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Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

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Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#151

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

iainmerrick wrote: post #54

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…

I've been wondering exactly the same thing over the last week once all this came to light. Seems it would be the worst of both worlds. Would personally feel safer to me knowing either I'm supposed to drive or not. This half way system means actually means the better the auto pilot is the more reliant I would naturally become and then not be ready to react or be in the frame of mind where I can. How airline pilots stop themselves becoming overly reliant on their autopilots is also a concern. It's that classic situation where two people each think the other will take care of it, then no one does. "I thought you were going to do it."

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#152

Post by donkeyd »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
donkeyd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pretty simple lane keeping aid in my car that keeps me within the lines. Yesterday it suddenly steered towards a wall. I think it may have been confused by either glare (low sun right in front of me) or a shadow line on the road.

What make & model?

Opel Astra. It also has a 'bug', where at a certain location the lines on the road trigger the emergency braking feature, every single time.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#153

Post by donkeyd »

admax88q wrote: post #76
donkeyd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They shouldn't market it as "autopilot"

Volvo does it too, but nobody seems to be complaining about Volvo.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#154

Post by microtherion »

ams6110 wrote: post #12
tjwds wrote: post #2

This comment from OP (beastpilot) is pretty frightening: > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know…

> Very glad the driver had 100% of their attention on the road at that moment. Yes, and 100% is critical. That required pretty quick and smooth reactions. The car started to follow the right-hand lane, then suddenly re-centered on the barrier. The driver had about a second to see that and correct. That's just the sort of situation where even a slightly inattentive driver might panic and overcorrect, which could cause…

> The driver had about a second to see that and correct.

And if there had been a crash, Tesla probably would have said that the driver had an unobstructed view of the barrier for several seconds before impact (conveniently omitting at what point AP started to swerve).

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#155

Post by pfooti »

alistairSH wrote: post #79
iainmerrick wrote: post #54

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…

Agreed. I really hate that Tesla named the feature "autopilot" as it gives the impression of being fully automatic (yes, I realize boat and airline "autopilots" aren't fully automatic - that is likely lot on most consumers). My VW has Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) which does the normal cruise control, plus basic distance keeping (with an alarm if the closing speed changes dangerously). My parents' Subarus have ACC pl…

Yeah, I have a recent Subaru with those features. It beeps when I'm backing out of the garage and there's someone driving or biking up the road before they even come into my sight lines.

It can help keep me in a lane, either by beeping or nudging the steering wheel if I drift - I only turn on active lane assist on long highway stretches, it is more of a security blanket than anything else - just in case I space out for a sec, here's another layer of defense.

Adaptive cruise is also great. Between the two, in long road trips I can put the car in a travel lane and just go. I still have to attend to my surroundings, but it is a lot easier to focus on that when I'm not worried about accidentally creeping up to 90 mph because suddenly there's nobody in front of me.

I also had the auto brake feature activate once when a car in front of me stopped unexpectedly. I was in the middle of braking, but the brake pedal depressed further and there was a loud alarm beep.

None of these are autopilot, and honestly I wouldn't want autopilot until it is legit reliable. Instead, these are defense in depth features. The computer helps prevent certain mistakes as I make them, but never is in primary control of the vehicle.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#156

Post by kalleboo »

huffmsa wrote: post #95
lafar6502 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

humans at least are aware that they made a mistake and can avoid collision. Tesla makes no mistake, tesla has no idea whats going on so you cannot call it a mistake. Its not a bug, its a feature.

Except it gets reported back to HQ and like with airline accidents, the systems are updated across-the-board so that the risk of future occurrences is greatly reduced. So instead of a single human learning "gee, shouldn't do that again", 100k+ vehicles learn about it.

Does Tesla actually do this? They should detect hotspots of people deactivating Autopilot (like in this video) and make Autopilot deactivate itself a few miles before

First we had the barrier crash. Then there was the video of someone reproducing the barrier crash and manually emergency braking. Now we have this video. One thing I've learned in my software career is that if one of our customers reports a bug, 10,000 others have encountered it but not bothered reporting it. So why hasn't Tesla rolled back the software yet?!

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#157

Post by jacquesm »

lisper wrote: post #149
jacquesm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your analysis. What is more worrying is that even following the rest of the traffic would have solved the problem. If you are the only car doing something then there is a good chance you are doing something wrong. Also: the lane markings are confusing but GPS and inertial readings should have clearly indicated that that is not a lane. If two systems give conflicting data some kind of alarm should…

> lane markings are confusing but GPS and inertial readings should have clearly indicated that that is not a lane GPS is not accurate enough to reliably pinpoint your location to a particular lane. Even WAAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System ) can have up to 25 feet of error. Basic GPS is less accurate than that. In fact, it's possible that GPS error was a contributing factor here but ther…

I drive a lot with my GPS (TomTom) on and it rarely gets the lane I'm in wrong, usually that only happens in construction zones.

So even if the error can be large in practice it often works very well.

It would be very interesting to see the input data streams these self driving systems rely on in case of errors, and in the case of accidents there might even be a legal reason to obtain them (for liability purposes).

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#158

Post by jacquesm »

donkeyd wrote: post #152
jacquesm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What make & model?

Opel Astra. It also has a 'bug', where at a certain location the lines on the road trigger the emergency braking feature, every single time.

> It also has a 'bug', where at a certain location the lines on the road trigger the emergency braking feature, every single time.

Ouch. That's really harsh on following traffic. Now, obviously they shouldn't be following closely enough for that to be a problem but in practice I'm pretty sure if I stomped hard on the brake a couple of times per day with regular traffic following it would not take long before someone would ram into the back of my car and if not then the one behind it.

It's also a great way to start traffic jams.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#159

Post by hyperbovine »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #134
paulie_a wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We've actually moved quite a bit away from "100%" direct control. Anti-lock brakes were the first such system. Before, you had to pump the brakes in an emergency, a practice that was difficult to execute even without the shock of an impeding accident. That system alone certainly saves thousands of lives every year.

Ahem. That is purely semantics -- ABS makes the car perform more like what you are conditioned to expect (under normal driving conditions). That's the whole success of ABS; it saves lives precisely because it conveys the illusion of you still being 100% under direct control when in fact you would be careening out of control otherwise.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#160

Post by aequitas »

jacquesm wrote: post #157
lisper wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lane markings are confusing but GPS and inertial readings should have clearly indicated that that is not a lane GPS is not accurate enough to reliably pinpoint your location to a particular lane. Even WAAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System ) can have up to 25 feet of error. Basic GPS is less accurate than that. In fact, it's possible that GPS error was a contributing factor here but ther…

I drive a lot with my GPS (TomTom) on and it rarely gets the lane I'm in wrong, usually that only happens in construction zones. So even if the error can be large in practice it often works very well. It would be very interesting to see the input data streams these self driving systems rely on in case of errors, and in the case of accidents there might even be a legal reason to obtain them (for liability purposes).

Don't navigation systems 'snap' to the most probable lane you are driving in based on general direction instead of your exact GPS coordinates?

A good example of this I think is when driving in tunnels, there is no GPS info there, but the navigation shows you following the (curved) road.

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