U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by SECProto » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #378

SECProto wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're advertising it. "The future can be yours, today. For the introductory monthly price of 79.99. Sign up here[1]"

This doesn't even make sense. Simply mentioning the name of a product I use is not advertising. Otherwise, is every person here who mentions Tesla advertising too?

> Simply mentioning the name of a product I use is not advertising.

Sorry, I actually meant to refer to Birken's comment above. Advertising might not have been the best word - astroturfing? If you read their comment but replace "comma" with "tesla" it still reads as spammy.

Yours was fine (though discussing downvotes will always get you downvotes, my comment included).

> Otherwise, is every person here who mentions Tesla advertising too?

Only the ones who needlessly sing the praises of the Tesla autopilot in barely-related threads.

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

#432

Post by xattt » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

postmeta wrote: post #346

Animats wrote: post #302

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 fa…

You list pages but fail to mention which models these are for. Do automakers issue manuals for advanced driving assistance systems?

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

#433

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #302

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…

> That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but often don't have enough shoulder space.

Actually, from talking with friends who are first responders, many times they will park fire trucks, etc so that they are blocking enough of the road to protect the first responders and the victims. The last thing you want is to have another car come and crash into first responders or victims of the initial accident. That is why they will deliberately park the truck at an angle to protect the people.

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

#434

Post by telside » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

tomdell wrote: post #285

jedberg wrote: post #276

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 trust someone posting here to driver safely and safer with it.

Forget the average, how about the bottom 10-20% of all drivers? I don't trust the bottom 10% driving with "Autopilot" at all, zero. They are going to use it to go on autopilot while driving, exactly as the marketing implies. I mean there has to even be people who think the car itself is conscious. Car has advanced AI, must be conscious.

To think otherwise is just highly underestimating how clueless some people are.

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

#435

Post by pandaman » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 11:49 PM UTC

wilg wrote: post #298

ra7 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's safety report lacks data and is extremely misleading. 1. Autopilot only works on (or intended to work on) highways. But they are comparing their highway record to all accident records including city driving, where accident rate is far higher than highway driving. 2. They're also comparing with every vehicle in the United States including millions of older vehicles. Modern vehicles are built for higher safety…

> The reality is Teslas are no safer than any other vehicles in its class ($40k+). Would another way of saying this be that they are as safe as other vehicles in that class? And that therefore Autopilot is not more unsafe than driving those other cars?

Do you know many vehicles $40K+ that don't have BLIS and rear/front cross traffic alerts? While a radar-based blind sport alert (one that warns if a car behind is moving too fast to safely merge) is probably irrelevant for the city driving, the cross traffic is extremely useful when pulling out of driveway obstructed by parked cars, I personally have seen several accidents just on my street that could have been prevented with cross traffic detection. I think the expensive models (S/X) still have the front radar so they may have the front alert but I don't think any model ever had the rear radar for the rear cross traffic alert.

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

#436

Post by phyzome » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #276

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 no longer have to look at my speedometer

I'm curious about this part. Do you manually input a limit, or trust it to read street signs?

And how often do you look at your speedometer anyhow? I think on the highway I glance at it maybe once every few minutes and otherwise match speed with the other vehicles, and in the city I look more often but mostly just drive at what feels a safe pace (which seems to match the limits, more or less.)

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

#437

Post by Vecr » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #259

bob33212 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as that goes if we want to save lives we can just regulate that semi-autonomous cars have to enforce the speed limit + 0 visibility from fog and heavy rain is an automatic pull over and wait for conditions to improve.

I don't think cars enforcing the law is a good idea at all. You have the moral and legally defensible right to break the law where not doing so would create substantial and immediate risk to yourself of others.

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

#438

Post by phyzome » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

jeofken wrote: post #413

Johnny555 wrote: post #258

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…

During the 3 years I’ve owned it there are 2 places where lines are wonky and I know to take over. I have not yet struggled to stay alert when it drives me, and it has driven better than I would have - so it certainly is an improvement over me driving 100% of the time. It does not have road rage and it does not enjoy the feeling of speeding, like I do when I drive, nor does it feel like driving is a competition, like…

> Would you buy a machine that is not your servant?

I mean... that's an odd thing for someone to say who has bought a vehicle with over-the-air firmware updates.

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

#439

Post by theluketaylor » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:20 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #276

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 do like using Tesla's Traffic Aware Cruise Control, but autopilot takes over enough of the driving I know I can't pay meaningful attention for more than 10 or 15 minutes. I just did a 1600 km round trip with traffic aware cruise control on the vast majority of the time, but I didn't turn on autopilot once.

Autopilot bothers me for a number of reasons. Fundamentally it's a poor driver, spending time in people's blind spots unnecessarily, braking and accelerating in rather abrupt ways, and just generally acting like a teenage driver who just got their license. It simply doesn't practice defensive driving.

I also spend a lot of time driving on undivided rural highways. These are highly dangerous roads, with closing speeds in excess of 200 km/hr at times. In those situations autopilot drives far too much according to the strict rules of the road and can't adjust to the situation. It doesn't use the lane space to leave additional room and it doesn't give a wide berth to cyclists.

It also bothers me deeply that one of the ways to override autopilot is to make steering input and that's also the indicator Tesla uses to determine the user participating. I haven't used autopilot much for the reasons above, but the few times I did active it the steering input required to tell the car I'm there is also enough steering input to move the car several feet in the lane due to very direct steering. It feels like I'm just fighting the car. That is deeply unnerving since the force required to override autopilot feels like enough to jump nearly half a lane and cause a collision.

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

#440

Post by diggernet » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:21 AM UTC

icelandicmoss wrote: post #369

Animats wrote: post #302

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…

I feel like part of the problem with the kind of autopilot crashes you describe here is how inexplicable they are to humans. Whilst humans can be dangerous drivers, the incidents they cause generally have a narrative sequence of events that are comprehensible to us -- for instance, driver was distracted, or visibility was poor. But when a supposedly 'all-seeing always watching' autopilot drives straight into a large…

My problem with those crashes is that they are entirely explicable: The car is blind to stationary objects in the road. (My best guess at the logic is they assume that "anything stationary cannot possibly be in the road, right?")

To me, that blindness is simply unacceptable. If there is anything in the road, whether identified or not, it should automatically be flagged as a hazard. That flag should only be removed if it is detected to be moving in a way such that it will be somewhere else when you get there.

I have Subaru EyeSight. It has no problem seeing stationary objects. What's Tesla's problem?