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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

#391

Post by jacquesm »

sjwright wrote: post #325
haditab wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment actually emphasizes why having a lidar is better. Cameras need neural networks to detect objects. Lidars on the other hand provide distance to all the surrounding objects. The neural networks processing the point cloud may not be able to detect what the object is, but because of the distance available in the point cloud data you will know there is something ahead. Fusing radar with camera does help but r…

Radar seems to work pretty damn well for the adaptive cruise control and autonomous emergency braking installed in hundreds of models of cars made over the past 5+ years. If autonomous systems needs more redundancy, the solution is to keep adding more cameras. The other sensor which I think is important is data captured by cars in that fleet. This is sort of what's known as "HD maps" but fully automated and based pur…

> autonomous emergency braking

I've just gotten rid of a car that did that and that was one of the contributing factors. That system was so totally unreliable that it almost caused two accidents in 20K km when otherwise nothing would have happened.

In both cases there were obstacles on the side of the road that gave a return (bridge supports/railing and a pretty sturdy billboard frame) to the radar that caused it to slam the brake full on. On the bridge that caused the car to skid , I narrowly avoided the posts on the far side of the bridge and the second instance the person behind me was totally surprised (as was I).

That sort of tech is really not yet ready for deployment as far as I'm concerned, it's a liability instead of extra safety. I contacted the manufacturer and they saw nothing wrong with the car. The system could not be disabled either.

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

#392

Post by lordnacho »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #359
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. HN's Contrarian Skeptics Brigade can…

There are indeed statistical issues with the comparison, but I'm not sure it's the one you're pointing out. There's probably enough Tesla miles being driven that we shouldn't worry about the random noise around the mean.

One immediate problem with real world stuff like this is selection. How do we know that Tesla is safer because it is built more safely than normal cars, rather than that perhaps people who are more safety conscious buy a Tesla? After all it's a more expensive car, the kind of thing you might only be able to afford once you're a bit older, the same time that you might have kids to worry about. But older people are also not the type to be racing around fast and furious style. Maybe there's an imbalance in the man/woman distribution?

It's a real can of worms to unpick these kinds of things. You find it all the time in social sciences.

Maybe you can find stats for Teslas without autopilot, or other cars with autopilot, and other cars without auto. And stats for how Tesla drivers are distributed according to age and sex?

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

#393

Post by dsfyu404ed »

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.

This is a dishonest comparison. You're comparing the Tesla to an "average" that includes 1995 Corollas that will happily let a telephone pole into the cabin and 1999 Dodge Dakotas that will readily turn into a pancake if you put them on their roof.

You're also comparing across economic classes and demographic groups. Your average Tesla owner is not going to be working 3rd shift or making a 100mi commute and consequently has a much lower chance of starting a small logging operation after falling asleep at the wheel or harvesting venison at high speed. Your average Tesla owner is also likely of an age where they're too old to be driving dangerously fast for conditions all the time but not yet old enough to be getting bad at driving. Basically the mean/mode Tesla owner is a wealthy-ish 30-something to 50-something man and that's a really safe demographic compared to the national average.

If you want to make a fair comparison compare the Teslas models to other sedans of similar age and price.

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

#394

Post by rcxdude »

studentrob wrote: post #270
ovao wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's ask Elon - https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=6081 "Anyone who relies on LiDAR is doomed. Doomed. It's like having a whole bunch of expensive appendices. One is bad, and now you want to put in a whole bunch of them. That's ridiculous."

It's probably a bad idea if your plan is to sell self-driving cars to consumers. Waymo can afford a substantially higher cost premium on their self-driving cars because they are looking at providing a taxi service, not a car that people can buy.

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

#395

Post by saalweachter »

tim333 wrote: post #370
abalone wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driver was obviously over confident I wouldn’t assume that. Videos of this exact scenario prove that the reaction time required is on the order of a few seconds. Everything Tesla says here exaggerates driver culpability, like saying he received “multiple warnings” (15 minutes ago and completely unrelated). Don’t let that hypnotize you into thinking he was being irresponsible here. There may have been other factors…

If you look at the videos here of a tesla going for a barrier there seems to be about 3 seconds between seeing it's going the wrong way and potential impact. Which is enough time if you're expecting it but not long if it's a surprise https://np.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/b36x27/its_back... (hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19443925 )

The short time frame to react to unexpected events is why, if you're a driver, your first response to any unexpected stimuli has to be to decelerate while you evaluate the situation. In turn, this is why tailgating is such a dangerous behavior.

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

#396

Post by studentrob »

rcxdude wrote: post #394
studentrob wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's ask Elon - https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=6081 "Anyone who relies on LiDAR is doomed. Doomed. It's like having a whole bunch of expensive appendices. One is bad, and now you want to put in a whole bunch of them. That's ridiculous."

It's probably a bad idea if your plan is to sell self-driving cars to consumers. Waymo can afford a substantially higher cost premium on their self-driving cars because they are looking at providing a taxi service, not a car that people can buy.

Tell that to Elon 5 years ago. I agree they'd have been better off focusing on luxury/sports EVs.

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

#397

Post by chli »

helloindia wrote: post #382

A more nuanced dissection of whose fault it was or could be[0]. "Huang was apparently fooled many times by Autopilot. In fact, he reportedly experienced the exact same system failure that led to his fatal crash at the same location on at least seven occasions." ........... "Huang knew that Autopilot could not be relied on in the circumstances where he was commuting along the 101 freeway in Mountainview, California. Y…

Or maybe, as I mentioned in a previous comment [1]:

   - Mr. Wuang knew about the bad spot
   - A Tesla OTA solved the issue for that particular spot
   - He got used to the car behaving properly in that location
   - A Tesla OTA introduces a regression for that particular spot
   - Mr. Wuang dies.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17141784

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

#398

Post by peteradio »

aneutron wrote: post #317
neotek wrote: post #278

That's what happens when you mislead your customers into believing your self-driving technology is far more advanced than it actually is. I hope Tesla loses this case and is forced to change their bullshit marketing before more people lose their lives.

But they actually didn't. They specifically tell you it is NOT a fully autonomous autopilot and that's it's more of an advanced cruise control. They also specifically tell you to KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD. If you fail to do so, you're asking for trouble. It is unfortunate the guy haf kids that will now grow up orphans, but judging from the information I've read in the Tesla blog post, it is clear that he was in the…

> but judging from the information I've read in the Tesla blog post

Lol

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

#399

Post by moduspol »

neotek wrote: post #278

That's what happens when you mislead your customers into believing your self-driving technology is far more advanced than it actually is. I hope Tesla loses this case and is forced to change their bullshit marketing before more people lose their lives.

> According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location.

The idea that "bullshit marketing" is the problem here seems short-sighted.

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

#400

Post by unityByFreedom »

chli wrote: post #397
helloindia wrote: post #382

A more nuanced dissection of whose fault it was or could be[0]. "Huang was apparently fooled many times by Autopilot. In fact, he reportedly experienced the exact same system failure that led to his fatal crash at the same location on at least seven occasions." ........... "Huang knew that Autopilot could not be relied on in the circumstances where he was commuting along the 101 freeway in Mountainview, California. Y…

Or maybe, as I mentioned in a previous comment [1]: - Mr. Wuang knew about the bad spot - A Tesla OTA solved the issue for that particular spot - He got used to the car behaving properly in that location - A Tesla OTA introduces a regression for that particular spot - Mr. Wuang dies. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17141784

Yep, or it didn't happen all the time and he perceived it was fixed after reporting it. We do not have all the facts.
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