Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#481

Post by buvanshak » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #458

hyperbole wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one dies so someone 10 years from now can watch a full episode of the family guy unimpeded for the duration of their commute. The human toll is irrelevant to the conversation, what's relevant is whether risks taken are being taken knowingly - you cannot market a self driving vehicle whose functionality "is 2x better than any human being" while simultaneously stating in your legal language to protect yourself: don'…

Plenty of people die right now because they just got a text or they had no other way home from the bar, etc. The human toll is absolutely relevant to the conversation: this is about people dying now and in the future. It seems cruel to discuss it in a "I'll sacrifice X to save Y" later, but it can reasonably be reduced to that. I think it's safe to assume that this will drastically reduce driving related injuries and…

>I think it's safe to assume that this will drastically reduce driving related injuries and deaths.

This assumes that the self driving tech will continue to increase in competence and will at some point surpass humans. I somehow find that extremely optimistic, bordering in on being naive.

Consider something like OCR or object recognition alone, where similar tech is applied. Even with decades of research behind it, it really cannot come any where close to a human in terms of reliability. I am talking about stuff that can be trained endlessly with any sort of risk. Still it does not show an ever increasing capability.

Now, machine learning and AI is only part of the picture. The other part is the sensors. This again is not anywhere near the sensors a human is equipped with.

From what we have seen in the tech industry in recent years is that trust in a tech by the people, even intelligent ones such as people who are investing in it, is not based on logic (Theranos, uBeam etc). I think such a climate is exactly what is enabling tests such as these. But unlike others, these tests are actually putting unsuspecting lives on line. And that should not be allowed..

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#482

Post by decker » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

Ryudas wrote: post #247

Dwolb wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla need to stop calling it 'Autopilot'. The name implies drivers don't need to drive and is most likely a big reason drivers are lured into a false sense of security.

I find this argument so often. Autopilot has never been a term for autonomous, just as its used in aviation. Just because people don't know the proper term or have an erroneous idea of the term, doesn't mean tesla has to have the burden of people misinterpreting what it says.

I'm guessing you must not be a lawyer.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#483

Post by theluketaylor » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

brandon272 wrote: post #31

selectout wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of being allowed to take your hands off the wheel is probably "how do I detect the hands are on the wheel?". In current S/X with no interior camera the way autopilot works is you have to "yank" the wheel every now and then to prove you have your hands on. Requiring constant "yanking" wouldn't work, and there are often long stretches of roads on highways (where Autopilot is meant to work) that wouldn't requ…

Every time I learn about how these cars are handling things I end up disappointed and concerned because the actual implementation is way less impressive and seemingly less foolproof than I - and I'm sure many other people - are assuming they are. I would have never guessed "hands on wheel" is detected only if the driver yanks the wheel. I figured it was camera based or that the wheel had capacitive sensors.

Cadillac Super Cruise is far superior to Tesla's autopilot and is a true Level 3 system. It does active attention monitoring of the kind you're expecting and uses GPS fences to only activate where GM has detailed maps.

Still very new only only on a single model so far, but it's at least the right direction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTuiB6Ob7Jc

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#484

Post by buvanshak » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

hyperbole wrote: post #473

pstuart wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people die right now because they just got a text or they had no other way home from the bar, etc. The human toll is absolutely relevant to the conversation: this is about people dying now and in the future. It seems cruel to discuss it in a "I'll sacrifice X to save Y" later, but it can reasonably be reduced to that. I think it's safe to assume that this will drastically reduce driving related injuries and…

It's a deceptive to assume autopilot saves lives when it too has taken them. The number of people with access to auto pilot is far fewer to statistically determine how many more center divider deaths we might have if everyone were it's passenger. Is the life taken by auto pilot worth less than the life taken by the aggressive driver who takes out an innocent driver? No. I hope we eventually save lives as in net impro…

> Is the life taken by auto pilot worth less than the life taken by the aggressive driver who takes out an innocent driver? No.

I think beliefs such as these is fueled by the extremely naive implication that each death will cause the learning algorithm to "improve itself" so every self driving thing out there is safer owing to that death..

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#485

Post by unityByFreedom » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

freerobby wrote: post #204

jijojv wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is extremely clear Oct'16 video on https://www.tesla.com/autopilot says Driver is only there for legal reasons https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969 " Yes, safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present 23 Jan 2017"

This isn't footage of Autopilot. It's a development build of Full Self-Driving.

That's odd. It's the only video and topmost content on a page titled Autopilot.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#486

Post by taneq » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #406

theclaw wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failed under what conditions, though? The manufacturer gets to specify the conditions under which they consider their product to be safe and suitable for a particular purpose. The car was not used under those conditions and the result was injury through misuse of the product. If my toaster causes me serious injury because I used it in the bath, that is my problem.

