Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#191

Post by cies » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:37 AM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #165

gambiting wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the correct answer. Flight autopilots have lowered accident rates tenfold, but every time there is a crash while on autopilot Boeing/Airbus will ground every single plane of that type and won't allow them to fly until the problem is found and fixed. If I know that my car's autopilot is statistically less likely to kill me than I am to kill myself, I would still much much rather drive myself.

If Tesla were to respond in a similar vein - that is turn off auto-pilot each time there was a fatal crash until the cause was fully investigated and fixed then I'd feel a lot more comfortable. From the videos in the article it's clear that auto-pilot should be disabled when there is bright low-light sunshine. Tesla should be prepared to tell customers there's certain times of the day when the reliability of the soft…

> Tesla should be prepared to tell customers there's certain times of the day when the reliability of the software is not high enough and turn it off.

Imho, they should detect that situation (by using cameras and/or the current time + GPS) and not allow you to switch it on. You should not give drivers the choice between safety and lazy (from which I assume that auto-pilot driving when currently feasible it SAFER than manual -- which I assumes, but read elsewhere in the thread is not yet properly demonstrated).

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#192

Post by B1FF_PSUVM » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:37 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #161

sho_hn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be surprised if Musk coldly responded that this is a known problem with no solution, but autopilot still lowers the death rate on average. In other words, for the proponents it's a trade-off. And also the idea that an automatic driver is easier to improve over time (skewing the trade-off better and better) than human drivers. Which of course will snowball when reliance on automation keeps making drivers w…

> And also the idea that an automatic driver is easier to improve over time (skewing the trade-off better and better) than human drivers. Which of course will snowball when reliance on automation keeps making drivers worse than better, and at some point you're past the point of no return. I really hope it does get to the point were all drivers are automatic and interconnected. Cars could cooperate to a much higher ex…

> all drivers are automatic and interconnected. Cars could cooperate

Say, like computers on the Internet (information highway)?

Rings a bell.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#193

Post by masklinn » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #100

nikofeyn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t see why it’s controversial. just look at drivers now. many are already on human autopilot checking their phone, eating, etc. if you give any amount of automation but that which still requires checking in from the human, humans will almost universally check out and crashes will be prevalent. autonomous driving will simply not work without full, unsupervised driving. i don’t understand why this is even a discus…

One solution would be to make the autopilot worse within the realm of safe driving. Make it so that it continuously makes safe errors that the driver has to correct. Like steering off into an empty lane. Slowing down. Etc. Defining safe errors might be a challenge though.

That's what most "driving assistance" does. It's limited in what it offers and it refuses to keep going unattended for long periods.

Tesla has been criticised all along for both its marketing and allowing long periods of unattended driving assistance.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#194

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:39 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #97

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. You should see me when the car isn't on AutoPilot. I speed excessively, weave through LA traffic switching lanes frequently and generally exhibit unsafe driving behavior. I can't help it, it's like I get bored or something. I'm a decent driver and have never gotten in a crash but have gotten a lot of tickets. When I use AutoPilot, the car automatically maintains a reasonable distance at a fixed speed. You nee…

The 3 Autopilot deaths so far involved 3 relatively young men, both in relatively elite professions: former Navy SEAL and an Apple engineer -- the third was a son of a Chinese business owner [0]. They fit the profile of men fairly confident about driving and tech, perhaps too confident. 3 fatalities over 320 million miles for Teslas equipped with Autopilot hardware is not much better than the 1.16/100 million miles f…

What about non-fatal accidents though? Where Teslas (and other assisted driving vehicles) prevent stuff like hitting pedestrians, random bikers, animals, parked cars etc.?

