Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 147 posts

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

#111

Post by SkyPuncher »

brokenmachine wrote: post #67
lacker wrote: 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…

What happens when the auto braking engages? Does it just slam the brakes on and stop dead? Wouldn't that be a big risk of you getting rear ended by someone behind you (especially if it's a false alarm)?

Depends on the vehicle. My 2014 Chevy pretensions the brakes, but doesn't apply meaningful force.

My 2021 Hyundai alerts and pretensions as well. The two situations it's come on, I've been aware of the situation and actively moving to brake. Had I not actually applied braking, I believe the vehicle would have in my place.

I somewhat suspect AEB on the Hyundai will lead to a collision, but at a significantly reduced speed. In other words, a fender bender instead of mangled mess.

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

#112

Post by bradknowles »

adfrhgeaq5hy wrote: post #93
namrog84 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Humans only have eyes... and the most powerful supercomputer in the world between their ears. The goal is to cut costs and keep shipping during the chip shortage. Ignore the excuses.

Humans also have ears. And a sense of touch. And a sense of motion. And that supercomputer between the ears has decades of experience doing sensor fusion amongst all the various inputs down to the level of milliseconds of variation, and decades of experience of rising in cars and knowing what they feel is safe versus what is not, and presumably at least months of experience of control behind the wheel.

Tesla doesn’t have a lot of any of those things.

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

#113

Post by bradknowles »

peatmoss wrote: post #46

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…

I’ve been dinged several times for sharing Apple News links, because they can’t be resolved unless you’re using a recent Apple OS.

I’ve stopped using Apple News.

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

#114

Post by Yaggo »

fwip wrote: post #73
Someone1234 wrote: post #49

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…

Notably, Tesla cars have never used Lidar, which is a lot more precise than radar, but it costs more.

Tesla uses common technology available. Mass-produced consumer cars haven't yet adopted lidar, because the technology has been too expensive and bulky, until very recent development. The next-gen premium cars will likely offer lidar as an option in near future.

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

#115

Post by fy20 »

andrewia wrote: post #28
choeger wrote: post #14

It's kind of interesting that this appears to happen with police cars and emergency vehicles mostly. Is there a particular way of parking such vehicles that makes it hard(er) for a Tesla to detect it? It might also indeed be about phantom braking. My relatively old (probably designed around 10 to 20 years ago) system gets confused sometimes when I pass a truck or a bus and once even when I passed a bicycle. It happen…

I think the flashing lights and appearance might degrade autopilot. Other cars also have issues because they use radar (except for some new models with camera-based systems like the 2022 Honda Civic) and ignore stationary targets when they see a moving vehicle as a more likely "target". Some systems use a combination of radar and camera (with camera providing low-speed, parked car, bike, and pedestrian detection). Th…

I wonder if it would make sense to hand over control to the human, or at least slow down a lot, if the car detects any emergency vehicles with lights flashing.

For emergency vehicles parked on the side of the road, there could be all sorts of reasons why you should slow down and move to the other lane. Blasting through 3ft from the vehicle at 80mph isn't the smartest move.

I've been in situations where I've had to stop suddenly because a emergency vehicle was coming across my path at a cross road, where the traffic lights were green for me. But as I heard sirens and saw the reflection of blue lights, I knew to slow down well before I saw the vehicle.

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

#116

Post by fingerlocks »

kbos87 wrote: post #80
lacker wrote: 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…

Automatic Emergency Braking is amazing and it never gets talked about. I’ve logged 40k miles in my 2019 Subaru with Eyesight and it very reliably notices dangerous situations. Other vehicles hard stopping in front of me is the most common occurrence, and it always hits that sweet spot of me being glad it alerted me so I could brake before it had to. I’ve had one instance where it went straight to braking - I took a r…

> Other vehicles hard stopping in front of me is the most common occurrence

Wow, is mine defective? I have the same vehicle. My most common occurrence is backing out of my steep driveway at faster than 1 mph. We made a habit of disabling it as soon as we start the engine. The second most common occurrence is driving past the narrow neighborhood roundabouts everywhere in Seattle.

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

#117

Post by cycomanic »

Yaggo wrote: post #114
fwip wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, Tesla cars have never used Lidar, which is a lot more precise than radar, but it costs more.

Tesla uses common technology available. Mass-produced consumer cars haven't yet adopted lidar, because the technology has been too expensive and bulky, until very recent development. The next-gen premium cars will likely offer lidar as an option in near future.

One little known fact is that lidar has been in cars for a long time. Volvo for example has had lidar in some cars going back almost 10 years IRRC (I saw a presentation by a Volvo engineer talking about this, can't find any link right now because it's all swamped by the Volvo luminar collaboration). It was very different type of lidar though mainly used for keeping distance to the car ahead (and maybe AEB?). The thing about "modern" Lidar is that there are still so many open questions (weather, how to keep the apertures clean...) , apart from the fact that they still are way too expensive.

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

#118

Post by emn13 »

ajross wrote: post #83
emn13 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the source for this claim? Are you accounting for the fact different classes of vehicle have differing accident statistics (e.g. comparing teslas to similarly old and expensive alternatives), and that autopilot's miles are not a random sample of all driven miles?

No, because it's enough that it exists as an existence proof refuting the hypothesis. The burden is on people contending that e.g. AP can't stop for emergency vehicles (or the related point in the linked article that emergency braking doesn't work) to show that it is unsafe. That analysis doesn't hold for obvious interpretations of the data we have. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it means you need to come to the table…

If you're merely questioning whether Tesla's really do crash into emergency vehicles more often that would be expected, I get it.

But "Tesla's on AP get in these crashes about half as much as vehicles in the general fleet" is unsupported; even in Tesla's own figures from https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport the difference between AP and non-AP Tesla's isn't large enough (for me anyhow) to actually draw any conclusions from, since AP usage is obviously correlated with road conditions. To be clear: I'm not saying it's at all obvious that AP does worse than a human driver, but it's neither is that possibility ruled out by anything they've posted there - Tesla simply choose to present statistics without the context required to interpret them, likely because it suits their marketing aims. News at 11.

The human instinct to retain control even when that's not to their advantage gives me the hunch that it's more plausible that the apparent numerical benefits of AP are simply due to selection bias; people turn it on in situations that are less messy, and therefore it's involved in fewer accidents. Perhaps these investigations will reveal more.

Put it this way: if autopilot actually were better than a human driver, and humans choose to use it in less dangerous situations, and those drivers at least sometimes pay enough attention to catch the occasional AP oversight (better isn't perfect!) - well, then I'd expect the AP crash numbers to be dramatically lower than the human crash numbers. They're not.

I do think the Tesla AP numbers look less bad than they did a few years ago anyhow, to be fair. I just don't think it paints a clear picture yet.

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

#119

Post by Griffinsauce »

namrog84 wrote: post #60
baybal2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because humans only have eyes.

This is the most ridiculous line of reasoning I've heard in a long time. Wow.

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

#120

Post by llampx »

namrog84 wrote: post #60
baybal2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Humans only have eyes? So Teslas can smell the milk and throw it out if its gone bad? Or listen to a faraway sound and know that its getting closer at an alarming or not-alarming rate? Or feel the road getting harsher and understand that the GPS is incorrect?
Post reply on HN