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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

#821

Post by riversflow »

mumblemumble wrote: post #813
riversflow wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree with this. Most people I’ve talked to about this incident think the guy is an idiot; if you had found a car’s feature to be unsafe on a portion of your commute before, why on earth would you trust it with your and other’s lives? If you had a new fancy belaying device slip in the gym, you wouldn’t use it on your next big wall climb. I also don’t get how everyone is forgiving him for being on his phone, in a…

It's not about forgiving him for being an idiot. It's more about recognizing that there's more than just the one idiot on the road. To an approximation, pretty much everyone who has ever had a driver's license has been guilty of making an idiotic decision or two while behind the wheel. And, Autopilot being a technology that, among other things, enables (or even encourages) idiotic behavior, there's real risk that pla…

I agree that everyone makes bad choices from time to time on the road. But as a society we put 100% of the blame on the driver if they aren’t doing everything in there power to prevent an accident. “Everyone makes mistakes” isn’t a get out of jail free card, booze clouds people’s judgement to the point where after enough drinks they’ll think they are good to drive, but that doesn’t change anything if they get behind the wheel, its still a DUI.

This guy was on his phone in a construction zone and crashed because of his lack of intervention, using a driving assist feature doesn’t somehow absolve him from being so preoccupied that his vehicle veered off the road and into a wall. Imagine if instead of him dying he had killed a construction worker; I have no doubt a jury would find him guilty of manslaughter. When you get into the driver’s seat of a car you are taking on responsibility for a death machine. I find it troubling that this conversation is happening at all, the blame should be put squarely on his shoulders.

Iff the car suddenly slammed the wheel to the side causing him to lose control or became unresponsive to his inputs, that would be another matter. But this could have been prevented if he wasn’t being grossly negligent of the risk he was partaking in behind the wheel.

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

#822

Post by Zanneth »

jskrablin wrote: post #781
bdamm wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that, but also we ought to know that pushing through the hard problems by rolling out systems operating world-wide and interacting with real people is the only way forward toward improved safety, reduced mental slavery to the menial task of driving, and the time and relationship freedom that comes with it. So yep, I let my Tesla do lots of driving. And I do it knowing that the brake pedal and the steering whe…

I wouldn't feel comfortable in a vehicle that may, or may not react to some situation on the road ahead. Because one day it will decide to do $something_really_stupid and you won't be able to react in time/correctly because you'll be too busy singing karaoke. With some extra bad luck, you'll die/kill someone else because of that.

With all due respect, that is just as likely to happen with human drivers as well.

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

#823

Post by nkassis »

microcolonel wrote: post #741
MereInterest wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through the crash test procedure, it is astounding how little attention is paid to pedestrians. 1. Front crash test. Procedure: Crash car into stationary barrier at 35 mph. Is also applicable to face-to-face crash with car of same size, going at same speed. 2. Side crash test. Procedure: Slam concrete block into side of stationary car at 38.5 mph. 3. Side pole test. Procedure: Drag car sideways towards a pole…

> Reading through the crash test procedure, it is astounding how little attention is paid to pedestrians. In the U.S. at least, pedestrian safety concerns mainly affect prescriptive legislation (i.e. no pop up headlights). Some countries and blocs have testing similar to crash tests, but I'm not really sure how effective something like that is: any meaningful standard would need to have exceptions for different categ…

"Though honestly I can't see that much can be done about pedestrian safety once your vehicle is colliding with a human being."

I don't agree, there some definitive choices in car design that affect the aftermath of the collision that can have effect on the pedestrian surviving. As pointed above if a pedestrian is hit by a car he has a better chance to roll over the hood of the car vs an SUV where the pedestrian would probably would be hit and fall under the car.

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

#824

Post by jaxn »

tyrust wrote: post #717
jaxn wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are under-appreciating the amount of perception that goes into driving. We are accustomed to making constant micro adjustments constantly while driving. Under autopilot, there are times when the "do I need to make an adjustment" instinct kicks in and you decide that you don't, but it was borderline. Things like being centered in the lane while passing a semi.

