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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

#171

Post by MichaelGroves »

CrazyStat wrote: post #115
sandworm101 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A self driving car obviously needs to be aware of other cars on the road. I don't see any reason why the car couldn't observe other cars, see what speed they are going at, and refuse to go faster than the rest. A car that refuses to do 120mph when all the other cars are doing 60mph in a 50mph zone should be trivial.

(Trivial if the self driving tech works at all....)

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

#172

Post by _ph_ »

hn8788 wrote: post #153
andreilys wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which many more people will be killed on the rise in the name of technological progress. Seeing as car crashes are the leading cause of deaths from people aged 1-54, it may be an improvement from the status quo More than 38,000 people die every year in crashes on U.S. roadways. The U.S. traffic fatality rate is 12.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. An additional 4.4 million are injured seriously enough to require medi…

I'd say it depends on how many of those deaths are caused by the driver doing something unsafe. I'd be more comfortable with higher traffic deaths that primarily affect bad drivers than a lower number of deaths randomly spread across all drivers by a blackbox algorithm.

If you are texting while driving and hit a stopped car or run a red light, you are very lightly to kill others. Actually more likely, as a side impact is more dangerous than a frontal one.

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

#173

Post by ra7 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #157
ra7 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reaso…

I recall a particular incident where Waymo was marketing their car being able to drive a blind man to a drive-thru, way before the thing could safely drive more than a mile on it's own. My understanding is that in 2021, it still can't navigate parking lots (which would preclude using it for drive-thrus). Later, they were talking about how sophisticated their technology was: It can detect the hand signals of someone d…

> I recall a particular incident where Waymo was marketing their car being able to drive a blind man to a drive-thru, way before the thing could safely drive more than a mile on it's own.

How is a marketing video relevant from 2015 relevant to their safety record? They weren't even operating a public robotaxi service back then.

> My understanding is that in 2021, it still can't navigate parking lots (which would preclude using it for drive-thrus).

Completely false. Here is one navigating a Costco parking lot (can't get any busier than that) [1]. If you watch any videos in that YouTube channel, it picks you up and drops you off right from the parking lot. Yes, you can't use it for drive-thrus, but it doesn't qualify as "lying about capabilities".

> Later, they were talking about how sophisticated their technology was: It can detect the hand signals of someone directing traffic in the middle of an intersection. Funny that a few months later, a journalist got an admission out of a Waymo engineer that the car wouldn't even stop at a stoplight unless the stoplight was explicitly mapped (with centimeter-level precision) so the car knew to look for it and where to look for the signal.

Here is one recognizing a handheld stop sign from a police officer while it stopped for an emergency vehicle [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5CXcJD3mcU

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpDbX1FViWk&t=75s

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

#174

Post by alistairSH »

sandworm101 wrote: post #166
peeters wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Illegal (no signal) lane change results in a steering wheel shaker (and optional audio alert). To be clear, tying the warning to the signal isn't about preventing unsignaled lane changes, it's gauging driver intent (i.e. is he asleep and drifting or just trying to change lanes). It's just gravy that it will train bad drivers to use their signals properly.

Is a lane change without signal always illegal? I know that it almost certainly make you liable for any resulting accident, but I'm not sure that it is universally illegal.

I have no idea, but the point wasn't so much that the lane change is illegal, but that lack of signal is used to indicate lack of driver attention. I shouldn't have used "illegal" in my original post.

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

#175

Post by lacksconfidence »

salawat wrote: post #66
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.

frankly, it's hard to even crash into an emerfency in my opinion while actually driving snd paying attention given tgeir lights have gotten so darn bright it's damn near blinding. frankly, I have to slow to a crawl not out of rubbernecking fascination, butout of self preservation to adapt to the dang lighting searing my retinas at night. now running into unlit emergency vehicles? still think tgat's rather difficult s…

the lights are actually what cause the crash. Some drivers just drive straight into the lights. This is part of why police, at least around here, have particular protocols around how far they stop behind a car, and never standing between the cop car and the car they stopped.

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

#176

Post by young_unixer »

leroman wrote: post #78

Seeing all the near-misses and life saving interventions on YouTube involving Tesla vehicles, 1 death seems not such a bad result.. The question should be - how many lives were saved by this system vs how many would die if driven "normally"?

I don't think that should be the question.

For example: it's not morally equivalent to die while drunk driving at 150 km/h vs dying as a pedestrian because someone ran over you.

I would prefer 10 drunk drivers die instead of just one innocent person.

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

#177

Post by aembleton »

zip1234 wrote: post #163
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…

Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road but let you set cruise control/self driving above the speed limit. Seems like for safety purposes that should not be allowed. Not only are people paying significantly less attention but they also are speeding.

> Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road

Does it always get this correct, or does it sometimes read a 30mph sign on a side road and then slow the car on the motorway down to that speed?

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

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

ra7 wrote: post #138
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reaso…

> California only months ago opened up permits for paid robotaxi rides. So no, they couldn't have launched it in CA.

Well, yeah, that's the logic of an established business. Disruptive startups flout laws rather than following them.

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

#179

Post by zip1234 »

aembleton wrote: post #177
zip1234 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road but let you set cruise control/self driving above the speed limit. Seems like for safety purposes that should not be allowed. Not only are people paying significantly less attention but they also are speeding.

> Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road Does it always get this correct, or does it sometimes read a 30mph sign on a side road and then slow the car on the motorway down to that speed?

I'm not sure how the cars know the speed limit. Maybe someone else knows? My guess is combo of GPS/camera to position correctly on road and the lookup of known speed limit data. Perhaps it reads signs though?

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

#180

Post by Sargos »

zip1234 wrote: post #163
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…

Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road but let you set cruise control/self driving above the speed limit. Seems like for safety purposes that should not be allowed. Not only are people paying significantly less attention but they also are speeding.

Going slower than traffic is actually unsafe and increases the chances of collisions with other drivers.
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