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

#471

Post by _ea1k » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

radcon wrote: post #447

_ea1k wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I'm also not sure that it is a particularly important distinction. He was repeatedly warned that attention is required with this system and yet clearly was not paying attention at the time of the crash.

> clearly was not paying attention at the time of the crash. This is the fundamental point that I'm disagreeing with though. As far as I know, Tesla has a very crude system for determining driver attentiveness. They rely ONLY on steering wheel torque, which is an extremely unreliable indicator. They don't do any sort of head or eye tracking. So when Tesla claims a driver wasn't paying attention, all it really means i…

When a driver unintentionally crashes into a solid object for no particular reason, noone needs vast knowledge to realize that the driver wasn't paying attention at that time.

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

#472

Post by pbreit » Thu, May 02, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #241

marmshallow wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate why?

Unlikely. The only comments he's provided here are one sentence sound bites that channel Musk's purest essence. Companies using LIDAR? "They bet wrong". People describing how stereo cameras don't inherently see 3D? "Baloney. Based on eyesight". Companies that have spent years and billions developing and testing autonomy? "Almost certain they are wrong".

Here's a nice video: https://answerswithjoe.com/lidar-vs-computer-vision-waymo-be...

It's a little more compelling on the data side but also goes into Lidar vs vision.

It might be controversial at this point to assert that vision is better. But I don't think it's controversial any longer to assert that vision is sufficient.

Given that driving and roads are currently set up for vision and Lidar will never be able to "see", it seems very reasonable to think vision could ultimately be better.

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

#473

Post by MeltySmelty » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #393

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…

precisely. tesla is full of shit and musk needs to take a serious hike.

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

#474

Post by toast0 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

mgoetzke wrote: post #274

afterburner wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering the overall odds of a crash may not be enough if the few accidents happen in circumstances that a human driver would have absolutely no trouble with.

Agreed, but a number of these accidents on dividers had previous accidents on the exact same spots with human drivers. So humans do have trouble with it. I would also like to point out, that dividers like these are dangerous in of themselves. There should never be knife-like intrusions into the driving space on a high speed road of any kind. They are also quite uncessary, a few simple left right signs that bend over…

This exit is a left hand exit for an HOV only ramp that originates a different freeway. The interchange is in the middle of a built out suburban area; there's no room for a grassy divider.

From experience driving around it, humans get dangerously close to the divider due to trying to change lanes much too late -- either into or out of the exit lane, often with a significant amount of braking. Durable cones separating the lanes might be an option, but would add significant maintenance expense.

The Tesla in question collided with the obstacle while its automation was attempting to maintain a lane, and because the automation detected that the car ahead had moved out of the lane, it also accelerated into the divider.

I seriously doubt many (or any) human drivers would misinterpret the position of the lane in this manner at this exit, especially given the conditions (clear day, sun high avoiding glare) despite the poor striping in the area.

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

#475

Post by slavik81 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

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…

> most accident are in the 15 Km around the drivers' home (probably because the driver feel "safer" because he knows the road)

A 15km radius from my house would nearly cover all but the most far-flung areas of the medium-sized city that I live in. The vast majority of my driving would be within that radius, so it's not surprising the majority of my driving accidents would be within that radius.

Just for reference, a disk with a radius of 15km would have an area of 700km². You could compare that with the area of Chicago (590km²) or New York City (780km²).

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

#476

Post by lunulata » Thu, May 02, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

beering wrote: post #119

lunulata wrote: post #38

Living around silicon valley with all the tesla drivers here, you learn real fast it makes for some of the worst drivers out on the road. Regularly see them running red lights and just generally not paying attention. They crutch too hard on the auto-pilot and dick around on their smart phones, which is probably exactly what this guy was doing. It's bad for tesla drivers and it's bad for drivers around them. Hope Tesl…

Is it that Tesla drivers are actually worse, or that Teslas stick out to you more than other mundane cars and are pretty common around Silicon Valley?

Good point, it could be they stick out more to me. They are super common in SV. I've personally had teslas run red lights in front of me on two different occasions within last couple months and those particularly stand out in my mind since they put my life in danger mid-intersection. I ride a motorcycle and suspect the Tesla auto pilot is particularly bad at spotting motorcyclists.

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

#477

Post by rladd » Thu, May 02, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

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…

And they still don't work and are still driving at barriers!

https://np.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/b36x27/its_back...

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

#478

Post by m463 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:46 AM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #365

rolleiflex wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are still misreprenting their self-driving capabilities in their marketing materials: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/autopilot?redirect=no In the beginning of this video there's the caption "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." If the lawyers in this lawsuit are any good they will have a field day with this.

That is pre-release full-self-driving software under test.

It is definitely NOT a feature that has been released to the public.

The traffic aware cruise control and self-steering features tesla has released to the public require your hands to be on the wheel. If you take your hands off the wheel you will get a small warning, then a larger warning and finally a huge alert.

By the way, if you show a pattern of ignoring alerts it will refuse to drive for you anymore.

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

#479

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Fri, May 03, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #457

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be so kind as to point me in the general direction of such bullshit.

Apologies if I'm wrong. Can't find anything right now (no time to search further) except some clarifications that accidents closer to home are often with parked cars, not often fatal, at slower speeds, and that possibly the biggest reason is simply because the majority of our driving is close to home. It's that last item that I'm focussing on. In other words, are we statistically more likely to crash near home? Yes.…

That makes intuitive sense, and when I reasoned about your comment earlier that's the general direction my thinking went.

I live pretty much exactly one mile from my work, and the two nearest shopping centres are less than half a mile beyond that.

I'd definitely be interested in seeing some heat maps of representing this data. It's easy to believe that the majority of people live close to at least one of the places they most often travel to, whether that is a workplace or other activity, and I think you're right that this is an important metric within which to consider such statistics.

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

#480

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Fri, May 03, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #451

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question. Did you mean to ignore the fact that Tesla knows the score? Tesla knows all of those statistics about its drivers, and knows how those numbers compare to other published data. And they chose to write up the data in the manner they did. In which configuration of all possible worlds is this ok?

Funnily enough I hadn't actually considered it. I guess because I was considering it from the outside.

Thank you for admitting that.

In light of this new context, has your thinking around this subject changed?