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

latimes.com

181–190 of 236 posts

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hum…

There are accidents caused by cruise control. That's your Level 1 example. Yet Level 1 systems are not banned.

I didn't recommend banning. But to stop saying "it's safer than an average driver".

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

#183
If Tesla is unable to brake for a stationary fire truck with 3+ seconds of visibility, why should I be confident to pay $6k for “Full Self Driving”? Recognizing a stopped fire truck (effectively a wall) in front of me is a prerequisite for me to invest further. A part of me believes that the public is being intentionally misled on the capabilities, and Tesla’s lack of transparency, coupled with their financial incentive to obscure, makes me more cynical.

What Tesla needs to do is to classify every known accident, and then recreate the accident (video please) followed by a recreation with their fixes. If the scenario can’t be prevented in software, it needs to be disclosed to the buyer.

Would Tesla crash into that same fire truck again with the newest software? I suspect yes. I even suspect there are a bunch of engineers sitting around Tesla confident that crashing into that fire truck was the right thing to do.

Heck, I think Tesla should be required to have an asterisk next to every self driving claim, with an asterisk for every known scenario where their product has failed, including links to the crash reports, including full video evidence. The public should have a right to know exactly where/when/why the system failed as long as those failures aren’t prevented in software from happening again.

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

#184
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In some parts of the US, the word "highway" is used to refer to roads (sometimes quite wide) that have stop lights and with speed limits around 40 MPH. I grew up in northern California, and we call roads without stop lights "freeways" and roads with stop lights "highways". There are various other terms, of course (e.g. "expressways"), but these are the most common generic descriptors. I wouldn't assume that the drive…

Makes sense, the usage is colloquially different in the Midwest.

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

#185
post #77
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm never going to to discourage people from driving slow, because our monkey brains have shit reaction times and perception, and KE increases with the square of velocity, but if you're traveling well below the normal speed of travel, put your flashers on. In many places this is mandated for a certain amount under the limit.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, whatever the reason, there are less accidents with Autopilot, than without. Autopilot is a convenience feature. The question is: Are you willing to accept only 33% less likely hood of an accident with autopilot engaged as compared to when you drive on your own in not Autopilot safe conditions? Do you use Uber knowing that their average driver will be ... well ... average, or just somewhat better than avera…

He has a point, right? There's a possibility of clear sampling bias: if there are X miles that are safe and Y miles that are dangerous and autopilot can only be engaged in the X miles, then it's not creating safety, but the partitioning will cause it to appear to be safer than the human. If the partitioning had been done without autopilot the two partitions may show similar behaviour.

For an analogy, you've got two surgeons, one who only takes cases where he is extremely confident he can operate successfully, and one who takes the cases no one else will. The first loses 1% of his patients on the table, the second 20%. Which person is the better surgeon?

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

#187
post #183

If Tesla is unable to brake for a stationary fire truck with 3+ seconds of visibility, why should I be confident to pay $6k for “Full Self Driving”? Recognizing a stopped fire truck (effectively a wall) in front of me is a prerequisite for me to invest further. A part of me believes that the public is being intentionally misled on the capabilities, and Tesla’s lack of transparency, coupled with their financial incent…

Why should anyone buy a feature for $6k that basically gets them nothing until a future point when they could buy it anyways?

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why's it hard? That humans get distracted and often make mistakes is no surprise, it should also be obvious that the amount of risky behavior is correlated to the amount of _perceived_ risk in any given situation, which is probably why so many are "a simple crash." It is, however, somewhat scary that a machine that has nothing else to do other than to drive the car as safely as possible still makes these "dumb" mis…

Adaptive cruise control makes dumb mistakes. Cruise control makes dumb mistakes. I know people who think automatic transmissions makes people worse drivers.

> I know people who think automatic transmissions makes people worse drivers.

Well, it's certainly a bit trickier to to respond to texts or browse instagram when you need two hands to operate the vehicle.

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

#189
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I am pretty sure in Germany they do just that: they drive with you to the next exit. They have a huge display that tells you to follow. At least according to my anecdotal evidence.

In EU you've usually got an entire always empty "emergency stop" lane on the right side.

These are getting removed in the UK to be opened as an extra lane, with overhead sings warning you to get out of it if there's a stranded vehicle.

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

#190
post #183

If Tesla is unable to brake for a stationary fire truck with 3+ seconds of visibility, why should I be confident to pay $6k for “Full Self Driving”? Recognizing a stopped fire truck (effectively a wall) in front of me is a prerequisite for me to invest further. A part of me believes that the public is being intentionally misled on the capabilities, and Tesla’s lack of transparency, coupled with their financial incent…

Why should anyone buy a feature for $6k that basically gets them nothing until a future point when they could buy it anyways?

It will be more expensive later.
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