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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

#131

Post by mattnewton »

SCNP wrote: post #123
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.

Let me preface by saying that I hold no strong opinions on this matter and my comments are purely speculative. This is kind of a position I've held for a long time but a different aspect of the problem. I think a system similar to IFF in aircraft would solve all of these issue. If every car knew where every other car was at all times, you could easily devise a system that would be nearly flawless. The issue is, there…

The problem is that you don’t just need to know about every other vehicle, you still need all the perceptual stuff for pedestrians, bikers, baby carriages, trash, road closures, traffic cops in the middle of the road, etc. All those things are arguably harder to detect reliably than a somewhat standard sized box of metal with pairs of lights in the front and back. I think shooting for superhuman perception of all these things is still where Tesla is failing.

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

#132

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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…

It can be really jarring too when a car behaves differently than you expect: I regularly use cruise control on my Kia, which makes driving much less stressful. It keeps the car centered in the lane, more or less turns the car with the road, and of course, matches the speed of the car in front of it with reasonable stopping distance. I wouldn't call it "self-driving" by any means, but if not for the alert that gets ticked off if your hands are off the wheel too long, it'd probably go on it's own for quite a long time without an incident.

However, I also once so far have experienced what happens when this system experiences a poorly-marked construction zone. Whilst most construction sites on the interstate system place temporary road lines for lane shifts, this one solely used cones. While I was paying attention and never left the flow of traffic, the car actually fought a little bit against me following the cones into another lane, because it didn't see the cones, it was following the lines.

It doesn't surprise me at all that if someone gets too comfortable trusting the car to do the work, even if they think they're paying attention, they could get driven off the roadway.

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

#133

Post by bcrl »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #54
jdavis703 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average driver breaks multiple laws on every trip. Most of the time no one gets hurt. But calibrating performance against folks violating traffic and criminal laws sets the bar too low for an automated system. We should be aiming for standards that either match European safety levels or the safety of modes of air travel or rail travel.

I disagree. Perfect is the enemy of good, and rejecting a better system because it isn't perfect seems like an absurd choice. I'm not saying improvements should stop there, but once the system has reached parity, it's OK to deploy it and let it improve from there.

Except that doesn't work if you're trying to produce a safe product. Investigations into crashes in the airline industry have proven that removing pilots from active participation in the control loop of the airplane results in distraction and an increased response time when an abnormal situation occurs. Learning how to deal with this is part of pilots' training, plus they have a co-pilot to keep an eye on things and back them up.

An imperfect self driving vehicle is the worst of all worlds: they lull the driver into the perception that the vehicle is safe while not being able to handle abnormal situations. The fact that there are multiple crashes on the record where Telsas have driven into stationary trucks and obstacles on roads is pretty damning proof that drivers can't always react in the time required when an imperfect self driving system is in use. They're not intrinsically safe.

At the very least drivers should be required additional training to operate these systems. Like pilots, drivers need to be taught how to recognize when things go awry and react to possible failures. Anything less is not rooted in safety culture, and it's good to see there are at least a few people starting to shine the light on how these systems are being implemented from a safety perspective.

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

#134

Post by bluGill »

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…

As was stated elsewhere, most accidents happen in city driving where autopilot cannot be activated so the with/without AI is meaningless. We need to figure out when the AI could have been activated but wasn't, if you do that then you are correct.

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

#135

Post by jacquesm »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #21

I remember when Google was first presenting on driverless technology about 10 years ago, and they mentioned how you have to go right to full self driving, because any advanced driver assistance will clash with human risk compensation behavior. Risk compensation is fascinating; driving with a bike helmet causes the biker and drivers around the biker to behave more dangerously. Is society sophisticated enough to deal w…

Risk compensation probably also works the other way, looking forward to all news cars standard supplied with a new safety device that cuts traffic accidents to a small fraction of what they used to be, the only ones remaining are all fatal for the driver.

A nice and very sharp 8" stainless steel spike on the steering wheel facing the driver.

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

#136

Post by ocdtrekkie »

ra7 wrote: post #122
paul7986 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully automated Self driving cars is either a pipe dream or decades away in which many more people will be killed on the road in the name of technological progress.

Fully autonomous cars are already a reality with Waymo in AZ and AutoX, Baidu in China. I don't know how safe the Chinese companies are, but Waymo's safety record [1] is nothing short of stellar. [1] https://waymo.com/safety

Waymo selected the one state willing to entirely remove any safety reporting requirements for self-driving cars as the place to launch their service. Regardless of what they claim to the contrary, if they had confidence in their safety record, they would've launched it in California, not Arizona.

Waymo has lied about the capabilities of their technology regularly, and for that reason alone, should be assumed unsafe. A former employee expressed disappointment they weren't the first self-driving car company to kill someone, because that meant they were behind.

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

#137

Post by okareaman »

When I was learning to drive, my grandmother drilled into me to never swerve for an animal that jumps out in front of the car. This saved me when I was driving by the Grand Canyon and jack rabbits kept jumping, out of nowhere seemingly, in front of my car. I drilled "never swerve" into my son and it saved him on a mountain road when he hit a deer. He didn't go into the trees. When I drove in Alaska I asked why the forest was cut back from the road. They said that moose like to step out in front of cars.

I have no idea how self-driving fits into this. I don't have a feel how self-driving responds to emergencies. I'd have to experience an emergency in one. For that reason, I don't see myself ever trusting self-driving.

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

#138

Post by ra7 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #136
ra7 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully autonomous cars are already a reality with Waymo in AZ and AutoX, Baidu in China. I don't know how safe the Chinese companies are, but Waymo's safety record [1] is nothing short of stellar. [1] https://waymo.com/safety

Waymo selected the one state willing to entirely remove any safety reporting requirements for self-driving cars as the place to launch their service. Regardless of what they claim to the contrary, if they had confidence in their safety record, they would've launched it in California, not Arizona. Waymo has lied about the capabilities of their technology regularly, and for that reason alone, should be assumed unsafe.…

> Regardless of what they claim to the contrary, if they had confidence in their safety record, they would've launched it in California, not Arizona.

California only months ago opened up permits for paid robotaxi rides. So no, they couldn't have launched it in CA. If you've noticed, they actually are testing in SF with a permit.

> Waymo has lied about the capabilities of their technology regularly, and for that reason alone, should be assumed unsafe.

What lies? Their CA disengagement miles are for everyone to see, their safety report is open, they have had 0 fatalities in their years of operation. Seems like you just made this up.

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

#139

Post by alistairSH »

Robotbeat wrote: post #127
alistairSH wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to buy a car that will randomly make its own decisions, that will pull the wheel from your hands ever time it thinks you are making an illegal lane change. That's almost exactly what my Honda does. Illegal (no signal) lane change results in a steering wheel shaker (and optional audio alert). And the car, when sensing an abrupt swerve which is interpreted as the vehicle leaving the roadway, attempts to…

Tesla’s system also requires driving’s to have their hands on the steering wheel and occasionally provide torque input.

Interesting, I assumed it didn't, given the prevalence of stories about driver watching movies on their phones. I guess they just leave one hand lightly on the wheel, but are still able to be ~100% disengaged from driving the car.
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