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NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

arstechnica.com

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Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#32
post #7
post #3

“[Driver’s] hands were not detected on the steering wheel for the final six seconds prior to the crash. Tesla has said that Huang received warnings to put his hands on the wheel, but according to the NTSB, these warnings came more than 15 minutes before the crash.” This kind of stuff is why I’ve lost all faith in Tesla’s public statements. What they said here was, for all intents and purposes, a flat out lie. Clearly…

Add to that, the last bullet point from page 2 of the official preliminary report[1]: At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected. That to me is a strong indicator that Tesla's AP2 can not recognize a crashed attenuator, probably one of the strongest argument that…

A counter argument that HUMAN DRIVERS are unsafe an fatal (let alone missing common sense and alertness). I 100% get your point, but my counterpoint, is that this is what we are going to see, in the future. Autonomous systems that by and large are way safer, than human drivers, but when they fail, the might do so, in circumstances where are human would not. Humans are good at some things, computers/ai/sensor suites are good at others, and that is going to mean different kinds of failures, and we have to learn from this. The gigantic upside, is countless situations where the ai, detecs things, the human would not, and overall better outcomes. (Its also worth nothing, that this incident, was way worse because of the barrier. If the divider was in normal condition, the driver would have lived, in my opinion).

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#33
post #3

“[Driver’s] hands were not detected on the steering wheel for the final six seconds prior to the crash. Tesla has said that Huang received warnings to put his hands on the wheel, but according to the NTSB, these warnings came more than 15 minutes before the crash.” This kind of stuff is why I’ve lost all faith in Tesla’s public statements. What they said here was, for all intents and purposes, a flat out lie. Clearly…

Also, „hands were not detected“ does not mean that they really weren‘t on the wheel. Maybe someone who drives a Tesla can comment on how reliable the hand detection is.

Hand detection is pretty good. You only need to rest your hands on the wheel. Have a model s as my daily driver.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#34

The NTSB report confirms that. The crash attenuator—an accordion-like barrier that's supposed to cushion a vehicle when it crashes into the lane separator—had been damaged the previous week when a Toyota Prius crashed at the same location. The resulting damage made the attenuator ineffective and likely contributed to Huang's death. kinda sounds like maybe that part of the road isn't well designed or marked too.

Any kind of self-driving system that is going to be usable and safe in the real world needs to be able to deal with the kind of roads we have in the real world.

Maybe one day, when the majority of cars are self-driving, road design will change. To get there, self-driving cars will need to prove themselves on today's roads so people will buy them.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#35
post #3

“[Driver’s] hands were not detected on the steering wheel for the final six seconds prior to the crash. Tesla has said that Huang received warnings to put his hands on the wheel, but according to the NTSB, these warnings came more than 15 minutes before the crash.” This kind of stuff is why I’ve lost all faith in Tesla’s public statements. What they said here was, for all intents and purposes, a flat out lie. Clearly…

If I were rapidly approaching a barrier at full speed on a highway, I might put my hands up and guard my face before the crash.

But then you would propably also be applying the brakes..

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#36
post #10
post #2

The report itself - worth of reading https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

No surprise there about it steering into the barrier or Tesla not-quite-lying about him getting warnings, but I'm surprised that he apparently wasn't dead on impact but survived all the way to the hospital? So even a three-car pileup with the Tesla steering straight into a barrier at 71MPH & accelerating, with the car catching on fire & being reduced to a husk, still isn't enough to kill a driver immediately. In a wa…

Except in obvious cases like decapitation, paramedics cannot legally declare someone dead; it has to be done by an MD, and the paramedics will keep trying to revive you until you get to the hospital. So it's not necessarily true that he didn't die in the crash.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#37
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that, the last bullet point from page 2 of the official preliminary report[1]: At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected. That to me is a strong indicator that Tesla's AP2 can not recognize a crashed attenuator, probably one of the strongest argument that…

A counter argument that HUMAN DRIVERS are unsafe an fatal (let alone missing common sense and alertness). I 100% get your point, but my counterpoint, is that this is what we are going to see, in the future. Autonomous systems that by and large are way safer, than human drivers, but when they fail, the might do so, in circumstances where are human would not. Humans are good at some things, computers/ai/sensor suites a…

It is not clear that this particular autonomous driving system is better than a human driver.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#39

Despite the autopilot failure, I find the battery failure quite remarkable too: > The car was towed to an impound lot, but the vehicle's batteries weren't finished burning. A few hours after the crash, "the Tesla battery emanated smoke and audible venting." Five days later, the smoldering battery reignited, requiring another visit from the fire department. Where is your LiPo god now? Batteries have more energy densit…

Battery failure?

You're expecting their engineers to design a battery that remains safe after a 70mph crash into a barrier?

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#40

self driving systems cant well reason about untrained scenarios or the intent of other humans on the road. I think the people have grossly underestimated how driving in an uncontrolled environment is really a general AI problem, which we're not even close to solving.

Disagree. I think that the likes of Waymo and Cruise understand exactly how hard of a problem this is. It's only companies like Uber and Tesla that are underestimating it, and doing stupid things like disabling automatic braking (Uber) or not using LIDAR (Tesla).
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