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Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#61

Post by thenewnewguy »

bangaladore wrote: post #57
thenewnewguy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is not gaming the system by having a good airbag system that only deploys when necessary (that's actually really good!). Tesla is gaming the system by excluding accidents where the airbags don't deploy from the "Autopilot/FSD accidents" dataset, thus artificially deflating the number of accidents.

This is a point you certainly could make. But it is not what the original commenter wrote.

Agreed, but I am not the original commenter, I am making my own point separately from them. I agree with you that Tesla isn't gaming anything by having a good airbag.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#62

Post by FireBeyond »

londons_explore wrote: post #32

> , it only records an accident if the airbags deploy, I've often wondered if Tesla is gaming the figures by only deploying the airbags in really bad crashes, whereas other manufacturers might deploy the airbags for pretty minor bumps. This in turn makes them look really good on 'number of accidents where airbags deploy'.

> I've often wondered if Tesla is gaming the figures by only deploying the airbags in really bad crashes, whereas other manufacturers might deploy the airbags for pretty minor bumps.

So even as a Tesla "hater", but as a paramedic, first generation airbags were very simplistic. Essentially, "if speed > x mph and collision = true then deploy".

Nowadays, advanced airbag systems do calculations based on speed, G forces, angle of intrusion, lateral movement, etc., and decide "will the airbag system cause or risk more injury?", i.e. "can the passenger restraint system (i.e. seatbelts) do sufficient work to minimize injury".

So you can get relatively low speed collision with heavy lateral movement causing a deployment, but some other deployments at 30mph not deploying airbags.

All that being said, I do not believe Tesla (or any other manufacturer) so describe accidents only in terms of airbag deployment. Other factors like speed, G force felt, did seatbelt pretensioners activate, should all be sufficient to categorize as an accident.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#63

Post by FireBeyond »

bangaladore wrote: post #38
londons_explore wrote: post #32

> , it only records an accident if the airbags deploy, I've often wondered if Tesla is gaming the figures by only deploying the airbags in really bad crashes, whereas other manufacturers might deploy the airbags for pretty minor bumps. This in turn makes them look really good on 'number of accidents where airbags deploy'.

The IIHS has repeatedly shown that Tesla airbags are the best in class. Deploying airbags when not needed can do significant harm to occupants. Not to mention total vehicles for no good reason. There isn't a need to wonder when independent data gatherers have already answered the question.

> The IIHS has repeatedly shown that Tesla airbags are the best in class.

No they haven't. For a start, IIHS doesn't rank "airbags".

And then... Tesla fans love to latch on to this as a trope.

The IIHS -groups- vehicles into safety levels by class. It doesn't rank in class, at all.

So what, you might say, they're still in the top or top two safety levels, they deserve credit... Except:

There are twenty one other vehicle at that same level or higher in the same segment ("mid-size luxury"), and sixteen if you only count the top segment.

Of those, Tesla could be number 1, or number 16. You don't know. So this whole meme of "Tesla is the safest" needs to die, it's just bluster.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#64

Post by lurkingmba »

Someone wrote: post #45
d_theorist wrote: post #25

The relevant metric should be accident rate per million miles driven. What is the rate with autopilot vs without autopilot.

On similar roads, in similar traffic, in similar weather. If you look at fatalities or define “accident” as cases where somebody had to visit a doctor or something like that, you also need to compare to similar cars. Most self-driving cars are relatively new and relatively large, and both decrease those (probably even accident rate because they statistically have newer brakes and tires and have more active safety fea…

You can add, "at a similar time of day". Hours after midnight are very dangerous.

To my knowledge, Tesla has never put out data on how Autopilot is "safer" on accidents per mile that was close to being apples to apples.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#65

Post by FireBeyond »

grecy wrote: post #53
Dylan16807 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a picture of a crashed car. Unless you're claiming the system doesn't crash now, a picture from 2018 is just as good as a picture from last week. It's not a main piece of evidence, it's an example. The evidence is in the text of the article where it talks about hundreds of crashes. As to your questions, as long as the issue in the article applies to the model in the picture, all of those are fine. I'd want a new…

It's like showing a video of an iPhone taking ages to load a web page or a very grainy photo that it took.. but it's from a 5 year old iPhone. FSD has come a LONG way in 5 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Lrrhn0CMk

> It's like showing a video of an iPhone taking ages to load a web page or a very grainy photo that it took

LOL. The disclaimer "Sequences Shortened" on ads came about because of other manufacturer complaints to the FTC about very early iPhone ads very much editing sequences to make the iPhone look faster than it was.

