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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

#481

Post by newman8r »

chillingeffect wrote: post #430
dubyah wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the no hands-on-steering-wheel detection claim Tesla keeps bringing up is that it's quite fallible and not as conclusive as they insist. A light touch(like one might expect while driving a freeway with cruise control and lane-keep assist, for example) may not provide enough torque for the sensor to detect it. Plenty of people have complained about it in the past. https://forums.teslarati.com/threads/…

Any idea why torque is used, as opposed to reliable methods like capacitive? I think you're absolutely right about torque being minimal on straight ways.

One guess is that capacitive would be problematic if the driver is wearing gloves.

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

#482

Post by craftinator »

natch wrote: post #144
craftinator wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what evidence?

Based on what Tesla presented in their autonomy day event ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE ) but it's also what they've been saying publicly for a while now... in a nutshell, they ask the cars to send selected summary data back when interventions happen and in certain other cases.

Ah thank you. I had only ever heard that it was a beta feature, something they planned to implement in the future.

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

#483

Post by studentrob »

_ea1k wrote: post #443
studentrob wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Tesla, > the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road [1] Tesla has made a habit of drawing conclusions about investigations that have just begun. It is sketchy, and people have noticed. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-says-fatal-model-x-aut...

I don't understand. What other theory are you proposing than that he wasn't paying attention?

According to the preliminary report from the NTSB,

> At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected. [1]

This means the vehicle gave the driver less time to respond. I'd argue the manufacturer bears some responsibility.

[1] https://ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HWY1...

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

#484

Post by sjwright »

jacquesm wrote: post #391
sjwright wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There might be some bad implementations out there, but that is a problem with that implementation, not the technology.

I've driven extensively with AEB in a 2015 Jeep Cherokee and it has been borderline faultless. And that's surprising because I have very low regard for anything made by Fiat/Chrysler, but whatever (presumably third party) tech they integrated, it has been rock solid. Over tens of thousands of kilometres it has never, ever had a true false positive. And the radar cruise has never, ever had a false negative.

Very occasionally the AEB has "freaked out" unnecessarily; usually when I'm driving right into someone who is in the process of turning off the road. I know that they'll be out of my way in time for me to go past, so technically it's a false positive, but even then I'd give it to the car. I am driving dangerously. I am gambling that the turning driver doesn't brake suddenly before they complete their turn

(I've also done a few thousand kilometers in a 2019 Subaru Forester with Eyesight—a purely vision-based system—and its adaptive cruise is even better than on the Jeep. It's less anxious on the brakes in response to movements by the cars ahead, and you can configure how eagerly it accelerates back up to set speed when the road clears.)

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

#485

Post by sjwright »

hef19898 wrote: post #357
sjwright wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does the car provide repeated warnings, we can pretty clearly infer that—like anyone who has used Autopilot—he had become reasonably proficient at avoiding the warnings. So not only was he warned, he was actively working to avoid those warnings. (Edit: to those voting me down, please contribute your objections to the discussion.)

Well, the warnings were unrelated and 15 minutes before the crash for once. So that invalids the ignored warnings in that case. I assume the real chain of events will be analyzed now. And the fact that the Autopilot is named the way it is for, presumably, marketing reasons doesn't help.

Exactly, no warnings for 15 minutes. Which means the driver HAD received warnings, understood the warnings, and learned how to avoid the warnings with such proficiency that he did not receive one for 15 minutes. It is not possible to avoid these warnings without being acutely aware of what the car was warning him not to do.

Furthermore, as a licensed car driver, he should know that driving is his responsibility. Nothing a car manufacturer says can diminish that responsibility. Even if Tesla's feature descriptions were ambiguous or insufficiently clear, that doesn't override the responsibility of a licensed car driver to remain in command of the vehicle at all times.

It's not Tesla's fault if a driver ignores the requirements of their driver license AND the vehicle's clearly worded warnings. Claiming that the driver is not at fault because they interpreted the word "autopilot" to mean "I can disregard my responsibility as a driver and ignore the vehicle's very clear warnings" is absurd.

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

#486

Post by sjwright »

rightbyte wrote: post #355
sjwright wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with the no hands-on-steering-wheel detection claim Tesla keeps bringing up I don't get why it matters. Why is Tesla's responsibility greater or lesser based on the position of the driver's hands? The driver could have had one hand on the wheel while mousing around on a laptop with the other. Or he could have been intensely focused on the road ahead with his hands resting on his legs, inches away from t…

It's a dead man switch. If the dead man switch is not working it's a system malfunction.

That might be technically true, but it's irrelevant. Nowhere does Tesla ever describe it to the customer as a dead man switch.

And it wasn't malfunctioning. He wasn't a dead man. He was very much alive, understood the warnings, understood that the car expected him to keep his hands on the wheel and keep paying attention to the road. He understood the warnings so well that he was capable of avoiding them with such proficiency that he did not receive one for 15 minutes.

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

#487

Post by sjwright »

astazangasta wrote: post #453
yifanl wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By representing the car to come with an auto driver, they implicitly take on that responsibility.

By naming it "Autopilot" they take on that responsibility.

Imagine a driver driving down a parkway at speed and thinking "I'm on a parkway, so I should shift the car into Park."

That's how dumb that argument is.

If a driver ignores the requirements of their driver license AND the vehicle's clearly worded warnings, then the driver is entirely responsible. Claiming that the driver is not at fault because they interpreted the word "autopilot" to mean "I can disregard my responsibility as a driver and ignore the vehicle's very clear warnings" is absurd.

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

#488

Post by carlivar »

pbreit wrote: post #472
FireBeyond wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

Or none of it will work.

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

#489

Post by Ntrails »

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…

> Companies need to aggressively enforce, both hands on steering until self-driving is really really really good.

Hands on the wheel is such a stupid metric. Two hands on the wheel whilst watching a film on an ipad doesn't do a damned thing.

What matters is whether I'm paying attention, a much harder to measure metric. Am I looking at the road, judging distances, hazards, etc.

I say this every time autopilots come up - I think it is impossible for a human to give up responsibility for reacting to 99.99% of input and still retain attention for the remaining 0.01%. I certainly don't believe I can do it, and don't intend to use a car that ever expects it.

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

#490

Post by pbreit »

carlivar wrote: post #488
pbreit wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

Or none of it will work.

I and many others believe that it is very unlikely.
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