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Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

latimes.com

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Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#61

Post by mixmastamyk »

matt-attack wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #11

Figure 7 depicts the movement of the Tesla and the two lead vehicles in the last 15 seconds before the crash. In the left panel—covering 15 to 8 seconds before impact—the Tesla is accelerating from 9 to 18 mph while following a lead vehicle (red car) at 30 to 46 feet.In the middle panel—covering 7 to 4 seconds before impact—the Tesla is traveling at a constant 21 mph while following a lead vehicle (green car) at a di…

It only highlights how incredibly dumb these autopilots are. They’re incredibly diligent but completely fail at the necessary skill of understanding . What is the point of any of this if the car with all of its sensors knowingly plows into a stationary red 30-ton obstacle. It’s something that a 4 year old human would understand instantly as an object to be avoided at all cost. I really think folks don’t realize how c…

Sounds like dumb policy to me. Why wouldn’t it stop for a boulder or fallen tree?

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#62

Post by slavik81 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #30
c3534l wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to stay attentive behind the wheel is to actually be the one driving. There's virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. If a driver can't check their email or whatever on their phone while autopilot is on, then autopilot is not safe to put in cars. And while I'm okay with not-exactly-safe for most things people willingly consume or use, driving is not an area where it…

> There's virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. How do aircraft pilots manage it?

There are lots of differences, but one is that situations requiring aircraft pilot intervention often have a timeline measured in minutes. The recommended procedure for handling an emergency situation is to pull the checklist for that situation before starting to ensure you don't miss anything. Even urgent situations, like a TCAS alert, will often give 30 seconds warning. By contrast, this driver had roughly 2 seconds to notice that the autopilot was silently failing to handle the situation and to apply the brakes to prevent a collision.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#63

Post by userbinator »

chrisseaton wrote: post #30
c3534l wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to stay attentive behind the wheel is to actually be the one driving. There's virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. If a driver can't check their email or whatever on their phone while autopilot is on, then autopilot is not safe to put in cars. And while I'm okay with not-exactly-safe for most things people willingly consume or use, driving is not an area where it…

> There's virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. How do aircraft pilots manage it?

Unlike a car, a plane at cruising altitude doesn't immediately crash into the one in front if the pilot doesn't pay attention for half a second, and despite their far higher absolute speed, actions performed when flying have a much lower relative speed.

For example, in a car, several seconds of following distance is normal and following another car that closely is common. In a plane, which can move in 3 dimensions, horizontal separation is measured in minutes and it's not that common to be following immediately behind another plane at the same speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_(aeronautics)#Horiz...

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#64

Post by Retric »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #61
matt-attack wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only highlights how incredibly dumb these autopilots are. They’re incredibly diligent but completely fail at the necessary skill of understanding . What is the point of any of this if the car with all of its sensors knowingly plows into a stationary red 30-ton obstacle. It’s something that a 4 year old human would understand instantly as an object to be avoided at all cost. I really think folks don’t realize how c…

Sounds like dumb policy to me. Why wouldn’t it stop for a boulder or fallen tree?

/devils advocate

False positives are dangerous. Trying to detect ‘Anything’ may result in more deaths than hitting the tiny number of exceptions.

Alternatively, the system would be overly flakey and hard break all the time.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#65

Post by bg24 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #9

Fire truck driver here: People crash into parked fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars all the damn time . That's why we park the Big Red Truck at an angle behind the accident -- so that when the 2-ton car crashes into the 30-ton truck, the car will bounce off and the people behind the truck (us) won't be injured. I don't disagree that Tesla's software is partly to blame here, but the null experiment also has a lou…

I was going at 30-40mph in the right lane on a 4-lane all empty highway, when a gentleman flies at 60-70mph and hits us right behind, goes 360 turn with us and we hit the wall. Everyone survived without any medical incident (other than that I do panic and respectfully avoid those fliers now-a-days). Relevant because: - I hope my sprinter (size of mini truck, with upfittings) had an autopilot in the front/rear to speed up or divert to save an accident. - +1 to your parking angle. The other driver survived because he hit us at an angle and skidded full circle to minimize the impact. Of course, that helped our life as well.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#66

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #25
diminoten wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is certainly okay when the rates at which these things happen is lower than the rates at which non-self driving cars have accidents. A 0% accident rate is unrealistic and unfair.

