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Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

latimes.com

51–60 of 147 posts

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#51

OT: I wonder why sites like the LA Times don’t offer a redirect to Apple News when the content is hosted there. I do subscribe to Apple News+ along with additional iCloud storage, Music, etc. I assume Apple gives LA Times something when I read the article vs. when I click away because I’m not willing to subscribe to more news sites than I already am. Apple News link for those in a similar boat: https://apple.news/A9P…

It is not as convenient as a redirect, but on iPhone and iPad you can use the "Share" function when on the page in Safari and select "News" as what to share with and that usually works.

I don't know how to do that on a Mac.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#52
post #7
post #2

Trying not to be a Tesl fanboy, but they have a nice graph showing the number of auto pilot complaints but fail to mention if they normalized for the number of cars on the road (with autopilot) of that brand. Maybe there are a ton of Tesla complaints because they have way more cars on the road? What's the percentage? I guess we'll never know. Not great reporting.

FTA: “The rate of complaints about Tesla, relative to the number of its cars sold in the U.S. in 2020, was more than three times that of the other automakers.” Still a bad comparison, but I would think that the number relative to the number of cars in use of each brand wouldn’t be better for Tesla. The real question would be how this would be relative to the number of miles driven (which, I guess, is about as fair as…

The Tesla NTHSA complaints are kind of a mess and why we can't have nice things (data).

Many are valid and from justifiably disgruntled owners, and I could see how Tesla would have the most driver assistance related complaints, but there are subset that are suspect and/or cranky.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2020/TESLA/MODEL%2525203/4%252...

Several begin with "The contact ", which I guess is someone filing a complaint based on second hand info?

There's also Keef, who is still filing complaints based off of insurance auction listings and has now started filing complaints based on FSD Beta videos.

THIS IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE BETA RELEASE AUTOPILOT. A RANDOM MODEL 3 VIN HAS BEEN USED TO BE ABLE TO FILE A COMPLAINT. THIS COMPLAINT APPLIES TO ALL MODELS OF TESLA. HERE IS A VIDEO OF A PROUD BETA TESTER. HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=PQ-RGY1V8UG THIS OWNER HAS A MISPLACED TRUST IN THE SAFETY OF THE AUTOPILOT. HE IS USING IT IN HIGH RAFFIC AREAS WITH PEDESTRIANS AND CYCLISTS HE IS ALSO USING IT AT EXCESSIVE SPEED ON NARROW ROADS ONLY INCHES AWAY FROM ONCOMING TRAFFIC. RATHER THAN HAVING HIS HANDS HOLDING THE WHEEL IN THE CORRECT WAY HE ONLY HAS HIS FINGERS TOUCHING THE WHEEL WITH THE PALMS FACING THE WRONG WAY. IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG HE WILL NOT BE ABLE GRAB THE WHEEL PROPERLY IN TIME TO PREVENT A COLLISION. FINGERTIP DRIVING IS UNSAFE AT THE BEST OF TIMES. IF AUTOPILOT HAS A GLITCH OR A SPASM THE DRIVER WOULD BE UNABLE TO QUICKLY REGAIN CONTROL. DESPITE THE CLAIMS OF ELON MUSK SUCH DRIVER BEHAVIOR DOES NOT LEAD TO THE BEAT RELEASE AUTOPILOT BEING REVOKED. THIS EXPERIMENT IS DEADLY. PLEASE GET IT STOPPED IMMEDIATELY. THANK YOU KEEF.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#53
post #41
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems like something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to the "clearly better than human" level. It's important to point out here that a handful of back of the envelope analyses are out there that show that Tesla's autopilot is already "clearly better than human" level at avoiding emergency vehicles. These are very common accidents. Emergency vehicles i…

>In fact (and I don't have a link handy) if you extrapolate out from a few different data sources it looks like Tesla's on AP get in these crashes about half as much as vehicles in the general fleet. Why use that as a comparison? The obvious confounder would be that people would disable autopilot in poor conditions, making such crashes a priori more likely. The relevant comparison would be Teslas (with and without AP…

That's nitpicking. There's an initial contention: "Teslas hit emergency vehicles frequently", and a simple refutation: "No, they don't, here are some numbers[1]". Your response only makes it "not impossible" that the initial contention is correct, but you have to show numbers to prove that.

All we have is a cluster of 13 accidents over 3-4 years, and there are something like thousands of such accidents in the US every year. That's not proof that this is noise and not signal, but the obvious hypothesis is that it's probably noise[2]

[1] Which I don't have, though I suppose I could track it down.

