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Go to Washington DC, head West on Congressional, cross the Roosevelt bridge and take the exit for the GW. If there isn't a car smashed into the middle of the north/south Y junction, you'll get the chance to count the skid marks at that Y junction from humans making this exact same error. Tl dr; humans make the same mistake, at a higher frequency, which is why the accordian barrier exists.
To be fair it steers _toward_ the barrier. No barriers were harmed. Does Tesla run some sort of regression suite on this stuff? Can they get a copy of the sensor data from when this happened so they can reproduce those conditions as part of their test suite?
If the overall shape of the road wasn't veering slightly to the right, the car would probably not have chosen to swerve to the left into a barrier, but the car sees the lane widening equally in both directions. Simple as that.
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Exactly. This is what I’ve been saying. It is so dangerous. I love Tesla but I think autopilot is currently a death trap.
> I think autopilot is currently a death trap. I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. As long as the driver keeps paying attention and uses it as a driving aid, not a driver replacement, everything is fine. It's the moment that people start relying on it doing something that it wasn't built for, that the problems arise.
The feature is called Autopilot after the namesake of flight systems where the pilot doesn't need to be constantly hands on. It is marketed as an autonomous driving system that allows the car to drive safely without human intervention.
In the same breath, Tesla says that it isn't really an autopilot system, and that even though they market it as autonomous driving, it is still essential that you act as if you were driving.
As you've stated, it's a tool for assisting drivers. So why do they market it as fire and forget?
People aren't going to tolerate this kind of stuff. These aren't cosmetic or aesthetic flaws. This is an area that deserves transparency. I'm out on the road too, and I don't get to make "consumer choices" for other people I share the road with. People are putting their market power into companies that lack the basic integrity to build these technologies with safety and transparency as the first priority, who evident…
Nobody's forcing autopilot on anyone. I think instead, tesla will / should opt to disable autopilot earlier in non-ideal conditions like this - that way they won't be held liable either. ATM it really feels like they're being put on trial here.
2) dont hit other objects
3) obey traffic laws
Then that devil that is the details shows up...
This kind of video makes me wonder: what is the "autopilot" feature actually for? Do people generally like it? (I don't own a Tesla and I've never driven one.) If you're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel, and given videos like this that show you really need to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, is automatic steering really that big of a deal? Cruise control, now, that really is useful because it a…
So human drivers are terrible at driving for any long period of time, especially on relatively consistent "boring" highways. Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. The Tesla Autopilot is supposed to be the always aware and paying attention portion on these cases where a human driver would be very likely to start texting or dozing off. Now, it's not fully autonomous and may well de…
Possibly on paper. In reality, as of right now, computers are clearly far from excelling at this specific task.
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Personally I hate cruise control. I prefer to be actively engaged when driving. Either I am driving 100% or I am not at all, there is absolutely no middle ground in my opinion
I can understand that. I like cruise control because it lets me focus 100% on steering and watching the road around me. Trying to maintain a steady speed and conserve gas is a fun challenge, but a bit pointless, because a) it's a distraction from more important tasks, and b) the computer can usually do it better than I can.
I did a 6 hours trip with a friend continuously putting his foot up and down on the throttle, and it was the most gruelling car trip I've had I think.
When I asked he said it was "to keep control on the car". I'm a patient friend.
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To directly answer your question: people buy autopilot so they can check their phone while commuting down the freeway to work. I was talking to a group of people about the difficulties of commuting in the Santa Clara Valley, and one guy shrugged and said, "just get a Tesla, move to the left lane, and manage email until you get to work".
Yikes! I really hope that's a joke...
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So human drivers are terrible at driving for any long period of time, especially on relatively consistent "boring" highways. Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. The Tesla Autopilot is supposed to be the always aware and paying attention portion on these cases where a human driver would be very likely to start texting or dozing off. Now, it's not fully autonomous and may well de…
The problem is autopilot actively engages you even less than highway driving. I argue this exacerbates some of the problems that cause humans to checkout. I don't know what the answer is but it feels like GM's super cruise does a more adequate job of acknowledging the realistic limits of the technology and explicitly white lists roads where the technology is available for use. I personally think that without some sor…
It's the sophisticated behaviors necessary to safely drive through that world model that are the issue.
The success of emergency breaking systems (that aren't advertised as "driving" assist) are pretty good evidence that the sensors can serve well as input to safe behaviors.