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Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

latimes.com

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Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#141

Post by abalone »

ohashi wrote: post #124
abalone wrote: post #102

I keep wondering what the customer benefit of Level 2 autopilot is if not to lower your attention and relax your mind. Tesla's "out" is that drivers are supposed to retain full attention and oversight of the autopilot system -- but then if you strictly follow this rule, what is the benefit of autopilot? I can see the benefit to Tesla and future Tesla customers of essentially crowdsourced fleet learning. But what is t…

The benefit for Tesla would be selling more cars because people think they are getting a technology that isn't really ready but Tesla's claiming is (but also claiming not really, read the fine print).

One doesn't have to be quite that cynical. Tesla's goal could genuinely be getting to Level 4/5 autonomy ASAP. My question is whether there is actually any immediate customer benefit to Level 2 autonomy that doesn't technically violate the terms of service.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#142

Post by calgoo »

I liked a comment from the hosts of The Grand Tour (paraphrasing): "When the owners of the car companies that promote these self-driving cars will allow the cars to drive them along the Yungas Road in Bolivia without a steering wheel, then it can be classified as safe."

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#143

Post by mikeash »

DannyBee wrote: post #134
mikeash wrote: post #30

How many non-Autopilot cars have crashed into parked vehicles? It happens a lot, to the extent that a lot of states have “move over” laws explicitly designed to reduce it. Does Autopilot actually make the problem worse, or is it just more newsworthy?

If you go look at IIHS, they have tests that will tell you exactly how good non-Autopilot cars are at this kind of crash avoidance: I cannot find any current (2018) car that crashes into the parked car. (I only spot-checked prior years). I found one in 2014 (audi q5) that hits the car at 1mph when going 12mph. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/audi/q5-4-door-su... By contrast, the 2014 subaru outback avoids…

Their report for the Model S says it avoided the collisions. Clearly there’s more to it than that.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#144

Post by hndamien »

imh wrote: post #137
hndamien wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto pilot != Self driving. People love to conflate these two so much that the people saying it rely on everybody else conflating it to justify their ignorance. This is just like Fox "some people say" - Fox people say! Or Javascript Bitcoin miners - Monero is not Bitcoin! It's snowing so there is no global warming - It is "climate change" but the entire globe is warming! This hurricane is just weather, not climate ch…

Those things are nothing alike. Some are facts that can be checked, others are definitions. If people all agree that the sun won't come up tomorrow, it's still coming up. If people all agree to start using a word in a new way, then it's time to change the dictionary.

So we should just start calling Monero Bitcoin because many people are consistently wrong?

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#145

Post by DannyBee »

mikeash wrote: post #56
lopmotr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a general problem with most news about accidents or deaths. They cherry pick the interesting stories, not the significant ones. The way I see news is that it's like fiction but with the extra excitement of being real, much like watching a movie that's "based on a true story". Its purpose is entertainment, not information or understanding of the world. Nobody should be making a decision to buy a Tesla or not ba…

Yes, I say that any risk that makes the news is probably not worth worrying about. What I don’t get is all the HN commenters acting like a few crashes proves that Autopilot is irredeemably dangerous.

Because it's way oversold for what it does, and even if you look at other traffic aware cruise control, all data suggests it is in fact, more dangerous than other traffic aware cruise control (probably in part because of the former)

I can't find an NTSB investigation or study that pegs traffic aware cruise control as the cause of the accident in any case except in Tesla's cases.

Of course, it seems to Tesla folks this is just evidence they are gunning for Tesla instead of evidence that maybe it is actually worse :)

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#146

Post by jellicle »

hndamien wrote: post #55
jonknee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow it super closely but there is exactly 1 car manufacture that I can think of guilty of pushing the self driving myth. The established car makers seem to market it as an assist, not as an autopilot. Tesla is the outlier, everyone else is much more conservative.

Auto pilot != Self driving. People love to conflate these two so much that the people saying it rely on everybody else conflating it to justify their ignorance. This is just like Fox "some people say" - Fox people say! Or Javascript Bitcoin miners - Monero is not Bitcoin! It's snowing so there is no global warming - It is "climate change" but the entire globe is warming! This hurricane is just weather, not climate ch…

> People love to conflate

Those people being Tesla's marketing team, presumably.

> they have always been clear that it is not self driving

That is very far away from the truth.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#147

Post by jellicle »

jfim wrote: post #115
ModernMech wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. Not just the model/UI but the actual sensor suite. Remember, the Tesla that resulted in a decapitation had over-saturated cameras that couldn't see a tractor trailer. Of course, that's where the UI comes into play, because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter, he would have seen the tractor trailer as well.

That's the thing, how do you make an UI that unambiguously conveys that the car hasn't seen an object in front of it, so that the driver can react to it? Maybe with AR the car could highlight the objects detected so that the driver can brake if the car doesn't see an object it knows about, but a head mounted display seems pretty clunky.

I don't think people realize that "Tesla Autopilot" will never, ever, ever stop for an object in front of it. Tesla has said repeatedly it isn't designed to do so. If you run a Tesla toward a brick wall with Autopilot on, it will crash into it 100 out of 100 times. It will hit ANYTHING in the lane ahead of you. It isn't designed to stop in such cases.

So there's no need for a UI. If there's something ahead of you, you must stop or you will hit it full speed without braking.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#148

Post by mikeash »

DannyBee wrote: post #145
mikeash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I say that any risk that makes the news is probably not worth worrying about. What I don’t get is all the HN commenters acting like a few crashes proves that Autopilot is irredeemably dangerous.

Because it's way oversold for what it does, and even if you look at other traffic aware cruise control, all data suggests it is in fact, more dangerous than other traffic aware cruise control (probably in part because of the former) I can't find an NTSB investigation or study that pegs traffic aware cruise control as the cause of the accident in any case except in Tesla's cases. Of course, it seems to Tesla folks thi…

What data is there? I didn’t realize there was enough to reach a conclusion yet.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#149

Post by gehwartzen »

jfim wrote: post #115
ModernMech wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. Not just the model/UI but the actual sensor suite. Remember, the Tesla that resulted in a decapitation had over-saturated cameras that couldn't see a tractor trailer. Of course, that's where the UI comes into play, because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter, he would have seen the tractor trailer as well.

That's the thing, how do you make an UI that unambiguously conveys that the car hasn't seen an object in front of it, so that the driver can react to it? Maybe with AR the car could highlight the objects detected so that the driver can brake if the car doesn't see an object it knows about, but a head mounted display seems pretty clunky.

The problem is that the "paying attention" part of driving is actually one of the most mentally taxing for the driver and it seems the pay attention 100% of the time is basically the same as saying 5% of the time an event might occurs that requires your immediate action. The problem being that if you have to jump into action to avoid something catastrophic 'sometimes' you basically have to be paying full attention all the time in order to collect enough contextual information about the incident. It's the same as watching someone toss a baseball to you and catching it vs your friend yelling "Headts up!" as a baseball is already flying through the air at your head.

Re: Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

#150

Post by ryeguy_24 »

This is another problem with the “imperfect specialist”. Fortunately and unfortunately we don’t need to grow our own vegetables anymore. Most of us have adopted the concept of buying vegetables from “specialists” who grow them more efficiently then we can. So, we use these specialists and detach ourselves from the growing process altogether. Then we receive a batch of Romain Lettuce comes with ecoli and die. This doesn’t happen often but we’ve delegated this task to someone else and inherited the imperfections of their process. I’d argue vegetable growing is pretty damn safe these days. I’m ok with that risk. But I don’t think Tesla is anywhere near worth the delegation of my driving. I’ll keep my brained turned on for now.
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