Perhaps you're right, I've not used any driver assist before so I'm not speaking from experience. Second-guessing the system while driving just does not sound like something I'd want to deal with (as someone pointed out above [0]). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22305695

It's not second guessing. It's more real-time than that. You are actively navigating and piloting the car, you just aren't performing the mechanics of executing most maneuvers. Sometimes you provide some extra direction. Sometimes you intervene.

It is a skill like driving. But it is not driving. It was way less frustrating and draining than driving and so is a very valuable feature. But we are all in agreement that it is not autonomous driving.

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

#825

Post by frankus »

jbtule wrote: post #785
frankus wrote: post #725

I can’t help but think that our culture-wide experiment in the normalization of deviance when it comes to speed limits (both how they are set and how they are observed) has something to do with this. A crash at 55 mph would have 40% less energy than at 71 mph.

The NTSB report information is public, from the NTSB docket, https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx , he wasn't traveling at 71 miles per hour. "At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected." The autopilot accelerated into the barrier.

Could that be because it effectively registered a lane change by the car it was following and was accelerating to the requested speed?

Or are you suggesting that the Autopilot accelerated beyond the top speed set by the driver?

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

#826

Post by erulabs »

dkonofalski wrote: post #769
yumraj wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was Autopilot driving above the speed limit? Or does Tesla allow you to set the speed?

It allows you to set the speed but only up to 8 mph above the posted speed limit (or something like that).

As far as I know my model 3 at least doesn't limit the auto-pilot speed other than the max which is 90MPH. It's just a scroll wheel, you can set it however you like.

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

#827

Post by TheKarateKid »

jm4 wrote: post #776
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…

That’s the part I don’t get either. The only thing I can come up with is he wasn’t paying attention to the drive up to that point and didn’t notice he was in a problem area. I have a Tesla and there are definitely problem areas. You learn them fairly quickly when you are taking the same route all the time and you’re trained to either turn off autopilot or at least be alert when going through those areas. Or maybe you…

> Or maybe you test it out with your hands on the wheel ready to take over to see if they fixed the bug.

Isn't holding the wheel always required now in Tesla's autopilot?

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

#828

Post by dkonofalski »

erulabs wrote: post #826
dkonofalski wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allows you to set the speed but only up to 8 mph above the posted speed limit (or something like that).

As far as I know my model 3 at least doesn't limit the auto-pilot speed other than the max which is 90MPH. It's just a scroll wheel, you can set it however you like.

I never used FSD but AP never let me go above 55mph in a 45mph zone when it was using traffic-aware driving.

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

#829

Post by bmat »

lostmsu wrote: post #297
bmat wrote: post #251

For every tragedy, there are tragedies avoided. I can attest to a few. In the last 10,000 miles, Autopilot has: safely swerved to avoid a car that would have sideswiped me, preemptively braked after detecting the 2nd car ahead (not visible to me) had slammed on its brakes, and avoided colliding with a completely stopped vehicle in the center lane of the freeway. And FWIW I've never felt misled about Autopilot's capab…

In the last 10,000 miles I had no accidents. In fact, I had none in the last 50,000 miles. It is a big question if any of what you mention here would be as much as a touch, if you did not have autopilot in the first place.

That's fair. In ~200k miles of driving I've also had zero accidents so maybe it's a stretch to call these things 'tragedies avoided'. But the point stands that Autopilot does little things every day to improve safety, but they get little media coverage since they're mundane and boring.

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

#830

Post by ChipSkylark »

StevenRayOrr wrote: post #701
mumblemumble wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 is maybe one of the most important lessons of the 20th and 21st centuries (at least thus far): knowledge does not automatically prevent us from errors in judgments nor does it necessarily protect us from misfortune…

My friends like to talk about how awesome it would be to time travel or know what the outcome of a future decision will be. Even when armed with knowledge from observed outcomes of near-identical setup scenarios, majority of the time they end up doing exactly what they would have normally done. Happens to me from time to time.
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