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

reuters.com

341–350 of 507 posts

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

#341

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…

> * Let the human do all the driving and have the robot jump in whenever the human makes a mistake.* Because when the human disagrees with the machine, the machine is usually the one making a mistake. It might prevent accidents, but it would also cause them, and you lose predictability in the process (you have to model the human and the machine).

I don't know how anyone can look at the types of accidents Tesla is having and conclude that it should override the human driver.

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

#342

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

Survivorship bias?

That would only be relevant is a substantial portion of people who felt poorly about tesla autopilot had literally perished from it.

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

#343

Right. As I've pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don't look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but oft…

Yeah, let's ignore all the good and force everyone to go back to human drivers that are 10x worse.

Can you please stop repeating this tripe, it's been debunked over-and-over again, and it is really getting tiring.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On most or all roads below 100km/h autopilot won’t allow speeding, and therefore I drive at the limit, which I know I would not have done if I controlled it If following the speed limit makes cars safer, another way to achieve that without autopilot is to just have all cars limit their speed to the speed limit. Sometimes it’s wonky when the street lines are unclear. It’s not perfect but a better driver than I am in 8…

> just have all cars limit their speed to the speed limit. The devil is in the details... GPS may not provide sufficient resolution. Construction zones. School zones with variable hours. Tunnels. Adverse road conditions. Changes to the underlying roads. Different classes of vehicles. Etc. By the time you account for all the mapping and/or perception, you could've just improved the autonomous driving and eliminated th…

Just add all those to the map system. It could be made incredibly accurate, if construction companies are able to actually submit their work zones and "geofence" them off on the map.

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

#345

Right. As I've pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don't look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but oft…

Yeah, let's ignore all the good and force everyone to go back to human drivers that are 10x worse.

No one is saying this should be the case, just that the feature is not what the company advertises (the ability for the car to fully drive itself) and that said feature is further away from completion than many might lead you to believe. as someone who drives a tesla with autopilot, I agree with this. Autopilot is the best lane assistance system ive used, but thats all it is.

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

#346

Right. As I've pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don't look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but oft…

As this reddit post pointed out, this appears to be a common problem with radar TACC. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/p5ekci/us_agen...

""" These events occur typically when a vehicle is partially in a lane and radar has to ignore a stationary object. This is pretty standard and inherent with TACC + radar.

The faster Tesla pushes the vision only stack to all cars after they’ve validated the data, the faster this topic becomes moot. Andrej Karpathy talks and shows examples of what that would do here. Minutes 23:00-28:00 https://youtu.be/a510m7s_SVI

Older examples from manuals of other TACC systems which use radar:

Volvo’s Pilot Assist regarding AEB/TACC.

According to Wired, Volvo’s Pilot Assist system is much the same. The vehicles’ manual explains that not only will the car fail to brake for a sudden stationary object, it may actually race toward it to regain its set speed:

“Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed. The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.”

Cadillac Super Cruise - Page 252

Stationary or Very Slow-Moving Objects

ACC may not detect and react to stopped or slow-moving vehicles ahead of you. For example, the system may not brake for a vehicle it has never detected moving. This can occur in stop-and-go traffic or when a vehicle suddenly appears due to a vehicle ahead changing lanes. Your vehicle may not stop and could cause a crash. Use caution when using ACC. Your complete attention is always required while driving and you should be ready to take action and apply the brakes.

BMW Driving Assistant Plus - Page 124

A warning may not be issued when approaching a stationary or very slow-moving obstacle. You must react yourself; otherwise, there is the danger of an accident occurring.

If a vehicle ahead of you unexpectedly moves into another lane from behind a stopped vehicle, you yourself must react, as the system does not react to stopped vehicles. """

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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....)

You're getting downvoted for this comment apparently, but I'm still of the firm belief that we will never see full autonomous driving without some sort of P2P network among cars/infrastructure.

There's just too much shit that can't be "seen" with a camera/sensor in conjested traffic. Having a swarm of vehicles all gathering/sharing data is one of the only true ways forward IMO.

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

#348

Right. As I've pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don't look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but oft…

Yeah, let's ignore all the good and force everyone to go back to human drivers that are 10x worse.

Go back? Human drivers are the norm, not the exception. This argument is tiresome beyond belief.

But no, just keep disregarding the clearly significant issues and mis-marketing, because progress, right?

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

#349

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

Thats not what they bloody sell it as, though. Thats the key.

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

#350

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

I once talked to a guy who bragged about having Autopilot drive him home when he's drunk
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