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Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#231

Post by Filligree »

plankers wrote: post #185
Filligree wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo seems to be doing just fine on their own. I'm not sure they feel they need any partnership. They just ordered some 30,000-ish cars, so it would seem they're entering the mass-production phase.

There's active disdain (or at least snide jokes) among the senior Waymo engineers for the approach to autonomous driving taken by Tesla. I can't see a partnership in the cards, probably ever. Source: used to work there

I can understand why there might be.

Source: Watched a presentation on the computational aspects recently.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#233

Post by gargravarr »

At present, the 'driver assistance' solutions on the market seem to be counter-intuitive. As the article notes, they may handle most situations competently, lulling drivers into a false sense of security, before reacting completely inappropriately to a rapidly developing hazard leaving the driver no time to re-take control.

Tesla explicitly states that a driver using their Autopilot must keep their hands on the wheel at all times. They place the driver in the role of supervising the machine. It seems like other driver-assistance technologies require the same, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of what drivers expect these systems to do. Drivers would expect these systems to ease their workload or take over some of the tedium of long highway drives. But these systems require the driver to be alert and constantly monitoring the system for abnormal behaviour. As far as I can tell, this is more work than simply driving manually. On a long drive, I can slip into my own sort of autopilot where I'm paying full attention to the road, able to react to changing conditions ahead, but am also entertaining a long train of thought in my head.

Six seconds sounds like a long time to react to a changing situation when driving (drivers know that accidents happen in split seconds), but if things are working normally, six seconds is about the length of time you might spend changing the climate controls or selecting a different playlist. If Tesla are saying their cars can't be trusted for a single-digit number of seconds without human supervision lest they total themselves, since it's so often toted that the driver's hands were off the wheel and thus he couldn't retake manual control and prevent the crash, then these companies are approaching driver assistance technology in completely the wrong way. More than that, these systems are outright dangerous because they're implemented so completely wrong. Taking your hands off the wheel in an unassisted car for six seconds won't result in it driving itself into the barrier beside you unless you're extremely unlucky at that exact moment and your front wheel hits a pothole. For these machines to be this unpredictable is becoming a serious safety hazard.

I'm going to stick with a car with non-adaptive cruise control and nothing else. And be extra vigilant around Teslas on the roads.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#234

Post by dm319 »

dmode wrote: post #139
macspoofing wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only irresponsible car company has been Tesla (and Uber). All the other companies positioned their adaptive systems correctly and very conservatively. Tesla came out and downright asserted their system was autonomous[1]. Predictably, they have since had to scale that back significantly. [1] https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/videos/autopilot-self-driving-ha...

Tesla literally never says that autopilot system is self driving and has repeated nags and reminders to keep hands on the wheel and pay attention. This message is repeated during onboarding, training videos, and manual etc. 99% of Tesla owners follow these instructions. There will of course be 1% drivers who will not.

> never says that autopilot system is self driving

That sentence sounds strange to me. It is called 'autopilot', and in our society's mindshare - this means self-driving. Either way, the public believe these cars are self-driving, and as a result, people likely buy the car for this feature.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#235

Post by wool_gather »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #152
beefield wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day. I take 15 minutes crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers over one hour of solitude in a small metal box with windows any day. Nobody has managed to explain me how self driving cars reduces congestion. It is space that is the limiting factor, and I do not understand how autonomous cars reduce the need for that. Vice versa, r…

> I take 15 minutes crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers over one hour of solitude in a small metal box with windows any day. Why those durations? I would expect a typical car trip to be faster than transit, since it takes a direct route with no stops. If transit is even as fast as driving, I'll take it 90% of the time. But that's quite an undertaking.

> I would expect a typical car trip to be faster than transit

Compared to buses on the same roads (i.e. without a dedicated lane), sure, but not to subways/light rail.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#236

Post by shiftpgdn »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #156
daferna wrote: post #125

Autopilot would have worked fine if the lane markings were properly painted. No one will blame Caltrans terrible maintenance of 101. As I am writing this, NB 101 near Oregon Expressway has been under construction for over two years with no painted lane markings (and the lanes suddenly become super narrow), leading to merge hell and probably at least 3-4 fender benders a week. The Tesla GUI shows you whether or not it…

If you find a self-driving car that's straddling lanes because the markers are excessively degraded, I'll be happy to blame the transit authority. This car left the road entirely. There's no excuse for that.

Go watch the youtube video of another Tesla owner testing the intersection where this accident occurred. The lane markers on the left side vanish but there is a divider marker setup. It's super clear the Tesla followed the divider marker thinking it was a lane and hit the jersey barrier.

