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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

#281

Post by ccorda »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #179
natch wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bizarrely inaccurate mischaracterization of what Tesla has ever said about autopilot.

Yes, nevermind the video that emphasizes "the driver is doing nothing" on their tesla.com/autopilot page since 2016, or that all vehicles come with hardware for full autonomy. There's nothing bizarre about threeseed's characterization. https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

That is a demo of full self driving, which is a perpetually coming soon feature. You even need to pay for it separately.

The actual section on what autopilot can do and what it requires of the driver is pretty clear:

> Autopilot advanced safety and convenience features are designed to assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving. Autopilot introduces new features and improves existing functionality to make your Tesla safer and more capable over time.

> Your Tesla will match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage.

> Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.

As a Model 3 owner, it does do those things quite accurately. Certainly more so than the MobileEye based system on our Volvo, which can't lane keep and stops abruptly.

I find it convenient and more relaxing when driving, but I heed their warning (which I also agreed to when enabling autopilot in car) and pay attention, being prepared to take over at all times.

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

#282

Post by hyperbovine »

kvhdude wrote: post #228

English is not my first language. I am confused by the blatant use of the term "Auto Pilot". Does it not suggest more automation than is currently feasible? Why not intelligent assist? Why is tesla/musk getting a pass here?

No, you are exactly right. “On autopilot” is English vernacular for “without thinking or paying attention”. It completely sends with wrong message, and the lawyers will have a field day with this in court.

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

#283

Post by pauljurczak »

ovao wrote: post #232
HeavenBanned wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Tesla's insistence that LIDAR is useless has a part in this case? To me it's telling that everyone in the ASD game _except_ Tesla is using LIDAR.

Has Tesla actually asserted that LIDAR is “useless”? I know Musk has argued that LIDAR is not necessary, but “not necessary” and “useless” are very different things.

Yes. Musk said that “Lidar is a fool’s errand” and "Anyone relying on lidar is doomed" at Tesla Autonomy PR event recently. See: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

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

#284

Post by hyperbovine »

xeromal wrote: post #237
kvhdude wrote: post #228

English is not my first language. I am confused by the blatant use of the term "Auto Pilot". Does it not suggest more automation than is currently feasible? Why not intelligent assist? Why is tesla/musk getting a pass here?

Autopilot in an airplane is similar. It can do a bit and make the trip easier, but it's not going to dodge a rock that happens to fall from the sky. It's a pretty simple system that really just relies on instrumentation. It's not using any fancy algorithms to make bold maneuvers. I might wager than Tesla's is doing more.

Yeah but most people are not aware of that. To them it’s a button you push that flies the plane. This is why the marketing around this term is so deceptive.

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

#285

Post by mft_ »

rjdagost wrote: post #94
deckar01 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla engineers talked about this in great depth during the recent streaming event. Manual disengagement of Autopilot is the mechanism used to trigger an upload of the sensor data. It is automatically uploaded to Tesla servers and used to train the driving model.

A Twitter user who rooted his Tesla claims that autopilot disengagement reports are very small ( https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1096322810694287361 Not the kind of information that you use to train computer vision algorithms. I found his claims to be an interesting read.

You might want to read the whole Twitter thread again.

The long section where he describes “campaigns” is Tesla's mechanism for capturing high quality data based on certain triggers, and including pictures.

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

#286

Post by fyfy18 »

spockz wrote: post #222
pbreit wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there are multiple reports from driver that autopilot problematic in that location.

I imagine that the court or some regulatory agency could order to automate these kind of reports and use them to shutdown autopilot or make it unavailable on some routes. It would be interesting to design the ux for this. Based on the wording it could even make them more liable if accidents happen outside of roads with known issues.

Why does it even need to be reported? Tesla should be able to detect where autopilot is regularly deactivated or does some wrong (driver takes over with sharp input on brakes or steering wheel), and use that to deactivate it prematurely.

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

#287

Post by Bombthecat »

jankotek wrote: post #269
sytelus wrote: post #254

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 a…

> Driver was obviously over confident on system's ability to self-drive That thing is called "auto-pilot". If its purpose is not to self drive a car, maybe it should be renamed.

It could be called assisted driving and still people will use it like auto pilot.

I had an Opel company car for two years, full of tech (lane assist, auto break, sign detection etc etc etc) after a year and a half I realized how much I relied on this stuff (hint way way too much!) our brains are wired in a way to do as much as possible with as little attention as possible...

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

#288

Post by londons_explore »

natch wrote: post #168
tntn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans can be 30+% better than "humans" by 1. not using a phone and 2. not being drunk or stoned. A few percent better than "humans" is quite bad relative to a semi-responsible human driver.

>A few percent better than “humans” is quite bad Yes it should be (imho) at least an order of magnitude better than humans before we consider it OK to not pay attention. Not a few percentage points better as you say. However, to overcome media drama, it probably will need to be not just one, but more like three or four orders of magnitude safer than humans, because of the “oh look, a Tesla had an accident” effect.

Getting more than 50 percent better than humans gets hard, since frequently the accidents are the fault of the other party.

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

#289

Post by underwater »

pbreit wrote: post #207
gamblor956 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's like this: Radar, LIDAR, ultrasound: returning packets have X value, where X is run through a single algorithm to return depth. In the case of ultrasound and radar, the strength of the return packet is generally directly proportional to depth (algorithmically). LIDAR systems might require an additional processing step depending on the type of LIDAR system used, since many systems use shifted-arrays or rotati…

Sure it’s laggier but with dedicated silicon that’s a non-issue. Fact is vision is more than adequate. And lidar is literally blind.

The problem is not lag, it's unpredictability. For example the white side of a truck trailer may have no distinguishing features, so in some situations the parallax-based depth algorithm returns incorrect information.

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

#290

Post by adrr »

sytelus wrote: post #254

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 a…

Tesla hand detection doesn't indicate that the driver didn't have their hands on the wheel. It detects if you applying torque to the wheel in a direction.

Also the Tesla fatality stat is them playing with numbers. Majority of fatalities happen where autopilot wouldn't be used. Only 15% of fatalities happen on the freeway and highways. I bet that number goes to single digits with pedestrian deaths.

https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/roadway-and-environment/f...

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