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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

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Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#191
If you know your autopilot is malfunction on a certain highway segment, you have observed it malfunction several times. Why would you still use it ? If you were a brain surgeon, and observed that your brand new ultrasonic scalpel created bleeding, reported it, but decided to still used it. The day a patient dies of an hemorrage post-surgery, would it be the fault of the company producing the ultrasonic scalpel or yours ? Those clowns admit to knowing it was faulty exactly where it crashed and are still suing Tesla. This habit of Americans to sue every time they have an issue is exhausting.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#192
post #33

I have a car with the "autopilot" feature like the Tesla, but they call it adaptive cruise control and lane assist. The adaptive cruise control works pretty well; I guess it only needs to check the radar to see what's in front to slow down. The lane assist is problematic in recognizing different kind of lanes and would steer off course from time to time. I guess the current state of "autopilot" technology is simply n…

Subaru? I gave up on lane assist because of a turn heading home from my old office. It really wanted to drive off that bridge and I didn't trust it to recover properly. It seemed safer to just turn it off after that.

It's another Japanese brand.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#193

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

Optimistically; maybe everybody is hiding their 'secret sauce'. But I expect you're probably right.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#194
post #172

Tesla publishes their safety numbers in terms of accidents per x millions of miles driven. If you believe their numbers then Autopilot in its current configuration is clearly safer than a purely human operated vehicle. Having driven on Autopilot for about 85% of the total time I’ve spent in a Tesla, its been a life changer. But obviously YMMV. It really sucks that this specific interchange has cost so many lives - an…

> If you take your hands off the wheel and look at your phone for 6 seconds in any other car you’re going to have a bad time. Which is why you don't do it in any other car. I don't know much about autopilot, but because we as humans don't know when it can go wrong, it's easier to get it into situations it wasn't designed for. This is not true for the 6 seconds any other car scenario as we will be predicting what the…

Very true. Tesla has done a lot to try and make it clear to drivers that they must remain vigilant - in this particular case it sounds like the driver ignored several auditory tactile warnings to resume control of the vehicle, in addition to the standard warnings when Autopilot is activated. Short of changing the name I think they’ve done everything they can to manage expectations for Autopilot once you’re in the car, but humans don’t always work like that.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#195
I drive with autopilot (auto steer as Tesla calls it) daily. Frankly it’s a mixed bag. Anyone who has used it with any frequency should know how dangerous it can be.

I use it because it usually brakes faster than I do when traffic suddenly slows down. It also slams on the brakes at random points on a 3 mile stretch of highway on my way home. For some reason it thinks the speed limit is suddenly 45 and brakes aggressively. I’m afraid one day I’ll get rear ended when it does that.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#196
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a regulatory basis true self driving only needs to outperform humans. Humans are good at driving but imperfect we have a nasty tendency to get ourselves into accidents, both fatal and non. My thought was that the public would fear and refuse to use the technology but some brave souls are jumping right in. My opinion: full self driving is only a matter of time. At some point in the future insurance companies will f…

The facts around current car safety is that it's already really quite good. In modern cars and "autopilot-feasible conditions" you are talking well below 1 fatality per billion vehicle miles travelled with regular human drivers. This means that if a model has sold 1 million cars they each need to drive 100 000 miles with autopilot enabled before the insurance company has enough statistics to say "this is safer than a…

They might be able to extrapolate from non fatal accidents because they care more about damage which costs money to repair than fatalities. But I take your point - a lot of miles need to be traveled before you'd want to build it into your actuarial models.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#198

This is sad and tragic. I remember going with a friend on a Tesla test drive. He was eager to try the Autopilot system. And within a few minutes we got freaked out with what seem to us as unpredictable action and we turned it off. I think the engineer should have never relied on it. Especially if he had concerns with the system. At the same time, "Autopilot" is misleading and Tesla does own responsibility here. Even…

I think self driving cars are a ridiculous solution to a problem we created and doesn't need to exist. The US building out the country for cars wasn't a good way to do transportation. If we just had trains going from city to city and subways in the cities, we wouldn't even need self driving cars.

The 'problem' doesn't even exist; non-autonomous cars work fine in America. Autonomy is a luxury product.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#199

There are going to be Autopilot crashes and people should disable it if they uncomfortable with putting their lives in the hands of Tesla's software. I would be. But I see no reason to not believe to not believe what they have on https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport It shows Teslas have much fewer accidents than the average car, and that Teslas with autopilot enabled are substantially safe per mile than with aut…

The AutoPilot is marketed as a safety feature like your link asserts. The issue though is that Tesla's software defect(s) is what killed him. NTSB would be investigating Toyota if their hardware or software defect(s) would've killed people.

In Tesla's case, AutoPilot's lane keeping feature did not keep the car in the lane. Instead it drove the car into concrete at 71mph killing the driver. More over anti-collision feature did not stop the car from colliding with the concrete barrier. See where the issue lies?

Will you tell the people who faced safety issues with their Takata airbags to get rid of them? or the Toyota owners whose vehicles had unintended acceleration that they should rip out their accelerators?

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