Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#111

Post by ideamotor » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

juunpp wrote: post #75

ideamotor wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheers for calling a spade a spade. I think you’ll agree neither is the whole picture. Engineers like to solve problems and nearly everyone wants the tools to solve problems which are power and money. My only hope is that people try to work on something that serves a social good while also getting paid well. I found it with renewable energy.

Indeed, the problem is the lack of accountability of one coupled with the ingenuity of the other. Some might even go as far as believing that they are doing something positive when in reality they are blind. Congratulations on balancing your career with social good; that has been the quandary of my life so far. I also agree 200% on your statement about contributing to the commons, and pretending that the technology s…

Thanks, I feel at least possibly hypocritical right now because I’m at a turning point in my career so while I’m making these comments, I’m over here calculating that I could retire in x years versus 2.5*x years if I could manage to snag one of these big tech jobs (I have the skills at least).

It can be a challenge being one of, if not the only, programmer/etc at a more domain specific company (gotta hold your ground) - and working at an actual tech company would certainly tool me up for future startups/etc. Or … my cost of living would go up and I’d be forever on that wheel.

I’ve been lucky enough to now really have the option financially, but I do pride myself on when I really didn’t have the option I chose scraping by with barely any money over something not in renewables for years. It helped not having any dependents. And ultimately through some luck it made up for the grunt years. Except now I’m old and rambling on hacker news, so retiring sooner is appealing at the moment.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#112

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

mwint wrote: post #81

_hcuq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So…… 25 sq miles. Let’s assume a 5 mile x 5 mile grid. Let’s put a bus route every half mile. That’s 20 bus routes. Let’s run a bus on each route every 15 minutes…. The buses run at an average speed of say 20 mph. So each bus takes 20 minutes to traverse the route in one direction. You would need 2 buses per route. That’s 40 buses. Let’s say it costs $100 per hour to run the bus. (Googled it). So that’s $4000/hr to r…

Where'd this $5000/car(/yr?) number come from? Total cost of ownership for a car is far less than that. You can only really get to $5k/year through very high depreciation, and people buying those kinds of cars won't be riding your busses anyway. Also, $100/hr to run a bus is probably a fine operating cost number, but you do have to buy the bus (capitalized cost) and take the depreciation hit just like cars.

I don't think I've paid (the equivalent of) $5000 for every car I've ever owned, in total.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#113

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #38

alexjplant wrote: post #30

I just spent a few hours on my Honda riding back from LA. I made it to a mile away from my apartment without incident only to watch a Tesla turn the wrong way onto the one-way street I was on. The driver was either using malfunctioning FSD or made a mistake as they immediately pulled up to the passenger-side curb. I'll be steering well clear of these things in the future.

Have you never accidentally turned onto a one way street when driving somewhere unfamiliar? It has definitely happened to me a couple of times. Humans make mistakes.

Nope. Never. Are you sure you should be driving?

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#114

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:24 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #44

coldtea wrote: post #17

What matters is the ratio of autopilot vs human driver accidents. And in that area, the highly cherry-picked and curated test results from Tesla sound absolutely convincing! Actually, scratch that: what matter is that the autopilot sounds cool and high tech. Given that, who cares about the casualties?

Can you explain how Teslas data is cherry picked? Is it unfair to compare crash data for just one particular area? Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense that some roads are inherently more dangerous because of poor designs or conditions?

To me it often feels like they are comparing the best conditions to all conditions. So for self driving only dry overcast well marked roads with no construction or surprises. Where as comparison include all conditions, from blizzard to blinding sunlight in between road construction on poorly maintained roads...

So not really apples to apples comparison. Unless FSD is as safe in middle of blizzard when positioning system is being jammed it fails for me...

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#115

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:24 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #102

Schroedingersat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In aircraft or maritime it's a system you can activate and stop paying attention to the controls or do a task like navigation, eating, or going to the bathroom for timescales on the order of seconds to minutes. Tesla's 'autopilot' system is cruise control but with more mental overhead when the human needs to react because the human is being hypnotised by lack of stimulus and has to keep a mental model of what the car…

To just arbitrarily redefine autopilot for cars as something that can avoid accidents isn't a good argument. You are supposed to still have awareness when using autopilot in an airplane, ship - paying attention to things like radar, radio, ADSB, e.t.c. And in a Tesla, you are supposed to pay attention visually. Full self driving is still in beta test, with present dangers that you have to accept. All the accidents th…

I've never seen Tesla's "autopilot" avoid an accident that a human driver wouldn't have reacted to sooner. Maybe the standard of driving in the US is very low, or something.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#116

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:27 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #102

Schroedingersat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In aircraft or maritime it's a system you can activate and stop paying attention to the controls or do a task like navigation, eating, or going to the bathroom for timescales on the order of seconds to minutes. Tesla's 'autopilot' system is cruise control but with more mental overhead when the human needs to react because the human is being hypnotised by lack of stimulus and has to keep a mental model of what the car…

To just arbitrarily redefine autopilot for cars as something that can avoid accidents isn't a good argument. You are supposed to still have awareness when using autopilot in an airplane, ship - paying attention to things like radar, radio, ADSB, e.t.c. And in a Tesla, you are supposed to pay attention visually. Full self driving is still in beta test, with present dangers that you have to accept. All the accidents th…

I think we could make argument that autopilot is a unfit system for car travel.

