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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

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Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#511

Post by DennisP »

I'm not convinced we should entirely blame Tesla, given that humans have been crashing into the same barrier:

> In the three years before the Tesla crash, the device was struck at least five times, including one crash that resulted in fatalities. A car struck it again on May 20, 2018, about two months after the Tesla crash, the NTSB said.

The article also says the engineer had complained about his Tesla veering towards this particular barrier. I don't understand why he still relied on the autopilot while driving past it.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#512

Post by Piskvorrr »

neotek wrote: post #494
capkutay wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have a similar feeling...but I am willing to try it. Just aware that there are probably corner cases it can't handle and generally curious about what the behavior is. For instance, I was driving on autopilot on a section of 101 where they repainted the lanes. I let autopilot do its thing...but I closely observed and kept my hand on the wheel and foot on the brakes. Lo and behold...the car positioned itself rig…

Does it not feel a little crazy to you that you're willing to put your life into the hands of a machine that you know is capable of, and has already tried, killing you? I can't think of any time in my life where I've almost driven my car into a no-man's land even after thousands of hours of driving, and yet every Tesla owner I know has half a dozen stories about the time Auto Pilot tried to steer them into a barrier…

As a driver of many decades, and having survived quite a few of my own stupid mistakes, I think this is also bias. As long as I had some direct input into the situation, I saw such near-misses as the inherent risks of driving: I should have had the wheels geometry checked, I should have replaced the lightbulb, I shouldn't have driven on old tires, I should have checked the mirror, I shouldn't have overtaken there - and I continue to use cars, despite dozens, perhaps hundreds of near-misses, or even minor accidents: "yeah, we almost died today - but didn't, that's just a fact of driving, not a suicide attempt".

Whereas once you feel that all agency is stripped from you, it's all someone else's fault, especially if the mistakes feel alien (as in "no human would err in this specific manner").

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#513

Post by syshum »

Alupis wrote: post #388
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

Actually one of the biggest obstacles to Level 5 is expectation of Zero Deaths for Level 5 autonomous operations. The standard should be fewer deaths than human-operated (or even auto assisted ) cars.

When you have thousands of machines traveling in close proximity at speeds exceeding 50mph there will be deaths, this is unavoidable. We need to reduce those as much as possible but to demand ZERO before the technology can be used is just unrealistic

That said, Just because some people are working towards Level 5, does not mean all of the other things you are asking for are not also being worked on, it is not a zero sum game. There are enough people that we can have teams working on both.

This complaint is repeated for everything, "Well if people were not working on X drug that I don't care about they could cure cancer"

We can have a better braking system, better frames, etc AND still try to achieve level 5 autonomous driving. It is not an either-or proposition

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#514

Post by TLightful »

Sad story, and condolences to the man's family, but if I'd previously complained about such an issue before, I'd have been damned sure to be careful at that place again and/or would have lost any trust in the system until another iteration proves me otherwise. Yes, hindsight is 100% and we all make mistakes, but still.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#515

Post by stephenr »

moooo99 wrote: post #503
stephenr wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, we're not quite ready for self driving And yet it's literally in cars on the road. I'm not saying you're wrong because of that. I just wonder how far from "ready" we are, and how much of a gamble manufacturers are taking, and how much risk that presents for not just their customers, but everyone else their customers may drive near.

> And yet it's literally in cars on the road. It is not . There is no real self-driving on the road, at least not in conventional vehicles. Teslas autopilot is basically a collection of conventional assistive systems that work under specific circumstances. Granted, the circumstances where it works are much broader than the ones defined by the competition, but for a practical use-case its still very restricted. Self-d…

> There is no real self-driving on the road

Emphasis on real. There is definitely something that most people would refer to as "self driving" in cars on the road.

I'm not saying what is there is specifically good at what it does - I'm saying someone put it into use regardless of how fit for purpose it is.

> but this future is probably not as close as Tesla PR makes us think

Unless you're suggesting the PR team decided to make shit like "Summon" available to the public, then it's not just "PR spin".

