Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#271

Post by ghoward » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

gher-shyu3i wrote: post #141

ghoward wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people need to see your comment because there seems to be a belief that full self driving is just around the corner. However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence. In your case, the new lane was clearly marked, which just shows how weak the system really is. Imagine if there was snow covering the lane markings. Or sunlight reflecting off of the road confuses the visio…

> it needs a full artificial general intelligence. How do you define full AGI? On a side note, another approach would be to have sensors in the roads that would transmit boundary information. That might be too expensive and difficult to maintain though.

I can't, but like Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it."

In fact, I believe that the difficulty of even _defining_ AGI is yet more evidence that we are not anywhere close to it.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#272

Post by ghoward » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #188

ghoward wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people need to see your comment because there seems to be a belief that full self driving is just around the corner. However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence. In your case, the new lane was clearly marked, which just shows how weak the system really is. Imagine if there was snow covering the lane markings. Or sunlight reflecting off of the road confuses the visio…

Curiously - Are Humans are AGI benchmark? Or is there more upper room at AGI+ level intelligence? I just think that we're on a continuum from virus to Humans, Chimps being significantly lower on the intelligence scale compared to Humans. There is nothing that says continuum stops at Humans. So, I am curious if AGI is defined as something profound (Turing complete, beats humans at every imaginable task by a large marg…

I don't think humans are the AGI benchmark, but smart mammals probably are.

What I think an AGI needs to have is the _ability to learn_. To me, that's what intelligence really is. For many people, it's having a lot of knowledge. However, that is merely lack of ignorance.

The reason that the ability to learn is important for AGI is because the true thing we miss with self-driving cars is _adaptability_. When roads change, humans adapt. But a self-driving car does not, unless a human interferes and tells it, "You learned about cones today."

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#273

Post by ghoward » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #127

vishnugupta wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me this is a big drawback of half-baked autopilot. It takes us humans time to engage in a split second and react to surroundings even if they are monitoring it. When driving I'm constantly updating my situation awareness by doing a 360 degree scan every few seconds and I'm 100% engaged with the car so I know which way to safely swerve, what happens if I slam the brakes etc.,. With this auto-pilot-assist I'm monit…

Right; you're practicing inductive logic--something computers can't do--at all times, thus essentially predicting possible futures. Until this ability is present in software, there won't be an adequate replacement.

This is a perfect summary of why self-driving doesn't work (yet?).

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#274

Post by ggreer » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

snypher wrote: post #97

nemothekid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the Bay Area, I think I know exactly what intersection you are talking about and I'm surprised it hasn't been fix. Someone died in a Model X at that intersection a couple years ago. https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/23/car-fire-closes-lanes-o...

Is it this exit (carpool lane over to 85)? 37.4110753, -122.0761614

If anyone is wondering why people are discussing this particular exit so much, look at this image: https://goo.gl/maps/Q2Qm5RR3myMkdsFE8

See that lane on the right that has solid white lines on each side of it? Now pan around: https://goo.gl/maps/TunvNLGvX9sUTbXp9 It actually leads directly to a barrier. If instead of putting smooth pavement before that barrier, Caltrans had placed grass or dirt or rumble strips or pretty much anything else, this would be a non-issue. But they didn't, so people hit it all the time. You can look at the street view history:

Feb 2008, the barrier is surrounded by cones (probably recently replaced): https://goo.gl/maps/faxMWWBCwXxnqqKS8

Nov 2008, no more cones: https://goo.gl/maps/LPLkCeqeojEgHV679

Feb 2011, the barrier is twisted metal covered in warning signs: https://goo.gl/maps/G3oQ4NxkiweJwVdx8

Sep 2011, the barrier has been repaired: https://goo.gl/maps/zs7WrXgUa8cxShKN6

Dec 2013, the barrier has been replaced. Note that this is now a reusable crash barrier. Most crashes won't be noticeable on street view history because the barrier is typically reset within a few days of a crash: https://goo.gl/maps/34oVqmDAJuTepUT76

Aug 2014, damaged again. Now the barrier is shorter (needs to be reset by Caltrans): https://goo.gl/maps/LYHidVpVgCt8uDa48

Oct 2014, now it's reset: https://goo.gl/maps/5uhK8bx8cExJR13z5

Sep 2015, damaged again. Now it's ridiculously short (needs to be reset by Caltrans): https://goo.gl/maps/m7ui9naztjRrgdx67

Oct 2015, barrier destroyed again: https://goo.gl/maps/6A6GCESsvjkKGK7A6

Apr 2016, replaced. Now the concrete behind the metal barrier is damaged: https://goo.gl/maps/zUiJzbrDMoUWaJqb9

At some point between 2017 and 2019, Caltrans painted between the lanes to make it more obvious: https://goo.gl/maps/zR8sGB2LxG1dUBSz5

Again, since late 2013 the barrier been reusable. Only particularly devastating crashes will damage it enough to require replacement. Usually Caltrans resets the barrier after a few days. Sometimes it takes them longer, such as when they didn't reset the barrier before the 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer driving a Tesla with autopilot enabled.[1]

1. https://abc7news.com/dan-noyes-tesla-crash-iteam-barrier-bat... (Warning: auto-playing video)