> FSD has come a LONG way in 5 years.

And has an even longer way to go. Usable means things like driving in Pittsburgh in winter at night, not "hey, look, it no longer causes near misses attempting to figure out a roundabout in suburban California in the middle of the day".

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#66

Post by FireBeyond »

HPsquared wrote: post #40
d_theorist wrote: post #25

The relevant metric should be accident rate per million miles driven. What is the rate with autopilot vs without autopilot.

Not all "miles driven" are the same. Autopilot is going to be engaged on highway driving which already has a lower accident rate per mile driven. So that biases a simple comparison. Edit: and even within highway miles, autopilot will be enabled more in the "easy" stretches and turned off in roadworks etc.

Precisely. If these systems aren't or can't be engaged on a Pittsburgh street at night in a whiteout, then I don't much care.

Tesla jukes the stats by "Oh, this won't go well, so we're not even going to try", which isn't an option for human drivers, short of "don't drive at all".

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#67

Post by grecy »

FireBeyond wrote: post #65
grecy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like showing a video of an iPhone taking ages to load a web page or a very grainy photo that it took.. but it's from a 5 year old iPhone. FSD has come a LONG way in 5 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Lrrhn0CMk

> It's like showing a video of an iPhone taking ages to load a web page or a very grainy photo that it took LOL. The disclaimer "Sequences Shortened" on ads came about because of other manufacturer complaints to the FTC about very early iPhone ads very much editing sequences to make the iPhone look faster than it was. > FSD has come a LONG way in 5 years. And has an even longer way to go. Usable means things like dri…

Why are you changing the topic and moving the goal posts?

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#68

Post by ahahahahah »

lukan wrote: post #10
loudmax wrote: post #7

If Tesla hadn't named their driver assistance system "Autopilot" they would have saved so much trouble (not to mention lives).

Autopilots in planes maintain altitude and speed and no landing or evasion. But full self driving was a broken promise.

That's a really dumb argument when the research exists explaining exactly how people understand autopilot in the context of cars.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#69

Post by tgma »

FireBeyond wrote: post #55
tgma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The aspirational claims are not about Autopilot, but FSD (and I agree that having people pay for FSD in 2015 is borderline fraudulent. It is a consumer protection matter, not a safety matter.) Again, the statements to California DMV or SEC or Congress is one thing. Whether the owner is confused by the abilities of their vehicle post purchase and driving for a week is a distinct matter. > Those drivers are "it's okay…

> People break traffic laws all the time because they are selfish and it is convenient for themselves. Tesla drivers are no different. Never said the first scenario is acceptable, and neither is the second. What's worse is this active "I'm going to let it do what it wants because it'll get better." > Have you seen a single consumer, not an employee, who does this for training data for Tesla? YouTube has plenty of exa…

They are doing it for content not to train Tesla. Isn't that obvious? People have doing performative moves with their bikes motor vehicles since the dawn of its age. You can find tons of those for drifting BMWs. No ADAS there.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#70

Post by bangaladore »

jeffbee wrote: post #59
bangaladore wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that there are 10s of millions of "L2 driver assist" as defined by synopsys that have zero driver supervising checks such as most cars out there with lane-keep and cruise control.

And you believe that federal regulators have simply never heard of these other systems? A more likely explanation is that the driver attention monitoring in a Honda or Cadillac or whatever works better than Tesla's.

You seem to have misunderstood me. I'm talking about vehicles without attention monitoring systems. Most cars sold in the past ten years technically have "Level-2" driving features but with no driver monitoring systems.

Tesla autopilot / FSD is immensely more capable than 99% of LKAS systems, so maybe that's why regulators care more. But from a pure attentiveness standpoint, 1000 other car models have grossly worse safety in this regard.

However, my argument is that your original claim that the "L2 driver assist system must ensure that the driver is always actively supervising" is demonstrably false, given that, by pure numbers, "Level-2" capable cars, by large, do not have driver monitoring features. However, the government continues to focus solely on Tesla.

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