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#195

Post by TeeWEE » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:41 AM UTC

When i look at the video, I would probably drive wrongly for the first few seconds: The road lining is not there anymore, causing you to make mistakes. But people can correct quickly when there is an anomaly. Weird that autopilot didnt see the divider.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#196

Post by yladiz » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:43 AM UTC

swebs wrote: post #189

usrusr wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could easily be more than just a wealth differential, e.g. people who are more are of their emissions impact might also be be more aware of intoxication impact. I'm any case, "statistically more safe" is a weak argument, e.g. we would be terrified of boarding a plane if they were merely statistically more safe than driving (by a small margin).

>e.g. we would be terrified of boarding a plane if they were merely statistically more safe than driving Don't know why you're treating that as a hypothetical. Many people are terrified of flying and it is safer than driving.

What that commenter is getting at is that the term "statistically more safe" is meaningless because it can be such a wide net of meaning, e.g. a very small margin (1%) or a large margin (50%).

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#197

Post by B1FF_PSUVM » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:44 AM UTC

lozenge wrote: post #166

Animats wrote: post #163

Come to think of it, whatever happened to Tesla's self-driving effort? They claimed to be shipping Model 3 cars with all the hardware needed for self driving (not including a LIDAR). They produced videos. Most of this was 1-2 years ago. But they never got to deployment, or even to the point of demoing it for car magazine writers.

They had a falling out with their software supplier Mobileye which set them back a year or more.

I gathered that Mobileye found that the use of the software was "outside the box" they were willing to risk ...

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#198

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:49 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #147

simion314 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you also have older cars with less safety features, not sure how is in US but in other countries you can stil see old cars that are missing airbags. So in fatalities statistics the fair thing is to compare Tesla with similar cars.

That’s a good point. Not just airbags. It starts to be common to have cars that apply the brakes automatically when they anticipate a collision. I think some research has been done on cars being designed to do less damage to a pedestrian in a collision, I don’t know if it has lead to design changes. Self driving cars may end up being only marginally safer than other new cars. But safety is not in my opinion the main…

> I think some research has been done on cars being designed to do less damage to a pedestrian in a collision

European safety tests rank pedestrian protection in addition to passenger protection https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...

Outfitted Volvos will actually lift the hood in an impact to protect pedestrians https://support.volvocars.com/uk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.as...

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#199

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:55 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I have now talked with two people who have autopilot in their model S's and both said the problem with autopilot is that it is "too good". Specifically it works completely correctly like 80 - 90% of the time and as a result, if you use it a lot, you start to expect it to be working and not fail. If it beeps then to tell you to take over, you have to mentally get back into the situational awareness of the road and the…

Best solution is to keep the driver engaged, IE still holding the wheel and showing they are paying attention. It's how all the other cars with lane assist do it. Cant go more than 30 seconds of not touching the wheel before it complains.

It's not perfect but it sure beats the driver being so used to it they start doing other things like watching movies on their laptop.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#200

Post by antirez » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analysis, like "yeah but it's a lot safer than humans" because there are at least three problems with this statement:

1. Ethical. One thing is that you do a stupid thing and die. Another is that a technology fails in trivial circumstances that in theory are avoidable. A doctor can make also errors, but a medical device is required to be very safe and reliable in what it does.

2. Of wrong comparisons: you should check the autopilot against a rested and concentrated driver that drives slowly and with a lot of care. Since in the statistics otherwise you do not account for the fact that when you drive, you are in control, and you can decide your level of safety. Such a diligent driver that goes to crash because of an immature software is terrible.

3. And lack of data: AFAIK there is not even enough data publicly available that tells us what is the crash rate of Teslas with auto-pilot enabled vs Teslas without auto pilot enabled, per kilometer in the same street conditions. That is, you need to compare only in the same streets where the auto pilot is able to drive.

Autopilot will rule the world eventually and we will be free of using the time differently (even if this was possible 100 years ago already stressing on public transportation instead of spending the money to have a car each one... this is sad. Fortunately in central Europe this happened to a degree, check for instance North Italy, France, ...). But till it is not ready, to plug it as a feature in a so immature way just to have an advantage over competitors, is terrible business practice.