Also of note the impact attenuator was completely missing due to bad highway maintenance. If the tesla had struck an engineered set of barrels instead of side striking a jersey barrier the driver would have walked away.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#237

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

ScottBurson wrote: post #230
joe_the_user wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that a bunch of data with something like objects and velocities isn't a world model. "How Large" a given thing is, is only one of a multitude of questions. I think we humans are so good at just passively keeping track of everything in our environment we forget how difficult it is "keep a world model" from what one sees.

> The thing is that a bunch of data with something like objects and velocities isn't a world model. Sure it is. Whether it's an adequate model for some particular purpose is another question. But no model includes everything. Objects and velocities would be a good start. I don't know enough about the present state of the technology to know whether we even have that. But from some of these accidents we're seeing, it s…

Well, object labels and velocities is not a world model. You can say that they are the attributes necessary to build one, but just a bunch of values is not a model.

Current tech builds a (statistical) model of some aspects of the world that an agent must navigate- aspects that pertain to entity types, trajectories, velocities and so on.

But other bits are missing and they are important ones- for example, what is a human doing on top of a bicycle moving at the same speed as him or her? What is the relation between a driver and a car? And so on. We can still not represent stuff like that with any accuracy to speak of.

In short, what's missing for the most part is a representation of the relations between entities in the world- even where we can accurately represent the entities themselves, or their characteristics.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#238

Post by Dylan16807 »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #236
Dylan16807 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find a self-driving car that's straddling lanes because the markers are excessively degraded, I'll be happy to blame the transit authority. This car left the road entirely. There's no excuse for that.

Go watch the youtube video of another Tesla owner testing the intersection where this accident occurred. The lane markers on the left side vanish but there is a divider marker setup. It's super clear the Tesla followed the divider marker thinking it was a lane and hit the jersey barrier. Also of note the impact attenuator was completely missing due to bad highway maintenance. If the tesla had struck an engineered set…

I've seen it, and it has zero effect on what I said. The car "thinking it's in a lane" while being misaligned? I can possibly blame the people that draw lane markings. The car "thinking it's in a lane" while it slams into/past the edge of the road? 100% the car's fault. It shouldn't do that even if there are no lane markings at all.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#239

Post by OnMyPhone »

EpicEng wrote: post #214
makewavesnotwar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless companies like Tesla stop worrying about being the next "Great American Industry" and start focusing on real world problems and their solutions. If Tesla could develop a network of self driving buses, that would have far greater reach and impact than trying to solve how to make a private network for charging and all case-considered self-driving system for asshole-mobiles. Not that Tesla cars aren't amazing, bu…

>With the exception of the handicapped, people don't really need cars. What country do you live in? We don't all live in downtown SF. In fact, most of us don't. We live outside the city and drive 20 miles to get to work (you're nuts if you think most people are going to spend hours commuting 60 miles on a bicycle every day). And there are no bike Lanes, let alone paths And it snows. >There's really no valid reason to…

Anytime I read posts like that, I just assume they have never been to a place that requires a car to get somewhere within a decent amount of time or it's been so long that they've forgotten.

Yeah, I could get an e-bike, I just have to make 5x+ the trips to the store since I doubt it could hold what I can get in 1 trip now. How would I drive 20 miles one way to work in the winter when there is zero public transportation here? There's no bike lanes out here, and taking an e-bike on the road will eventually get you killed, that's if you can stand driving 40 miles round trip in the snow / rain 5 days of the week.

I guess I can move, (as been suggested before lol) but now there's a lot of new problems with that that an e-bike won't touch.

It just isn't feasible for most people yet. Hopefully sometime soon, but definitely not right now.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#240

Post by EpicEng »

OnMyPhone wrote: post #239
EpicEng wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the exception of the handicapped, people don't really need cars. What country do you live in? We don't all live in downtown SF. In fact, most of us don't. We live outside the city and drive 20 miles to get to work (you're nuts if you think most people are going to spend hours commuting 60 miles on a bicycle every day). And there are no bike Lanes, let alone paths And it snows. >There's really no valid reason to…

Anytime I read posts like that, I just assume they have never been to a place that requires a car to get somewhere within a decent amount of time or it's been so long that they've forgotten. Yeah, I could get an e-bike, I just have to make 5x+ the trips to the store since I doubt it could hold what I can get in 1 trip now. How would I drive 20 miles one way to work in the winter when there is zero public transportati…

Pretty much. I grew up in rural IL, good luck with your e-bikes.
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