Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by confiscate » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

rickycook wrote: post #399

6nf wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

ya but, other cars that DON'T have autopilot/self-driving tech (e.g. Subaru Eye Sight as mentioned above) already have reliable emergency braking in case of obstacles. Aren't they already able to tell the difference between a plastic bag and a big rock? If they can, then it's already a solved problem, and Tesla should be able to do it reliably too, no?

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

#472

Post by feiofh398r39rty » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #459

azinman2 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise the bar of what you need to deliver which will change your approach, and don’t ship products that aren't ready.

It seems to me that delaying self-driving cars for any appreciable amount of time will lead to more deaths/injuries, not fewer.

You're assuming that the quickest route to safest auto-driving lies via incremental improvements to existing systems and that's not necessarily true; see: AlphaGoZero

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

#473

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #121

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…

Yes. There is zero chance I'd use a system like this. Regular freeway driving is already boring enough that I worry about losing focus. (I supplement with things like caffeine and audiobooks.) There's some threshold of interventions/minute that I think humans just aren't very good at. Which is why there are systems like Threat Image Projection, which turns baggage scanning into what is effectively a video game: https…

Try it before making such sure if yourself statements.

In my experience it’s LESS boring to drive with autopilot and I pay MORE attention to the actually important, potentially dangerous, things like what’s coming up (you’re actively aware of longer stretch forward, which also means you know you’re coming up to a stretch that autopilot won’t be able to handle well in advance and have plenty of time to disengage) and the cars around it (not watching lanes closely frees you to give all your attention to cars around you).

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

#474

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #294

gutnor wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual benefit is to have the car handles itself in situation where you would be distracted regardless. I engage similar system on my car before fiddling with the attention seeking touch screen, or when I need to give a quick look at the kids behind. Another is traffic jam: a lot of nothing going followed by a lot of things going on - focus on the wrong thing and you can rear end somebody. Minor benefit are some…

before fiddling with the attention seeking touch screen ...in other words, the feature partially works around some of the problems they introduced themselves by using an overly complex touchscreen UI instead of the traditional no-eyes-needed buttons and knobs.

I haven’t seen a non-touchscreen media player in a new mid- to upper-range car in a long time...

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

#475

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

lagadu wrote: post #415

iamtew wrote: 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…

Really goes to show how what they do with the reader's data that they collect is actually shady to the point of illegality in large swathes of the world.

What it really shows is that they have so little EU-originating readers/income that it doesn’t make economical sense spend thousands of dollars on evaluating compliance. And yes, the law is poorly written that even parsing it is a non trivial cost, particularly if you are a risk-averse organization.

It may mean they are doing obscene tracking too, but you are making ideological assumption if that’s your only hypothesis.

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

#476

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:29 AM UTC

eyeing_see wrote: post #410

cherioo wrote: post #337

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…

These cars are driving on public roads, so the question is not whether the user is informed but whether they are compliant. It doesn't take many ignored beeps to learn that a particular customer is not using the feature as intended, and deactivate it for the safety of others. Offer to turn it back on after watching a trainig video at the dealer and signing some papers once, escalate to a mandatory counselling session…

So speeding is the manufacturer’s fault too? Informed by the car, non-compliant driver...

Oh, and Tesla does disable Autopilot if you ignore the hands-on-wheel warnings.

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

#477

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #40

olliej wrote: 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.

Well, no. Mercedes had to pull Drive Pilot (notice the name...) ads that actually claimed, unlike Tesla, to be self-driving... about a system significantly underperforming Tesla’s.

Tesla is outlier mostly in the disproportionate amount of flak it takes.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20160801/RETAIL03/308019956/...

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

#478

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:43 AM UTC

argonaut wrote: post #379

Arn_Thor wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their life is on the line they'd be stupid not to. Which, of course, a lot of people are. But the fact it's common doesn't take away the blame

Almost nobody reads the entire owner's manual for their car, and even those who do read them skim over warnings like that.

The warnings are shown on the behind-wheel display every time you engage Autopilot. Unmissable.

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

#479

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #194

beamatronic wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between “objects in front of you that it senses” and “obstructions in a lane”?

Well, I guess the second doesn't presuppose that it senses them. But I think you concentrated on the wrong thing: Autopilot is not designed to steer around obstructions. Autopilot is designed to brake for obstructions. It sometimes fails to brake for obstructions. But it sometimes succeeds in braking for obstructions. It never steers around obstructions, even if it senses them perfectly.

Emergency braking is designed to lessen the impact, not prevent crash. See manual. This is mostly for avoiding crashes into a car that suddenly stops in front of you, I.e. in lower speed city traffic and jams. For this, detection within a few meters is all you need - ultrasound sensors might do. If the velocity delta is 120km/h, you’re not going to meaningfully slow down when already this close.

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

#480

Post by vsl » Thu, May 31, 2018, 7:54 AM UTC

ashleyn wrote: post #164

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

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.

I test drove a Volvo S90 recently. The Pilot Assist feature almost feels like a gimmick due to the attention required. If you don't give steering input in five seconds, Pilot Assist disables itself. It basically requires enough of your attention that there's little difference between using it and not using it. It seems pretty clear to me that Volvo only has Pilot Assist in the first place as a method to gather data v…

> Consequently, I haven't heard of any notable incidents where Pilot Assist caused an accident.

It may be, but is not necessarily “consequently”. That Volvo is not cool to write about plays a role. You don’t read about boring daily crashes either.