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

Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

fuelarc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 449 posts

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#261

Post by throwaway31131 »

energy123 wrote: post #30
xbmcuser wrote: post #22

The point I soured on Musk was when he ditched radar/lidar and tried to go with camera's alone. This made me realize he is not the genius he is made out to be but instead he is a fraud/charlatan and over the years his statements on different topics have only hardened that belief. Why the fuck would you want ai cars to be the same as humans you should want them to be many times better and radarr/lidar sonarr type tech…

Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane instead of just one pilot. The chance of a fatal error (false negative identification of an object near the car) decreases from p to p^n. The size of that decrease is not intuitive: if p=0.0001 it now becomes a much smaller number with the introduction of a second pilot or second independent sensor stream (0.0001^2). Now the errors are not…

Does that mean a Tesla only has one camera? If not, you're dealing with "multiple independent sensor streams" regardless.

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#262

Post by ddq »

FireBeyond wrote: post #169
dathinab wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk did not understand this. more likely he is a ruthless ** who doesn't care about people dying and slightly increasing the profit margin is for him worth more then a some people dying regulators/law allowing self driving companies to wriggle out of responsibility didn't help either lidar was interesting for him as long as it seemed light Tesla could maybe dominate the self driving marked through technological ex…

Right, he despises environmental regulations because he’s “trying to get us to a new home”, so who cares what happens to this one? Especially if it delays him doing so. Someone said in an interview “Elon desperately wants the world saved. But only if by him.”

Earth is the only home, any other planetary body would be akin to homelessness. Words cannot adequately express the sheer small-minded ignorance of these feckless technocrats, the unadulterated hubris to presume themselves remotely capable of surpassing eons of biospheric development with their fucking spaghetti code that can't even drive a car properly. With such a level of dangerous stupidity posing an existential threat to all life in this solar system, it is nothing short of the gravest immorality to allow such a dim-witted, mean-spirited, drugged-out, misguided moron to remain in a position of power and control.

There is no planet B.

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#263

Post by bink »

Hobadee wrote: post #123
audunw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see any way you can spin this in a positive light. Yeah, there may be many more FSD miles on Tesla, but if that leads to a bunch of motorcyclists getting hit, then maybe that’s exactly the problem. We know this is one of the core issues of Tesla FSD: its capabilities have been hyped and over promised time and time again. We have countless examples of drivers trusting it far more than they should. And who’s to…

The problem is there isn't enough data here. Killing 5 motorcycles isn't great, but if human driver killed say 100 in the same sample, 5 is actually pretty good. Of course if human drivers kill 1 or 2 in the same sample, 5 is really bad.

The difference to me, as a motorcyclist, is that to prevent humans from crashing cars into motorcycles is complicated. There are a multitude of reasons someone may not be paying attention or may not see another vehicle. This problem with Tesla has an easily implemented solution that could be deployed now but isn't. We don't have such a solution for non-Tesla crashes into motorcycles. How many motorcyclists deaths are we willing to accept to save money? How much money is too much to prevent 5 deaths?

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#264

Post by breadwinner »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #145
xbmcuser wrote: post #22

The point I soured on Musk was when he ditched radar/lidar and tried to go with camera's alone. This made me realize he is not the genius he is made out to be but instead he is a fraud/charlatan and over the years his statements on different topics have only hardened that belief. Why the fuck would you want ai cars to be the same as humans you should want them to be many times better and radarr/lidar sonarr type tech…

It's because the sensor suite for lidar is expensive and HD cameras are basically a commodity at this point. So if your goal is to pump out $20k self driving cars, then you need cameras to be good enough. So the logic becomes "If humans can do it, so can cameras, otherwise we have no product, no promise."

Cameras have poor dynamic range and can be easily blinded by bright surfaces. While it is true that humans do fine with only eyes, our eyes are significantly better than cameras.

More importantly, expectations are higher when an automated system is driving the car. It is not sufficient if, in aggregate, self-driving cars have fewer accidents. If you lose a loved one in an accident where the accident could have been easily avoided if a human was driving, then you're not going to be mollified to hear that in aggregate, fewer people are being killed by self-driving cars! You'd be outraged to hear such a justification! The expectation therefore is that in each individual injury accident a human clearly could not have handled the situation any better. Self-driving cars have to be significantly better than humans to be accepted by society, and that means it has to have better-than-human levels of vision (which lidars provide).

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#266

Post by btrettel »

BeetleB wrote: post #240
btrettel wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does address the base rate, though not in a fully satisfactory way. You're correct to point out the number of Teslas on the road vs. other vehicles, as is this person who mentions driving hours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43601681 The replies to my comment seem to me to be addressing the question of what the appropriate reference class is, not the base rate fallacy.

