I worry much more about public overreaction to rare incidents slowing and overregulating self driving technology than I do about the rare crash here and there. Overall statistical safety is what matters, and statistics goes out the window when the public emotionally fixates on specific mishaps and demands regulation that slows and cripples overall-safe technology. Everyone believes, without reason, that he is a good…
Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
201–210 of 236 posts
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#202The Tesla damage control astro-turfing is out in full force. Between the surveillance state they've built and their complete disregard for safety, Silicon Valley will eventually be forced to atone for this from the public at large. Make sure you're on the right side of history.
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> As far as I'm concerned, there is only one criterion that matters when evaluating self driving cars: is it better than human drivers? By that measure, no tech company has contributed more to self-driving than Facebook Inc, masters of distraction. Relative safety isn't a good metric.
You can make moralistic arguments about why you don't like this or that, but at the end of the day you are causing unnecessary deaths when you choose to suppress a system which is better than human drivers.
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not convinced that's the right metric though. A more fair comparison would be: other drivers of similar demography driving other vehicles of similar age and specifications.
Why, though? I could buy a car with 3 star crash ratings, and people would be fine with that. I could get in a taxi with a mediocre driver, and people would be fine with that. Why does the comparison have to be to me driving, in a car like this ? When I'm shopping for a car, it makes sense. But for public policy discussions, what matters is how the safety ranks against the general population.
You can't determine whether Autopilot makes driving safer by comparing miles driven only on highways by Teslas to miles driven across the whole vehicle fleet.
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, we could also talk about the time the Tesla accelerated into a gore point when the lead car followed the lane to the overpass. Or the couple of times the Tesla drove into a semi trailer. Or the several other stationary emergency vehicles they've hit. At least the semi's were moving. We don't really know how well the Tesla automation does vs human drivers, because the statistics are complex, and Tesla only gives…
> The capabilities that Tesla cars have aren't that much different than other luxury cars, ... because their marketing It's actually somewhat impressive, if frustrating, how well Tesla's marketing works. In a previous article here a couple of weeks ago, a Tesla owner was touting "how much better" Tesla's blind spot monitoring was than "other manufacturers", because it took speed differentials into account, while my 2…
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#206Earlier 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.
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#207Earlier 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.
Well, thats half of the problematic drivers, and i suspect texters as well. /s
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#208Earlier 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…
> is far less fatiguing than making constant microadjustments to steering, speed and following distance. Adaptive cruise control and lane assist, available in every modern car under the sun will make microadjustments to steering, speed, and following distance all day long. What exactly does autopilot bring to the table?
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> is it better than human drivers? The bar is much higher than that. People accept people killed by other humans suddenly becoming ill or briefly not paying attention. We accept human error. We do NOT accept machine error. So the criterion is that autopilots should avoid a lot of accidents that humans risk getting into (e.g. lack of attention) but it must not be involved in ANY accidents that a human paying attention…
I do disagree about the mechanism. I don't find that humans are very generous to one another - public opinion very often assumes the worst and takes the least generous interpretation. People are more than happy to vilify a reckless driver who caused a death.
I think the mechanism here is media coverage. We are still seeing articles pushed out by media corporations about this one accident from a year ago. Meanwhile, human drivers kill thousands of people a day and you don't hear a peep about it. So naturally public opinion becomes scared of self driving cars and ignorant of the real issue.
All of that is really tangential to my point, though. My point is that "feelings over facts" is grossly immoral when ignoring facts causes tens of thousands of preventable deaths each year.