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After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

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Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#161

Post by derefr »

erobbins wrote: post #138

I think Tesla eventually has a catastrophic accident and is sued and/or criminally prosecuted into oblivion. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have to die for this to happen. This trope that humans are bad drivers is, in general, crap. Humans are very good drivers. The US has 7.3 deaths per billion km driven. This means if you drive 50km a day, every day, you are (essentially) guaranteed to die... after 75…

> The US has 7.3 deaths per billion km driven.

This is a meaningless measurement. Segment those km by where they occur. Most of them are either:

1. "cruise-control compatible" kilometers—e.g. freeway straightaways—where you're surrounded by cars but they're all going the same speed in a straight line, and all you need to do to be safe is to go the same speed in a straight line as well.

2. "closed-course" kilometers—e.g. most rural roads, and most suburban roads any time other than rush-hour—where the road may curve and have intersections and such, but at any given time of day, it's probable that there aren't any other cars (or even pedestrians) on the road for you to collide with, no matter how bad your driving is. (Think "roads you'd have a teenager practice driving on." These roads are good for practice because there are effectively no accidents to get into.)

3. (a smaller segment, but still relevant because of the number of freight kilometers driven here:) "empty" kilometers—this has all the properties of segment 2, but also, the road is at grade, and there's nothing abutting the road (i.e. the road isn't a street), so even if you veer off the road, you're unlikely to hit anything. (Examples: the Nevada desert; Saskatchewan; most farmland.)

People point out that the safety-per-km stats for airplanes are a nonsense measurement, because what little crashing that airplanes do tends to mostly occur during the first and last 50km of the planned flight-path—so short flights are just as dangerous as long flights.

Well, the same goes for car accidents. Subtract all the "trivial" driving that humans and AIs can both do by just doing... nothing much at all, with no obstacles/hazards to evaluate, let alone react to. The kilometers that are left (freeway merging; city driving; suburban streets during rush-hour; parking in parking lots) are a lot more crash-y, and are the place where both human and AI competence is questionable.

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#162

Post by close04 »

rayiner wrote: post #153
slg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to dismiss your whole point, because it is certainly valid, but that isn't really the issue here. It is entirely possible for bugs like this to exist in the self driving tech and for Tesla to be correct in their claims that Autopilot is on average safer than a human driver. It is obviously troubling to see self driving cars run into solid and stationary objects, but human drivers do that all the time too…

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. We're not even at the point where we're comparing safety rates. Can a Model Y drive through DC? Can it ignore traffic signals in favor of following hand signals from a uniformed traffic officer, or follow the directions of a construction worker having traffic in turns through a road that they've decided to turn into one lane? Can it deal with an unannounced presidentia…

It's because Tesla marketing material doesn't tell the whole truth, just the selected bit that sounds impressive. The conditions in which the Autopilot is safer than a human driver are so narrow and under so many restrictions that it's obvious it's less "self driving" and more "driver assist".

Indeed, I also find it disingenuous to claim the Autopilot is safer than a human driver even if it actually can't function at all in 95% of situations on the road. Guess saying "possibly safer than a human driver at these 3 things and only under these very specific conditions" isn't so catchy. Definitely not thousands-of-dollars catchy.

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#163

Post by [deleted] »

erobbins wrote: post #138

I think Tesla eventually has a catastrophic accident and is sued and/or criminally prosecuted into oblivion. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have to die for this to happen. This trope that humans are bad drivers is, in general, crap. Humans are very good drivers. The US has 7.3 deaths per billion km driven. This means if you drive 50km a day, every day, you are (essentially) guaranteed to die... after 75…

[deleted]

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#164

Post by tim333 »

tbabb wrote: post #60

I have been yelling about this for a long time: Tesla is not going to be able to deliver full self-driving as promised. They don't have the hardware, for one (ranging is terrible; they need stereo cameras), and second, their software strategy seems to be a dead end. They need sensor fusion. The system needs to make maximum use of all the information available to it: Where is the road striping? Where are the other car…

Musk is more optimistic than you - says late 2020 for sleep while the car drives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8dEYm8hzLo&t=10m25s

Also quite interestingly he says there will be a big jump forward in quality when they switch to their own computing hardware (18m40 or so)

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#165

Post by javagram »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #144
x38iq84n wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I have never understood the cheering for OTA of something that can literally kill you. Were they limited to infotainment and the useless easter eggs I would not care, however AP OTA is downright scary, especially pushed by vendor instead of being initiated by an informed user.