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#516

Post by anjc »

I hope people aren't commonly doing what this poor guy did, turning autopilot on and taking their hands off the wheel at 71mph. At this speed, the stopping distance is greater than the max effective distance of some of the forward looking cameras, and a collision means almost certain death. I'm surprised people will trust any autopilot system at a potentially fatal speed.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#517

Post by fxtentacle »

Alupis wrote: post #388
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

Count me guilty then, because I am also hoping to one day take a nap while the car drives me around. Until then, I found the next best thing is booking an Uber. They'll even use venture capital to subsidize my ride :)

But wait, isn't that exactly why they are now in such a rush and cannot accept anything less than full autonomy?

From what I heard, Uber has been burning billions of VC money to capture market share. And their model just won't work financially if they need to pay drivers a living wage. So they attempted trickery to pay them less as "independent" contractors, but now that governments are stepping in to prevent that, there is only one option left:

Uber needs self-driving cars or else they'll go bankrupt.

At least, that's my theory.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#518

Post by keanzu »

mistahenry wrote: post #312
fxtentacle wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was optimistic like that in university. Great times :) But then I went into consulting and saw that big companies have teams of lawyers that settle proactively out of court to keep inconvenient truths out of the public opinion. Like the first few exploding iPhones. (Just an example, never worked there) BTW, did you hear about the Uber crash where their AI couldn't track a pedestrian and then killed her?

That’s an unfair characterization if you’re talking about the crash in Arizona. Perhaps: “Did you hear about the Uber crash where the AI couldn’t track a pedestrian jaywalking at night across the middle of a nearly pitch black two lane highway and then killed her?” would have been more apt. https://youtu.be/ufNNuafuU7M That being said, I’m a huge skeptic of the current state of self driving cars. I would have assumed…

Police concluded that given the same conditions, Herzberg would have been visible to 85% of motorists at a distance of 143 feet (44 m), 5.7 seconds before the car struck Herzberg.

A vehicle traveling 43 mph (69 km/h) can generally stop within 89 feet (27 m) once the brakes are applied.

The police explanation of Herzberg's path meant she had already crossed two lanes of traffic before she was struck by the autonomous vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg

I was also misled by the poorly exposed "official" video. Given the numbers above there was time for a human driver to see her and even come to a complete stop. Further since she was moving from one side of the road to the other and only entered directly into the vehicle's path in the last 1.3 seconds (image in "Software issues" section of wikipedia article) it is likely that all that would have been needed to avoid the collision would have been a minor slow down and she would have completed her crossing safely.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#519

Post by emiliobumachar »

skat20phys wrote: post #489
ascar wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the report is comparing at all. The report is comparing all vehicles driving in all conditions vs Teslas driving in all conditions (separate for with and without autopilot). The numbers show that Teslas experience a lower crash rate than other vehicles. Granted, this can be to a number of reasons including the hypothesis that humans deciding to buy Teslas drive more carefully to begin with. And the nu…

I think the tricky part is that at some level you want to be comparing counterfactuals. That is, accident rates of Teslas on autopilot with a driver of Tesla-driver abilities, in road conditions where the accidents occur, and so forth. It kinda seems self evident that a car that drives you into a wall randomly is less safe than one that doesn't. I grant that Teslas might be safer than eg a drunk driver, and so we mig…

Beware of the No True Scotsman fallacy. A human who drove into a wall could not possibly have been a Safe, Competent Driver, could they? A True Safe, Competent Driver would never drive into a wall.

Unless you're serious about bringing the bar way up for getting a driver's license, I think it's fair to compare self-driving technology with real humans, including the unsafe and incompetent. In most of the world, even those caught red-handed driving drunk are eventually allowed to drive again.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#520

Post by codewench »

l33tman wrote: post #469
stephenr wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, we're not quite ready for self driving And yet it's literally in cars on the road. I'm not saying you're wrong because of that. I just wonder how far from "ready" we are, and how much of a gamble manufacturers are taking, and how much risk that presents for not just their customers, but everyone else their customers may drive near.

The weird thing is there seems to be a discrepancy between these publicized figures of millions of miles of auto-pilot on the roads, and the general feeling you get when you turn on the system yourself. I've used it on a Model 3 and it at least feels horribly insecure, the lines used to show detection of the curbs are far from stable and jitters around often, maybe it's more safe than it seems, but the feeling is I w…

Even Tesla's marketing copy describes it that way, so I don't think you are to far off.

>Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane.

>Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.

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