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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

#681

Post by dopamean »

mumblemumble wrote: post #659
dkonofalski wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't understand the sad conclusion of the story in the article. The driver knew that AutoPilot had issues with that stretch of the freeway and was able to repeat the issues on several occasions but still thought it best to be on his phone, while driving 71 mph, at the mercy of AutoPilot? Especially considering that he was an engineer who had expressed concern over this, it seems silly to me that he wou…

We don't need to understand it. We just need to know that, even armed with all that knowledge, he still made the decision he did, and that we should not expect others with less knowledge of how software works to be any less human.

This has been my takeaway from the whole situation. It says something about the exactly how safe this stuff needs to be for it to be considered reliable.

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

#682

Post by aerovistae »

I was quite confused by this. He knew the car was taking a consistently erroneous action that was likely to have fatal consequences, but he continued to use autopilot on that same stretch anyway.

To be clear, I think Tesla has been cavalier and careless in their approach to autopilot.

But Walter Huang knew what he was doing and did it anyway. His death is largely by his own hand. I don't see this as different from people who knowingly take other careless risks and pay a price.

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

#683

Post by bagacrap »

crazygringo wrote: post #632

Yesterday here on HN there was a top thread about how a open dataset used for training self-driving cars is rife with missing labels and mislabeling. [1] Quite a few commenters insisted the issue was a non-issue -- that all datasets are noisy and mislabeling occurs all the time, that nobody's building actual self-driving cars from it, that surely if an object isn't labeled in one frame it'll be labeled in the next. N…

The consensus was that the training set in question was not used for any real life situations.

The only player in autonomous vehicles that doesn't understand the gravity of the technology is Tesla/Musk.

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

#684

Post by ngcc_hk »

justapassenger wrote: post #637
tim333 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re robbers, car jackers and the like in some ways you may be better with a self driving car as they seem to be covered with cameras and report back to base the whole time so the crooks would be photographed and the cops called. Already the Tesla cameras have caught a few https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqBWt9rRx-U Re all the edge cases - yeah that'll take a while.

License plate can be covered (or more often - using stolen car) and balaclavas cost just few dollars.

If it is know it is stolen a hi tech truck can be remotely ... of course there is another kind of risk. But if one just ensure only one guy can open the container or the container is fixed with pin certain distance from a driver etc.

Ther is always a way.

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

#685

Post by bagacrap »

salimmadjd wrote: post #12

This is sad and tragic. I remember going with a friend on a Tesla test drive. He was eager to try the Autopilot system. And within a few minutes we got freaked out with what seem to us as unpredictable action and we turned it off. I think the engineer should have never relied on it. Especially if he had concerns with the system. At the same time, "Autopilot" is misleading and Tesla does own responsibility here. Even…

You think "autopilot" is bad? Do you realize Tesla has a DLC mode called "full self driving"?

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

#686

Post by SirZimzim »

mrits wrote: post #167
PopeRigby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self driving cars are a ridiculous solution to a problem we created and doesn't need to exist. The US building out the country for cars wasn't a good way to do transportation. If we just had trains going from city to city and subways in the cities, we wouldn't even need self driving cars.

Not everyone wants to live in a dense population.

If you visit Europe you can see this system working with a much less dense population and connections for small towns.

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

#687

Post by contravariant »

gdulli wrote: post #678
contravariant wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with merely fewer deaths than a human operated car is that technology tends to fail in 'silly' ways. Also at the very least an self-driving car should reach the level of a good driver, having self-driving cars cause as many deaths as drunk or inattentive drivers do nowadays isn't defensible. Especially since there's usually no explanation and nobody to hold accountable.

> technology tends to fail in 'silly' ways And a scenario we can easily imagine is that a buggy update goes out to the whole fleet overnight that starts killing people all over the place. The common case of accidents being on par with manual human driving goes out the window until the software is rolled back and for 12 hours, 24 hours, however long, we get a number of deaths that far outpaces what humans are capable…

This might be one of the few cases where it'd be better to not try to have all devices have the latest update all the time.

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

#688

Post by ksec »

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…

>I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer.

There is a saying where all software (security) engineers dont have IOT or any "Smart" devices in their home.

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

#689

Post by inviromentalist »

salimmadjd wrote: post #12

This is sad and tragic. I remember going with a friend on a Tesla test drive. He was eager to try the Autopilot system. And within a few minutes we got freaked out with what seem to us as unpredictable action and we turned it off. I think the engineer should have never relied on it. Especially if he had concerns with the system. At the same time, "Autopilot" is misleading and Tesla does own responsibility here. Even…

This is the ethics of Tesla.

They are marketing primarily, function second.

My biggest concern is that since the company isn't profitable(?) That these highly risky things are acceptable. Other profitable auto companies cannot be this wreckless.

It's not like they can go after Personal assets.

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

#690

Post by bagacrap »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #166

There are going to be Autopilot crashes and people should disable it if they uncomfortable with putting their lives in the hands of Tesla's software. I would be. But I see no reason to not believe to not believe what they have on https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport It shows Teslas have much fewer accidents than the average car, and that Teslas with autopilot enabled are substantially safe per mile than with aut…

Autopilot is only going to be enabled on freeways, where accident rates will always be much lower than surface streets. Not a useful statistic, even if true.
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