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Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

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

#281
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what is the benefit right now if you strictly follow the rule of remaining alert enough to intervene at a second's notice? You have an extra failsafe for those moments where you fail to remain alert. People keep treating these incidents in isolation and failing to account for the fact that human drivers make exactly this kind of fuckup every hour of every day, and lives are lost. Every day. You get that right?…

Tesla is shipping systems in the absolute infancy of this technology that are already statistically indistinguishable from human drivers as far as safety goes. That’s a hell of a claim, I’d love to see some serious citations on it.

Oh, for goodness sake. Just Google "Tesla accident rate" and you'll find plenty of yammering on both sides of the argument. But read the numbers therein and you'll find that (1) they're noisy, because it's just one car model and (2) they're clearly in line with what you see with other car statistics.

There are plenty of cars that have been detectable death traps. Teslas aren't among them. You're just spooked by the scary computer behind the wheel.

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

#282
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is shipping systems in the absolute infancy of this technology that are already statistically indistinguishable from human drivers as far as safety goes. That’s a hell of a claim, I’d love to see some serious citations on it.

Oh, for goodness sake. Just Google "Tesla accident rate" and you'll find plenty of yammering on both sides of the argument. But read the numbers therein and you'll find that (1) they're noisy, because it's just one car model and (2) they're clearly in line with what you see with other car statistics. There are plenty of cars that have been detectable death traps. Teslas aren't among them. You're just spooked by the s…

Filtering out the noise, you’re not willing or able to cite, and I don’t blame you, since you’d probably try to start with the discredited Tesla numbers. Then I’d post the reasons why they’re crap, and you’d grope for some more apples and oranges numbers. I like how you’ve just skipped past all of that and gone straight to the personal attacks, it saves a lot of time. Since you’ve made your claim without a hint of support, here’s my equally unsupported counter-claim: Tesla autopilot is much less safe than a human who wouldn’t accelerate into a cop car, fire truck, or gaurd rail unless dead, or drunk.

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

#283
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell this to the families of the people who have died

The NHTSA found a 40% crash rate reduction from Tesla's autopilot. So how about you tell all the people who lives have been saved that you wish they hadn't been because you're an emotional reactionary

I believe many people have found issues with the data used and how they were prevented. Also it's worth comparing the common case of accidents - bumper to bumper, etc on a freeway which I'd except all self driving systems to instantly reduce the rate of just by increasing the distance to the next car - to the number of serious crashes - e.g. driving into parked vehicles, concrete pillars - those have entirely different failure modes.

That said, the reality is that the types of self driving systems currently deployed - Tesla or whomever - are all fundamentally flawed because they do two things:

* Require attention from the human driver at all times * Cause driver inattention

The first is fairly clear, literally every one of these products is prefaced with "the driver is still in control of the vehicle and must remain attentive", and the latter is clearly demonstrated because of all of the different mechanisms that the manufacturers are deploying to try and deal with the fact that if you tell a human to pay attention to a specific task, but they aren't doing that specific task, they will not pay attention. Every system tried just increases the time required for a human driver to adapt to unconsciously managing the various "pay attention" alarms.

The solution is fully self driving cars. We don't have that yet. I fully expect them to be safer once we get there.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The freeing of the physical part is really the benefit for me. My knees are bad, and sitting in stop and go traffic, or even long traffic lights can actually be painful. Its not bad, but it gets really annoying. Being able to physically move my leg is amazing. You probably do get a lot of that with just adaptive cruise control these days as well, but no real experience with that. The mental load is still identical, b…

Exactly: you get that benefit with adaptive cruise control. What autopilot adds is autosteer. What’s the benefit there that doesn’t violate TOS? You are supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and pay full attention just the same.

It moves your mind from micro to macro. Instead of focusing on balancing the car within the lane I can look 500m in front and plan further ahead. I can also spend 2 seconds with eyes off road adjusting the navigation compared to without where you can only spend maybe max 0.5sec. I also feel much fresher after a long trip, constant minor adjustments sounds minor but once you've driven with a good lane keeping aid(not the ping-pong versions) it feels so much more comfortable when the steering wheel is magnetically trying to snap to the center of the lane. It still feels like you are driving but the path of least resistance is always pulling you towards the center of the lane. This would still be considered level 2 self driving, the danger comes when you go to level 3 and really take your mind off the road, those I think should never be allowed on the road.

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

#285
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame Elon Musk. I'm serious. He's been promising "self-driving" for years, except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from. The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. His engineers know this, which is why Tesla's self-driving group has had such a high turnover rate over the last few years. Musk keeps overriding them.

> except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from Outrageously false. These incidents are so rare that they have whole news stories written about every single one. How many crashes were there in Laguna Beach yesterday? Tesla accident rates in aggregate are quite good. Under autopilot the data is noisy but still underneath the level of an average car (not as low as luxury…

By definition and design, Autopilot is used in the safest, most predictable driving situations, only. So it really makes no sense when you start comparing it with statistics on human drivers in general. My first reaction was that it is better to compare with interstate driving, but even that is still an unfair comparison, because humans are going to have a disproportionate number of fatalities in precisely the situations that most drivers with Autopilot turn it off.

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

#286
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not any worse than the term cruise control really.

Auto pilot implies level 5 autonomous vehicle, while Tesla has glorified assistance capabilities, at level 1. Idiots are using as if Tesla is Level 5.

No, idiots are naming it as if it's level 5.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is always autopilot, you must pay attention and it never is or has been fully self driving.

Honestly the whole system is in the "uncanny valley." It is just effective enough to leave people with a false sense of security but just buggy enough to continue to kill people. Any system that randomly needs a massive correction in under six seconds between potentially several minutes of inaction is too dangerous to be used on public roads. I didn't sign Tesla's little disclaimer, I shouldn't have to share roads wi…

You mean you shouldn't have to share roads with bad drivers. I do think that this probably makes bad drivers worse and good drivers marginally assisted.

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

#288
post #40
post #6

I really wish all the car manufacturers would stop with this bullshit "you still have to be driving it" self driving nonsense. Claiming that the driver is still responsible for driving the car, while using a system designed to encourage the "driver" to not pay attention is a dumb idea, and all I can see is this kind of thing leading to regulations the delay actual self driving cars. I'm not a self-driving car fanboy…

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.

I think there is more than one. This Audi ad from 2016 shows it driving around with no hands on wheel. They don't get as much press as Tesla, and I don't know how good their system is, but it sure does make a bold implication (although their choice of the "Piloted Driving" name is probably a much safer choice than Teslas.

https://youtu.be/I2j2-DqcPfM

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

#289
post #42

I remember reading people saying that insurance premiums will plummet for Teslas because of how much safer they will be on the road. Today I read Tesla is getting into the insurance business because premiums are getting out of hand. It makes some sense since internally they’ll have more data they can use to deny claims. It’s interesting how reality plays out. https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insuran…

To be fair, a major reason they are expensive to insure is because parts and labor are in low supply and high demand, thus high repair costs.

Also, aluminum is expensive to repair.

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

#290
I wish all those advanced assist functions in today's upper middle-class cars would trickle down to cheaper cars faster. That would give us much more safety now.

It seems Teslas autopilot cannot reliably do much more than conventional lane assist etc.

Tesla could disable autonomous lane changing and autonomous changing of streets, requiring driver's input for all changes of direction (that are not smoothing out, but staying in lane), and it would be really good.

But Tesla needs the impression of game-changing, not just best-in-class for financial markets reasons.

I believe authorities should order call-backs and force Tesla to disable all traces of autonomy.

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