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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

#251

Post by amelius »

slg wrote: post #137
txcwpalpha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly why all of these articles recently about how "great" it is that Tesla sends out frequent OTA updates are ridiculous. Frequent, unpredictable updates with changelogs that just read "Improvements and bug fixes" is fine when we're talking about a social media app, but is entirely unacceptable when we're talking about the software that controls a 2 ton hunk of metal flying at 70mph with humans inside…

This isn't an issue specific to Tesla as all automakers are now making cars that are more and more dependent on software. So what is the right way to handle these updates? You mentioned a clear flaw with OTA updates, but there are also numerous advantages. For example, the recent Tesla brake software issue was fixed with an OTA update. That immediately made cars safer. Toyota had a similar problem a few years ago and…

> So what is the right way to handle these updates?

Require updates to be sent to a government entity, which will test the code for X miles of real traffic, and then releases the updates to the cars. Of course, costs of this are to be paid by the company.

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

#253

Post by Piskvorrr »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #185
crote wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dutch citizen here, I have never seen something like this. To compare, here's a similar situation in The Netherlands: https://www.google.nl/maps/@52.0928662,5.1734685,3a,75y,281.... Points of interest: - big solid white arrow, line-fade is nearly impossible - white-green sign indicating that the road is splitting - big shoulder in the continuation of the division - loads of grass instead of immediately using a metal…

The intersection in the Tesla crash is pretty sub par by US standards. Most highway off ramps are as you described. In space restricted areas we tend to use tons of reflectors then water/sand barrels or metal crumple barriers instead of gently rising barriers and a grass infield. In basically all cases where there's a lot of pavement that isn't a lane there's diagonal lines of some sort that make it very clear that t…

I wouldn't think wrong, but it seems to imply "AVs need great roads or bad roads, on mediocre roads they might kill you for no obvious reason, gee, too bad."

Such "pretends to work but actually doesn't", IMNSHO, would be far worse than "doesn't work there at all"

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

#254

Post by elpool2 »

jfrankamp wrote: post #74
Animats wrote: post #42

NTSB: • At 8 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was following a lead vehicle and was traveling about 65 mph. • At 7 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla began a left steering movement while following a lead vehicle. • At 4 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was no longer following a lead vehicle. • At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increas…

To follow on, there has already been reported autopilot drifting and mismanaging that spot on the freeway (although without this catastrophic result). That fact adds to this description/explanation. Aside: the following another car heuristic is dumb. It's ultimately offloading the AI/decision making work onto another agent, an unknown agent. You could probably have a train of teslas following eachother following a du…

Does it actually use the position of the car in front to determine where to steer? My Honda will sense cars in front of me but will only use that info to adjust speed when using cruise control.

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

#255

Post by ninkendo »

walrus01 wrote: post #252

This guy tested it at the EXACT same location with tesla autopilot. The Tesla starts steering directly into the barrier before he corrects it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJSjeHDvfY

Hmm, totally off-topic but that line needs to be re-painted. The actual lane marker is almost entirely faded away, while the line that follows the exit lane is bright white. If the glare is bad enough it's possible for a human to end up thinking the more solid line is the lane marker and follow it left.

(Not to excuse tesla here though, if that wasn't clear.)

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

#256

Post by ekianjo »

amelius wrote: post #251
slg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an issue specific to Tesla as all automakers are now making cars that are more and more dependent on software. So what is the right way to handle these updates? You mentioned a clear flaw with OTA updates, but there are also numerous advantages. For example, the recent Tesla brake software issue was fixed with an OTA update. That immediately made cars safer. Toyota had a similar problem a few years ago and…

> So what is the right way to handle these updates? Require updates to be sent to a government entity, which will test the code for X miles of real traffic, and then releases the updates to the cars. Of course, costs of this are to be paid by the company.

Yeah, because we know governments are really good at giving certifications and doing tests that mean sonething. Lets put every design decision in the hand of governements then! or better, nationalize car companies! Problem solved?

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

#257

Post by freerobby »

Xylakant wrote: post #184
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…

Autopilot will only be engaged on roads and under conditions that are favorable to autonomous driving, but fatal accidents tend to happen more under unfavorable conditions for human drivers. The non-Tesla numbers also include cars that are smaller, cheaper and less sophisticated, so much more likely to lead to fatal outcomes in crashes. So these numbers are heavily skewed in favor of Tesla. The proper comparison woul…

I don't think it's fair to compare an L2 system to an L5 system, though. My sense is that a very good ADAS (L2) system will reduce overall fatalities, while causing a small number of additional ones through human misuse of the system. This accident seems like the latter case.

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

#258

Post by Piskvorrr »

stefan_ wrote: post #107
ckastner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the Tesla self-crashing car in action. Remember how it works. It visually recognizes rear ends of cars using a BW camera I'm sure Tesla's engineers are qualified and it is certainly easy to second-guess them, but it is beyond me why they would even consider a BW camera in a context where warning colors (red signs, red cones, black and yellow stripes, etc.) are an essential element of the domain.

You can have different cameras for sign recognition if you can't deal without color. But BW cameras have huge benefits from sensitivity in the optics all the way to processing power in the backend without much downside.

Oh, you can deal without colors, but you're intentionally depriving yourself of data, as you now have Safety Gray, Danger Gray, Warning Gray and Traffic Gray. Not to worry, those colors probably didn't mean anything important anyway.

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

#259

Post by ericb »

If I was building this, I would upload millions of hours of data from actual Tesla drivers, and I would have autopilot releases step through data and flag the variances from the behavior of the actual drivers. I'd run this in a massively parallel fashion.

For every release, I'd expect the score to improve. With a system like this, I would think you'd detect the "drive towards traffic barrier" behavior.

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

#260

Post by amelius »

ekianjo wrote: post #256
amelius wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is the right way to handle these updates? Require updates to be sent to a government entity, which will test the code for X miles of real traffic, and then releases the updates to the cars. Of course, costs of this are to be paid by the company.

Yeah, because we know governments are really good at giving certifications and doing tests that mean sonething. Lets put every design decision in the hand of governements then! or better, nationalize car companies! Problem solved?

In any case, let a third party control the actual updating, so that we know when and how often cars are updated. Require at least X months of time between code submission and deployment to cars. We don't want a culture of "quick fixes".
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