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

reuters.com

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

#321

Post by samstave »

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…

One would think that with "autopilot" there would be a limit to speed and an increased "caution distance" the vehicle maintains with everything.

I also think there should be dedicated lanes for self driving cars..

A very good friend of mine was a sensor engineer at google working on virtual sensors that interacted with hand gestures in the air... and is now a pre-eminent sensor engineer for a large japanese company everyone has heard of...

We drove from the bay to nprthern california in his tesla and it was terrifying how much trust he put into that car. I got car sick and ended up throwing up out the window...

Knowing what I know of machines working in tech since 1995 -- I would trust SHIT for self-driving just yet.

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

#322

Post by sorokod »

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…

Survivorship bias?

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

#323

Post by xahrepap »

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #292
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…

The technical term for this is Risk Compensation: "Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to perceived levels of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected."

Reminds me of this kind of thing:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/09/13/wide-residential-stre...

I was first introduced to "wide streets in neighborhoods are more dangerous than narrow" on HN years ago. (I don't think it was the linked article, but that was the first one that came up just now after a search :P )

Since having read that, I've actually noticed how true this is, at least to me anecdotally. When I'm driving in a neighborhood with crowded streets, I can't bring myself to go over 15MPH, much less over the speed limit (typically 25 in neighborhoods in the US).

Wide streets give a sense of security. So I feel like people are less likely to pay attention going around bends, parked cars, etc, than if they didn't have that sense of security.

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

#324

Post by labcomputer »

jhgb wrote: post #283
DrBenCarson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think the issue boils down to their use of the term "Autopilot" for a product that is not Autpilot (and never will be with the sensor array they're using IMO.) They are sending multiple signals that this car can drive itself (going so far as charging people money explicitly for the "self-driving" feature) when it cannot in the slightest do much more than stay straight on an empty highway. They should be…

> the issue boils down to their use of the term "Autopilot" for a product that is not Autpilot It is literally an autopilot. Just like an autopilot on an airplane, it keeps you stable and in a certain flight corridor. There's virtually no difference except for Tesla's Autopilot's need to deal with curved trajectories.

> There's virtually no difference except for Tesla's Autopilot's need to deal with curved trajectories.

Well, and it actively avoids collisions with other vehicles (most of the time). Airplane (and boat) autopilots don't do that.

"But you're using the word autopilot wrong!"

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

#325

Post by jdavis703 »

kemiller wrote: post #297

OK people. There have been a grand total of 11 cases in 2.5 years. NHTSA investigates a lots of things. How many regular drivers collided with emergency vehicles in the same time frame?

The FBI has stats on police deaths by type of death. If memory serves correctly slightly more cops were killed in traffic crashes than that.

However, I’m assuming the crashes were quite varied: anything from a driver recklessly fleeing a stop to some drunk crashing into a cop on the highway shoulder. Most likely these deaths didn’t have a systematic pattern to them that could be prevented if only we knew what the root cause was.

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

#326

Post by zebnyc »

I was excited to read about Tesla's "autopilot" until I read the details. To me as a consumer, autopilot would let me get in my car after dinner in SF, set the destination as Las Vegas and wake up in the morning at Vegas. Wake me up when that exists.

Or I can tell my car, "Hey tesla, go pickup my kid from soccer practice" and it would know what to do.

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

#327

Post by guerby »

foepys wrote: post #314
zzt123 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that belted and unbelted people get into accidents at the same rate, and given another commenter mentioning that Autopilot users have 8.7x lower accident rate than baseline, that makes Autopilot a greater safety add than seat belts, no?

Can Autopilot work in heavy rain or fog? If not, those comparisons are useless. Those are the conditions where most accidents occur, not in sunny Californian weather.

Yes up to a point where it gives up and asks the driver to take back the wheel.

But at this point you really see nothing and you'll limit your speed to 10-40 km/h by yourself.

I used it in those situation on my tesla model 3 to be able to focus a maximum on the small visibility left as a driver, and with both hands strongly on the wheel and foot on the brake, low visibility is really dangerous and scary on the road.

Part of the issue is that you don't know what speed the car arriving behind you will have so where's your optimum speed? Too slow and rear ended by bad drivers, too fast and it won't go well.

It's fresh on my mind since I had such driving conditions two weeks ago on the highway. Trucks stayed at suicidal 90 km/h ...

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

#328

Post by tomdell »

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.

It looks like the federal government is beginning to collect and analyze relevant data, which will be interesting.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-29/nhtsa-adas...

Tesla released data in the past, but that’s quite suspect as they have an obvious agenda and aren’t known for open and honest communication.

https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-safety...

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

#329

Post by freeone3000 »

beambot wrote: post #275
Johnny555 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On most or all roads below 100km/h autopilot won’t allow speeding, and therefore I drive at the limit, which I know I would not have done if I controlled it If following the speed limit makes cars safer, another way to achieve that without autopilot is to just have all cars limit their speed to the speed limit. Sometimes it’s wonky when the street lines are unclear. It’s not perfect but a better driver than I am in 8…

> just have all cars limit their speed to the speed limit. The devil is in the details... GPS may not provide sufficient resolution. Construction zones. School zones with variable hours. Tunnels. Adverse road conditions. Changes to the underlying roads. Different classes of vehicles. Etc. By the time you account for all the mapping and/or perception, you could've just improved the autonomous driving and eliminated th…

The single system you're describing, with all of its complexity, is a subset of what is required for autonomous vehicles. We will continue to have road construction, tunnels, and weather long past the last human driver. Improving the system here simply improves the system here -- you cannot forsake this work by saying "oh the autonomous system will solve it" -- this is part of the autonomous system.
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