A Tragic Loss

The way the blog posting is written comparing miles driven per fatality, you are led to believe these cars are 38% safer than they really are. The figure being touted by Tesla counting miles driven doesnt tell you that those are interrupted miles driven where the software couldnt decide what to do and hands back immediately to the driver for a period of time, unlike a human who in essence is performing uninterrupted driving miles.

I wouldnt trust a dead duck in any of these automated cars at the moment but then a fool is easily parted with their money and I have noticed the United States IQ is in decline. Must be all the sugar consumed.

What worries me is that we're dreaming up massive fear scenarios. I see the aim of the automation is to prevent the scenarios from ever happening. Sensible speeds with sensible distances.

We can never make it to having zero casualties unless we can first get to a stage where we can treat accidents as an abnormality. Something that needs to be investigated in the same manner as an aircraft crash.

I too hate terms like "acceptable losses" as well as it brings up the truly horrible "cost-benefit" analysis that Ford did [2] with it being cheaper to pay out to the dead relatives rather than fix the problem. I too worry that if we accept lower standards for software now, it will set a precendent with 'acceptable' deaths that will only get lowered.

If Tesla can apply the level of analysis that approaches airplane crash investigation as well as fixes to prevent each death - then I believe we're on the best path.

It's also worth noting that Tesla used the word 'crash' rather than 'accident' in this report, something which has been highlighted [3] as another thing we can do to improve investigations into road deaths.

[1]: http://blog.yhat.com/posts/traffic-fatalities-in-us.html

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analys...

[3]: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-we-say-car-accide...

"Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S"

1) The Sensors did not "see" the trailer due to Bright sunlight & 2) The Collision was at the WindShield Level and above but not to the Front

Neither of these sound like "Extremely Rare" occurrences. That part is just pure PR Spin.

Request for TESLA - You are doing great things to move the whole industry forward. Do not F* it up by being too aggressive here.

1) Do not rely on purely Visual cues use (multiple) Radars/LiDARs/Some thing that works irrespective of Visible Light conditions - so an additional Radar unit on Top that is checking for obstacles at the height of the car would make sense.

2) Improved Crash sensors

Till then DISABLE the system except in very limited circumstances even if the owner tries to activate it. This is NOT a "Move Fast and Break things" situation. Some poor soul lost his life because of Tesla's inability to foresee this situation lulled him into a false sense of complacency (and partly his own inattention).

It's a choice between "human drivers, MANY MANY lives lost" and "AI drivers, fewer lives lost".

What would archagon have us do? Not have AI drivers until a perfect solution is possible? The "crash-unavoidable" scenario is an unavoidable reality as long as stopping distances/acceleration/reaction times are non-zero.

It sounds as if archagon would have us spend all our time looking at trees -- and none of it looking at the forest -- all while thousands of people die every year under the status quo.

I think perhaps the reason archagon is so aghast though is a combination of two things:

1) The illusion of [human] control and judgement. Implicit in archagon's reasoning is the idea that the outcome MIGHT have been different had a human been making a decision. Yet a human WAS in control here, and DIDN'T make a different decision. That happens. A lot. Archagon seems to be so distracted by the novelty of this situation that he/she has not noticed that.

2) The normalization of automotive deaths and safety engineering in the current industry. 90 people die per day in the U.S. due to errors made by human drivers. Every day human drivers are on the road, 90 more lives are snuffed out. If we follow archagon's hand-wringing, then how could we justify having cars AT ALL? Of course, the reality that many people would die because of the lack of cars makes even the abolition of cars a less than perfect solution with (according to archagon's apparent line of reasoning) a body count attached and all the moral implications thereof.