths, irregardless of how "deserved" those deaths are. How many deaths has Tesla prevented, which would have happened otherwise?

> A death caused by shitty engineering (e.g. Tesla in this case) is not the same as a death caused by gross negligence on ones own part. The result is the same, no? Isn't the idea to save lives? Why does one life have more value than another's simply because someone's death was caused by their own negligence? What about the other people on the road? Do their lives matter less because of the gross negligence of the pe…

It is unethical to ship non-essential/luxury features containing known defects which could lead to someone's death.

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

#577

Post by ksk » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

AliShug wrote: post #545

ksk wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps. I reject this argument though. A death is a death. A death caused by shitty engineering (e.g. Tesla in this case) is not the same as a death caused by gross negligence on ones own part. >And if you prevent lifesaving technology then you are responsible for a whole lot of deaths, irregardless of how "deserved" those deaths are. How many deaths has Tesla prevented, which would have happened otherwise?

> How many deaths has Tesla prevented, which would have happened otherwise? Certainly a larger number than the number of deaths caused by Autopilot failure (which makes major news in every individual case). Have a look at YouTube for videos of Teslas automatically avoiding crashes.

I don't see a number.

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

#578

Post by neolefty » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #412

neolefty wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they improve safety on shared roads but aren't perfect?

If they are unable to avoid blatantly obvious yellow and black barriers / safety cushions and their algorithm is a simple "follow the whitest white line", then they should not be on shared roads.

Again, they mostly do. Same with human drivers.

By the same logic, should nobody drive?

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

#579

Post by oldgradstudent » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:33 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #240

mirimir wrote: 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…

And even if the "software part" is perfect, the machine learning part is still a black box. You don't know when will it fail or how will it fail.

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

#580

Post by oldgradstudent » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:45 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #284

otalp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big pharma has been mistrusted for decades now. Think of the 1993 movie The Fugitive.

Banks and other lenders has been mistrusted since biblical times.