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

Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

ktvq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 530 posts

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#231

Post by chopin »

idlewords wrote: post #142
cperciva wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both right. That's exactly how aircraft autopilot systems work... and it doesn't work. There have been several plane crashes -- most notably AF447 -- which resulted from autopilot systems disengaging when the (human) pilots had insufficient situational awareness to safely take over control of the aircraft.

It's not lack of situational awareness after the autopilot disconnected that caused AF447 to crash.

It was, at least partially. The pilot failed to notice (or account to) "Alternate Law" conditions (which doesn't provide the same safeguards as normal mode). Especially stall handling is much different in Alternate Law.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#232

Post by lloeki »

slavik81 wrote: post #182
iabacu wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 90 million miles among all cars. I'd wager that if you compare it with cars at Tesla price point -- mostly luxury cars -- Tesla would look pretty bad.

Why do you think the accident rate is lower among luxury cars as compared to more common vehicles? I would suspect the opposite. My hypothesis is that the people who seek out and buy cars that go 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds probably drive faster and more aggressively than average. They therefore are more likely to have an accident.

> My hypothesis is that the people who seek out and buy cars that go 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds probably drive faster and more aggressively than average

Highly unscientific anecdotal evidence and personal experience living in an area with an unusually high concentration of such cars shows me that most people that own really fast cars do drive fast and enthusiastically from time to time but do so in a responsible manner and typically respectfully go with the flow, whereas a lot of people with more regular cars (mostly MPVs around here) have a habit of driving a good deal too close and a good deal too fast every single day. Many even engage in some truly reckless behaviour as soon as they feel threatened/frustrated, a telltale sign of power/control issues.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#233

Post by sangnoir »

schiffern wrote: post #210
studentrob wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In comparison, when a Google self-driving car bumped a bus at 2mph, Google admitted fault, took the blame, and Urmson gave a talk at SXSW showing the data from the sensors and discussing how the self-driving car misjudged the likely behavior of the bus. This is what we should be trumpeting. Responsibility, honesty, and transparency. Google's self driving car project reports [1] should be the standard. They're publi…

>Google's self driving car project reports [1] should be the standard. They're published monthly and they detail every crash Copying a reply from earlier... Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have always been required by law to send autonomous vehicle accident reports to the DMV, which are made available to the public on the DMV's website. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/auto…

> So the transparency itself is mandatory

Then why on earth is Tesla being opaque and seemingly passing the buck with their PR?! I don't get it.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#234

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

azernik wrote: post #225
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the comments above, if the sensor suite is insufficient, over-the-air software updates won't help.

But OTA updates can disable the feature, which is the essential safety response right now. Even if they wanted to recall and add sensors, I don't think that would make this system safe enough - the bigger issue is the human factor involved in a not-quite-good-enough autonomous vehicle.

With the PS/Linux decision, not sure they can just 'disable' the feature.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#235

Post by eropple »

easytiger wrote: post #224
wyldfire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve? Reasoning about what's legitimate can be a really fine line. Oncoming car, raccoon, fawn, human, doe, coyote, elk: some of these obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around [perhaps depending on speed]. I'd be really curious if any of the autopilots have a value system that tries to minimize damage/loss of life. And how does it value the exterior obstacle aga…

> obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around In the UK its illegal to swerve for these things. In the sense that if you subsequently cause an accident for swerving to avoid a cat, you are at fault.

Wait, it's illegal to swerve for a moose (TIL: moose are called elk in Europe, American elk are totally different) in the UK? Hitting a moose is a fast route to the grave.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#236

Post by studentrob »

seesomesense wrote: post #223

What I find just as disturbing is the highly conflicted M&A scam he is running using SolarCity. The SolarCity scam exposes him as a dishonest scamster.

That one is crazy. No way that goes through. His job as CEO of SolarCity is to shop around for the best price from other acquirers. Michael Dell did this when he combined two of his companies and still got fined for it.

Maybe I'm drinking the Fortune coolaid. Their article seemed logical to me [1]

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#237

Post by kylec »

studentrob wrote: post #81
lucb1e wrote: post #66

What I don't understand is why Tesla doesn't whitelist roads where this feature can be used, since the manual sets very specific conditions. Especially given that the feature is currently enabled, they must know which roads work with high confidence values. Or assume they wanted to do the right thing from the start, and they don't have this dataset. It's not as if we don't have OpenStreetMap (or as if they couldn't b…

> What I don't understand is why Tesla doesn't whitelist roads where this feature can be used, since the manual sets very specific conditions I think they want the data of drivers attempting to drive with autopilot on these roads. Tesla does, I've read, restrict how fast autopilot can drive on unapproved roads, so it appears they already have them mapped out. They're using customers as guinea pigs for their tech.

Why not have Autopilot running and monitoring the sensors to learn the road, but not have it actually take control of the vehicle? Even if the driver is manually in control the Autopilot system could still be learning.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#238

Post by studentrob »

sangnoir wrote: post #233
schiffern wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google's self driving car project reports [1] should be the standard. They're published monthly and they detail every crash Copying a reply from earlier... Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have always been required by law to send autonomous vehicle accident reports to the DMV, which are made available to the public on the DMV's website. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/auto…

> So the transparency itself is mandatory Then why on earth is Tesla being opaque and seemingly passing the buck with their PR?! I don't get it.

The requirement does not seem to be there for driver-assist vehicles. Also, it's a state-level requirement. Looks like it's just in CA for now. The accidents detailed in the Google reports are all from California.

And, Tesla may be unwilling to start reporting driver-assist accident rates to the public unless the other driver-assist car companies are forced to do it too.

I'll make an addendum to my above comment.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#239

Post by dayaz36 »

NamTaf wrote: post #163

This is going to keep happening until Tesla change their approach from a move-fast-and-break-things startup philosophy to sound engineering one that puts safety in design front-and-centre. Traditional real-world enigneers have been drilled in this for longer than living memory. When the software guys decide to bring their software appraoches to the real world, this is what happens. From 12 days ago: https://news.ycom…

You do know Tesla has the highest safety rating of any car ever rated in history right? https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best...

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#240

Post by Scarblac »

studentrob wrote: post #216
agumonkey wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk used to be calmer and more open before. Now he seems bratty. Maybe stress or overconfidence.

I don't envy his position, or any other CEO or leader of a large group. It's a huge responsibility. You can face jail time for not sharing information. Usually only the most egregious violators see a cell, but it's still a scary prospect if you somehow got caught up in some other executive's scheme. At the end of the day, the CEO signs everything. Edit: I see the downvote. Am I wrong? Is being a CEO all rainbows and…

It sounds like it's some predicament he's in by some accident that wasn't his fault.
Post reply on HN