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Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

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Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#121

I watched a similar video recently, but a car ahead avoided an accident and the car where video was taken from was rammed in the back because of a sudden stop. Which make me think maybe Tesla's response wasn't the best possible.

The best human driver would have the same constraint. The best you might do is flash the brake lights to get the guy's attention behind you, if you smell trouble, and then use medium braking force instead of full. A swerve to the shoulder or adjacent lane might be available, and a tesla would have the upper hand here on situational awareness, since it always knows what's alongside.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on error-prone, distracted, slow humans to guide massive killing machines is playing Russian roulette. AI driving will no doubt be eventually better than the best human driver within a decade, in nearly all instances.

The glorification of tech/denigration of humans juxtaposition is getting old fast. This attitude may seem benign, but it's insidious, carries a hint of elitism, and spills over into labor, class, and other aspects of human life. Why can't we appreciate tech advances without devaluing people?

This is something that kills tens of thousands of people per year in the US alone- already greatly reduced by technological advances, and still falling. Excuse me if I don't shed a tear for the feelings that might be hurt among human drivers who consistently and measurably overestimate their abilities.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure that Tesla didn't publish this video, an individual person did :-) (from what I have read till now). This is indeed good PR for self driving cars

True. Can someone fill me in.. why does lately every Tesla-related post have a token "PR stunt" comment?

>why does lately every Tesla-related post have a token "PR stunt" comment?

Why does every single bit of Tesla "news" make the front page? I see 50 videos a day on Reddit of people miraculously avoiding accidents, never once on HackerNews. This is kind of cool, but I'm going to remain skeptical that it "predicted" the accident. There were other cars that also stopped in time. Did we expect it to bulldoze into the back of the cars?

I mean, do people actually believe that Tesla has developed self-driving AI that is actually "predicting" accidents? Get enough cars on the road using the technology and we'll see amazing things that are hard to explain.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#124
One of the main causes of accidents are vehicles left on the road and other vehicles impacting them or the people as they take for granted that traffic will be fluid and are distracted or whatever.

You should never leave your children and family on a car on the left lane while you leave, never.

I have a neighbor that is paraplegic because of that. His entire family went to the hospital after a vehicle crashed from behind after a minor accident.

Your first priority is putting your car and family on a safe place. Proper triage priority number one is avoid another accident, by removing obstacles and signaling other cars.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#125

One part of my brain is saying: Sweet piece of technology!!! Another is saying: This seems like a very convenient piece of good PR for Tesla (and self driving car technology)... Yet another is saying: I hope the folks in the car are alright

3 people were wounded and brought to a hospital (dutch newspaper: http://www.ed.nl/regio/valkenswaard-e-o/valkenswaard/video-d...)

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#126
post #109
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same. The Skoda video only shows detection of the car in front of you and responding to that. In this case the Tesla also bounces the radar under that vehicle and responds to the motion of the car in front of the car in front of you. If you watch the video again carefully, the Tesla alerts before the car in front brakes, because the car in front of that is braking.

You are right, this video only hints at this at the end but if you read closely the specs Skoda seems to promise exactly that - automatic breaking to avoid collision. Here is a blurb on their Front Assistant feature ( http://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/euro-ncap-advance... ) "Skoda Front Assistant is a system designed to help avoid or to mitigate accidents into the rear of preceding traffic. A long-range rada…

Even a 12 mph reduction can greatly reduce the severity of a crash. Every foot per second makes a difference.

One problem with suddenly braking hard to avoid a collision in front is then you get rear ended (happened to me). Sometimes the best approach is to swerve onto the shoulder instead (also happened to me, and I watched the guy behind me plow into the guy in front).

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#127
I think the most exciting thing (and we're way behind schedule on this, a lot of this could have easily been done literally 30 years ago, no problem at all), is caravan functionality, where a group of cars moves together. If you imagine 20 cars at a standstill for some reason, if they begin to move forward slowly but at the same time (less than 50 millisecond apart) because they're coordinated then they can get up to speed almost as fast as if it were only just one car (let's say they have to speed up a bit more slowly for a safety allowance). But if you factor in human response time, it can be a phantom traffic jam. There is no reason for a traffic jam because there is clear road all the way ahead of the group - yet a traffic jam slowly makes its way back anyway. Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVjVVaLe10&t=1m55s

coordinating this stuff doesn't require computer vision or truly self-driving cars or anything like it and could have been done 30 years ago (1986) over an AM radio standard and some kind of coordination between cars - just nobody sat down and designed that standard.

today wireless coordination technology offers dozens of choices (in the gigahertz domain) and caravans could be assembled all but "trivially", cars can know where they are via gps with no problems at all. That would be an exciting move forward. Of course, it only works when everyone is doing it, but if just a few traffic jams instantly disappear (the ones where are the cars happen to have caravan functionality and coordinate) it would improve things for everyone: the traffic jam will disappear whenever it bunches up in a way that happens to consist of coordinated cars. (e.g. a 3-car phantom jam slowly moving backward will disappear whenever it crosses 3 caravan-enabled cars - not every car has to have this functionality). But I haven't read anything about Tesla coordinating even with other Teslas, let alone some standard of intercar coordination. A shame - this stuff is way easier than the self-driving stuff Tesla and others are doing. It's very low-hanging fruit.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#128
post #60

do the cars have some serious computer hardware or is it really good code/cloud assisted computation? Maybe ANN's active while driving?

I believe it's onboard, they have an onboard GPU - cloud-assisted would have latency problems and would also have problems in tunnels and areas with bad reception.

Why do you say GPU? I'm vaguely aware that GPU is far superior at multitasking unlike a CPU.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#129
post #60

do the cars have some serious computer hardware or is it really good code/cloud assisted computation? Maybe ANN's active while driving?

It must all be local. You couldn't possibly rely on any kind of network link for a hard realtime task like driving.

Yeah would-be neat to have them "globally connected" to Tesla, not sure why you would want that.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#130

One of the main causes of accidents are vehicles left on the road and other vehicles impacting them or the people as they take for granted that traffic will be fluid and are distracted or whatever. You should never leave your children and family on a car on the left lane while you leave, never. I have a neighbor that is paraplegic because of that. His entire family went to the hospital after a vehicle crashed from be…

In fairness the guy is saying that in the video. Stop, wait to see what the cars do behind, etc. Presumably he gets out when traffic has stopped behind him.
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