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Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

nytimes.com

31–40 of 192 posts

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#31
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember the days when the SciFi of the day sold robotic drivers as "they don't get tired, they don't make mistakes, they are relentless in their pursuit". Instead of that, we got robots that are apparently unable to avoid crashing into large vehicles with flashing lights. Sometimes. As usual, the future never ceases to disappoint me.

Maybe we just haven't reached that future yet.

I heard it's tomorrow.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#32

> The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday But there are 4500 crashes every year, and that's only including ambulances ( https://www.ems.gov/pdf/GroundAmbulanceCrashesPresentation.p... pg 22). So why is Tesla being investigated for being involved in 0.25% of these crashes when they made up 3% of car sales in 2020? Also, radar ignores stationary objects on any car.…

I think the right stat to measure is - of all the Tesla cars out there, how many had crashes, and compare this against the average for other car brands/models.

I'd hope that "automated driving" has standards much much higher than the average.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#33
Biden, when he's not eating ice cream and awake, hates Tesla because they aren't a union shop. This and other things are just a shakedown. You can see by the echo chamber here who's the bot army and who's not.

Remember, the primary purpose of Tesla is to save the planet. But I guess the unions trump that. Fuckers.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you're basing your expectations of reality on SciFi books than I expect you will be dissapointed quite often.

There's always dystopian scifi as well.

Yes! - This has not failed to disappoint, rather it has exceeded all expectations!

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#35

> The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday But there are 4500 crashes every year, and that's only including ambulances ( https://www.ems.gov/pdf/GroundAmbulanceCrashesPresentation.p... pg 22). So why is Tesla being investigated for being involved in 0.25% of these crashes when they made up 3% of car sales in 2020? Also, radar ignores stationary objects on any car.…

Maybe because every other car manufacturer calls it "cruise control" and not "full self driving autopilot"?

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#36
post #2

> The safety agency informed Tesla weeks ago that it was looking into the spate of crashes in which Tesla vehicles operating on Autopilot failed to detect stopped emergency vehicles with flashing lights. The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday, when a Model 3 hit a police cruiser that had stopped behind a car that had broken down on an interstate in Orlando, Fla.…

We just did a 1,500 mile round-trip journey to visit family. Because of the Tesla stuff, I was casually aware of roadside emergency vehicles moreso than usual. We passed 28 police/fire/emergency vehicles that were next to our travel lane.

I saw a number of Tesla vehicles on the road as well, each passing these same emergency vehicles, but not always in the same lane.

By this point, there must be 1M+ incidents of Tesla vehicles passing roadside emergency vehicles in an adjacent lane.

12 crashes is 12 crashes too many, statistically speaking, but it's also a tiny tiny percentage of the total number of cases.

IMO, it is good that there is federal investigation into this. My main concern is that is seems our government agencies at large are not very good when it comes to properly understanding anything technology related, or making relevant decisions/rulings/etc. on these kinds of things.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#37
post #2

> The safety agency informed Tesla weeks ago that it was looking into the spate of crashes in which Tesla vehicles operating on Autopilot failed to detect stopped emergency vehicles with flashing lights. The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday, when a Model 3 hit a police cruiser that had stopped behind a car that had broken down on an interstate in Orlando, Fla.…

> 12 crashes into vehicles with flashing lights on them doesn't sound like great success from Autopilot, gonna be honest. I'm sorry, but how can you form an opinion so quickly? 12 crashes out of what? Any number? 12 crashes out of 10000000 scenarios sound like a pretty good record, while 12 crashes out of 15 scenarios indeed doesn't sound like a great success. But what information do you have that the rest of us does…

"I'm sorry, but how can you form an opinion so quickly?"

It doesn't really matter. They're stationary objects; there's absolutely no reason, good or bad, for the algorithm to determine that the correct trajectory change is into the stationary object.

Humans crash into stationary objects because they're lacking attention almost 100% of the time, whether it's because they're half asleep, drunk, texting, or distracted by just about anything else. Autopilot shouldn't have this issue, so there's no reason for it to fail to recognize the obstacles unless it's been poorly trained, and there's absolutely no reason for it to recognize an obstacle as a valid path or destination.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#38
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it occurs so often should suggest to you that autopilot itself makes people too comfortable and not pay attention.

Mixed control between automated and human for tasks that require persistent attention is bad. We have known this for decades. The example often given in engineering textbooks is 3 mile island. I suspect that the engineers involved in self driving systems know this too, but the liability is too great to make the switch all at once. It seems better to take baby steps into self driving, but history teaches us it should…

You could say the same about airplane autopilots, but they have an amazing safety record.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#39

> The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday But there are 4500 crashes every year, and that's only including ambulances ( https://www.ems.gov/pdf/GroundAmbulanceCrashesPresentation.p... pg 22). So why is Tesla being investigated for being involved in 0.25% of these crashes when they made up 3% of car sales in 2020? Also, radar ignores stationary objects on any car.…

The poor statistics of this comment aside, if I drove into 12 emergency vehicles in a year, I can assure you I would also be investigated.

Re: Tesla is ordered to turn over Autopilot data to a federal safety agency

#40
post #14

> The regulator originally said it was looking into 11 such crashes. A 12th occurred on Saturday But there are 4500 crashes every year, and that's only including ambulances ( https://www.ems.gov/pdf/GroundAmbulanceCrashesPresentation.p... pg 22). So why is Tesla being investigated for being involved in 0.25% of these crashes when they made up 3% of car sales in 2020? Also, radar ignores stationary objects on any car.…

No offense but that is whataboutism. I think every crash, where an investigation could prevent another crash in the future, should be investigated. Shouldn't Tesla "celebrate their mistakes" (yes, morbid, sorry) and see this as an opportunity to improve their product?

Tesla is already putting a lot of resources into improving Autopilot and FSD. I'm not sure how regulators are going to help that process, and I think there are a couple possible pitfalls:

(1) Will they take relative risk into account? If the car sometimes crashes but less often than humans, will that be sufficient, or considered a flaw because it's not perfect and regulators hate looking bad?

(2) Will they take progress into account? If the car drives worse than humans but its accident rate drops 10% per year, then after some number of years we'll accumulate fewer total accidents than if we hadn't allowed progress to continue. That's important because progress won't continue without lots of cars on the road using Autopilot and FSD betas.

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