[2] For the record: I believe it's probably a real bug, but in a product that on the whole is clearly better, so it's well hidden in the noise.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#54
post #16

Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems like something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to the "clearly better than human" level. This is purely anecdotal, but I find the automatic braking system on my Mazda CX-9 to be fairly annoying. Once every couple months or so, it has a false alarm and brakes while blaring out alerts, in an urban environment where I don't observe anything out of th…

Toyota's safety sense system has saved me from minor accidents a few times. It has never auto applied the brakes, but the alarms and brake assist have been really helpful on freeways during abrupt stops. My girlfriend, on the other hand, hates her Honda's auto braking system, as it triggers too easily, even on the lowest setting. I've seen it regularly trigger when pulling up to sensor controlled gates.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#55
post #54
post #16

Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems like something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to the "clearly better than human" level. This is purely anecdotal, but I find the automatic braking system on my Mazda CX-9 to be fairly annoying. Once every couple months or so, it has a false alarm and brakes while blaring out alerts, in an urban environment where I don't observe anything out of th…

Toyota's safety sense system has saved me from minor accidents a few times. It has never auto applied the brakes, but the alarms and brake assist have been really helpful on freeways during abrupt stops. My girlfriend, on the other hand, hates her Honda's auto braking system, as it triggers too easily, even on the lowest setting. I've seen it regularly trigger when pulling up to sensor controlled gates.

I have a Toyota and my auto-braking alarm thing has only gone off a few times... all very clearly my fault for losing attention for a brief moment. To be honest, I have no idea if it's gone into applying-brake-mode. I'm guessing yes, but... it hasn't been often nor can I even remember really what happened. I do know that it prevented crashes, whether it applied the brakes or alerted/scared me into doing so.

There has never, ever been a false alarm though. Not even once.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#56
post #38
post #19

My hypothesis on this is that all automaker's automatic emergency braking systems likely function at approximately the same level, but Tesla drivers are disproportionately likely to rely on it due to the use of Autopilot being so incredibly common. Statistically, drivers of other brands that include similar lanekeeping abilities are far less likely to use them compared to Tesla owners' use of Autopilot. Should it be…

Sorry, your hypothesis makes no sense. There are WAY more cars sold by other brands, so more Tesla incidents is even more galling. Using autopilot should only HELP the auto braking not make it worse. Other systems use radar and camera. They are thoroughly tested by the OEMs and suppliers to strict tolerances. Meanwhile Tesla is shipping beta software and having people test it. Including removing radar because of “pha…

OPs point was tesla drivers are more likely to use the features. More cars being sold by other brands, could refute that but it doesnt necessarily. Its about the rate of usage of the software X total sales X avg. miles driven

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#57

It always bugs me they trot out the Mountain View crash as an example where a Model X struck an unmarked and unprotected jersey barrier end in what visually looks like a traffic lane. Further that multiple human drivers had hit the divider in the same spot and a near fatal accident occurred literally the next day into the same barrier. If I put a brick wall on the freeway and paint it to look like a tunnel ala wil-e-…

Is this the one you are talking about?

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-o...

I'd blame a human driver for hitting it in this case.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#58
post #29

After several officers where nearly injured/injured/killed because drivers ran into them as they were stopped on the side of the road, some states instituted laws that say you either slow down to 45 or you move over a lane. Is that built into AutoPilot and whatever it's called on other brands? Humans have to do it, so cars should have to as well.

Every lane change is a possible collision. I wonder if that was taken into account.

Yes, that's why slowing down is the other action you can take.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#59

Because Tesla effectively doesn't have AEB while AutoPilot is enabled. In a Tesla AEB should be an entirely self-contained ("dumber") system. Its only job should be to look for any ground-level object ahead and brake. It should do this using simpler but more reliable ("dumber") techniques like forward bumper-level radar or camera parallax, not NN/deep learning/object recognition/AI. To use an analogy, AEB should be l…

Does Tesla even have a radar?

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#60
post #59

Because Tesla effectively doesn't have AEB while AutoPilot is enabled. In a Tesla AEB should be an entirely self-contained ("dumber") system. Its only job should be to look for any ground-level object ahead and brake. It should do this using simpler but more reliable ("dumber") techniques like forward bumper-level radar or camera parallax, not NN/deep learning/object recognition/AI. To use an analogy, AEB should be l…

Does Tesla even have a radar?

I dont think so. I thought their whole gimmick or goal was to drive entirely by cameras and nothing else. Because humans only have eyes.

Though just speculation and no source.

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