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

reuters.com

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

#191

Post by lawn »

okareaman wrote: post #137

When I was learning to drive, my grandmother drilled into me to never swerve for an animal that jumps out in front of the car. This saved me when I was driving by the Grand Canyon and jack rabbits kept jumping, out of nowhere seemingly, in front of my car. I drilled "never swerve" into my son and it saved him on a mountain road when he hit a deer. He didn't go into the trees. When I drove in Alaska I asked why the fo…

It's always contextual. If you run into a moose head on, you're in for a very bad time.

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

#192

Post by filoleg »

zip1234 wrote: post #163
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…

Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road but let you set cruise control/self driving above the speed limit. Seems like for safety purposes that should not be allowed. Not only are people paying significantly less attention but they also are speeding.

That’s a feature accommodating realities of driving on public roads, not a bug.

If you drive on a 60mph speed limit highway, no one is driving 60mph, everyone is going around 70mph. If you decide to use autopilot and it limits you to 60mph, you singlehandedly start disrupting the flow of traffic (that goes 70mph) and end up becoming an increased danger to yourself and others.

Not even mentioning cases when the speed limits change overnight or the map data is outdated or if a physical sign is unreadable.

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

#193

Post by throwaway0a5e »

malwrar wrote: post #187
zemptime wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of comments here postulating how autopilot is a terribly designed feature from people who appear not to be speaking from first hand experience and now I feel compelled to comment, exactly following that HN pattern someone posted about how HN discussions go. That said thanks for keeping this discussion focused & framed as a system design one, doesn't feel like a Tesla hate train so I feel comfortable hoppi…

This expresses the mindset I find myself in when I use Autopilot. It's like enabling cruise control, you're still watching traffic around you but now you don't need to focus on maintaining the correct speed or worry about keeping your car perfectly in a lane. You can more or less let the car handle that (with your hands on the wheel to guard against the occasional jerky maneuver when a lane widens for example) while…

Exactly. It frees the driver from increasingly advanced levels of mundane driving (cruise control manages just speed, adaptive cruise also deals with following distance, lane keeping deals with most of the steering input, etc) allowing the driver to focus more on monitoring the situation and strategic portion of driving rather than the tactical. Of course, this relies on the driver to actually do that. They could just use devote that extra attention to their phone.

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

#194

Post by throwaway0a5e »

hnarn wrote: post #190
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…

> 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 This is a situation that you simply shouldn’t put yourself in. There is no reason to ever drive right next to a large vehicle, on either side, except for very short periods when overtaking them on a straight road.

This just isn't realistically possible on most highways except in the lightest traffic conditions. You are gonna spend some time beside trucks whether you like it or not.

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

#195

Post by cma »

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…

I feel like driver monitoring can keep it safe, and should even be available without autopilot enabled.

Comma.ai makes the monitoring more strict when the system is less certain or when in denser traffic.

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

#196

Post by ghaff »

jays wrote: post #147
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

If you go back a few years, there were clearly expectations being set around L4/5 self-driving that that have very clearly not been met.

I still wonder to what degree this was a collective delusion based on spectacular but narrow gains mostly related to supervised learning in machine vision, how much was fake it till you make it, and how much was pure investor/customer fleecing.

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

#197

Post by emerged »

zip1234 wrote: post #163
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…

Also, these cars know the speed limits for the road but let you set cruise control/self driving above the speed limit. Seems like for safety purposes that should not be allowed. Not only are people paying significantly less attention but they also are speeding.

Almost nobody drives at or below the speed limit. It’s dangerous to do so in many places.

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

#198

Post by 360walk »

crubier wrote: post #9

Predictable outcome of a sensing system fully based on deep learning. Rare unusual situations don't have enough training data and lead to unpredictable output. I still think that Tesla's approach is the right one, I just think they need to gather more data before letting this product be used in the wild unsupervised.

I think it is necessary for the crashes to occur, to gather the data required to re-train the auto-pilot. We as a society need to decide whether we want to pay this cost of technological advancement.

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

#199

Post by Retric »

Brakenshire wrote: post #185
Retric wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have empirical data showing how safe actual level 2 self driving cars are in practice. So there’s no reason to work from base assumptions. Yes, level 2 self driving cars cause avoidable accidents, but overall rate is very close to the rate people do. The only way that’s happing is they are causing and preventing roughly similar numbers of accidents. Which means people are either paying enough attention or these se…

> We have empirical data showing how safe actual level 2 self driving cars are in practice. Do we? Where does that come from? The data Tesla provides is hopelessly non-representative because it makes the assumption that the safety of any given road is independent of whether a driver chooses to switch on the system there.

Only overall numbers actually mater here, if self driving is off then that’s just the default risk from human driving in those conditions. Talk to your insurance company, they can give you a break down by make, model, and trim levels.

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

#200

Post by hnarn »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #194
hnarn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is a situation that you simply shouldn’t put yourself in. There is no reason to ever drive right next to a large vehicle, on either side, except for very short periods when overtaking them on a straight road.

This just isn't realistically possible on most highways except in the lightest traffic conditions. You are gonna spend some time beside trucks whether you like it or not.

Spending time right next to a truck is completely optional. You can either speed up or slow down, either of them will put you in a position where you are no longer right next to them.
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