Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 495 posts

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

#331

Post by ovi256 »

mnl wrote: post #276
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…

> 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. I didn't know Tesla sold motorbikes t…

>Why do they still do this?

This is the game-as-played, vs the game-as-we-wish-it-were-played. If you don't want a player to engage in this, don't accept it in any of the players, like the plaintiff.

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

#332

Post by mr_toad »

corodra wrote: post #8
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…

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…

> these questions need to be hard lined pretty soon

I’d argue that they’re a long way from being an issue.

Firstly, current AI are far less ‘intelligent’ than almost any animal. Even a mosquito has more brain power, and we don’t think twice about killing mosquitoes.

Secondly, even if an AI had similar intelligence to a human, there is no reason to believe it would be a moral creature, capable of making moral judgments, and being judged as such. Our morality evolved over thousands, probably millions, of years (or if you prefer, it was granted by some divine power). Either way, intelligence and morality aren’t synonymous.

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

#333

Post by civilitty »

natch wrote: post #298
londons_explore wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure I follow. I would think the rating of how much better they are would be applied only to the non-culpable driver? But you are saying the metric should taint that driver with the fact that they didn't manage to avoid an accident caused by someone else? I sort of get it but not sure if it makes sense... can you say more? Or maybe I'm overthinking it and you're just talking about how hard it is to get the statis…

You're overthinking. Fault is a legal construct to help decide liability. What we really care about is if we're dead or not. Insurance is there to take care of the rest.

Since drivers under the influence are less likely to die in an accident because most drugs either relax the muscles or delay reflexes enough to keep the body relaxed during an accident, preventing a lot of potential injury, it's an important nuance to consider. If the people most likely to drive drunk are the least likely to adopt self driving cars, there is an absolute floor to how much safer they can be.

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

#334

Post by jeffreygoesto »

ebg13 wrote: post #200
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…

> Each matrix is run through edge-detection and object-detection algorithms, and the resultant data is then run through more algorithms to match and compare objects between the two images. Finally, once objects have been matched up, a parallax algorithm determines their 3d positioning. Where is your information coming from, and can you point me to a stereo algorithm that uses object detection?

Right, almost all stereo depth calculation is matching without object detection. Maybe doing both simultaneously counts? ;-) https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09738

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

#335

Post by cromulent »

nolok wrote: post #329
mnl wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I didn't know Tesla sold motorbikes t…

> Why do they still do this? What's the point if not trying to mislead the public? You're answering your own question there; they're doing it not with assumed evil intent ("let's lie about the safeties so that people kill themselves ! meuahahah") but for PR and stock reasons, but it ends up being the same result: they want people to see autopilot as "it drives for you" if you're a car buyer or an investor, but they a…

It's a terrible comparison, that's for sure. The figure they quote (1 per 86 million miles) is for all vehicles (including bicycles). Only 37% of those deaths came from passenger vehicles.

Additionally, the Tesla cohort is really modern high-safety passenger vehicles IMO. A < 5 year old passenger vehicle with stability control, etc could easily be statistically as safe as a Tesla.

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

#336

Post by aiyodev »

adrr wrote: post #290
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.or…

I think the bigger issue is that Tesla would rather lie than accept responsibility and work to improve the problem. I would never trust a company like this with my life.

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

#337

Post by grey-area »

fyfy18 wrote: post #286
spockz wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they do the first part of your suggestion (they send reports from all disengagements, and detailed reports from some), but not the last part.

Sounds like a sensible idea, particularly in an area where they've seen a near collision. The difficulty might be that conditions change all the time (barriers are moved or removed), and that makes it difficult to make this kind of determination on a case by case basis.

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

#338

Post by Ulrich1 »

aiyodev wrote: post #336
adrr wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.or…

I think the bigger issue is that Tesla would rather lie than accept responsibility and work to improve the problem. I would never trust a company like this with my life.

Tesla is improving Autopilot all the time.

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

#339

Post by huhtenberg »

This person died because of Tesla's cocky marketing, which leads people to believe that "Auto Pilot" is just that and that does very little to discourage this interpretation even though it is life-threatening. In this context them blaming it on the accident victim is a 100% asshole move.

I am life-long Musk's fan, but Tesla trying their hardest to weasel out of any responsibility here is incredibly damaging to their reputation. The future will come, trying to accelerate its arrival at all costs is reckless.

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

#340

Post by rolleiflex »

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…

I'm paraphrasing from the last time this was posted, but Tesla's words need to be read very carefully. What they say is:

> the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision

What Tesla does not say is that the six seconds the driver's hands were not on the wheel was immediately preceding the crash. It is any six seconds before the crash.

Admittedly this is a very dark reading, however, this reading is supported by their further claims that the driver 'had multiple warnings', which was in fact fifteen minutes ago, and for an unrelated event.

This is the kind of sketchiness that makes people wary of Tesla. Funny thing is, they make cool tech, they don't need to do any of this, nor things like discounting the 'gas savings' from the sticker price. I genuinely don't understand where their apparent need for pushing the definition of truth to its breaking point is coming from.

Had they not openly misrepresented their autopilots' capabilities, they wouldn't have lie in this bed of their own making now.

Post reply on HN