> The replies to my comment seem to me to be addressing the question of what the appropriate reference class is, not the base rate fallacy. The base rate fallacy is fundamentally about the relative rates in the population, and I don't see that data in the article.

Again, I think it comes down to what the "population" (reference class) is. Implicit in what I quoted was the population being companies. I personally would criticize it on that point, not that they are making the base rate fallacy because I think from their perspective they are not.

Seems like semantics to me, I don't think we actually disagree on much.

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#267

Post by ModernMech »

Hikikomori wrote: post #224
dagw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing how many FSD miles Teslas have done compared to other brands, it's hard to judge. It could just be that Tesla owners are far more likely to trust and use their cars FSD capabilities, and thus end up in more FSD accidents. Other brands might have so bad FSD that people simply not trust it and basically never use it, and thus never get into an FSD accident.

How good can it be if it rear ends motorcycles?

This.

People arguing over base rates of motorcycle accidents as if Tesla didn't get fooled by a loony tunes wall. If Waymo had killed 5 motorcyclists in SF we would know. But they operate there without an incident for years.

Meanwhile, Tesla just after releasing autopilot to the world a man is decapitated because the system is deficient. Then it happened again in 2016 under eerily similar circumstance. Then we observe Teslas hitting broad objects like fire trucks and busses.

The correct response to that is not to say "Well what's the base rate for decapitations and hitting broad objects?"

No, you find out the reason for this thing happening. And the reason is known: a deficient sensor suit that it prone to missing objects clearly in its field of view.

So with the motorcycle situation, we already know what the problem is. This isn't a matter of a Tesla just interfacing with the statistical reality of getting rear-ended by a car. Because we know Teslas have a deficient sensor suit.

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#268

Post by ben_w »

toddmorey wrote: post #142
xbmcuser wrote: post #22

The point I soured on Musk was when he ditched radar/lidar and tried to go with camera's alone. This made me realize he is not the genius he is made out to be but instead he is a fraud/charlatan and over the years his statements on different topics have only hardened that belief. Why the fuck would you want ai cars to be the same as humans you should want them to be many times better and radarr/lidar sonarr type tech…

This was purely an effort to improve margins on the cars that they tried to sell with other types of rationale. From the way I've seen him operate his companies, treat his employees, and now work with the government, he has a high tolerance for risk paired with a very low tolerance for perceived inefficiencies plus too little patience to fully understand the problem. He really embodies the ethos of "move fast and bre…

Yup, it's a product development process known as "Muntzing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing

While it was absolutely vital to getting the costs of the original Tesla Roadster and SpaceX launches way down… it can only work when you are able to accept "no, stop" as an answer.

Rockets explode when you get them wrong, you can't miss it.

Cars crashing more than other models? That's statistics, which can be massaged.

Government work? There's always someone complaining no matter what you do, very easy to convince yourself that all criticism is unimportant, no matter how bad it gets. (And it gets much worse than the worst we've actually seen from DOGE and Trump — I don't actually think they'll get to be as bad as the Irish Potato Famine, but that is an example of leaders refusing to accept what was going on).

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#269

Post by dawnerd »

Havoc wrote: post #115
energy123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane instead of just one pilot. The chance of a fatal error (false negative identification of an object near the car) decreases from p to p^n. The size of that decrease is not intuitive: if p=0.0001 it now becomes a much smaller number with the introduction of a second pilot or second independent sensor stream (0.0001^2). Now the errors are not…

>Multiple independent sensor streams is like having multiple pilots fly a plane. Don't think that's the right analogy. Realistically you'd aim to combine them meaningfully. A bit like two eyes gives you depth perception. You assume 1+1 is less than two, when really you'd aim for >2

That’s the thing, they’re already merging multiple data streams (cameras) and dealing with visual anomalies. Pretty nonsense they can’t figure out different sensors when other companies are doing it just fine.

Re: Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

#270

Post by bink »

petra303 wrote: post #19
pelagic_sky wrote: post #8

When I used to ride, getting rear ended at a stop was one of my biggest fears other than people blowing stop signs. I always left more space in front of me that would give me room to maneuver as I watched for the car behind me to make the stop.

Lane filtering solves this fear. Should be legal nation wide.

As a motorcyclist, lane filtering also comes with some dangers. It's up to each motorcyclist to decide if it's worth it. I lane split in heavy traffic in CA but I'm also very wary about being the first vehicle into an intersection after a light changes. I see far more people running red lights around me than I do people rear ending stopped traffic at a light. I'm glad we have the option.
Post reply on HN