Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 236 posts

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

#71

Post by gbrown »

bg24 wrote: post #65
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 spee…

The other driver was clearly 100% totally at fault, but I'm just curious: why were you going 30-40 on a four lane highway? Where I live that's at least 25 below the speed limit.

Here it's mostly tractors and other farm equipment driving at those speeds.

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

#72

Post by toomuchtodo »

organsnyder wrote: post #42
danhak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The physical act of turning a wheel isn't the hard part of driving. Paying attention is. As an avid user of Tesla Autopilot I'll disagree with this. On a long road trip, monitoring my surroundings and making sure everything is generally ok is far less fatiguing than making constant microadjustments to steering, speed and following distance. Even while paying close attention to the ride, long trips (especially in st…

I've noticed the same thing driving my Chrysler Pacifica, which has lane keeping and adaptive cruise (with FCW). But it's not called "autopilot", and it deactivates if it detects that my hands are off the wheel.

Model S and X owner here. Autopilot will nag you after so many seconds (depending on vehicle speed and autopilot path planning confidence) if it doesn’t detect steering wheel torque, and if you ignore the nags, it brings the vehicle to a stop safely with the hazards on.

Car and Driver tested AEB in several vehicles (Tesla, Toyota, Subaru) and they are all pretty equally bad at it. Figuring out if matter in front of you, while traveling at speed, poses a life critical hazard is hard! It’s better than no AEB, but don’t rely on it entirely or you’re going to end up maimed or dead. As the driver, you are still the final responsible party.

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

#73

Post by birdyrooster »

gpm wrote: post #54
birdyrooster wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to be fair to consumers and bystanders, Tesla needs their product to safely stop the reckless behavior (not simply warn the user). If it can't do that, it needs to disable AutoPilot. AutoPilot was marketed in a way which led to Tesla selling their product to people with unwittingly dangerous uses in mind. It is unacceptable for Tesla to enable this reckless driving. Tesla has the ability to affect the scal…

Why can't I say literally the exact same thing about all cars? Let's hold people responsible for their actions, not objects. It's one thing to say "autopilot makes it hard to focus", it's another thing to say "autopilot made me pick up the phone while driving, and lie about it".

Tesla's Auto Pilot website makes claims that other auto manufacturers don't make like:

"With the new Tesla Vision cameras, sensors and computing power, your Tesla will navigate tighter, more complex roads."

There is a lot implied in the short phrasing of "navigate tighter, more complex roads". It also begs the question that Tesla's capabilities were sufficient in the first place.

"All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat."

Why make potentially misleading and untested future-looking statements when consumer safety should be the focus of a system like this? https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

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

#74

Post by creato »

rayiner wrote: post #44
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 may not be fixed. My 2019 Subaru, also a camera based system, does exactly the same thing (accelerate towards stationary traffic when the car in front changes lanes). And car and driver found at least with the 2018 Model S that it performed somewhat worse than Subaru on avoiding stationary objects.

I use the automatic cruise control on my 2018 Subaru pretty much 100% of the time I'm on a highway, and I've never noticed this problem.

The only limitation like this that I've noticed is that the range isn't long enough for me to trust it to slow down if I'm traveling at highway speed and there's a stationary vehicle far ahead. Is this what you are referring to? Because I don't think that's the same problem. If I'm not traveling at highway speed in the same situation, I'll let the cruise control do its thing, and as soon as the stopped vehicle is in range, it will start to slow down.

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

#75

Post by macintux »

brownbat wrote: post #59
macintux wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics makes for a tough sell to the survivors. “Yes, this autonomous vehicle killed your son who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but someone else’s son would have died in an unrelated accident somewhere else were it not for autonomy.”

You absolutely can't challenge someone's personal experience with statistics, but something about this line of argument still troubles me. I've lost a handful of close friends to car accidents. If survivorship grants standing, then I'm for doing almost anything to reduce the tens of thousands of US road deaths each year. Survivors have been angry at safety tech before, but we generally ignore them. I've known people…

People understand drunk drivers. They understand distracted drivers. They’re angry, rightfully so, but it’s a known problem and easy to comprehend. We can make laws tougher and feel good about it, even if it doesn’t help much.

It’s harder to emotionally cope with, I speculate, when someone you love is killed by a software bug, or by machine learning where no one can precisely explain why it made a certain choice.

I’m not saying I’m against autonomy. I just don’t know how to prevent it being caught in a backlash when people who didn’t have to die, do.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

diminoten wrote: post #8
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by dahfizz »

gbrown wrote: post #71
bg24 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spee…

The other driver was clearly 100% totally at fault, but I'm just curious: why were you going 30-40 on a four lane highway? Where I live that's at least 25 below the speed limit. Here it's mostly tractors and other farm equipment driving at those speeds.

Yeah, that seems dangerous. There is usually a hard 45mph minimum on the highways near me.

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

#78

Post by newnewpdro »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #27
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…

This one time I go stopped at a fruit fly control point on the border between South Australia and Victoria, near Bordertown. The person staffing the control point indicated with hand signals for me to stop on the highway in the lane I was in. So I slowed down to walking speed and pulled off the highway into the car park next to the office. The agent then lectured me about not following instructions and that she could…

It always blows my mind when a highway patrol scolds me for not stopping immediately on the side of the road, instead pulling off at the first exit/intersection to make it safer for us.

I'd estimate it's about 10% of the time. But on the contrary, I've also had them express appreciation for doing the same thing.

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

#79

Post by dahfizz »

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…

This is completely ridiculous. Adults drive into stationary objects all the time. 4 year olds walk into stationary objects all the time.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one criterion that matters when evaluating self driving cars: is it better than human drivers?

The fact that we are still discussing this _one_ accident that happened _a year ago_ indicates to me that the answer is a resounding yes.

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

#80

Post by jmpman »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #69
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…

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 wi…

And the lawyers will become very wealthy putting these companies into bankruptcy... as they should.
Post reply on HN