Both air and water the distances and reaction times needed are much much longer. At least in the situations autopilots are used. And they are not really used in situations where manual control is needed.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#117

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:28 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #44

coldtea wrote: post #17

What matters is the ratio of autopilot vs human driver accidents. And in that area, the highly cherry-picked and curated test results from Tesla sound absolutely convincing! Actually, scratch that: what matter is that the autopilot sounds cool and high tech. Given that, who cares about the casualties?

Can you explain how Teslas data is cherry picked? Is it unfair to compare crash data for just one particular area? Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense that some roads are inherently more dangerous because of poor designs or conditions?

It's not even especially "cherry picked". If you compare accidents in vehicles driven on "autopilot" versus every other vehicle, you'll see that they have far fewer accidents per mile.

However, that's not a fair comparison.

Tesla's "autopilot" only works on clear motorways with nothing "exciting" going on. It can't cope with sudden changes in conditions very well, and hands over to the human driver. It can't cope with two-lane roads with cars coming at it at all, never mind single-track country roads.

So, if you compare Tesla "autopilot" with cars driven in the same conditions as when "autopilot" is in use, you see that they're no safer or just a little bit worse.

TL;DR Tesla "autopilot" only works in conditions where cars don't crash anyway, but they are compared against cars driven in all possible conditions.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#118

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:30 AM UTC

dahdum wrote: post #33

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #5

I always think it's weird how instead of just improving public transit, we've all become fixated on self driving vehicles. Good transit would mean most people don't need to operate a vehicle while having a plethora of other benefits like combating climate change and more efficient land use (if you live in a suburb, take note of the sheer amount land dedicated to parking; it's often more land than the store for retail…

> I always think it's weird how instead of just improving public transit, we've all become fixated on self driving vehicles. To me self driving EV's appear a much more viable way to "solve" public transit everywhere beyond major metros. They'll drastically drop labor costs and are extremely flexible. No major infrastructure changes are needed compared to adding things like rail. No cities need to be redesigned in one…

> To me self driving EV's appear a much more viable way to "solve" public transit everywhere beyond major metros.

But it doesn't solve the problem of using something sized for four people carrying one person.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#119

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:36 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #72

ravenstine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your ideas for improving public transit? Because the way I see it, public transit suffers from issues that are hard to overcome and are exacerbated by globalized societies. Public transit simply can't take you everywhere. Even when I e lived in areas with dense bus routes, how one would get to a stop was often a question. Buses are relatively slow and impede traffic, especially in larger cities. More trains…

> The only place where I have lived where this wasn't a problem was New Zealand, and that was 18 years ago, so I don't know if that's still the case. I always give up on public transit after seeing enough acts of human degradation and fights breaking out. Let's not forget the smell. You were supposed to describe public transit, not a rest stop on an Interstate Highway in the United States :-) But seriously: the thing…

> But seriously: the things you're describing are civic issues, not issues with public transportation

They both are and they aren't. It is a civic issue that is inherently worse for public transportation, especially those that have nearly no supervision like subways. I totally agree that the issue is a civic one that should be solved, but if we're not going to solve it, then it's a problem that will prevent public transportation from reaching its potential. Would you rather encounter a crazy person out in the open or be trapped in a steel box with them? That's essentially the decision people are making when they board public transit in a major American metro. If a person is smelly out in the open, at least there's a breeze that can blow the odor away, but on a bus or train you are trapped in the recirculating smell cloud. Out in the open, one might have to pass by such things, but being on public transit can mean experiencing them for hours.

> But that doesn't actually make them less frequent; it just converts the drunk guy shouting on the subway bench into the drunk guy who's about to T-bone you.

That's a bit of a false equivalence. While there's indeed some mathematical soundness to what you're saying, I'd argue the vast majority of trouble makers (for lack of a better term) on public transit aren't there out of commuting necessity. They hang out on public transit because it's out of the elements and they are unlikely to be harassed themselves. It's somewhere for them to go. If all public transit closed, they'd just be out on the curb or in front of a gas station.

There is an incentive for city officials to ignore the problem as much as they can get away with. They know that the vast majority of their constituents aren't taking public transit, so what better place to allow the unwanted to be off the streets?

That's why it is a public transit issue. It's a much greater challenge to solve civic problems at a higher level, but cities could actually hire security to be on their trains and actually enforce tickets. No matter what, it's an inferior daily experience to being in one's own car. You can never get rid of smells and the low-level bad behavior. Not without society changing itself.

Re: Tesla on autopilot rear ends motorcycle on freeway, killing rider

#120

Post by herewulf » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

Gordonjcp wrote: post #115

ActorNightly wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To just arbitrarily redefine autopilot for cars as something that can avoid accidents isn't a good argument. You are supposed to still have awareness when using autopilot in an airplane, ship - paying attention to things like radar, radio, ADSB, e.t.c. And in a Tesla, you are supposed to pay attention visually. Full self driving is still in beta test, with present dangers that you have to accept. All the accidents th…

I've never seen Tesla's "autopilot" avoid an accident that a human driver wouldn't have reacted to sooner. Maybe the standard of driving in the US is very low, or something.

It actually is. Some states are far worse than others. In my state, a learning permit can be obtained at the age of 15. Not exactly a good age for handling grave responsibility.