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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

#271

Post by Filligree »

jeffreygoesto wrote: post #160
nathas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to think that a group of engineers didn't consider stationary objects when _designing_ an autopilot system. I would no longer consider it a flaw if it was considered.

It is a ROC curve/precision-recall issue basically. Radar has a terrible lateral and even worse to non-existing elevation measurement. Potholes, man holes, Coke cans and ground clutter look all alike and can in fact be detected as "having the negative relative velocity as my car's own velocity". You want to stop for only very few of all those stationary objects, otherwise you won't drive at all. The problem is you ca…

This rather sounds like radar is the wrong choice, does it not?

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

#272

Post by Lazare »

slg wrote: post #158
txcwpalpha wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That update going out immediately OTA is going to save lives compared to if Tesla waited for the cars to be serviced like other manufacturers. I don't think you can legitimately argue against that fact. There is again no evidence to support this fact. There is evidence that Tesla's OTA software updates have introduced safety issues with Tesla cars. That's a fact. Better braking distance is of course a good thing bu…

I simply don't know what to say to you if you are going to legitimately argue that shaving 20 feet off of braking distance will not make a car any safer. EDIT: The comment I was replying to was heavily edited after I responded. It originally said something along the lines of improving braking distance is good but there is no evidence that it would improve safety.

I think you're misunderstanding the question.

> if you are going to legitimately argue that shaving 20 feet off of braking distance will not make a car any safer.

Nobody is arguing that. We're arguing that there is no evidence the Tesla OTA update made the cars safer on net.

You're trying to set up some sort of "OTA updates are dangerous in general, but this one is clearly good, how do we balance it" conversation, but the problem is, this OTA update is not clearly good. OTA updates are dangerous in general, and also in this case in specific. You need to find a better example where there's actual difficult tradeoffs being made, and not just a manufacturer mishandling things.

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

#273

Post by madengr »

greedo wrote: post #178
jeffreygoesto wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a ROC curve/precision-recall issue basically. Radar has a terrible lateral and even worse to non-existing elevation measurement. Potholes, man holes, Coke cans and ground clutter look all alike and can in fact be detected as "having the negative relative velocity as my car's own velocity". You want to stop for only very few of all those stationary objects, otherwise you won't drive at all. The problem is you ca…

The military does it with SAR (synthetic aperture radar). Is something like that feasible for self-driving cars?

No, since you need movement to create the along-track aperture, you would have already moved through the aperture, running over what you are trying to detect.

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

#274

Post by dylan-m »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #37
martin_bech wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to mention repeatedly claiming that "it saves lives", when they're probably either talking about a completely separate collision avoidance system (which has probably stopped several accidents, by definition, but it isn't special and it doesn't move the car on its own); or they're talking out of their asses because the number of independent variables is the kind of thing you need a PhD statistician for and they'll probably just tell you to take a hike.

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

#275

Post by crote »

hexane360 wrote: post #232
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…

This is pretty apples-to-oranges. You see things like this in a lot of less dense U.S. areas as well. But in the crash example, it's right in the middle of an interchange, with the lane needing to form and rise quickly. Additionally, the gently rising metal barriers aren't safe in many situations because of their ability to launch cars. That's why they've been replaced by crash attenuators and sand/water barrels. Unf…

Well, yes and no.

First, your counter-example is, ironically, pretty apples-to-oranges, as it is literally in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, the municipality where my interchange is located has a population density 1.5x that of Mountain View.

About the A20: it was built around 1970, inspired by American designs. Something like this would probably not be built today. Meanwhile, the specific ramp where the accident occurred, was constructed around 2006.

I do agree that safety measures should be adjusted according to their location, there is indeed no one-size-fits-all solution here.

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

#276

Post by freerobby »

jungturk wrote: post #140
Analemma_ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, I'm kind of stunned that you are defending a system that you yourself describe as "like being driven by a tipsy friend". What?! Sure, I could sit in the front passenger seat while being driven by my tipsy friend and grab the wheel from him if he was about to steer into a wall, but that is clearly much less safe than just driving myself. And I definitely wouldn't pay for the privilege nor endorse it as a…

Its curious to see you appeal to ad hominems, outrage, and assumptions of bad intent, but I'll give it a go anyhow. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about the two use cases I cited, but the car performs excellently (and entirely soberly) in those situations. It's a tool that has significant utility and significant footguns. I'm not advocating whether you should use it or not - I'm sharing my experience with where the sy…

Fellow Tesla owner here. Agree with everything you wrote.

Autopilot is a wonderful system when used properly. It's lousy when it's abused. Applied responsibly, it is very obviously a safety improvement to anybody who uses it. Used as a substitute for human attention, it's very easy to see how it can turn tragic (as we are discussing/witnessing).

The way Elon talks about these situations frustrates me to no end. The data are on his side, yet he continually resorts to half-truths because they are simple to present. Pretty obnoxious for a dude who is on a tear about media dishonesty. But: that is a knock against Elon, not against Autopilot. At the end of the day, I believe Autopilot does much more good than bad, and results in in more people staying alive than would without it. I'm glad we have NTSB and NHTSA to keep Tesla honest, and I'm also glad that they are more thorough and tempered than a lot of folks here on HN would like them to be.

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

#277

Post by uncoder0 »

ummonk wrote: post #163
natch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense if the radar is stationary. In this case, the radar system itself is moving... including moving relative to stationary objects. So I don't see how what you say makes sense. Not saying you are wrong. Just saying I don't follow your explanation.

Right. Besides, pulse doppler can detect stuff that is stationary relative to the radar anyway. The real issue is false positives from things like soda cans on the road, signs next to the road, etc. Can't have the car randomly braking all the time for such false positives. As a result, they just filter out stationary (relative to the ground) objects, and focus on moving objects (which are assumed to be vehicles) toge…

Same thing happens in my BMW wrt toggling the adaptive cruise to recognize a stopped car.

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

#278

Post by amelius »

stickfigure wrote: post #270
amelius wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

This is a popular idea: Just put someone in charge! It ignores the incentives for those gatekeepers, who are now part of the system. In practice I don't think you're going to get better updates, you're going to get "almost no updates". See also: The FDA and drug approvals.

So you want to do away with the FDA? Put BigPharma in charge and let them regulate themselves? That sounds a lot less appealing to me.

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

#279

Post by uncoder0 »

codedokode wrote: post #244
JackCh wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla claims their cars have all the hardware required for full self-driving, but their cars do not have LIDAR. Every serious self-driving outfit understands LIDAR to be necessary. Tesla's marketing department would have people believe otherwise of course.

Exactly. I think a LIDAR could see the obstacle in this case.

You are correct. Built an autonomous car in 2007 that wouldn't hit that wall.

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

#280

Post by amelius »

qaq wrote: post #264
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.

Seriously ? so instead of taking x amount of time it will take x amount of time + a few years.

Testing is absolutely necessary. We're talking about millions of cars here, which are potentially millions of deadly weapons. You don't want companies pushing quick fixes, which turn out to contain fatal bugs.
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