Product liability (in the US) attaches to the normal usage of a product, whether that is an intended usage of the product or not. A toaster is not normally used in the bath, so that does not create product liability issues. A car is normally used for driving...in fact, that's a car's primary use...so product liability would attach to its driving-related functional failure.

To be fair, a car isn't normally used for driving on the freeway without looking where you're going for 5+ seconds at a time.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#487

Post by secabeen » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #456

drdeadringer wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this, or can be, detected?

tesla's already detect people not having the hands on the wheel, for starters. then you can fairly easily see where the eyes are looking and I guess with some more effort if the eyes are engaged or wandering. this is a paper from a hundred years ago about the subject, this is not rocket science https://www.jstor.org/stable/1412972?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

The Model 3 has a driver-facing camera, presumably for exactly this.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#488

Post by neya » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

At first, I thought the news was click bait. I watched the video fully to understand if a company like Telsa would really say something to this extent.

    Tesla's auto-pilot requires the driver to be alert and have hands on the wheel. 

    The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, 
    which means the only way for this accident to have occured is 
    if Mr.Huang was not paying attention to the road.

This is the official response. I'm completely baffled and at a loss of words. I feel very sorry for the family and I hope they sue the sh*t out of Tesla just for this arrogant statement.

And as for Tesla, you should fire the guy that wrote this. If this official response was something approved by Musk, I just lost all respect for him.

Personally, this is why I am a hardcore manual guy. I drive a stick/manual. I don't even trust automatics to do the job right, let alone some software. There's no way I'm trusting a self driving car. I personally opine that driving is actually very relevant to planning ahead. If you drove a stick, you would know you need to shift down before a steep curve to maintain traction and to reduce your inertia to turn around safely. Or, if you're planning to overtake someone, or you foresee a situation that requires braking, you downshift.

As much inefficient as gearboxes + clutches + ICEs are, the ability to plan ahead and downshift correctly is an exclusive human edge that I believe strongly that computers can't mimic. If they could, we wouldn't have automatics (in 2018) that can't even downshift even with all that data from its sensors. Even the most expensive automatics w/ some sort of software fail to downshift correctly.

Unfortunately, in the driving world, it's not enough if your car can drive 99% accurately as even one instance of wrong downshit/upshift can kill you easily.

I strongly believe driving is best left to humans and there are simply too many variables that could be reliably fixed with mathematical algorithms. Sometimes, it just doesn't "feel" right and maybe it's ok to just trust our instincts.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#489

Post by dbasedweeb » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 1:59 AM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #155

patcheudor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>t's a tool to help attentive drivers avoid accidents that might have otherwise occurred. This needs far more discussion. I just don't buy it. I don't believe that you can have a car engaged in auto-drive mode and remain attentive. I think our psychology won't allow it. When driving, I find that I must be engaged and on long trips I don't even enable cruise control because taking the accelerator input away from me is…

I have to preface my post to say that I think developing self-driving automobiles is so important that it's worth the implied cost of potentially tens of thousands of lives in order to perfect the technology, because that's what people do; make sacrifices to improve the world we live in so that future generations don't have to know the same problem. But I think you're right. I think the "best" way to move forward unt…

If you’re willing to die for this, then by all means go ahead and sign up to be a dummy on a test track. If you know other people who feel the same way, sign up as a group. If you’re just talking about letting other people die so that someday, maybe we’ll have fully automated cars, that’s monstrous, especially when they’re not volunteers and don’t get to opt out!

A laudable goal doesn’t give anyone the right to kill people by taking unnecessary risks. The reason that Tesla and Uber do what they do the way they do, instead of a more conservative approach is an attempt to profit, not save lives. If you don’t have to spend lives to make progress, but choose to do so for economic experience, there’s s word for that: evil.

Re: Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

#490

Post by buvanshak » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #450

osrec wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your initial sentiment. In my opinion, we can have self driving cars without a large human toll. I just think we need to stop trying to merge self driving cars into a road system designed for human operators. Moreover, we should not be "beta testing" our self driving cars on roads with human operators. Accidents will happen, as ML models can and do go unstable from time to time. Instead, we should loo…

How about all those martyred by prolonging our current manual driving system for the years band decades it will take to roll out separate infrastructure for vehicles no one owns because they can't drive them anywhere? I think we need to keep the human driver in control, but have the computers learning through that constant, immediate feedback. And get rid of misleading marketing and fatal user experience design error…

>but have the computers learning through that constant, immediate feedback.

I don't know what is stopping them from simulating everything inside a computer.

Record the input from all the sensors when a car equipped sensors is driven through real roads by a human driver. Replay the sensor input, with enough random variations and let the algorithms train on it.

Continue adding to the library of sensor data by making the sensor car by driving it through more and more real life roads and in real life situations. Keep feeding the ever increasing library of sensor data to the algorithm, safely inside a computer.