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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

#101

Post by serf »

dahfizz wrote: post #82
mixmastamyk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How often are bolders in the road? As software engineers, we can understand the hidden costs in complexity and bugs when implementing features that don't need to be implemented. I could imagine that false positives for bolder avoidance causing more harm than false negatives. Obviously it should be smart enough to detect any and every obstruction, but I'd rather the 99% use case get ironed out first.

> How often are bolders in the road?

as someone who has driven all over the west , all the time.

You have New Mexico and Arizona that believe that steep incline cliff faces on both sides of the highways are a fashion statement, states like California, Washington, and Oregon that like to build new properties on rapid-eroding mountainsides, and states like Nevada that simply don't patrol sparsely populated highways -- and are simply ignorant to the boulder some kids rolled into the street some weeks back.

All anecdotal, but i'm a fairly heavy driver and I see them commonly.

I agree that false positives are to be avoided -- but that doesn't really lessen the value in boulder-avoidance ; it just brings up yet another point to worry about with the system as a whole.

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

#102

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #94
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I assume he's referring to the NHTSA study which was released on the last day of the Obama administration and purported to show a 40% reduction in crash rates. It's still the highest search result on HN for "Tesla Autopilot." That study was later shown to have employed sketchy data and egregiously flawed methodology. A deeper dive showed that the crash rates may have actually gone up with Autopilot. HN discussion her…

Thanks for the link. (No idea why your comment has been down voted, certainly wasn't me).

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

#103

Post by cortesoft »

newnewpdro wrote: post #78
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jesus, how many times have you been pulled over that 10% of the time is more than once!?

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

#104

Post by AndrewBissell »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #102
AndrewBissell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume he's referring to the NHTSA study which was released on the last day of the Obama administration and purported to show a 40% reduction in crash rates. It's still the highest search result on HN for "Tesla Autopilot." That study was later shown to have employed sketchy data and egregiously flawed methodology. A deeper dive showed that the crash rates may have actually gone up with Autopilot. HN discussion her…

Thanks for the link. (No idea why your comment has been down voted, certainly wasn't me).

Happens on every Tesla thread.

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

#105

Post by rohit2412 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #100
matt-attack wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adults drive into stationary objects all the time I agree. But do they when alert and focused and when they clearly see the object? I highly doubt it. This Tesla was all of those things, and still crashed.

That's a non-sequitur unless the average driver the autopilot is replacing is alert and focused.

Or you could have only the automatic emergency braking in a vehicle, and not autosteer.

Stop acting like it's all or nothing. The technology behind autopilot is being touted as driverless/self-driving, but it can do passive accident avoidance. That should be the benchmark to compare too.

In this particular case, humans get distracted and get in an accident. Autopilot is dumb as shit and gets in an accident. But a human with an emergency braking system is smart and doesn't get in an accident on the account of driver distraction.

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

#106

Post by newnewpdro »

cortesoft wrote: post #103
newnewpdro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jesus, how many times have you been pulled over that 10% of the time is more than once!?

There was a period of a few years where I drove a track-prepped race car on the street daily, with out of state plates for emissions reasons, and it resulted in a lot of police encounters.

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

#107

Post by kwhitefoot »

kevingadd wrote: post #90
toomuchtodo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

How do you reconcile this with the claims in the accident report that the hands-off alert intervals are measured in minutes for the accident scenario? Quoted here with link to full source: https://twitter.com/vogon/status/1169358625220882432 Visual indicator after 2 minutes of no detected driver-applied torque to the steering wheel (apparently because they only detect torque - i.e. turning/steering motions - and not…

>hands-off alert intervals are measured in minutes for the accident scenario

Since January 2018 there have been software updates that reduce the time that the car will allow you to not signal to it that you are paying attention. You now have to apply a little turning force to the wheel much more often than before.

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

#108

Post by jmpman »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #84
jmpman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why should they?

Because self driving car companies are putting a dangerous product onto the road, citing “safer than human drivers” in a disingenuous manner. Musk likes to cite autopilot as safer than human drivers, based upon accidents per miles driven. However, where are autopilot miles primarily being driven? On the highway. I expect a sober human driver to have a much lower accident rate than Tesla’s autopilot when driving the same highway miles. And yet Musk pushes his agenda... which is possibly an overreach. When I see cars plowing into the rear of fire trucks, into freeway split barriers, into tow trucks or under turning semis, I have to ask myself if I would have been able to avoid those, and I can honestly say that I would have. Would a drunken high schooler? Probably not.

I simply don’t believe the “safer than humans” narrative is being honest with the number of caveats.

Until self driving car executives are willing to send their children into the street in a real life game of frogger with their cars being driven by a bunch of drunken frat boys in a blizzard, they shouldn’t expect the general public to blindly agree to be their guinea pigs either.

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

#109

Post by anticensor »

organsnyder wrote: post #41
chrisseaton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Extensive training, restriction of hours worked, health restrictions (pretty sure my ADHD would prevent me from being a commercial pilot)... Also, my understanding is that aircraft autopilot systems are designed to allow for pilot response to take up to three seconds. Three seconds on the highway is a lifetime.

Car driving also has health preconditions.

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

#110

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

newnewpdro wrote: post #106
cortesoft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, how many times have you been pulled over that 10% of the time is more than once!?

There was a period of a few years where I drove a track-prepped race car on the street daily, with out of state plates for emissions reasons, and it resulted in a lot of police encounters.

Has there been any studies of this? I think it’s well known that if you drive a sports car you get pulled over more often, but I drive a beat up pickup in the south of USA and almost never get pulled over even though I’m frequently 5-10 MPH over the speed limit. Would be interesting to see pickup vs a normal mid range sedan vs sports cars in numbers. Maybe throw in out of state plates as an extra variable.
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