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Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

latimes.com

391–400 of 488 posts

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but I agree. A commercial pilot doesn't flip on autopilot and start browsing the internet on a phone or take a nap. And that's at 30k feet where there's little traffic to worry about. It seems like a misunderstanding of what the technology does, by consumers and the media. I'm no expert on Tesla's marketing history, but I'm of the opinion that these crashes are due to drivers misunderstandin…

> where there's little traffic to worry about I don't think you are aware of how much traffic on the "air roads" really is....

Well, that was condescending for no reason.

I drove around five miles to my friend's house and back today. I'd estimate that I was in near proximity with potential for collision with around 1,000 cars on that trip.

During the portion of a flight where traditional autopilot is used, how many planes are on a potential collision course? They're traveling at specified altitudes, along specified paths through 3D space. So tell me, how many planes is a jet airliner likely to collide with at cruising altitude when operating on autopilot?

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

#392

People always lament about how Tesla tries to mislead customer's about its capability, but is there actually data that shows this is truly the case among Tesla owners? How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? Even among non-Tesla cars, whose manufacturers don't try to "mislead", 71 percent of people believe automatic…

> How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? I mean there is a warning telling you that it's not self driving. People are dumb, that's it.

I don’t think it’s helpful or even correct to say “people are dumb,” as if this is purely a user problem.

The system exists in a bad gray zone — one that works well enough most of the time you stop paying attention. But it’s not full proof, so you get the worst of cognitive bias here.

Personally I think this faux self driving (literally falsely named auto pilot) should be outlawed. We cannot depend on people to take over when the car generally is handling the situation most of the time. Either manual or fully automatic — this in between will continue to cause too many bad accidents.

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

#393
post #344

Is the article available to Europeans somewhere? All I'm getting is a message with this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism…

Turns out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971 was not a joke.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? I mean there is a warning telling you that it's not self driving. People are dumb, that's it.

I don’t think it’s helpful or even correct to say “people are dumb,” as if this is purely a user problem. The system exists in a bad gray zone — one that works well enough most of the time you stop paying attention. But it’s not full proof, so you get the worst of cognitive bias here. Personally I think this faux self driving (literally falsely named auto pilot) should be outlawed. We cannot depend on people to take…

Agree, if you are not actively driving, your attention, and therefore reaction time, will inevitably deteriorate. In addition to that your reaction time is further reduced by the fact that even if you anticipated a problem looking at the road, you need to wait long enough after when you expected the car to react before realising that the car didn’t react and you need to take over, which further reduces your reaction time. Which is why I have some sympathy for the drivers of experimental self driving cars. Doesn’t excuse them playing with their smartphone at the wheel but they are tasked with a really hard exercise while being legally liable if things go wrong.

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

#395
post #198
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…

Self driving strikes me as a technology with a hard boolean quality threshold. Either it is as good as a human or it just doesn't work. This is a lot like rocketry. A rocket that meets 95% of its design requirements explodes, crashes, or fails to reach the proper orbit. Its damn near 100% or failure. Too bad Elon can't see this. I think Tesla's obsession with autopilot is misplaced. Give me a solid reliable affordabl…

I think he can see it, but the first seriously solid entrant into the space is going to have a huge advantage and so that drives their interest in Autopilot.

Eventually, you're not marketing to consumers but to fleet owners.

Outside of that, he's in the grey area where he can build product excitement and fall back onto the "Keep your hands on the wheel" type of fineprint. I agree with those saying that it's far from ideal.

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

#397

People always lament about how Tesla tries to mislead customer's about its capability, but is there actually data that shows this is truly the case among Tesla owners? How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? Even among non-Tesla cars, whose manufacturers don't try to "mislead", 71 percent of people believe automatic…

Tesla advertises their cars as having full self driving... hardware. Even if this is true[1], it's pretty misleading to advertise their cars as having "full self driving capability" because they have the _hardware_ for it. The problem is clearly that the software isn't ready yet.

[1] I think it's pretty debatable, and as far as I know it's still something of an open question to determine the minimum amount of hardware required for a fully autonomous car

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

#398
post #344

Is the article available to Europeans somewhere? All I'm getting is a message with this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism…

This is so stupid, they are still infracting on European Citizens that just happen to not be in Europe. For example I can get to the page but I am in Switzerland which is not part of the EU yet smack in the middle of Europe.

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

#399
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd like the car to stop for plastic bags too please. Anything in the road directly in my path. I mean that plastic bag could contain a rock or something, driving through it is just a bad idea.

what about a large leaf?

it’s dangerous to stop in the middle of the road unexpectedly too

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

#400
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but I agree. A commercial pilot doesn't flip on autopilot and start browsing the internet on a phone or take a nap. And that's at 30k feet where there's little traffic to worry about. It seems like a misunderstanding of what the technology does, by consumers and the media. I'm no expert on Tesla's marketing history, but I'm of the opinion that these crashes are due to drivers misunderstandin…

> It seems like a misunderstanding of what the technology does, by consumers and the media. I'm no expert on Tesla's marketing history, but I'm of the opinion that these crashes are due to drivers misunderstanding that the system does and what its capabilities are. Perhaps the name "autopilot" has something to do with that misunderstanding.

Eh. This is reminding me of a law school friend bragging about how great lawyers are, giving the example of suing a firearms manufacturer for a 'faulty' safety. They'd done something insane, like pointing a loaded gun at a friend and pulling the trigger, thinking "haha the safety's on!" But lo and behold, the safety failed and someone was dead.

She was adamant that a safety was infallible, and any damage from failure was the manufacturer's responsibility. As someone who grew up with guns, I realized that only an idiot would put someone's life in the hands of a 'safety' mechanism.

If people have dumb, uninformed ideas about what words mean in context, they should probably educate themselves. Based on videos and articles I've seen, people are doing extremely stupid things that are clearly warned against by Tesla, like driving down a winding country road, or assuming it's going to somehow know about road work.

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