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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

#461

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…

> Humans killing humans is very different thing than machines killing humans even if the fatality rates are 10X lower. So it is better for 10 humans to die at the hands of other humans, than one machine caused death? In what moral framework is that true?

It's a public acceptance issue, not a moral issue.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to remember here is that with RADAR it is, I have read, very hard to tell a soda can from a car from a above highway sign as you are cresting a hill. So they will often filter out anything that is stopped. I read this a few months ago and it blew my mind. Then I read about that LIDAR sensor burning a camera sensor and thought "how safe can that be?!?"

> with RADAR it is, I have read, very hard to tell a soda can from a car from a above highway sign Yes, read about phantom braking, for example here, https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/b5yx1o/welp_th...

Don't need to read about it. Last year I was on a 2400 mile trip. On a long, deserted stretch of road, suddenly, out of nowhere my Tesla slammed on the brakes. I had to throw away my underwear. :-)

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

#463
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all very true, but one interesting thing is that the driver in this case knew that at this location the autopilot was 100% likely to fail. I believe I read he had even reported it several times to Tesla Service and his family. The lane markers in this area, based on video I watched of it years ago, are pretty bad, IIRC. Like, a human could have problems following the markers bad. As evidence to support this I'…

The problem is: - Autopilot doesn’t work in that area. Driver reports it to Tesla. - Tesla fixes the issue in a software update. - Driver sees the improvement, and happily relies on autopilot. - After a while, a new software update introduces a regression. - Driver doesn’t find out about the regression until it’s too late (and is not around to testify about it anymore).

Is this what happened in this case, or is this speculation? Just curious, because it's a valid point, but I hadn't heard that it got better but then reverted. Source?

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all very true, but one interesting thing is that the driver in this case knew that at this location the autopilot was 100% likely to fail. I believe I read he had even reported it several times to Tesla Service and his family. The lane markers in this area, based on video I watched of it years ago, are pretty bad, IIRC. Like, a human could have problems following the markers bad. As evidence to support this I'…

Except he won’t argue that because he is dead. Which, in itself, is the best counter argument to your conclusion that he knew what he was doing and allowed it to happen intentionally. Unless you’re also theorizing that he chose to commit suicide using one of the most creative methods he could, while making Tesla take the blame. It’s not impossible I suppose, but it doesn’t seem like the most reasonable conclusion.

Agreed, it's not impossible but also seems unlikely. It seems, as I was writing my previous message, like the plot for some crazy courtroom drama show: He couldn't go on living but needed to support his family!

Seems unlikely, but I just don't understand why he'd be using Autopilot in this area given his past with it.

When I first got Autopilot in my Tesla, I was playing with it on the city streets, and it decided to swerve into the divided, concrete median at the end of the intersection, deciding that was the lane. I grabbed control of it, no problem, but 2 years later I still am extra vigilant around any lane dividers. Mostly though, I don't use Autopilot in such restricted areas.

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

#465

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…

They need to be aggressively fined until they stop using the term "auto pilot" which is highly disingenuous.

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

#466

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 has hammered on this "hands not detected on wheel for 6 seconds" point, but in my experience that doesn't mean anything.

Tesla's "hand on wheel" detection is terrible. It basically only works if you have one hand on the wheel at the 2 or 10 o'clock position; you have to be slightly tugging on the wheel. But not TOO much or it disengages.

I would usually drive, on long straight sections of the Interstate, with my hand at the 5 o'clock position, resting on my thigh and grasping the wheel. Very little steering input is necessary. But the Tesla always detects this as "hands not on wheel". Ditto if I have both my hands on the wheel, because the pulling force evens out between the left and right side of the wheel.

I basically never drive without my hands on the wheel, but Tesla kind of always detects "hands not on wheel". Sometimes I notice it before it sounds the audio alert, but sometimes I don't.

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

#467
post #185

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…

Yes, just break open a 1L torts treatise and there are dozens of cases.

The difference between autopilot on a boat and Tesla's Autopilot is a matter of agency/autonomy. Boat and plane autopilots mostly just go in a straight line--they make no decisions.

Tesla's autopilot functions autonomously from the driver--and that, legally, makes all the difference, because it can make different decisions from what the driver would do. The driver still bears some responsibility for their failure to oversee and correct TA, but TA bears direct responsibility.

The analysis would be different if TA was just a glorified cruise control or lane-keeping system.

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

#468

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, ho…

The word "prior" leads me to believe they mean immediately preceding the crash. However, if you want to place blame on Tesla, you can interpret that however you want. The data will come out in court unless there is a settlement. If Tesla loses this case, the world will NEVER see autonomous vehicles. In this sense, Tesla is kind of dumb for this very reason, should have never offered the feature at all.

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

#469
post #401

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.

Getting much better than the average human is achieved by a lot of humans. Deaths per mile are about 30x lower for bus/coach compared to cars, about 4x lower for vans and about 50x higher for motorcycles. There's a lot of variation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300601/average-number-of... If you assume vans have about the same crash protection as cars and some van drivers are idiots then I'd guess you could ge…

> Deaths per mile are about 30x lower for bus/coach compared to cars

Per passenger mile. So if busses have 30 people on on average, the accident rate could be the same, just typically only one passenger dies.

That also makes sense with the vehicle characteristics. It's much harder to die by being ejected from the vehicle or by intrusions into the passenger compartment in a bus. Also, heavier, longer bus = more gentle deceleration.

Your statement might still be true (and I suspect it broadly is), but it just isn't backed up by the cited data.

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

#470
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say has just enough technical detail to seem entirely plausible to someone who doesn't understand technology. It is also entirely wrong. The problem that I am describing is not the Halting Problem. A theoretically perfect NN is also able to do a lot better than any person could. The ability to have binocular vision in multiple directions, and mix that with radar awareness of the local environment and electro…

>It's also entirely wrong. It's not. You're asking for a Neural network capable of making generic inferences about the output of another neural network, in real time. That's Halting Problem. Will the data I'm feeding in cause the program I'm running to encounter an edge case (return/not return). You can't generify a neural network beyond it's training set. Cheekyness of the previous post aside, I stand by my statemen…

A neural network capable of making generic inferences about the output of another neural network, in real time, just needs to be able to run a simulation of that other network. While we do not currently have the resources to do it with a human brain, it is in principle quite doable.

The critical difference between this and the Halting problem is that solving the Halting problem by running a simulation would require simulating in finite time what another system does in infinite time. This requires simulating in finite time what the other system also does in finite time. Which requires a better system, but not an impossibly better system.

Moving on, you are over-estimating the requirements of the system that I describe. Today, with humans, a system like Waze can provide warnings about the road ahead which provides a useful assist to human drivers. This with a very small fraction of humans using the program, and even fewer actively registering hazards like "object on road". And yet, it is useful.

Automated driving systems can participate in a similar system. Only they will be more likely to provide information, and their information can be more detailed. Such as what lane the foreign object is in. It doesn't take a lot of data about what is out of view ahead to improve driving by a lot. But humans are built to only pay attention to one thing at that speeds. Automated systems can integrate information from multiple. Which means that they can be better.

Yes, what they are doing is simply feature extraction/input output mapping/information synthesis - but in principle nothing more is needed to drive better than is possible for humans.

At the moment, humans are better. But it is not impossible that computers can become better. It is, in fact, inevitable.

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