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

U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 507 posts

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#301

Post by malwarebytess »

wilg wrote: post #293
tomdell wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

This is a question that is answerable with the right data – we can just see if it's safer or not.

Doesn't the data show that cars with assistive technologies are in fewer non-fatal and fatal accidents?

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#302

Post by Animats »

Right. As I've pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don't look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That's the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but often don't have enough shoulder space.

It's clear what Tesla really has - a good lane follower and cruise control that slows down for cars ahead. That's a level 2 system. That's useful, but, despite all the hype about "full self driving", it seems that's all they've got.

"Full self driving" just adds some lane-changing assistance and hints from the nav system.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#303

Post by kube-system »

xeromal wrote: post #278
phoe18 wrote: post #4

> "The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes," No mention of the deceptive marketing name "Full Self Driving" in the article.

I'm pretty sure because FSD is out to a limited number of users at the moment. I think it totals around a 1000.

This is just more evidence of the confusion that Tesla marketing has created. "Full Self-Driving Capability" is the literally quoted option they've been selling for years now.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#304

Post by birken »

tomdell wrote: post #285
jedberg wrote: post #276

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

Absolutely not true as a blanket statement. Maybe if the driver monitoring is so lax that you could conceivably trick the car into poorly driving itself, but the system I use, Comma [1], has incredibly strict driver monitoring.

There is absolutely no doubt I'm a safer driver with Comma than without it. I'm still in control, but Comma not only allows me to expend less effort driving (which allows me to stay alert over longer periods of time), but also be much less emotional when driving. I'm pretty convinced that a large percentage of accidents are caused by frustrated or bored drivers doing crazy things that you just don't feel the urge to do with the assistance of self-driving.

1: https://comma.ai/

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#305

Post by kelvin0 »

ghaff wrote: post #114
kelvin0 wrote: post #75

Having human drivers and assisted drivers on the same road is problematic currently. I think the best situation would be to have 'automated' stretches of highway specially designed to 'help' self driving systems. Only self driving vehicles would be allowed on such special highways, and everything would be built around such systems.

Who is going to pay for these dedicated stretches of highway that only, presumably, relatively wealthy owners of self-driving cars are going to be allowed to use?

Any entity (individuals or corporate) could use it of course. Rich or not, since Electric vehicles such as buses could be a public form of transportation on these specially adapted roads.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#306

Post by xsznix »

barbazoo wrote: post #299
mensetmanusman wrote: post #21

I remember when Google was first presenting on driverless technology about 10 years ago, and they mentioned how you have to go right to full self driving, because any advanced driver assistance will clash with human risk compensation behavior. Risk compensation is fascinating; driving with a bike helmet causes the biker and drivers around the biker to behave more dangerously. Is society sophisticated enough to deal w…

> Risk compensation is fascinating; driving with a bike helmet causes the biker and drivers around the biker to behave more dangerously. Source please

Here you go:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...

https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#307

Post by hellbannedguy »

jedberg wrote: post #276

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

There's not a small part of your psyche that tells you it's ok to drive while tired, or all the way home from that Las Vegas trip because the technology is so good?

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#308

Post by guerby »

btbuildem wrote: post #263
guerby wrote: post #184

There is about 36000 death on the road per year in the USA for 280 millions vehicles, that's 128.5 death/million vehicule/year If we assume the number of tesla autopilot death double this year to 8 (from 4 at the time of probe launch), for about 900 thousand tesla on the road in USA, that's 8.9 autopilot death/million tesla/year. Ratio between the numbers of 14.4. Tesla reporting says for Q1 2021 one crash on autopil…

> I was shocked that in the USA in 2019 about 40-46% of all road death people were unbelted, while 90% of front seat people wear seat belts according to observation studies. Doesn't that just speak to the effectiveness of seatbelts? Most people wear them, and two-fifths of those who died in a crash did not wear a seatbelt. If we had the same proportion of deaths as we have seatbelt wearers, that would indicate the be…

Yes we agree.

It's just that in France "only" 20-25% of fatalities are for people not wearing seatbelt.

Observation statistics are at about 98-99% of front seat users wearing seat belt in France.

Seat belt in front is mandatory since 1st july 1973 and back seat since 1st october 1990.

So seat belts not Tesla autopilot or whatever would save around 8000 lives per year in the USA.

Are tesla cars in the USA nagging about seat belt with no software off switch like in France?

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#309

Post by andyxor »

jedberg wrote: post #276

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

i've rented model X with the latest FSD a few weeks ago and even simple things like lane detection are very inconsistent and unpredictable.

I don't know if this "AI" has any sort of quality control, but how difficult is it to test if it detects a solid white line on the side of the road in at least 6 out of 10 tries

it also tends to suddenly disengage and pass control to the driver at most dangerous parts of the trip e.g. when passing other car in narrow lane, etc.

This "driver assistant" is a series of disasters in the making.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#310

Post by ra7 »

wilg wrote: post #298
ra7 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's safety report lacks data and is extremely misleading. 1. Autopilot only works on (or intended to work on) highways. But they are comparing their highway record to all accident records including city driving, where accident rate is far higher than highway driving. 2. They're also comparing with every vehicle in the United States including millions of older vehicles. Modern vehicles are built for higher safety…

> The reality is Teslas are no safer than any other vehicles in its class ($40k+). Would another way of saying this be that they are as safe as other vehicles in that class? And that therefore Autopilot is not more unsafe than driving those other cars?

I would probably agree, but I also think it’s a case of “need more data”.

We should really compare Autopilot with its competitors like GM’s Super Cruise or Ford’s Blue Cruise, both of which offer more capabilities than Autopilot. That will show if Tesla’s driver assist system is more or less safe than their competitors product.

Post reply on HN