It is initiated by the user ... the update only happens after you give say it's okay to do so.

According to the posters on Reddit, this update’s release notes were about “Dog Mode” and “Sentry Mode”.

Nothing warning that behavior of autopilot might change.

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#166

Post by throwaway789214 »

jessaustin wrote: post #149
throwaway789214 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not use it if it is net negative for you but if you do, follow the instructions. You can't have the cake and eat it. There are a lot of people at Tesla working fulltime on auto-pilot and some drivers think they know better than them by disregarding their instructions how to use it? Frankly, that's just crazy.

Perhaps those drivers don't have your inside view of Tesla R&D?

Inside view not required, self-awareness of users should suffice to come to that conclusion (i.e. "I know nothing of the inner workings of this system, so my judgement has to be worse than that of the ones who designed it.").

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#167

Post by slg »

btilly wrote: post #157
tim333 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could theoretically be a trolley problem. In practice Tesla are probably not that safe if you compare them driving themselves on freeways to humans driving under the same conditions.

I was going to point you to a study showing that autosteer reduced accidents by 40%, but Google told me that this was recently shown to be wrong. In fact it increased accidents by 60%. See https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-t... for details and verification.

The the paragraph directly after that 60% number:

>So does that mean that Autosteer actually makes crashes 59 percent more likely? Probably not. Those 5,714 vehicles represent only a small portion of Tesla's fleet, and there's no way to know if they're representative. And that's the point: it's reckless to try to draw conclusions from such flawed data. NHTSA should have either asked Tesla for more data or left that calculation out of its report entirely.

I will go back to my original statement at the start of this thread. No one in these comments has the data to say definitively whether Autopilot is safer than a human driver. I am skeptical that Tesla even has enough data for that. But I am also skeptical of people who take that unknown and the occasional anecdotal data point like the above video as proof that Autopilot is inherently less safe than humans.

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#168

Post by mdorazio »

Joe-Z wrote: post #147
erobbins wrote: post #138

I think Tesla eventually has a catastrophic accident and is sued and/or criminally prosecuted into oblivion. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have to die for this to happen. This trope that humans are bad drivers is, in general, crap. Humans are very good drivers. The US has 7.3 deaths per billion km driven. This means if you drive 50km a day, every day, you are (essentially) guaranteed to die... after 75…

Cars have gotten so safe though. There's all this measures put in place to ensure your survival _in case of a crash_. Wouldn't it be more relevant to calculate the chances of getting injured / end up in a crash at all? I mean just being caught up in a traffic accident and have no bodily harm done to you can be a traumatic event.

Yes, this is a very important distinction. Humans have gotten pretty good at not getting killed in car accidents, mostly due to increasing safety engineering and assistance features in cars. Humans are not very good at avoiding collisions entirely. In 2016 there were 6.3 million motor vehicle accidents reported to police. And NHTSA estimates about 10 million accidents go unreported each year (mostly minor fender benders and people damaging their own vehicles on fixed objects). To me, that's pretty clear evidence that humans are poor drivers.

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#169

Post by slg »

rayiner wrote: post #155
slg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are setting up a false dichotomy. You don't have to choose between Autopilot and paying attention. The video above is an obvious example. It didn't result in an accident because the driver was paying attention and intervened. Also you aren't considering that other drivers can be the cause of a potential accident. You can assume that the other drivers on the road are average drivers with all the distractions that…

> You are setting up a false dichotomy. You don't have to choose between Autopilot and paying attention. The video above is an obvious example. It didn't result in an accident because the driver was paying attention and intervened. If you have to pay attention, then you might as well be driving.

This is just a silly argument to me. Would anyone suggest that cruise control is worthless because you still have to steer the car?

Re: After 6 months of working fine, Tesla software update drives at barriers again

#170

Post by javagram »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #148
txcwpalpha wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevators and medical devices go through extensive testing and certification processes before they ever go near being put into service. And when they are updated, they again go through extensive testing and certification. Teslas, on the other hand, apparently change their handling and driving profile overnight at the whim of the software engineers at Tesla, without even telling the drivers , and introducing bugs like…

> apparently change their handling and driving profile overnight at the whim of the software engineers at Tesla, without even telling the drivers OTA updates only happen after confirmed by the users. Where did you hear that it happens without user intervention?

According to the linked Reddit poster “ Tesla's only release notes for this release were DOG MODE and SENTRY MODE. They don't tell you there is a massive change to AP and to reset your expectations.“
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