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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

#111

Post by ghaff »

KronisLV wrote: post #41
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

> But how can you react promptly if you're not ready? I just don't get this. You cannot, that's the simple truth. You're supposed to focus on the road anyways and should be able to take over once any sort of autopilot or assist system starts working erroneously, yet in practice many people simply assume that those systems being there in the first place mean that you can simply stop focusing on the road altogether. It…

It's nothing (well certainly not everything) to do with people's assumptions. There's a ton of research around how people simply stop paying attention when there's no reason for them to pay attention 99% of the time. It doesn't even need to be about them pulling out a book or watching a movie. It can simply be zoning out.

Maybe, as you say, it's feasible today or soon to better handle brief distractions but once you allow that it's probably dangerous to assume that people won't stretch out those distractions.

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

#112

Post by Someone »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74
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…

Then why not flip the scheme. Instead of have the human as backup to the machine, make the machine backup the human. Let the human do all the driving and have the robot jump in whenever the human makes a mistake. Telemetry can then record all the situations where the human and the machine disagreed. That should provide all the necessary data, with the benefit of the robot perhaps preventing many accidents. Of course…

I think that’s the approach many car manufacturers have been on for decades.

As a simple example, ABS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system) only interferes with what the driver does when an error occurs.

More related to self-driving, there’s various variants of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_departure_warning_system that do take control of the car.

And it is far from “incapable of speeding”, but BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz “voluntarily” and sort-of limit the speed of their cars to 250km/hour (https://www.autoevolution.com/news/gentlemens-agreement-not-...)

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

#113

Post by antattack »

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.

All Level 2 systems need to better integrate with the driver. Upon engagement driver and driver assist are team where communication and predictability is crucial.

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

#114

Post by ghaff »

kelvin0 wrote: post #75

Having human drivers and assisted drivers on the same road is problematic currently. I think the best situation would be to have 'automated' stretches of highway specially designed to 'help' self driving systems. Only self driving vehicles would be allowed on such special highways, and everything would be built around such systems.

Who is going to pay for these dedicated stretches of highway that only, presumably, relatively wealthy owners of self-driving cars are going to be allowed to use?

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

#115

Post by CrazyStat »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74
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…

Then why not flip the scheme. Instead of have the human as backup to the machine, make the machine backup the human. Let the human do all the driving and have the robot jump in whenever the human makes a mistake. Telemetry can then record all the situations where the human and the machine disagreed. That should provide all the necessary data, with the benefit of the robot perhaps preventing many accidents. Of course…

> Want safety? How about a Tesla that is electronically incapable of speeding.

That would be unsafe in many situations. If the flow of traffic is substantially above the speed limit--which it often is--being unable to match it increases the risk of accident. This is known as the Solomon curve [1].

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

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

#116

Post by dalbasal »

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 think the fundamental flaw is indisputable. Everyone is aware of in-between stage problems. I don't think it's an insurmountable flaw.

These things are on the road already. They have issues, but so do human only cars. Tweaks probably get made, like some special handling of emergency vehicle scenarios. But, it's not enough to stop it.

Meanwhile, it's not a permanent state. Self driving technology is advancing, becoming more common on roads. Procedures, as well as infrastructure, is growing around the existence of self driven cars. Human supervisor or not, the way these things use the road affects the design of roads. If your emergency speed sign isn't being headed by self driven cars, your emergency speed sign has a bug.

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

#118

Post by Ajedi32 »

ben_w wrote: post #94
Seanambers wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHT…

> we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged [...] for those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven

This still isn't the correct comparison. Major selection bias with comparing miles with autopilot engaged to miles without it engaged, since autopilot cannot be engaged in all situations.

A better test would be to compare accidents in Tesla vehicles with the autopilot feature enabled (engaged or not) to accidents in Tesla vehicles with the autopilot feature disabled.

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

#119

Post by comeonseriously »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

I agree with everything you said. I do hope that eventually the tech gets to the point where it can take over full time. We recently took a road trip for our vacation and the amount of road rage we witnessed was ... mind boggling. Don't get me wrong, not everyone is a raging asshole, but there were enough to make me wonder just why so many people are so freaking angry.

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

#120

Post by ghaff »

MonadIsPronad wrote: post #16

Oopsie. This strikes me as perhaps one of the growing pains of not-quite-self-driving: common sense would dictate that manual control would be taken by the driver when approaching an unusual situation like a roadside incident, but we just can't trust the common sense of a minority of people. Tesla perhaps isn't being loud enough about how autopilot isn't self-driving, and shouldn't even be relied upon to hit the brak…

What on earth makes you think it's the minority of people who stop paying attention when machinery is handling some task all by itself the vast majority of the time? There's plenty of research that says otherwise even among highly-trained individuals.
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