US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash • Hacker News Board

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#461

Post by lrvick » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

All these self driving car companies are competing to see whose proprietary firmware and sensors kill the fewest people. This is insane.

I will -never- own a self driving car unless the firmware is open source, reproducible, remotely attestable, and built/audited by several security research firms and any interested security researchers from the public before all new updates ship.

It is the only way to avoid greedy execs from cutting corners to up profit margins like VW did with faking emissions tests.

Proprietary safety tech is evil, and must be made illegal. Compete with nicer looking more comfortable cars with better miles-to-charge, not peoples lives.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#462

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

TheCleric wrote: post #374

bastawhiz wrote: post #257

Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous. - It failed with a cryptic system error while driving - It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene. - In my opinion, the default setting accelera…

> Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. There’s a simple answer to this. As soon as it’s good enough for Tesla to accept liability for accidents. Until then if Tesla doesn’t trust it, why should I?

This is how I feel about nuclear energy. Every single plant should need to form a full insurance fund dedicated to paying out if there’s trouble. And the plant should have strict liability: anything that happens from materials it releases are its responsibility.

But people get upset about this. We need corporations to take responsibility.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#463

Post by jeffbee » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

Laaas wrote: post #420

jeffbee wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a dime for every hackernews who commented that FSD version X was like a revelation compared to FSD version X-ε I'd have like thirty bucks. I will grant you that every release has surprisingly different behaviors. Here's an unintentionally hilarious meta-post on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531915

Doesn’t this just mean it’s improving rapidly which is a good thing?

No, the fact that people say FSD is on the verge of readiness constantly for a decade means there is no widely shared benchmark.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#464

Post by Aloisius » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:18 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #300

travem wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer is zero If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. I agree that it should be regulated and incidents thoroughly investigated, however letting perfect be the enemy of good leads to stagnation and lack of practical improvement and greater injury to the population as a whole.

>>If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. And yet whenever there is a problem with any plane autopilot it's preemptively disabled fleet wide and pilots have to fly manually even though we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that it's less safe. If an automated system makes a wrong decision and it contributes to harm/death then it ca…

Depends on what one considers a "problem." As long as the autopilot's failures conditions and mitigation procedures are documented, the burden is largely shifted to the operator.

Autopilot didn't prevent slamming into a mountain? Not a problem as long as it wasn't designed to.

Crashed on landing? No problem, the manual says not to operate it below 500 feet.

Runaway pitch trim? The manual says you must constantly be monitoring the autopilot and disengage it when it's not operating as expected and to pull the autopilot and pitch trim circuit breakers. Clearly insufficient operator training is to blame.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#465

Post by potato3732842 » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:19 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #359

potato3732842 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were a poorer driver who did these things you wouldn't find these faults so damning because it'd only be say 10% dumber than you rather than 40% or whatever (just making up those numbers).

That just implies FSD is as good as a bad driver, which isn't really an endorsement.

I agree it's not an endorsement but we allow chronically bad drivers on the road as long as they're legally bad and not illegally bad.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#466

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

alexjplant wrote: post #216

> The collision happened because the sun was in the Tesla driver's eyes, so the Tesla driver was not charged, said Raul Garcia, public information officer for the department. Am I missing something or is this the gross miscarriage of justice that it sounds like? The driver could afford a $40k vehicle but not $20 polarized shades from Amazon? Negligence is negligence.

Yeah, I have a couple of mirrors placed around my car that reflect light into my face so that I can get out of running into someone. Tbh I understand why they do this. Someone on HN explained it to me: Yield to gross tonnage. So I just drive where I want. If other people die, that’s on them: the graveyards are full of people with the right of way, as people say.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#467

Post by meibo » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:26 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #436

therouwboat wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better that way than "Oh it tried to run red light, but otherwise it's great."

"Oh we tried to build it but no one bought it! So we gave up." - Mercedes before Tesla. Perhaps FSD isn't ready for city streets yet, but it's great on the highways and I'd 1000x prefer we make progress rather than settle for the status quo garbage that the legacy makers put out. Also, human drivers are the most dangerous, by far, we need to make progress to eventual phase them out.

2-ton blocks of metal that go 80mph next to me on the highway is not the place I would want people to go "fuck it let's just do it" with their new tech. Human drivers might be dangerous but adding more danger and unpredictability on top just because we can skip a few steps in the engineering process is crazy.

Maybe you have a deathwish, but I definitely don't. Your choices affect other humans in traffic.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#468

Post by dmix » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:28 PM UTC

TheCleric wrote: post #440

bdcravens wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liability for killing someone can include prison time.

Good. If you write software that people rely on with their lives, and it fails, you should be held liable for that criminally.

Drug companies and the FDA (circa 1906) play a very dangerous and delicate dance all the time releasing new drugs to the public. But for over a century now we've managed to figure it out without holding pharma companies criminally liable for every death.

> If you write software that people rely on with their lives, and it fails, you should be held liable for that criminally.

Easy to type those words on the internet than make it a policy IRL. That sort of policy IRL would likely result in a) killing off all commercial efforts to solve traffic deaths via technology and vast amounts of other semi-autonomous technology like farm equipment or b) government/car companies mandating filming the driver every time they turn it on, because it's technically supposed to be human assisted autopilot in these testing stages (outside restricted pilot programs like Waymo taxis). Those distinctions would matter in a criminal court room, even if humans can't always be relied upon to always follow the instructions on the bottle's label.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#469

Post by jsjohnst » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:38 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #376

modeless wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla jumped the gun on the FSD free trial earlier this year. It was nowhere near good enough at the time. Most people who tried it for the first time probably share your opinion. That said, there is a night and day difference between FSD 12.3 that you experienced earlier this year and the latest version 12.6. It will still make mistakes from time to time but the improvement is massive and obvious. More importantly,…

> That said, there is a night and day difference between FSD 12.3 that you experienced earlier this year and the latest version 12.6 >And I don't even have 12.6 yet, this is still 12.5; How am i supposed to take anything you say seriously when your only claim is a personal anecdote that doesn't even apply to your own argument. Please, think about what you're writing, and please stop repeating information you heard on…

> I have absolutely zero faith in your anecdote that you didn't touch the steering wheel. I bet it's a lie.

I’m not GP, but I can share video showing it driving across residential, city, highway, and even gravel roads all in a single trip without touching the steering wheel a single time over a 90min trip (using 12.5.4.1).

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#470

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 11:44 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #400

sangnoir wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a right of way over a slow moving vehicle that merged ahead of you. Most ramps are not long enough to allow merging traffic to accelerate to highway speeds before merging, so many drivers free up the right-most lane for this purpose (by merging left)

Since a number of people are giving pushback, can you point to any (California-oriented) driving instructions consistent with this? I'm not seeing any. I see people saying "it's curteous", but when I'm driving I'm managing hundreds of variables and changing lanes is often risky, given motorcycles lanesplitting at high speed (quite common).

It's not just courteous, it's self serving, AFAIK, a self-emergent phenomenon. If you're driving at 65 mph and anticipate a slow down in your lane due merging traffic, do you stay in your lane and slow down to 40 mph, or do you change lanes (if it's safe to do so) and maintain your speed?

Texas highways allow for much higher merging speeds at the cost of far large (land area), 5-level interchanges rather than 35 mph offramps and onramps common in California.

Any defensive driving course (which fall under instruction IMO) states that you don't always have to exercise your right of way, and indeed it may be unsafe to do so in some circumstances. Anticipating the actions of other drivers around you and avoiding potentially dangerous are the other aspects of being a defensive driver, and those concepts are consistent with freeing up the lane slower-moving vehicles are merging onto when it's safe to do so.