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U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#81

Post by Seanambers »

3pt14159 wrote: post #52
Robotbeat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree. (And before you respond, please read my post because it’s not a trivial point.) The fact that an huge formal investigation happened with just a single casualty is proof that it may actually be superior for safety in the long-term (when combined with feedback from regulators and government investigators). One death in conventional vehicles is irrelevant. But because of the high profile of Tesla’s…

I largely agree with you, but I just wish regulators would start by only allowing these assist programs for people that are already known to be poor drivers. The elderly and convicted drunk drivers, for example. That way we could have the best of both worlds.

Teslas Autopilot system is almost 10X safer than the average human driver already based on the latest 2021 Q1 numbers.

https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/VehicleSafetyReport

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#82

Post by josefx »

dotdi wrote: post #5

Unfortunately the article doesn't mention anything about how common it is for human drivers to crash into first responder vehicles during the night. I'm not trying to downplay these cases, as hitting emergency vehicles is very bad indeed, yet ~4 such crashes per year might be in the same ballpark or even better than "unassisted" drivers that cause such crashes.

Might be around 98 a year if this[1] is the correct list.

Edit: I think the page count at the bottom of that list is off, it seems to repeat the last page so it might be less.

[1]https://www.respondersafety.com/news/struck-by-incidents/?da...

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#83

Post by SEJeff »

Waterluvian wrote: post #19
gundmc wrote: post #3

This is why I believe the approach of incremental improvement towards full self driving is fundamentally flawed. These advanced driver assist tools are good enough to lull users into a false sense of security. No amount of "but our terms and conditions say you need to always pay attention!" will overcome human nature building that trust and dependence.

I have a Subaru Forester base model with lane keeping and adaptive cruise control. I need to be touching the wheel and applying some force to it or it begins yelling at me and eventually brings me slowly to a stop. I’ve had it for a year now and I cannot perceive of a way, without physically altering the system (like hanging a weight from the wheel maybe?) that would allow me to stop being an active participant. I th…

You're literally describing how the Tesla system works. It requires you to keep your hand on the wheel and apply a slight pressure every so often. The cabin camera watches the driver and if they're looking down or at their phone, it does that much more often.

People causing these problems almost certainly are putting something over the cabin camera and a defeat device on the steering wheel.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#84

Post by salawat »

formerly_proven wrote: post #25
nathias wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not human nature, that's user stupidity

The design is fine, it's all the users who are idiots. P.S. /s. Obviously, Mr. Poe.

T. Every maligned designer when someone points out a flaw

It's okay. I do it too. Really need to work on seeing yourself making that argument as a starting point and not an endpoint.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#85

Post by sidibe »

bob33212 wrote: post #68
sidibe wrote: post #23

Glad the regulators are looking into this. It bothers me that now Tesla seems to have no liability at all for the system not working, since it's always the driver's fault for not paying enough attention. As Teslas get better at driving the drivers will be paying less attention inevitably, Tesla needs to start being responsible at some point

Every year young drivers die because they were inexperienced and didn't realize they were going too fast to too slow for a certain situation. Once full self driving is statistically safer than humans how will you not let people use it? It is like saying you would rather have 10 children die because of bad driving skills rather than 1 child die because they were not paying attention at all times.

>Once full self driving is statistically safer than humans how will you not let people use it?

I'm fine with self-driving if/when it works (though I'm pretty sure from watching FSD Beta videos shot and edited by their biggest fans with a few interventions every 5 minutes, this is many many many years away for Tesla). But the company selling the self driving has to be responsible to some degree for the mistakes it makes.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#86

Post by unionpivo »

vntok wrote: post #63
Robotbeat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree. (And before you respond, please read my post because it’s not a trivial point.) The fact that an huge formal investigation happened with just a single casualty is proof that it may actually be superior for safety in the long-term (when combined with feedback from regulators and government investigators). One death in conventional vehicles is irrelevant. But because of the high profile of Tesla’s…

This argument is flawed, because when regulators investigate a Tesla crash, Waymo doesn't care the slightest. The technologies (emphasis on having skeuomorphic cameras vs a lidar), approaches (emphasis on generating as many situations as possible in simulated worlds and carefully transitioning to the business case vs testing as early in the real world with background data captation) and results are so different betwe…

well when regulators investigate Boing, Airbus probably doesn't care either.

Until it leads to something systemic, that then regulator mandates for all vehicles

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#88

Post by userbinator »

jdavis703 wrote: post #45
mrfusion wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious if there are studies out there on how to do automated assists in machines that require vigilance that don’t have this problem.

Both airplanes and trains have automated “assist.” At least in the case of WMATA they give up on automatic train control after a fatal crash.

In a plane you also have far more time to react once the autopilot disconnects for whatever reason, than the fraction of a second that a car gives you.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#89

Post by ben_w »

mnmmn123456 wrote: post #15
gundmc wrote: post #3

This is why I believe the approach of incremental improvement towards full self driving is fundamentally flawed. These advanced driver assist tools are good enough to lull users into a false sense of security. No amount of "but our terms and conditions say you need to always pay attention!" will overcome human nature building that trust and dependence.

Today, there is at least one of the most advanced Neural Networks entering each car: A human being. If we could just implement the AI to add to this person and not replace it...

What would such an AI even look like? If it spots every real danger but also hallucinates even a few dangers that aren’t really there, it gets ignored or switched off for needlessly slowing the traveler down (false positives, apparently an issue with early Google examples [0]); if it only spots real dangers but misses most of them, it is not helping (false negatives, even worse if a human is blindly assuming the machine knows best and what happened with e.g. Uber [1]); if it’s about the same as humans overall but makes different types of mistake, people rely on it right up until it crashes then go apoplectic because it didn’t see something any human would consider obvious (e.g. Tesla, which gets slightly safer when the AI is active, but people keep showing the AI getting confused about things that they consider obvious [2]).

[0] https://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wz6Ins1D9ak

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#90

Post by antattack »

jdavis703 wrote: post #50
antattack wrote: post #42

NHTSA is lumping TACC with Autopilot to increase number of incidents and make the case sound more serious: "The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes," NHTSA said in a document opening the investigation. TACC is very different from Autopilot.

NHTSA reports are usually very neutral. I’d be very surprised if they were out to get Tesla, or really any other corporation or individual.

Every car with adaptive cruise has similar disclaimer, pointing how unreliable system is recognizing parked vehicles [1]:

Safety Consideration When Using Adaptive Cruise Control

• The system can only brake so much. Your complete attention is always required while driving.

• Adaptive Cruise Control does not steer your vehicle. You must always be in control of vehicle steering.

• The system may not react to parked, stopped or slow-moving vehicles. You should always be ready to take action and apply the brakes.

[1]https://my.gmc.com/how-to-support/driving-performance/drivin...

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