Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by mastware » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

natch wrote: post #244

unityByFreedom wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In case you think this kind of abrupt shutoff sounds dangerous, keep in mind this is in the current generation of the system which relies on a human driver being attentive and ready to take over at all times. What is a driver to do when the system randomly decides to brake? [1] Phantom braking has been an issue for awhile, and has yet to be acknowledged by Tesla. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/b5…

They do acknowledge it. You asked what to do. Apply gentle force to the accelerator pedal. And that video is from a super old software version.

> they do acknowledge it.

Where has Tesla acknowledged phantom braking as a persistent issue? It has been around since 2016.

> that video is from a super old software version.

Looks like the video was taken a month ago. The driver had the version of software that Tesla gave him. Drivers can't choose which software version they get, so if it was old, that's on Tesla, not the driver.

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

#252

Post by salty_biscuits » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

gugagore wrote: post #160

areoform wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common perception, but it's not true! Kalman filters have for years been used to get usable data out of these and multiple studies have shown that ultrasound can be used as a standalone in low-speed scenarios. Design and experimental study of an ultrasonic sensor system for lateral collision avoidance at low speeds - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1336460 Environmental perception and mult…

Kalman filters over what state space? Localization isn't really the challenging aspect of self-driving cars.

KF as a particular online method for estimation of state of vehicle location and locations of things in the environment (the M bit in SLAM).

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

#253

Post by mastware » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

marmshallow wrote: post #226

unityByFreedom wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if AP is really 2x safer as Musk claims. Highway driving is already significantly safer per mile than local roads, > The grim statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also show that drivers on rural roads die at a rate 2.5 times higher per mile traveled than on urban highways. Urban drivers travel twice as many miles but suffer close to half the fatal accidents. [1] Could thi…

I would assume that Musk's claim was comparing manually driven Teslas on the highway with AP Teslas on the highway. But I don't think there's a way to verify.

He may have been using data from the flawed NHTSA study,

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26455/nhtsas-flawed-autopilot-...

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

#254

Post by sytelus » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

Tesla's blog post: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/update-last-week’s-accident

the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider

Looks like sensors failed to see concrete divider in nice sunny weather and car slammed in to it at 70mph. Driver was obviously over confident on system's ability to self-drive, probably busy looking at phone and ignored warnings to put his hands on steering.

In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident.

These stats don't help when you read the guy had two kids who will now grow up fatherless for rest of their lives. Humans killing humans is very different thing than machines killing humans even if the fatality rates are 10X lower. Companies need to aggressively enforce, both hands on steering until self-driving is really really really good.

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

#255

Post by rohit2412 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

unityByFreedom wrote: post #175

codelord wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depth estimation is not a solved problem. Why do you think SDC companies pay so much to buy Lidar if depth estimation was solved?

We need to define solved. Used in the Musk sense, it is solved because it's possible. Used in the academic sense, it's not as reliable as depth from LiDAR.

This is the Crux of the problem. Elon musk and Tesla are happy to use words with misleading meaning deliberately. Autopilot, full self driving, "solved", safer than a human driver etc.

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

#256

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #76

arkades wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we've heard from other Tesla drivers on HN in the past: Tesla continues to deliver OTA updates, which occasionally causes people to think that previous issues have been fixed, especially if they haven't popped up again recently. Either they continue to avoid using autopilot because they can't take the chance of finding out whether Tesla ever bothered fixing the problem, or they give it a test, think it's working f…

As a Tesla driver, I look out the windows when operating my motor vehicle. If my car crashes on AutoPilot or otherwise, it’s my fault. When Tesla tells me I can stop looking while the car drives, instead of how they currently do it where it constantly reminds me to be alert, then I might change my position. Until then it is abundantly clear to every single Tesla driver, who exactly is responsible for controlling the…

> instead of how they currently do it where it constantly reminds me to be alert, then I might change my position.

So you're a new Tesla owner then?

Because a few years ago, it'd only tell you to put your hands on the wheel once every 15 _minutes_...

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

#257

Post by simion314 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

Jonanin wrote: post #24

js2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah but he’s not the one suing. The family lost him and probably isn’t thinking rationally. Or, maybe they are thinking rationally. Lawyers probably took the suit on contingency right?

That's fair enough, but the problem I have is the way this event is being portrayed in news and social media. The implication everywhere is that autopilot just unexpectedly swerved into a wall and there was nothing the driver could have done. It actually was expected, and any reasonable driver could have easily prevented it, because it had almost happened so many times in the past.

>It actually was expected, and any reasonable driver could have easily prevented it, because it had almost happened so many times in the past.

Not true if is the driver first time on that road at that time of day on that software version.

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

#258

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #185

gamblor956 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Tesla driver, I look out the windows when operating my motor vehicle. If my car crashes on AutoPilot or otherwise, it’s my fault. Legally, both you and Tesla are at fault if the car crashes. You, for not maintaining full control of the car. And Tesla, for developing the AutoPilot system which directly caused the crash. In this context, Tesla is the "proximate cause* of the crash, so their liability generally wou…

You’re the lawyer. Is there case law to support this? I ask not to mean “citation required” but because I would be very interested to read it. I don’t know if and how much Tesla can disclaim responsibility for the crash based on warnings written into the UI and user manual and TOS. For example, I’m fairly certain that autopilot systems on boats do not absolve the Skipper of liability if a boat crashes, and suing a sm…

Autopilot systems on (small) boats neither have, nor advertise, nor imply that they have any form of collision detection, let alone avoidance.

Tesla on the other hand describes its system as being safer than human drivers at avoiding accidents.

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

#259

Post by Gustomaximus » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

areoform wrote: post #96

I would like to add over here that Tesla does indeed do sensor fusion in their cars. Their Autopilot combines radar and ultrasound with vision to decide where to drive. Commentators bringing up LIDAR are jumping the gun by assuming that this scenario isn't something that these sensors wouldn't have detected in either combination or individually to spot the anomaly. The problem over here is likely to be software due t…

I think the 'how do we decide' is when we can show autonomous driving is significant safer than humans.

I suspect the problem will then be computers avoid many accidents humans make. But make mistakes that seem obvious to humans. So even though the overall risk is lower it becomes very hard to accept the computer did something wrong vs admitting a person was speeding and they stuffed up killing themself.

To allow this tech to exist we might need legislation that autonomous car companies can't be sued unless there is clear malpractice in their systems vs some level of 'accidents happen'. In the same way a wife doesnt typically don't sue her husband that caused an accident that killed themself.

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

#260

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

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.

People are suing based on injury and illness that occurred during the period this knowledge was being suppressed, etc. Not because they took up smoking last year and are sick.