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An Update on Last Week’s Accident

tesla.com

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Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#241

Post by hartator »

> In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident.

"Equipped with Autopilot" is different than running with Autopilot. As far as I know, all model S fatal accidents except one was with Autopilot engaged. Making Autopilot far more dangerous than manual driving from a statistical standpoint.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#242

Post by leereeves »

chris_t wrote: post #198
pja wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, wealthy drivers can afford to keep their cars in better shape and can afford better cars in the first place. Neither of these factors depend on self-driving technology. Secondly, Tesla themselves makes it clear that their self-driving can't be relied upon to driver the car unsupervised - the driver has to be paying attention at all times in case the Tesla self-driving code decides to do something catastrophi…

>Wealth correlates with health correlates with better reaction times & general fitness I agree with your general point, but you can't just join up 2 correlations like that, that isn't always going to work when there are other confounding factors (and there always are). Wealth also correlates with age which anticorrelates with reaction times and general fitness.

According to insurance adjusters, age correlates with lower accident rates.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#243

Post by zadwang »

I just wouldn’t buy a Tesla at this point because: 1) the autopilot is not reliable. The accident shows clearly that it can dive straight into wrong path without giving warning. This is unacceptable, however small the probability. 2) the battery explosion is making the accident ever so dangerous. 3) Tesla’s response is disgusting. It may be true that statistically or on the average it is safer, but I am not a number. If I drive responsibly I can beat the statistic. Plus, relying too much on the comfort of statistics may be attributing to the lack of human intervention. 4) price is also a factor but the least important one compared to the above three.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#244

Post by michjedi »

Does anyone have any data of % of accidents of autopilot vs drivers that don't speed? I am wondering, because I recently say some statistics that showed that a majority of drivers normally speed by at least 10mph, and that the majority of crashes occur when people are driving over the speed limit.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#245

Post by saalweachter »

adamlett wrote: post #239
saalweachter wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a RADAR problem, it’s a world modeling problem. So you’re sending out pulses and listening for echos, which tells you how far away something is in a particular direction. You correlate subsequent pulses to say whether the object is moving toward you or away. If you have a car 50 m ahead of you every time you ping, everything is good. Now that car suddenly swerves around a car stopped in front of it, and y…

That’s not how it works in my limited understanding. Radars don’t just detect the positions of object, but also their relative speed. For this, they take advantage of the Doppler effect. When a pulse gets reflected, its frequency rises if the object is moving towards the radar, and falls if it’s moving away.

You could be right, either in this case or other cases. I'm entirely inferring what autos are doing based on their failure case (not detecting stationary cars when the car in front of you swerves around them); that sounds a helluva lot like mistaking the new car for the old.

Again, not saying it's a limitation of RADAR; it sounds like a deficiency in the way they're using it.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#246

Post by pmg101 »

incadenza wrote: post #30
loeg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fully aware" drivers (true Scotsmen) as proposed here statistically do not exist, or at least do not compose the vast majority of drivers. So it is kind of a meaningless comparison to draw.

It's not a True Scotsman in this context. The point is that humans tend to crash into things they're not fully aware of, short of self-harm. Either: A) The autopilot could not see a concrete barrier in its path. B) More likely, and as the story reports, it WAS aware of the danger but didn't do anything. Either case is at least worth discussing, no?

"tend NOT to", did you mean?

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#247

Post by zeroxfe »

obeattie wrote: post #224

To me there is a stunning lack of compassion and decency in the response to these incidents by both Tesla and Uber. Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant. They’re trying to bamboozle the reader in an effort to improve their images at the expense of victims who…

I agree with the lack of compassion bit -- I think the messaging could have been far more empathetic. However...

> Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant.

I don't understand how you can equate those first two lines. Uber's observation is clearly irrelevant, but the fact that the Tesla driver received multiple "get your hands back on the wheel" notifications, as close as six seconds before the accident seems very relevant to me.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#248

Post by psychedelic »

Donald wrote: post #232
obeattie wrote: post #224

To me there is a stunning lack of compassion and decency in the response to these incidents by both Tesla and Uber. Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant. They’re trying to bamboozle the reader in an effort to improve their images at the expense of victims who…

This was clearly vetted (or written) by a lawyer who is interested in changing the narrative for his future wrongful death defense rather than exercising empathy.

It reads like it was written by a company who has a lot of scientists working there is all. They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files before the incident and then reminding the public that it is still safer.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#249

Post by mannykannot »

In several places, this statement is missing some important information, which leads to the impression that the story is being spun to imply the driver had more responsibility in this crash than may have been the case.

The statement says "The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." (my emphasis.)

What is not stated here is how long before the impact was it clear that the car was off course and was not going to make a correction - i.e. how much time would an attentive driver have to realize that something was going wrong? Tesla may not yet know the answer to that question, but if it does not, I do not think it should suggest that the driver had five seconds to respond (the only information I have read on this matter is Tesla's own statements, so I do not know if other reporting on the crash shows that this was the case.)

Hands off the wheel does not prove that the driver is inattentive. More importantly, hands on the wheel does not show that the driver is attentive. IMHO, something at least as effective as eye tracking is necessary to establish that. Furthermore, Tesla's own statement indicates that it is allowing too long a period of inattentiveness, even for highway driving.

It is reasonable for Tesla to use statistics to justify the utility of their systems, so long as they compare like with like. Unfortunately, this statement is cagey about that: "If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident." Compared to what? Teslas without such hardware? Regardless of whether the hardware is being used? depending on what they are comparing it to, these statistics might be on account of simpler, more reliable safety features of the vehicle, or even owner demographics.

Finally, the absence of a working crash attenuator, while a tragic fact, has no bearing on the issue of Autopilot's reliability.

Re: An Update on Last Week’s Accident

#250

Post by golergka »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #63

In keeping with the "Autopilot" terminology, this was "Controlled Flight info Terrain". Tesla demonstrates their usual abuse of statistics. 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles is the average across all types of terrain, conditions, and cars. The death rate in rural roads is much higher than in urban areas. The death rate on highways is much lower than average. The death rate with new cars is much lower than average…

> "Controlled Flight Into Terrain"

Thanks, I never knew this term before. Seems like a dark humour gem - equally funny and terrifying.

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