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

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

#491

Post by osrec » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:01 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…

I don't think it'll take years to update our infrastructure. For example, we could embed beacons into catseyes to make it easier to know where the road boundaries are etc. Also, we could make sections of the highway available with the new infrastructure piece by piece. It is just as progressive as your suggestion, but the problem becomes a whole lot easier to solve when you target change towards infrastructure as well as the car itself.

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

#492

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #425

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic incentives and competition will eventually cause it to happen regardless of sentiment. First, insurance rates for manually driven cars will shoot through the roof as less risky drivers moving to self driving cars decimate that risk pool (like if gun owners were required insurance for misuse). Second, cities that go to self driving only will have a huge advantage in infrastructure utilization and costs as roa…

> Or worse, people and companies will relocate to cities with exclusive self driving car policies So people will relocate to avoid traffic? Why doesn't this happen today? Suppose San Francisco decided to not enforce self driving laws to protect small businesses and preserve community infrastructure and culture. Now suppose Phoenix (only picked because they've been progressive with self driving technology) does enforc…

Additionally, it isn't really SF vs. Phoenix. Think global competition: if developing mega cities in Asia adopts this before American cities do, they will be able to more quickly catch up with and very likely exceed their American counter parts in a short period of time economically.

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

#493

Post by theluketaylor » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

cdancette wrote: post #248

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…

For me it's the opposite. I feel like with cruise control on, I'm much more attentive to the road and the surroundings and feel much safer. It really annoys me when I have to constantly look at the speed to avoid getting above the limit and it is very tiring for long drives.

I think growing up in a snowy climate where super precise throttle control is critical to not ending up in ditches plays a huge role in why I zone out when using cruise control. The fine motor skill of throttle control occupies the back of my mind while my conscious thoughts rotate through the mirrors, track other vehicles and watch for obstacles. I can maintain a speed within a couple km/hr for a very long time without needing to glance at the speedo at all.

The moment the back of my mind doesn't have to handle precise throttle control I find my mind wandering and my spacial awareness is shot. I guess maintaining speed is the fidget spinner that keeps me focused on the task of driving.

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

#494

Post by RyanShook » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

The Apple Watch is fully submersible and in reality waterproof but Apple is smart enough not to call it waterproof for the purpose of liability. Tesla has chosen to market their product as “autopilot” and will have to face the consequences of that marketing decision.

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

#495

Post by paulcole » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

tc wrote: post #18

Tesla probably shouldn't be saying anything about this at all, even just to avoid giving it more news cycles. But if they were going to say something, here's what they should have said the first time. ---- We take great care in building our cars to save lives. Forty thousands Americans die on the roads each year. That's a statistic. But even a single death of a Tesla driver or passenger is a tragedy. This has affecte…

Pretty bold to think you could singlehandedly wirte a release for Tesla. Feels like the communications equivalent of Dropbox is a weekend project.

Just curious, what’s your writing background?

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

#496

Post by pishpash » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:07 AM UTC

hyperbole wrote: post #449

jameslevy wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a solution for this - if the driver shows any type of pattern of not using the feature safely, disable the feature. Autopilot and comparable functionality from other vehicles should be considered privileges that can be revoked.

Systems that are semi autonomous where there's some expectation of intervention work well in those scenarios, keep the car in lane markers on the highway, etc. Make sure the users hands are on the wheel but for fully autonomous even if your hands are on the wheel, how does it know your paying attention?

Just turn off autopilot if no human input is detected. Hands on the wheel may not be enough input but some other combination may be enough.

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

#497

Post by Robotbeat » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

hashbig wrote: post #437

Robotbeat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called autopilot, not self-driving.

Autopilot is a miss-leading product name. It implies automation of the process of driving. It doesn't function like an autopilot and requires no co-pilot. Taking a technical term used in aviation is meaningless and dangerous.

It functions similar to an autopilot (ie follows terrain, but not perfect). Even general aviation aircraft have them and don’t require copilots.

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

#498

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

patcheudor wrote: post #107

tc wrote: post #18

Tesla probably shouldn't be saying anything about this at all, even just to avoid giving it more news cycles. But if they were going to say something, here's what they should have said the first time. ---- We take great care in building our cars to save lives. Forty thousands Americans die on the roads each year. That's a statistic. But even a single death of a Tesla driver or passenger is a tragedy. This has affecte…

>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…

[deleted]

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

#499

Post by hyperbole » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

buvanshak wrote: post #484

hyperbole wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

That's not the thrust of my point... Talking about how many people have to die to perfect autonomous vehicles is pointless, some people are willing to jump out of airplanes & they fully understand the risks.

Some number of people, N are willing to risk their lives to use autonomous vehicles they'll die as a result. It should be just as clear to person using autopilot the risks involved not misled with marketing fluff that doesn't come close to reality. Martyrs not victims

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

#500

Post by pstuart » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

buvanshak wrote: post #481

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…

>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, i…

It is optimistic. Is it naive? Only in the sense that I don't do development in that realm and I can only base my assessment on what's publicly discussed.

Please note that I artfully omitted a due date on my assumption. There's so much money involved here and so much initial traction that it is indeed reasonable to think that tech can surpass a "normal" driver.

I'm also biased against human drivers, plenty of whom should not be behind the wheel.