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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

#311

Post by ehsankia »

confiscate wrote: post #91

I don't get it, why is it so hard to detect stationary objects in front of you? wouldn't that be the "hello world" of any self-driving tech? Every time I ask this question, the response is "radar as a technology has too much noise, not accurate enough to detect stationary objects". But it DOES detect stationary objects. Otherwise no one would even turn on Tesla AP at all. Why is it so hard to detect stationary object…

You do realize that when driving, 90% of the things around you are stationary, right? Also, it may not apply to this specific case, but try comparing a plastic bag in the streets vs a big rock. Telling those two apart isn't trivial, but only one of those you can drive through.

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

#312

Post by tim333 »

djsumdog wrote: post #301

Let's make the roads out of rubber and the wheels out of pavement. I feel like this is the backwards mentality with autonomous vehicles. I wrote a while ago about how they simply cannot solve the transportation problem, at least not in a way that's cheaper than just building mass transit: https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-so... I realize this particular case is different with us talking about…

We've had mass transit for a century. I don't see much harm in trying something new that may save a million lives per year.

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

#313

Post by zrobotics »

anonymfus wrote: post #211
gehwartzen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

Japanese train drivers are famous for pointing at things to always keep attention. May be similar system can be used for cars: for example car could narrate objects it sees and ask driver to point at them with hand, then check with depth sensor and gesture recognition that user pointed correctly, and then slow down and stop if user pointed wrong.

So wait, rather than just pay attention to the road when driving my old beater, I could constantly be pointing at things and struggling with poor voice recognition? Somehow this sounds like more work than just driving the car myself.

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

#314

Post by DannyBee »

mikeash wrote: post #158
DannyBee wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked about non-autopilot cars and how common it is. I gave you data. I can also find no data that suggests any other TACC is crashing into vehicles (no NTSB studies, investigations, etc) at all . So yeah, i'm going to conclude, based on what i've seen so far, that autopilot is part of the problem. If you have data that says autopilot is not worse, i'd love to see it.

I asked about actual crashes. You gave me info about a controlled test where the exact car discussed in this article avoided the test collision. Given that the car discussed in this article crashed in real life, the controlled test is clearly not the final word in whether these other cars are experiencing crashes like this in the real world. Also, I wasn't asking about how Autopilot compares to similar systems from o…

I'm just going to leave you to your non-data driven skepticism of "everything other than tesla", because this is clearly not a useful conversation.

That isn't what you originally asked (and as you see, i wasn't the only one who interpreted it this way), and imho it's not a useful comparison. I have no idea why one would ask "is autopilot worse" and then say "but only compared to humans, not taking into account the other systems that do the same thing and humans are also using on a regular basis"

It doesn't answer the question whether autopilot is really worse or not, because nobody cares if it's better or worse than a straw man human who has disabled the collision avoidance on their car.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

djsumdog wrote: post #301

Let's make the roads out of rubber and the wheels out of pavement. I feel like this is the backwards mentality with autonomous vehicles. I wrote a while ago about how they simply cannot solve the transportation problem, at least not in a way that's cheaper than just building mass transit: https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-so... I realize this particular case is different with us talking about…

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by Tomte »

Maxion wrote: post #310
Tomte wrote: post #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…

The thing is, a tesla crashing while running on autopilot is more newsworthy than a tesla crashing while being driven. We should not let anecdotal evidence drive our fears.

I don't see how this comment could possibly be a reply to mine.

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

#317

Post by telchar »

olliej wrote: post #283
wooter wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

I don't disagree that levels 2/3 are a danger zone in self-driving technology, but I feel the need to point out that there are plenty of people who are disabled or suffer chronic injuries resulting from being rear-ended. Stop and go traffic can be plenty dangerous as well.

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

#318

Post by wpietri »

userbinator wrote: post #192
wpietri wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since circa 1968, "cruise control" has been used to refer to automatic throttle adjustment to maintain speed. [1] Is there some previous meaning that makes you think it misleading? Because I've never thought of it as meaning anything else. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control#History

From your link: The first car with Teetor's system was the 1958 Imperial (called "Auto-pilot") using a speed dial on the dashboard. More details here: http://www.imperialclub.com/Yr/1958/58AutoPilot/index.htm http://www.imperialclub.com/Articles/58AutoPilot/index.htm How ironic. I wonder how many drivers using that system crashed, thinking it would do everything for them...

From looking at the photos on the latter article, I'm guessing zero people crashed expected it to do everything for them. The UI is a knob on which you set the speed you want.

The state of the art in computers at the time was the RAMAC 305, a vacuum tube computer which featured IBM's first disc drive. The computer itself was meant to be installed in a room 30'x50'. The disk drive itself was 4' across, weighed about a ton, and held 5 million characters (6 bits each). All this could be yours for only $300k/year (in current dollars).

Given that, and given that the transistor radio was introduced only a few years before, I doubt anybody expected the sort of magic we see as commonplace today. And if they did, they would let go of the wheel and find out in about 2 seconds that it was not staying on course.

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

#319

Post by ams6110 »

mikeash wrote: post #166
desdiv wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The screen displays a Mars rover. You turn the steering wheel to control where that Mars rover goes. I'd consider that a video game. I guess you don't consider that a video game, which is a perfectly valid opinion. But I'd just wish you had made your first comment "I don't consider Tesla's interactive easter eggs to be video games" instead. That way you clearly communicate your intent and this whole needless bikeshed…

"You turn the steering wheel to control where that Mars rover goes." No you don't. The Mars map is exactly like the Earth map, with a Mars texture instead of the map, and a rover instead of an arrow. Technically you control where the rover goes by using the steering wheel, because the steering wheel controls where your car goes, and the rover's movements come from your car's GPS. But it's not the sort of video game y…

All the same I'd rather the developers at Tesla were working on improving the autopilot functionality instead of developing easter eggs.

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

#320

Post by shaklee3 »

true_religion wrote: post #262
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Move fast and break things" is probably the worst philosophy to sweep over SV. It encourages a worldview where externalities that potentially break laws and maim or kill other people should be disregarded in the pursuit of "progress" and profits. But it's nice to see the HN community finally start to come to this realization

That.... was just Facebook's idea. I don't know any other company apart from those founded by former Facebook employees that took the monicker seriously. A more mainstream paradigm was 'disrupt!' as in disrupt old industries, by applying the rules in ways that they couldn't aided by technology that they are disinclined to use. For instance Uber used 'disrupt!' as the centerpiece of their business, by acting as contra…

There are a lot of companies who try to be like Facebook and copy everything about them. Look at how do you open work spaces are becoming popular.
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