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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

#201

Post by slg »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #195
slg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have exact numbers for Tesla but there are 2 confirmed casualties in what is conservatively over a billion Autopilot miles. The average casualty rate for human drivers is something around 1.25 death per 100 million miles. Those numbers are not directly comparable given that Autopilot is not something that is used during 100% of all driving miles and Tesla drivers are not average car drivers. However, there i…

Keep in mind that a billion miles is a very small number in this context. People in the U.S. alone drive well over 3 trillion miles every year [1]. We simply don't have enough data yet to say that autonomous vehicles are safer. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/21/516512439...

I completely agree and should have put something about sample size in that comment. However there are no red flags yet in the statistics and I think that is important.

Think of it like flipping a coin. We decide to flip a coin 4 times and get 2 heads and 2 tails. That wouldn't be enough to draw any meaningful conclusions about whether the coin is fair or if it is weighted to one side, but I would feel a lot better about that result than if the coin ended up on the same side 4 times.

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

#202

Post by Maybestring »

xab9 wrote: post #102
Maybestring wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This kind of stuff is why I’ve lost all faith in Tesla’s public statements. I don't understand why they would issue any statement other than, 'condolences, we're committed to safety, we're working with the NTSB to understand what happened'

Money.

I'm not sure it's in Tesla's financial interest. Misleading statements give the plaintiffs more room to argue for punitive damages, and California juries have awarded tremendous punitive damages on auto companies.

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

#203

Post by dragontamer »

jakelarkin wrote: post #142
Animats wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't a hard case that needed advanced AI. This was a clearly visible stationary obstacle on a good freeway on a clear California day.

deciding how/when to make panic stop or evasive maneuvers without routinely becoming a hazard requires advanced AI determining the path of travel through lanes markings that suddenly fade out while moving in 70mph on a busy freeway requires advanced AI its pretty clear the self-driving gods are not giving these cars a grounds up understanding of physics and self-preservation. They best thing they come up with is prog…

Or they require Lidar. You know, a sensor that actually detects stationary objects at a reliable rate.

Tesla is relying upon advanced AI to do things that its sensors can't do reliably. Its only Tesla who is trying to make self-driving cars off of cameras and inaccurate radar alone.

Maybe Lidar really is too expensive for mass-market adoption. But its the most obvious solution to the problem right now, instead of trying to solve harder problems (ie: camera recognition of 3d objects over trained neural nets).

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

#204

Post by gamblor956 »

myth_drannon wrote: post #191

I was listening to a Software Engineering Daily podcast with Lex Fridman about self-driving deep learning. Very interesting topic on ethics of self-driving cars. What he was saying, is that we need to accept the fact that people are going to die following incidents with autonomous vehicles involved. In order for systems to learn how to drive, people will have die. It's more of societal change that is needed. 30,000 p…

It's very possible to get self-driving systems to learn to drive without killing people.

Waymo and Cruise have done a good job at that so far, by taking the conservative route of testing their systems in controlled environments before unleashing them on an involuntary public.

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

#205

Post by kevincox »

mymacbook wrote: post #27

Reading that initial report is terrifying. I am so glad the NTSB set the record straight that the driver had his hands on the wheel for the majority of the final minute of travel. Really makes me feel like Tesla was out to blame the driver from the get go. To be clear the driver is absolutely partially at fault, but my goodness autopilot sped up into the barrier in the final seconds — totally unexpected when the car…

> Don’t want to see autopilot disabled as a result of this

I would. I think any self-driving system that expects the "driver" (passenger I guess) to take over in tough situations is bound to fail again and again. If people feel like they don't need to pay attention they won't no matter how much they know that they should.

I think that partial autonomy is a sort of uncanny valley, either side is much safer.

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

#206

Post by cornholio »

jakelarkin wrote: post #114
pipio21 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need reason, you need fast reaction times slowing the car and avoiding obstacles. The same happens with humans. Reason is extremely slow. Pilots are trained to act fast training the subconscious, not the logical mind.

normal driving requires anticipating the behavior of other humans who may or may not entire your path of travel or anticipating unseen obstacles. it has less to do with "reaction times" than one would think. Humans routinely over-drive their vehicles capability to safely stop for an obstacle in front or adjacent to their path of travel.

> Humans routinely over-drive their vehicles capability to safely stop for an obstacle in front or adjacent to their path of travel.

Hence, the opportunity for an automated system that does not do that to be much safer, by relying on reaction times rather than strong AI.

Where a human driver would use subtle cues to anticipate a slowdown of the preceding vehicle before a turn, an automated system can get by by simply slamming the brakes in less than one millisecond when it detects braking from the other vehicle.

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

#207

Post by dralley »

falcolas wrote: post #112
mymacbook wrote: post #27

Reading that initial report is terrifying. I am so glad the NTSB set the record straight that the driver had his hands on the wheel for the majority of the final minute of travel. Really makes me feel like Tesla was out to blame the driver from the get go. To be clear the driver is absolutely partially at fault, but my goodness autopilot sped up into the barrier in the final seconds — totally unexpected when the car…

> To be clear the driver is absolutely partially at fault I'm... not so certain. Why? The autopilot had likely exhibited proper behavior every time that the vehicle had passed that particular section of road prior, and if the driver was paying full attention to the behavior of the vehicle, he would only notice the problem around the 5 second mark. Five seconds, if you have no reason to be concerned about the vehicle'…

If I recall correctly (and I might be wrong), didn't the driver in question actually report prior to the accident that autopilot had anomalous behavior on this section of road?

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

#208

Post by blevin »

dragontamer wrote: post #123
jackson1way wrote: post #30

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…

> Now imagine the same situation with Tesla's huge semi batteries. I'm bearish on Tesla (not financially, but I'm mostly a pessimist in regards to their news). But to be perfectly fair: I'm not sure if 400 gallons of diesel fuel (typical in a 18-wheeler) could be put out by a typical fire-department. There was a tractor-truck spill due to an accident in my area once. The fire-department closed down BOTH sides of a 2x…

A decade ago a fuel-tanker truck crashed on a freeway overpass in Oakland, and the ensuing fire softened enough steel for the overpass to collapse:

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html

The overpass was reconstructed and I-580 highway reopened after 26 days:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputa...

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

#209

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

panopticon wrote: post #127
zo1 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. The start of that concrete lane-divider looks incredibly dangerous for a highway. It pretty-much just "starts", with only some sort of object that they call a "crash attenuator" in front of it. I would imagine its purpose is to dampen/dissipate kinetic energy and maybe deflect oncoming objects from hitting the concrete slab directly. I don't even see any sort of road-bumps to warn drivers of this dangerous obsta…

Out of curiosity, are you not in the U.S.? These types of lane dividers are incredibly common throughout the country. Note that I'm not defending the safety of them; I'm just surprised to see someone call them out as a hazard as they're such a common sight.

Excessively long, unstriped gores are not at all common in the Eastern US. This is bad engineering and poor maintenance.

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

#210

Post by ars »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #135
jumelles wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? Welcome to the automotive industry. Lives are at stake.

Is there an equivalent safety standard for ICE vehicles? I don't think a gas task would do particularly well in the exact same circumstance either

Yes, of course there is. That's why the gas tanks are in the back, and they most certainly do survive such crashes.
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