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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

#81
It's just one of the many lawsuits against Tesla. It doesn't matter what happens with it.

The thing is: Tesla will lose one or more of the many, and the crooked company is already halfway into bankruptcy.

So whether they win or lose this particular lawsuit, it's only a matter of time before they fold.

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

#82
post #79
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are going to have a really hard time getting out true autonomous driving if they don’t do this. That’s how the system will learn how to deal with real life scenarios.

You're okay training an incomplete self driving machine learning model on the general population?

I actually help it every day during my commute. They are not stupid and this isn’t so unsafe as people who have no actual experience with it claim to be.

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

#83

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.

I'm not a pilot, but I have had flying lessons. Airplane autopilots are extremely simple. They can basically fly you in a straight line, at a fixed altitude. Tesla's autopilot is actually way more advanced than those found in airplanes.

A commercial airliner autopilot (the kind people think of when you say autopilot) can perform evasive maneuvers and land the plane.

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

#84

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…

> it's a common luxury car feature

Almost all luxury cars implement this feature the same way that Tesla does, with radar that ignores stationary objects. I'm not aware of another company that implements the steer towards obstacles part of the problem, though.

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

#85
post #8
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…

Well, this brings to light the concept from the movie I, Robot. Is it a crime when an ai kills someone, unintentional or not, or is it an industrial accident? If it's suppose to replace a human task due to a "level of intelligence", is it still taxed as equipment or as an employee? Is the company (due to equipment failures) or the ai (choosing to do an action on its own) at fault? To be fair, these questions need to…

Don't know why this is downvoted - it's a good statement of the essential issue.

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

#86
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a pilot, but I have had flying lessons. Airplane autopilots are extremely simple. They can basically fly you in a straight line, at a fixed altitude. Tesla's autopilot is actually way more advanced than those found in airplanes.

A commercial airliner autopilot (the kind people think of when you say autopilot) can perform evasive maneuvers and land the plane.

What are they evading?

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

#87
I hear people say “self driving cars don’t have to be perfect, they just need to be safer than humans.” Here is a good example of why that might be harder to achieve than expected. Apparently the car had gotten confused at that exact location repeatedly before. That’s what self driving cars are going to do—if there is something “weird” it’s likely that every self driving car (at least, every one from the same manufacturer) that encounters the weird scenario will run into a problem. That could result in catastrophic failure modes at scale.

What would have happened if every car on that road had been an identical Tesla? How many crashes would have happened? How long would it have taken Tesla to issue a fix? How many miles of perfect driving would be required to make up for the cluster of crash events due to that one anomaly?

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

#88
post #78

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…

His car increased speed because the adaptive cruise was set to a higher speed than his car was going, and for 4 seconds before impact there were no cars in front of him. The adaptive cruise increased speed to his set point when his car left the flow of traffic. The AEB will not trigger on a stationary object at highway speeds. I do not believe there exists any AEB that will emergency brake at highway speed, maybe exc…

>crash attenuator

>this particular one is hit fairly frequently.

Interesting way to build your road infrastructure

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

#89
post #87

I hear people say “self driving cars don’t have to be perfect, they just need to be safer than humans.” Here is a good example of why that might be harder to achieve than expected. Apparently the car had gotten confused at that exact location repeatedly before. That’s what self driving cars are going to do—if there is something “weird” it’s likely that every self driving car (at least, every one from the same manufac…

To play devil's advocate:

Assuming self-driving cars are connected to each other, either directly or via the internet, if one car crashes, or even just makes a minor mistake, the knowledge of how to avoid that can be transmitted to every other car on the planet.

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

#90
post #21

I think it's deeply irresponsible to create a device which can drive in 90 or 95% of scenarios. It's just a way to fool humans into killing themselves.

If the system is even a few percent better than humans then it would save thousands of lives when widely deployed. Musk has made this argument many times. Basically don't let perfect be the enemy of better. But if the vendor is legally liable in each case then this software is untenable.

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