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

Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 159 posts

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#131

Post by fluffything »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #23

"Cruise Control" doesn't mean I can ignore the ~3200lbs of sports car I drive, just like "Tesla Autopilot" doesn't mean drivers can ignore the ~5000lbs of battery under them. As an American who spends considerable time driving cars in various performance events (even some fun wheel to wheel endurance stuff) I think I can safely estimate at least ~25% of drivers on the road today, probably shouldn't be. Tesla is makin…

"Autopilot" is short for "automatic pilot" which is defined as "a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot."

If their "Autopilot" needs any sort of human supervision, either it is faulty, or tesla marketing is misleading. Either way, in case of an accident, it's tesla's fault - the name of the feature strongly implies that no human intervention is necessary, and talking about it with many pilot friends they all agree.

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#132

Post by scoot »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32
jrochkind1 wrote: post #13

So I take it it's NOT okay to take your hands off the wheel with Tesla Autopilot? I am not familiar with the technology. The Tesla page on it ( https://www.tesla.com/autopilot ) takes a while to get to describing what it does , but then says, among other things: > Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane. And: > With the new Tesla Vision cameras, sensors and computing po…

> So it's steering... but you're supposed to leave your hands on the wheel anyway? But not actually steering, just resting there just in case? I'm not sure how realistic this is in terms of human behavior. I have an Acura, so no autopilot, but it allows my car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically within its lane. Also, if I don't apply control to the steering wheel (let alone have my hands off of it) for mor…

That just goes to prove what a misnomer Tesla’s “autopilot” is, since its core features are just lame assist.

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#133

Post by bloaf »

pseudolus wrote: post #2

The percentage of drivers who think it's safe to nap is small but nonetheless frightening. What are these people thinking?

So the obvious question is: how many uneventful naps do we need to take before we declare that it actually is safe?

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#134

Post by [deleted] »

Shivetya wrote: post #130
m463 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even say sometimes it checks too much. I've driven, actively looking ahead at the road, and then it will beep because I ignored the prompt on the dashboard (below the wheel). The prompt is white at the top of the dashboard and is a white gradient, that looks like glare on the dash. I don't know how these people fall asleep behind the wheel unless they've done something that mimics an active hand on the wheel.…

I have had this happen to but it only goes to emphasize just how much we tune out during long drives. My use of autopilot is to have the equivalent of a back seat driver or co-pilot who is just a bit paranoid. Zoning out is something the AP system won't do but drivers can do. I look at it this way, how many have been driving on a long trip only to glance in the rear view mirror and see a bridge behind you that you do…

[deleted]

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#135

Post by Faark »

Cookingboy wrote: post #83
neotek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tesla is making progress, and regardless of whether they survive these various courts of public opinion, they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. They're also wilfully misrepresenting the quality and safety of their technology to their customers, presenting intentionally misleading statistics to the media about it, and attempt…

If you go to certain sub-Reddits or other similar forums, you will see that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation associated with Tesla, Tesla Auto Pilot, driver assist technology and Full Self Driving technology in general. I largely blame the absurdly irresponsible misinformation campaign spearheaded by Tesla and Elon personally. It's awful to get the public's understand of a nascent and potential game cha…

Your statements seem to have quite a slant as well.

> 3. [..] I've seen Tesla fan suggesting that Waymo handles Stop Signs by hard coding the location of each stop sign in the map.

I'm sure you'll see uninformed individuals behaving uninformed. But in my experience does this not represent the average of e.g. the r/tesla community. It's surprising to have you specifically mention Waymo, since it was mostly others (especially German car makers) who usually bring up how important high precision maps (or more recently "5G", while we're mentioning buzzwords) is for self driving. My first google result right now was from Lyft [0]. I can totally understand how people less informed on the topic can get that wrong.

> 4. [..] when in reality Tesla's FSD system has seen almost ZERO actual testing anywhere

What? The usual argument I remember is Tesla outsourcing the testing to its customers and the many good reasons against it. But how can you in good faith represent the tesla AP as untested after it has driven millions of miles? Or are you specifically talking about whatever final L5 FSD solution Tesla might come up with one day? Since this obviously cannot be tested yet, since it doesn't exist.

