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

U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 507 posts

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#141

Post by [deleted] »

KronisLV wrote: post #41
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

> But how can you react promptly if you're not ready? I just don't get this. You cannot, that's the simple truth. You're supposed to focus on the road anyways and should be able to take over once any sort of autopilot or assist system starts working erroneously, yet in practice many people simply assume that those systems being there in the first place mean that you can simply stop focusing on the road altogether. It…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#142

Post by Robotbeat »

bluGill wrote: post #134
ben_w wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHT…

As was stated elsewhere, most accidents happen in city driving where autopilot cannot be activated so the with/without AI is meaningless. We need to figure out when the AI could have been activated but wasn't, if you do that then you are correct.

On the contrary to your overall point: The fatal crash rate per miles driven is almost 2 times higher in rural areas than urban areas. Urban areas may have more accidents, but the speeds are likely lower (fender benders).

https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#143

Post by alistairSH »

peeters wrote: post #129
alistairSH wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to buy a car that will randomly make its own decisions, that will pull the wheel from your hands ever time it thinks you are making an illegal lane change. That's almost exactly what my Honda does. Illegal (no signal) lane change results in a steering wheel shaker (and optional audio alert). And the car, when sensing an abrupt swerve which is interpreted as the vehicle leaving the roadway, attempts to…

> Illegal (no signal) lane change results in a steering wheel shaker (and optional audio alert). To be clear, tying the warning to the signal isn't about preventing unsignaled lane changes, it's gauging driver intent (i.e. is he asleep and drifting or just trying to change lanes). It's just gravy that it will train bad drivers to use their signals properly.

Correct. It's not (primarily) a training thing, but used to ensure the driver is driving and not sleeping/watching movies/whatever.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#144

Post by api »

gundmc wrote: post #3

This is why I believe the approach of incremental improvement towards full self driving is fundamentally flawed. These advanced driver assist tools are good enough to lull users into a false sense of security. No amount of "but our terms and conditions say you need to always pay attention!" will overcome human nature building that trust and dependence.

Full self driving is one of those things where getting 80% of the way there will take 20% of the effort and getting the remaining 20% of the way there will take 80% of the effort.

Tesla auto-drive seems like it's about 80% of the way there.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#145

Post by hnburnsy »

paul7986 wrote: post #110
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

Fully automated Self driving cars is either a pipe dream or decades away in which many more people will be killed on the road in the name of technological progress.

Will changes such as machine-readable road markings, car to car communications, and traffic management systems make this happen quicker.

For example, couldn't emergency vehicles could send out a signal directly to autonomous vehicles or via a traffic managagemnt system to slow down or require the driver to take over when approaching. An elementary version of this is Waze which will notify you of road hazards or cars stopped on the side of the road.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#146

Post by oblio »

pedrocr wrote: post #102
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

I drive a Tesla and don't use the self-steering feature exactly because of this. What I do instead is enable the warnings from the same software like the ones you describe. That is actually a large gain. I'm already paying attention as I'm driving the car at all times and the software helps me catch things I haven't noticed for some reason. Those features seem really well done as the false positives are not too frequ…

Does it have/use emergency braking in case of danger, if you don't use self-driving?

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#147

Post by jays »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #64
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

These are exactly my arguments to my girlfriend on why she shouldn’t use the Autopilot on our Tesla. Your mind will stray, the feature is exactly meant to do that to you. The feedback loop goes the wrong way. Then boom you don’t see emergency vehicles at a wreck apparently. I do blame Elon, he did the Silicon Valley thing of just promise a lot of untested stuff before the laws have solidified. Uber, Lime scooters, et…

Agreed. I'd also add that other car manufacturers have made tradeoffs on safety issues for decades.

So I wonder if it's more about Telsa capitalizing on the hype of self driving cars (with the expensive self-driving add-on) in the short term and less about him misunderstanding the magnitude of difficulty.

Telsa is using the proceeds from that add-on to make them seem more profitable and fund the actual development. It's smart in some aspects, but very risky to consumers and Telsa.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#148

Post by andreilys »

paul7986 wrote: post #110
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

I drive a lot across Europe: as in, really a lot, long trip across several countries, several times a year. I drive enough on the highways to know a few scary situations, like the truck driver in a big curve slightly deviating out of his lane and "pushing" me dangerously close to the median strip for example. To me driving requires paying constant attention to the road and being always ready to act swiftly: I just do…

Fully automated Self driving cars is either a pipe dream or decades away in which many more people will be killed on the road in the name of technological progress.

which many more people will be killed on the rise in the name of technological progress.

Seeing as car crashes are the leading cause of deaths from people aged 1-54, it may be an improvement from the status quo

More than 38,000 people die every year in crashes on U.S. roadways. The U.S. traffic fatality rate is 12.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. An additional 4.4 million are injured seriously enough to require medical attention. Road crashes are the leading cause of death in the U.S. for people aged 1-54.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#149

Post by ghaff »

ra7 wrote: post #122
paul7986 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully automated Self driving cars is either a pipe dream or decades away in which many more people will be killed on the road in the name of technological progress.

Fully autonomous cars are already a reality with Waymo in AZ and AutoX, Baidu in China. I don't know how safe the Chinese companies are, but Waymo's safety record [1] is nothing short of stellar. [1] https://waymo.com/safety

Good for Waymo and hopefully Google keeps up this science project. But it's a very limited and almost as perfect an environment as you could have outside of a controlled test area. Those who were saying L4/5 would be decades at least away seem to be those who were on the right track. Kids growing up today are going to have to learn to drive.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#150

Post by caf »

oblio wrote: post #146
pedrocr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive a Tesla and don't use the self-steering feature exactly because of this. What I do instead is enable the warnings from the same software like the ones you describe. That is actually a large gain. I'm already paying attention as I'm driving the car at all times and the software helps me catch things I haven't noticed for some reason. Those features seem really well done as the false positives are not too frequ…

Does it have/use emergency braking in case of danger, if you don't use self-driving?

Yes.
Post reply on HN