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

nytimes.com

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

#111

Post by yardie »

fallingknife wrote: post #38
galangalalgol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have their own records of fuck ups [0]. And for similar reasons as the Tesla AP crashes. Autopilot disengages and leaves the pilot in the lurch. If the pilot doesn't have situational awareness right away it can be fatal.

Airplane autopilots, depending on generation, are full touch. The pilot programs the waypoints. The pilot is alerted and agrees to every course correction and change.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

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

#112

Post by sudosysgen »

Someone wrote: post #78
lftl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the specific comment now, but on previous autonomous driving discussions here, it's been asserted that Tesla (and many other systems) simply can't reliably detect stationary objects at speed. If the systems actually did a naive, "that looks like a stationary object, I'm going to avoid it" they'd barely be able to move in a highway setting.

AFAIK, it can detect them just fine, but it is bad at discriminating those its collision avoidance part should pay attention to from those it shouldn’t pay attention to (e.g. the road surface, traffic signs on the side of or over the road), so they (¿mostly?) chose to ignore all of them.

That just means it lacks the ability to place objects in 3D space and plot a course, which is... sad.

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

#113

Post by sudosysgen »

fallingknife wrote: post #38
galangalalgol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Airplane autopilots don't disengage. They do what you told them to do. They are simple and predictable systems that at most simply follow a predetermined course exactly.

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

#114

Post by ghaff »

_ea1k wrote: post #30
tyfon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will nag you every 17 seconds (if not attentive/holding the wheel with a torque) and abort auto pilot completely if you do not comply. If you do this three times in a drive you have to power off and on the car again to be able to use autopilot again. I've done maybe 40.000 km on autopilot and it's very aggressive compared to my other car (ioniq electric) when it comes to attention. The fact that some people purpos…

To be fair, the person you are responding to may not like those other systems either. All the articles with industry analysts insisting that other driver monitoring systems are nearly perfect have sometimes blinded me to that fact. A lot of people don't like any of these systems for a lot of the same reasons that people didn't like basic cruise control in the early days.

I haven't used basic cruise control in years. It's actually convenient not to have to pay attention to the speed but I find, on roads with even moderate traffic, it comes at the cost of prioritizing maintaining a constant speed rather than flowing with traffic and generally staying in a lane.

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

madamelic wrote: post #92
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, the correct solution is to shut Autopilot and all systems like it down, and charge their developers with reckless endangerment. A autonomous driving system which can't detect stationary obstacles is not an autonomous driving system: It's a murder machine. If they can't do this, they shouldn't operate, full stop.

The horrible truth is that if autonomous driving can save 1+ life, it's better than what we have now so we should keep it and accept that crashes will occur much like they do now with humans in sole control. There's no reason to kill autonomous driving just because gen 1 - 50 isn't perfect but is an improvement on current driving methodology. Giving a one-line sentence of what happened disregards other variables such…

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by detaro »

sudosysgen wrote: post #113
fallingknife wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Airplane autopilots don't disengage. They do what you told them to do. They are simple and predictable systems that at most simply follow a predetermined course exactly.

That's not entirely true, there are situations where they do disengage automatically (e.g. due to missing/conflicting sensor information). By the nature of the thing it is a) rare and b) the pilots have more time to react because it won't be a "you're going to hit a truck in 1 second" situation unless something went badly wrong before. But there is still some risk to the handover situation making it more likely pilots misinterpret the current state of the plane or do not realize which automatic support is still active (not just autopilot, also other avionics support (e.g. if I remember correctly one aspect around the Air France 447 crash is that the pilot likely did not realize that the plane had disengaged support systems that would keep him inside a safe flight envelope in normal circumstances).

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

#117

Post by PavleMiha »

Spare_account wrote: post #106
ghaff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's asserting that a normal attentive driver won't crash into a stationary emergency vehicle under remotely normal weather/road conditions. And, personally, I'm not going to trust a system that isn't as good as a normal attentive driver.

Thanks, I'm not sure how I missed that. >I'm not going to trust a system that isn't as good as a normal attentive driver. As I understand it, we're not expected to trust the current incarnation of Tesla Autopilot. We're supposed to be ready to intervene in case it screws up. I'd be interested to know how long the drivers of the 12 Teslas in these accidents had to intervene but didn't (how long was it obvious Autopilo…

My problem with this is that we have little proof that people are any good at this sort of task (i.e. monitoring something without intervening for really long stretches of time).

So if data show that people keep failing at it we have to take a look and decide that it's not a good system, not that the people are at fault.

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

#118

Post by yardie »

wyager wrote: post #56
yardie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but the general computer called your brain is not like the purposebuilt computer of Autopilot. 12 is too many for a computer who's only job is to literally look at the road and drive.

The standard should probably be “better than human”, not “perfect”.

Maneuvering around congested streets I agree is a judgement call that humans and computers can get wrong. Not hitting stationary objects doesn't take a supercomputer to solve it.

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

#119

Post by CultMember001 »

yardie wrote: post #50
brk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Tesl…

I'm sorry but the general computer called your brain is not like the purposebuilt computer of Autopilot. 12 is too many for a computer who's only job is to literally look at the road and drive.

I believe that Autopilot and Full Self Driving is perfectly safe. Where is the evidence to the contrary? I am willing to pay $5000/month/car for Full Self Driving.

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

#120

Post by _jal »

madamelic wrote: post #92
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, the correct solution is to shut Autopilot and all systems like it down, and charge their developers with reckless endangerment. A autonomous driving system which can't detect stationary obstacles is not an autonomous driving system: It's a murder machine. If they can't do this, they shouldn't operate, full stop.

The horrible truth is that if autonomous driving can save 1+ life, it's better than what we have now so we should keep it and accept that crashes will occur much like they do now with humans in sole control. There's no reason to kill autonomous driving just because gen 1 - 50 isn't perfect but is an improvement on current driving methodology. Giving a one-line sentence of what happened disregards other variables such…

>can save 1+ life, it's better than what we have now so we should keep it and accept

So I take it you would be fine with the nightmare version of Apple's phone scanner, continuously scanning your devices for thoughtcrime? After all, "If it saves just one child..."

Any time I hear emotional appeals that ignore the cost side of the equation, I look for a financial motive.

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