> 5. The Mountain View driver who was killed at the 85/101 on-ramp was the result of a terrible AP regression that failed to handle concrete barriers that it used to handle.

Can you source that being caused by a regression? The best I've found [1] mentions someone else saying it got worse in a comparable spot, but I also remember reading the killed driver having specifically complained to Tesla about the location the crash happened, but not if AP behavior there had gotten better in between.

But yeah, a lot of Tesla's communication around that case was horrible and I also don't feel they do enough to stop their fans and customers from being aware of the technologies current limits.

[0] https://medium.com/@LyftLevel5/https-medium-com-lyftlevel5-r... [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/dashcam-video-shows-tes...

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#136

Post by seanmcdirmid »

scoot wrote: post #132
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's steering... but you're supposed to leave your hands on the wheel anyway? But not actually steering, just resting there just in case? I'm not sure how realistic this is in terms of human behavior. I have an Acura, so no autopilot, but it allows my car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically within its lane. Also, if I don't apply control to the steering wheel (let alone have my hands off of it) for mor…

That just goes to prove what a misnomer Tesla’s “autopilot” is, since its core features are just lame assist.

The same thing is true with an airplane autopilot, which is an even lamer assist. It actually isn’t a misnomer at all, if we go by what autopilots have actually done historically.

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#137

Post by astazangasta »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #74
astazangasta wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereas, i presume, in your previous non-Tesla cars you were regularly getting into pileups?

How reductive. Let's try looking at it as getting closer to accidents before managing to fix the issue. So now with this system, one-in-a-million odds of that type of accident might become one-in-ten-million odds.

My point, ill-made, is this is anecdotal data and therefore useless in evaluating anything.

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#138

Post by cjcenizal »

astazangasta wrote: post #137
Dylan16807 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How reductive. Let's try looking at it as getting closer to accidents before managing to fix the issue. So now with this system, one-in-a-million odds of that type of accident might become one-in-ten-million odds.

My point, ill-made, is this is anecdotal data and therefore useless in evaluating anything.

To be better understood, you could try directly stating your point instead of making a snarky remark that requires interpretation. :) as far as anecdotes, that’s all I have to offer on this topic. Feel free to ignore them if they don’t help you in evaluating something.

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#139

Post by ricardobeat »

FireBeyond wrote: post #84
agitator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Which other vehicles on the road actively steer your vehicle away from an imminent collision when it's safe to do so? Tesla's blind spot monitoring doesn't just detect what's in your blind spot, like other vehicles, it also detects whether a vehicle is slowing down or accelerating into the "blind spot" adjacent to your vehicle. Their autopilot or automated emergency braking doesn't just brake when a vehic…

Uhh, my Audi did exactly that. Blind spot monitoring was adaptive to the speed differential. My current car uses brake light detection to assist with braking. These are not features unique to Tesla.

A Tesla has a radar with 160m range, plus an entire camera vision system with something like 70TFLOPs of computing power. Comparing that to simple brake light detection is disingenuous. Did you car also autonomously steer away from the incoming vehicle?

Re: Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology

#140

Post by Cookingboy »

Faark wrote: post #135
Cookingboy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go to certain sub-Reddits or other similar forums, you will see that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation associated with Tesla, Tesla Auto Pilot, driver assist technology and Full Self Driving technology in general. I largely blame the absurdly irresponsible misinformation campaign spearheaded by Tesla and Elon personally. It's awful to get the public's understand of a nascent and potential game cha…

Your statements seem to have quite a slant as well. > 3. [..] I've seen Tesla fan suggesting that Waymo handles Stop Signs by hard coding the location of each stop sign in the map. I'm sure you'll see uninformed individuals behaving uninformed. But in my experience does this not represent the average of e.g. the r/tesla community. It's surprising to have you specifically mention Waymo, since it was mostly others (esp…

>Or are you specifically talking about whatever final L5 FSD solution Tesla might come up with one day? Since this obviously cannot be tested yet, since it doesn't exist.

According to Elon they will reach feature complete by end of this year, but somehow that's achieved without any real world testing and validation, and they are supposed to be shipping to customers by next year.

Post reply on HN