> It is certainly okay when the rates at which these things happen is lower than the rates at which non-self driving cars have accidents. Eh, Tesla likes to point to this statistic every time the safety of Autopilot comes into question, but it is an apples-to-oranges comparison because AP is only used on highways where traffic incidents are already far less common per mile driven. Detailed data is hard to come by, bu…

The way I remember it, Telsa keeps saying something like 'Autopilot is way safer than all-other-road-vehicles-combined'.

What's the point of comparing Telsa Autopilot related crashes to crashes involving at least one motorcycle?

I think it's obvious the answer is: deception*.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#67

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

NickM wrote: post #34
AndrewBissell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is certainly okay when the rates at which these things happen is lower than the rates at which non-self driving cars have accidents. Eh, Tesla likes to point to this statistic every time the safety of Autopilot comes into question, but it is an apples-to-oranges comparison because AP is only used on highways where traffic incidents are already far less common per mile driven. Detailed data is hard to come by, bu…

it is an apples-to-oranges comparison because AP is only used on highways where traffic incidents are already far less common per mile driven. True, and that kind of flawed argument bugs me. However, there is also data that showed that accident rates went down significantly on the same cars after Tesla first enabled autopilot via a software update. This is much more compelling to me; if the same people driving the sa…

This sounds interesting. Are you able to remember where you might have read this?

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#68

Post by GhostVII »

kazinator wrote: post #16

> The vehicle’s design “permitted the driver to disengage from the driving task” Which vehicle's design does not permit a driver to disengage from the driving task?

Cadillac super cruise monitors your eyes to ensure you are looking at the road. Its not perfect but its a lot better than just requiring you to put pressure on the steering wheel.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#69

Post by Gustomaximus »

matt-attack wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #11

Figure 7 depicts the movement of the Tesla and the two lead vehicles in the last 15 seconds before the crash. In the left panel—covering 15 to 8 seconds before impact—the Tesla is accelerating from 9 to 18 mph while following a lead vehicle (red car) at 30 to 46 feet.In the middle panel—covering 7 to 4 seconds before impact—the Tesla is traveling at a constant 21 mph while following a lead vehicle (green car) at a di…

It only highlights how incredibly dumb these autopilots are. They’re incredibly diligent but completely fail at the necessary skill of understanding . What is the point of any of this if the car with all of its sensors knowingly plows into a stationary red 30-ton obstacle. It’s something that a 4 year old human would understand instantly as an object to be avoided at all cost. I really think folks don’t realize how c…

We need to look at driverless a different way and I suspect this is why it's going to be hard to accept driverless for longer than we need to.

Computers look at the world in a different way. So they are going to have accidents that seem very obvious to humans making people go "look how bad driverless is because a human would never...". Many people will take that as a reason to avoid driverless tech.

Yet driverless will (or should) avoid many more accidents humans would have made if they were in control.

Because of this we need to look at overall statistics. If we only look at specific driverless accidents from a human lens it's going to be easy to non-lateral thinkers to get caught up in criticising but it doesn't actually understand the benifits or not.

Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

#70

Post by KT-222 »

Did the sun play a role in this? This picture from the report shows a low sun directly ahead. (Southbound 405 is going SSE in Culver City. 8:40AM accident)

https://imgur.com/a/OaHNqdQ

Assuming it was taken ~1 hour after accident, the sun would have been lower and to the left at time of the accident. The slightly askew firetruck might have been basically facing the sun, and its prominent rear features would have been in as much as shadow as possible. Obviously there were other factors involved (yes, ultimately driver's fault), but do Tesla's cameras have the dynamic range to be looking directly at a low sun and also see details in shadows? Originally I thought this was a high-speed accident and am surprised to learn it happened between 20-30 MPH.

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