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Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

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Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#51

Post by protomyth »

nn3 wrote: post #46
protomyth wrote: post #40

So, in a traditional embedded system, discovery can reveal the source code to help determine what went wrong (e.g. divide by zero error in x-ray machine). What are the lawyers going to get when they start looking into the Tesla's autopilot software?

Likely they will get a gigantic sea of trained deep learning weights that noone understands.

That really isn't going to play well with a judge or jury. I can see the poor programmer up on the stand not being able to say what it meant or how the car made its decisions.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#52

Post by carlivar »

saagarjha wrote: post #19

The problem with Tesla's "Autopilot" is that it's marketed heavily as just that: autopilot. It's good enough to work that way 99% of the time, too, which is a recipe for disaster: things that work 99% of the time but have the potential to fail catastrophically often get glossed over by humans because it's hard to keep paying attention to something that rarely fails.

This is exactly why Waymo and Cruise and such believe autonomy Level 3 or so is utterly dangerous and have intentionally skipped it entirely.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#53

Post by CoolGuySteve »

If the Tesla had a proximity sensor that slammed on the breaks in the last 2-3 meters, would he have survived? I ask because it's a common luxury car feature and would be easy for Tesla to implement. IIRC this crash and the semitruck crash had no evidence of the autopilot hitting the breaks according to the NTSB.

Even if his velocity was only reduced by a fraction, the amount of power involved in the collision would have been reduced by whatever that fraction was.

Edit: So it turns out the Model X does have automatic emergency breaking, but the preliminary report says that the Tesla actually increased its speed in the 3 seconds leading up to the crash. Sounds like a major software bug to me.

Here's a review of the Model S AES compared to other cars, in particular the Tesla AES trigger can't handle when a lead car moves out of way, which is what the NTSB report says happened: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu...

Here's the NTSB preliminary report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#54

Post by threeseed »

stevenjohns wrote: post #5
cmurf wrote: post #2

I think it's unacceptable for automation to produce a worse result than a human in the same situation, with the same information. i.e. it's not acceptable for automation to fail danger, it must fail safe, including even if all it can do is give up (disconnects, warning tone, hands control over to the human driver). I think it's reasonable, in the narrow case where primary control is asserted and competency is claimed…

> or was somehow incompetent If they survived, they would have lost their license and been charged with some form of reckless driving. The underlying issue is that manufacturers are beta testing on the road and almost literally playing with peoples lives in the process. Legislation, although would hurt innovation, in this case is appropriate to ensure that the race to the finish doesn’t have a blood-stained legacy.

Tesla is the only one claiming to have a working solution and is selling it to the general public.

Everyone else is far more cautious.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#55

Post by protomyth »

jimmaswell wrote: post #14
modzu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cant expect the human driver to be ready to take over autopilot in any meaningful way. if the driver is alert enough to the conditions and physically ready at the appropriate controls to do that, then they are already driving . still, despite it not being based on science, but legal reasons, companies pretend that humans can "take over" when alerted to. maybe a lawsuit will change that idiocy.

A few people dying of their own irresponsibility does not warrant ruining it for the rest of us.

A lot of people said the exact same thing about lawn darts and a whole host of products and activities, but sadly, society doesn't go that way.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#56

Post by mikeash »

threeseed wrote: post #43
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarette manufacturers got sued into oblivion because they suppressed science and insisted their product was beneficial. Now that they acknowledge the dangers, nobody’s suing.

Of course people are still suing. And in many countries governments are continuing to sue as well. Just Google it. Plenty of examples.

How many of them are not based on previous lies and fraudulent claims by tobacco companies?

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#57

Post by jbritton »

I think self driving cars should have both high dynamic range cameras and LIDAR and maybe time of flight cameras. Input from a LIDAR system would be much more likely to detect that barrier, and computer vision via a camera much more likely to be fooled. I think an investigation into why the computer vision system failed to detect a barrier under clear daylight conditions will show the negligence on the part of Tesla. Lane lines are frequently not well marked, and sunlight glare is a difficult problem for cameras. However, you have to be able to detect a concrete barrier, in the worst of conditions. Does Tesla have in place some kind of determination of its lane detection accuracy and then alert the driver that it is turning off auto-pilot when accuracy is low?

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#58

Post by carlivar »

I know the argument is always that autopilot is not intended by Tesla to be abused (never mind the CEO on national television abusing it).

However, there's what you tell humans, and then there's pragmatism regarding human nature. We should consider the latter.

It's possible to be both academically correct on the warnings/instructions given and also practically wrong on human psychology.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#59

Post by tekno45 »

jbritton wrote: post #57

I think self driving cars should have both high dynamic range cameras and LIDAR and maybe time of flight cameras. Input from a LIDAR system would be much more likely to detect that barrier, and computer vision via a camera much more likely to be fooled. I think an investigation into why the computer vision system failed to detect a barrier under clear daylight conditions will show the negligence on the part of Tesla.…

Guidelines definitely say keep your hands on the wheel and be ready to take over.

plus it beeps at you to take over.

Re: Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

#60

Post by jimmaswell »

patejam wrote: post #39
jimmaswell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few people dying of their own irresponsibility does not warrant ruining it for the rest of us.

There are other people on the road, it's not just the drivers that are impacted by this. Calling it "Autopilot" is what's irresponsible.

Pilots still need to take over sometimes despite the autopilot. The name is fine.
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