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NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

arstechnica.com

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Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#221

Post by mrpippy »

metalliqaz wrote: post #139
Animats wrote: post #42

NTSB: • At 8 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was following a lead vehicle and was traveling about 65 mph. • At 7 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla began a left steering movement while following a lead vehicle. • At 4 seconds prior to the crash, the Tesla was no longer following a lead vehicle. • At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increas…

But why would it speed up beyond the speed limit?

The cruise control was set to 75. 8 seconds before the crash, it was following a vehicle at 65 mph. It steered left, then was not following the vehicle anymore, and accelerated to try and get back to the set speed.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#222

Post by slededit »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #209
panopticon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are you not in the U.S.? These types of lane dividers are incredibly common throughout the country. Note that I'm not defending the safety of them; I'm just surprised to see someone call them out as a hazard as they're such a common sight.

Excessively long, unstriped gores are not at all common in the Eastern US. This is bad engineering and poor maintenance.

If anything the US tends towards far too little merge space than excessive. Almost every city has a blind yield entering the freeway somewhere.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#223

Post by LinuxBender »

Disclaimer: Taboo comment ahead.

Subtle bugs in self driving cars would be a simple way to assassinate people with low cost overhead. One OTA update to a target and you could probably even get video footage of the job being completed, sent to the client all in one API call.

Surely by now someone must have completed a cost analysis of traditional contractors vs. having a plant at a car manufacturer.

Am I the only one thinking about this?

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#224

Post by slededit »

rhacker wrote: post #49
martin_bech wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter argument that HUMAN DRIVERS are unsafe an fatal (let alone missing common sense and alertness). I 100% get your point, but my counterpoint, is that this is what we are going to see, in the future. Autonomous systems that by and large are way safer, than human drivers, but when they fail, the might do so, in circumstances where are human would not. Humans are good at some things, computers/ai/sensor suites a…

I get that in 5-10 years we MAY have SDVs that are superior than human drivers. But I think a lot of people have a mental model of SDVs _right now_ being superior to human drivers. I can't remember the crash stats, but I think the only way to know for sure is to calculate the number of miles a single human generally drives on average before they are involved in a collision or crash, etc... Now I don't have the number…

> I realize Tesla isn't advertising level 5 autonomy

To my reading they are, and then disclaiming it in the small print. They clearly want to leave an impression its close to level 5.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#225

Post by detaro »

LinuxBender wrote: post #223

Disclaimer: Taboo comment ahead. Subtle bugs in self driving cars would be a simple way to assassinate people with low cost overhead. One OTA update to a target and you could probably even get video footage of the job being completed, sent to the client all in one API call. Surely by now someone must have completed a cost analysis of traditional contractors vs. having a plant at a car manufacturer. Am I the only one…

Probably doesn't need self-driving cars: many higher-end cars nowadays have some kind of wireless interface and software control over speed and steering.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#227

Post by panopticon »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #185
crote wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dutch citizen here, I have never seen something like this. To compare, here's a similar situation in The Netherlands: https://www.google.nl/maps/@52.0928662,5.1734685,3a,75y,281.... Points of interest: - big solid white arrow, line-fade is nearly impossible - white-green sign indicating that the road is splitting - big shoulder in the continuation of the division - loads of grass instead of immediately using a metal…

The intersection in the Tesla crash is pretty sub par by US standards. Most highway off ramps are as you described. In space restricted areas we tend to use tons of reflectors then water/sand barrels or metal crumple barriers instead of gently rising barriers and a grass infield. In basically all cases where there's a lot of pavement that isn't a lane there's diagonal lines of some sort that make it very clear that t…

Granted my experience is my own and shaped by the areas I've lived in, but I'd say the crash barrier is pretty standard by US standards.

A few reflectors, a crumple barrier or some barrels and you've got a highway divider start! Certainly not as lengthy or as well marked as the Dutch example. This one I used to drive by in KC almost daily looks similar to the Tesla accident one (granted, this example does have some friendly arrows in the gore): https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0387093,-94.6774548,3a,75y,1...

I have also seen so many people crash into this one that they put up yellow hazard lights: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0790636,-94.594365,3a,75y,17...

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#228

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

greedo wrote: post #178
jeffreygoesto wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a ROC curve/precision-recall issue basically. Radar has a terrible lateral and even worse to non-existing elevation measurement. Potholes, man holes, Coke cans and ground clutter look all alike and can in fact be detected as "having the negative relative velocity as my car's own velocity". You want to stop for only very few of all those stationary objects, otherwise you won't drive at all. The problem is you ca…

The military does it with SAR (synthetic aperture radar). Is something like that feasible for self-driving cars?

Consider price point implications.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#229

Post by LinuxBender »

detaro wrote: post #225
LinuxBender wrote: post #223

Disclaimer: Taboo comment ahead. Subtle bugs in self driving cars would be a simple way to assassinate people with low cost overhead. One OTA update to a target and you could probably even get video footage of the job being completed, sent to the client all in one API call. Surely by now someone must have completed a cost analysis of traditional contractors vs. having a plant at a car manufacturer. Am I the only one…

Probably doesn't need self-driving cars: many higher-end cars nowadays have some kind of wireless interface and software control over speed and steering.

Good point, I should clarify and add in those vehicles, such as the infamous Jeep Grand Cherokee that was hacked on a live highway.

Re: NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash

#230

Post by gwern »

codeonfire wrote: post #18
gwern wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No surprise there about it steering into the barrier or Tesla not-quite-lying about him getting warnings, but I'm surprised that he apparently wasn't dead on impact but survived all the way to the hospital? So even a three-car pileup with the Tesla steering straight into a barrier at 71MPH & accelerating, with the car catching on fire & being reduced to a husk, still isn't enough to kill a driver immediately. In a wa…

A doctor has to declare a person dead, paramedics can't do it. In all cases it makes sense to transport the body to the hospital where the person is pronounced dead by the doctor. Otherwise the family may argue in court the paramedics did not try enough to save the person.

Usually in reports, if someone dies at the scene but is only officially declared dead at the hospital, they'll write a phrase like 'was declared dead at the hospital'. This report says instead that he was transported to the hospital 'where he died from his injuries'. Double-checking, media articles at the time uniformly describe him as dying at the hospital, and at least one says that he died in the afternoon ( http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/03/27/tesla-crash-inve... ) while the accident was at 9:27AM, so either traffic in the Bay Area is even worse than I remember, they like to spend hours doing CPR on a corpse, or he did in fact survive the crash and died at the hospital in a literal and not legalistic sense.
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