Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

481–490 of 1001 posts

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

#481

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.

What a laugh, would you take that deal?

Upside: you get paid a 200k salary, if all your code works perfectly. Downside: if it doesn't, you go to prison.

The users aren't compelled to use it. They can choose not to. They get to choose their own risks.

The internet is a gold mine of creatively moronic opinions.

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

#482
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't equate airplane safety with automotive safety. I worked at an aircraft repair facility doing government contracts for a number of years. In one instance, somebody lost the toilet paper holder for one of the aircraft. This holder was simply a piece of 10 gauge wire that was bent in a way to hold it and supported by wire clamps screwed to the wall. Making a new one was easy but since it was a new part going o…

No, I'm pretty sure I can in this regard - any automotive "autopilot" has to be held to the same standard. It's either zero accidents or nothing.

This only works for aerospace because everything and everyone is held to that standard. It's stupid to hold automotive autopilots to the same standard as a plane's autopilot when a third of fatalities in cars are caused by the pilots being drunk.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

And if someone wants to claim I’m cherry picking the video, happy to shoot a new video with this post visible on an iPad in the seat next to me. Is it autonomous? Hell no. Can it drive in Manhattan? Nope. But can it do >80% of my regular city (suburb outside nyc) and highway driving, yep.

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

#484

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.

Assuming there's the kind of guard rails as in other industries where this is true, absolutely. (In other words, proper licensing and credentialing, and the ability to prevent a deployment legally)

I would also say that if something gets signed off on by management, that carries an implicit transfer of accountability up the chain from the individual contributor to whoever signed off.

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

#485
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Your take is understandable and not surprising on a site full of software developers. Somehow, the general software industry has ingrained this pessimistic and fatalistic dogma that says bugs are inevitable and there’s nothing you can do to prevent them. Since everyone believes it, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and we just accept it as some kind of law of nature.

Holding software developers (or their companies) liable for defects would definitely kill off a part of the industry: the very large part that YOLOs code into production and races to get features released without rigorous and exhaustive testing. And why don’t they spend 90% of their time testing and verifying and proving their software has no defects? Because defects are inevitable and they’re not held accountable for them!

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

#486
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liability alone isn’t nearly that high. Car insurance payments include people stealing your car, uninsured motorists, rental cars, and other issues not the drivers fault. Further insurance payments also include profits for the insurance company, advertising, billing, and other overhead from running a business. Also, if Tesla was taking on these risks you’d expect your insurance costs to drop.

Yeah any automaker doing this would just negotiate a flat rate per car in the US and the insurer would average the danger to make a rate. This would be much cheaper than the average individual’s cost for liability on their insurance.

Somehow I doubt those savings would be passed along to the individual car buyer. Surely buying a car insured by the manufacturer would be much more expensive than buying the car plus your own individual insurance, because the car company would want to profit from both.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable. It's completely acceptable. In fact the numbers are lower than they have been since we've started driving. > Accidents caused by human drivers Are there any other types of drivers? > are one of the largest causes of injury and death More than half the fatalities on the road are actually caused by the use of drugs and alcohol. The statistics are very clear on thi…

> Non impaired people drive orders of magnitude better. That raises the question - how many impaired driver-miles are being baked into the collision statistics for "median human" driver-miles? Shouldn't we demand non-impaired driving as the standard for automation, rather than "averaged with drunk / phone-fiddling /senile" driving? We don't give people N-mile allowances for drunk driving based on the size of the drun…

Motorcycles account for a further 15% of all fatalities in a typical year. Weather is often a factor. Road design is sometimes a factor, remembering several rollover crashes that ended in a body of water and no one in the vehicle surviving. Likewise ejections during fatalities due to lack of seatbelt use is also noticeable.

Once you dig into the data you see that almost every crash, at this point in history, is really a mini-story detailing the confluence of several factors that turned a basic accident into something fatal.

Also, and I only saw this once, but if you literally have a heart attack behind the wheel, you are technically a roadway fatality. The driver was 99. He just died while sitting in slow moving traffic.

Which brings me to my final point which is the rear seats in automobiles are less safe than the front seats. This is true for almost every vehicle on the road. You see _a lot_ of accidents where two 40 to 50 year old passengers are up front and two 70 to 80 year old passengers are in back. The ones up front survive. One or both passengers in the back typically die.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about relative safety compared to all human driving. We all know that some humans are sometimes terrible drivers! We also know what that looks like: Driving too fast or slow relative to surroundings. Quickly turning every once in a while to stay in their lane. Aggressively weaving through traffic. Going through an intersection without spending the time to actually look for pedestrians. The list goes on.…

> Bad automated driving is invisible. I'm literally saying that it is visible, to me, the passenger. And for reasons that aren't just bad vibes. If I'm in an Uber and I feel unsafe, I'll report the driver. Why would I pay for my car to do that to me?

We are taking about the same thing: unpredictability. If you and everyone else can't predict what your car will do, then that seems objectively unsafe to me. It also sounds like we agree with each other.

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

#489

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…

> It didn't merge left to make room for vehicles merging onto the highway. The vehicles then tried to cut in. The system should have avoided an unsafe situation like this in the first place. This is what bugs me about ordinary autopilot. Autopilot doesn't switch lanes, but I like to slow down or speed up as needed to allow merging cars to enter my lane. Autopilot never does that, and I've had some close calls with ir…

Agreed. Automatic lane changes are the only feature of enhanced autopilot that I think I'd be interested in, solely for this reason.

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

#490

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…

> I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year. I'm curious, what is the alternative that you are considering? I've been delaying an upgrade to electric for some time. And now, a car manufacturer that is contributing to the making of another Jan 6th, 2021 is not an option, in my opinion.

I've got a deposit on the Dodge Charger Daytona EV
Post reply on HN