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#275

Post by sethammons » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

gauravphoenix wrote: post #58

>removing radar sensors to transition to a camera-based Autopilot system A few weeks back, I had a terrible experience while using auto pilot. I was driving on a highway (in CA) with autopilot engaged. For the most part, there was a concrete median on the highway. Suddenly, a section came with no concrete median and a new left only turn lane gets added. For whatever reasons, autopilot thought it is a great idea to su…

A colleague at work gave me a ride in his new tesla a couple years ago. I know that autopilot has improved a lot since then, but we were on a freeway and the left lane was merging onto the expressway and had come to a stop. The lane we were in was moving just fine. The tesla though we were in the left lane or something because it slammed on the breaks to prevent us rear-ending the stopped/slowing car in the left lane. This caused us to nearly get rear-ended for erratic driving. My colleague drove manually for the remainder of the commute :)

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#276

Post by roenxi » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #137

ghoward wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people need to see your comment because there seems to be a belief that full self driving is just around the corner. However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence. In your case, the new lane was clearly marked, which just shows how weak the system really is. Imagine if there was snow covering the lane markings. Or sunlight reflecting off of the road confuses the visio…

There's also the very common argument (even here on HN) that it doesn't matter because "humans have plenty of accidents too". I think it's not a good rebuttal because self-driving cars will have to be orders of magnitude safer than humans if order to be successful. If I'm drunk and I decide to drive and I end up crashing into a pedestrian, then it's my own damn fault and I'll face the consequences. If a self-driving…

It doesn't make any sense to look at a situation and say "well, I could save 5 lives at no cost ... but nah". It really doesn't matter who is responsible when a self driving car kills someone. We're going to respond by making the self-driving module of the car safer whether it is responsible or not.

We're putting a driver on the road who can still learn after suffering a fatal accident! This is huge, it means all parts of the system can learn from anything and will practically eliminate deaths in the long term; much like in the airline industry. If the short term is safer but confusing we should do that and who cares about philosophical technicalities.

This attitude could literally get people killed for no measurable gain. Saving lives and reducing road deaths (which comes with a whole host of other benefits, like freeing up an enormous number of hours of people's time) is much more important than worrying about holding people responsible. We shouldn't be trying to hold people responsible for tragedies, we should be trying to prevent tragedies!

And we need to keep getting self driving cars into common use to push them up the technological learning curve . This is much more important than worrying about who is at fault because it will make the cars an order of magnitude safer. The payoffs here are so huge it is even worth putting them on the road if they are slightly less safe than humans then subsidising the producer's legal costs to hold their risk down.

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#277

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

jfrunyon wrote: post #227

arcticfox wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which will hurtle you 200mph at a wall and then disengage autopilot 100ms before hitting the wall and not count it as an autopilot death. This is false: "To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before a crash." https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport It would be more helpful to focus on actually deceptive issues in how they report data, nam…

5 seconds is not nearly enough time. If you need to drive 3 seconds behind a vehicle going the same speed as you to have safe reaction time & stopping distance, then you certainly can't (a) move your attention back to the road you weren't looking at because "autopilot" "self-driving" and (b) react to a stationary object and (c) come to a stop, all in 5.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#278

Post by m463 » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

Lendal wrote: post #55

The irritating thing is it's all so unnecessary. My Tesla is a great car. But I paid an extra $10,000 for a feature that was promised but still hasn't been fully delivered, FSD. It feels like I paid extra for my awesome car to be sabotaged. What was promised by FSD was never going to be possible, and yet they are doubling down. They need to stop this idiocy. The vision system is horrible. The car stops at green light…

But having auto-parallel parking on a rainy night with tight spacing is awesome. (even though I think it exclusively uses sonar)

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#279

Post by 19h » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #274

snypher wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it this exit (carpool lane over to 85)? 37.4110753, -122.0761614

If anyone is wondering why people are discussing this particular exit so much, look at this image: https://goo.gl/maps/Q2Qm5RR3myMkdsFE8 See that lane on the right that has solid white lines on each side of it? Now pan around: https://goo.gl/maps/TunvNLGvX9sUTbXp9 It actually leads directly to a barrier. If instead of putting smooth pavement before that barrier, Caltrans had placed grass or dirt or rumble strips or p…

Off-topic: it's truly amazing that there's a history feature built into StreetView. First time I've seen this!

Re: Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features

#280

Post by qRNA » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #186

masklinn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are in severe danger of being disrupted by the very automakers they took on. The worst part is they’re nowhere near: the effective strength of Tesla is that they built a large and reliable network of fast chargers. I don’t know how non-Tesla charging is in the US, but in Europe it’s still a complete mess of half-assed crap, meaning if you don’t have a Tesla you either simply can’t make trips beyond a single-ch…

I've had a Tesla, and I still have a Bolt, so I have experienced both. The supercharging experience is smoother. But the standardized infrastructure generally works fine, even if it is more expensive. What I think a lot of people are starting to realize is that the road trip angle is small. It needs to work, but it doesn't make or break the experience. In both cases I found that I did 99% of my charging at home, and…

I think you can charge Tesla at any charger (at least in Europe)