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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

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Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#491

Post by Piskvorrr »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #333
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

I would almost agree with you, but please indulge with me in the following thought. Let's say that you can go to work by feet or by bike. Let's also say that by feet your probability of getting killed are 1 in 1,000,000, and the commute takes 20 minutes. On a bike, commuting takes only 10 minutes, but the probability is up to 1 in 200,000. Five times more. You end up deciding to use the bike every day to go to work.…

As you note, you're coming from impossible premises ("assuming your actions never affect anyone else"). Do you expect to come to meaningful conclusions?

In other words, as a buyer, I do care about the occupant safety rating, you are correct in that. As a road user, I also care that other people's cars consider me as irrelevant, my potential death an externality to be amortized in the purchase prize.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#492

Post by KurtMueller »

mcv wrote: post #478
Alupis wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

I'm very excited about the possibility of self-driving cars. Let the car drive while I take a nap or read a book. But I have a hard time believing that the technology is anywhere close to being mature. You need a lot of contextual knowledge to drive safely in unusual circumstances. I totally believe that within well-defined limits, AI already outperforms humans, but traffic has no well-defined limits. Anything can ha…

Let the car go park itself while I walk into the restaurant. Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#494

Post by neotek »

capkutay wrote: post #252
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

Yeah I have a similar feeling...but I am willing to try it. Just aware that there are probably corner cases it can't handle and generally curious about what the behavior is. For instance, I was driving on autopilot on a section of 101 where they repainted the lanes. I let autopilot do its thing...but I closely observed and kept my hand on the wheel and foot on the brakes. Lo and behold...the car positioned itself rig…

Does it not feel a little crazy to you that you're willing to put your life into the hands of a machine that you know is capable of, and has already tried, killing you?

I can't think of any time in my life where I've almost driven my car into a no-man's land even after thousands of hours of driving, and yet every Tesla owner I know has half a dozen stories about the time Auto Pilot tried to steer them into a barrier or took a corner way too fast or suddenly braked for no reason.

I totally get the appeal of a Tesla, holy shit that acceleration is amazing, but Auto Pilot just does not seem worth it at all.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#495

Post by easytiger »

asdff wrote: post #341
easytiger wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could even make it so that you drive it yourself and keep it outside your home to use when you need. What an innovation that would be

Would be great if you could afford the $40k and insurance to house that 4000lb hunk of precious metal you spend energy moving around everywhere you go. A bus pass is a $1.75 on the other hand...

263 million cars in an America.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#496

Post by notahacker »

CPLX wrote: post #455
thaumasiotes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginal Revolution just highlighted an interesting detailed look at US car (driver) fatalities. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/02/wh... >> After accounting for freeways (18%) and intersections and junctions (20%), we’re still left with more than 60% of drivers killed in automotive accidents left accounted for. >> It turns out that drivers killed on rural roads with 2 lanes (i.e., one lane in…

You’re committing a logical fallacy here. Avoiding driving on those roads is only a mitigation if the accident rate is highly disproportional to their usage. If half of all driving occurs on highways and half doesn’t, and half of all accidents are on highways, then avoiding highways will have absolutely no effect on your accident rate. It’s possible that driving on these roads leads to a disproportionate accident rat…

True. I think there's plenty of non-statistical reason to believe you can reduce your risk of death by not being one of the 50% of drivers involved in accidents on those roads who weren't wearing a seat belt or ~35% who are over the drink drive limit though.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#497

Post by krzat »

arethuza wrote: post #454
krzat wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's possible to solve noise problem with flying cars. Maybe use active noise cancellation at the source? No idea if it's even theoretically possible, but would be neat.

Aren't flying cars going to be much noisier than surface cars?

Yes, that was my point. We will need some clever tech to make the noise bearable.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#498

Post by Piskvorrr »

dontreact wrote: post #365
eloisant wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the number of accident per km, I'm pretty sure the numbers for self-driving are much lower than human drivers. When a self-driving car is involved in an accident, it's in the news all over the world. Human drivers kill or get killed every day, in every country.

Humans have 1 fatality per 100 million miles, self driving is nowhere close to this.

The statistics for SDVs have an issue which might invalidate them: "fatality per miles driven" doesn't take disengagements into account: how do you even do that, meaningfully? "Fatality avoided because human driver stepped in - another triumph for autonomous driving"? That doesn't make much sense...

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#499

Post by keanzu »

greatpatton wrote: post #411
pja wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video released by Uber was extremely misleading. Here is a video on YouTube of the same stretch of road taken by someone with an ordinary phone camera shortly after Elaine’s death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRW0q8i3u6E It’s clear that a) the road is well lit and b) visibility is far, far better than the Uber video would suggest. An ordinary human driver would have seen Elaine & taken evasive action. This de…

"May have seen" is more appropriate as every day pedestrian get killed on well lit road by human drivers.

The assumption was for an ordinary driver, the expectation is that given sufficient lighting the vast majority of drivers would see and avoid a pedestrian. Most of the millions of pedestrian vehicle interactions daily go by without incident, one or the other party giving way, so this would be the normal expectation for an ordinary driver.

We can reasonably assume that pja is aware of the existence of abysmal drivers and fatal crashes that should not have happened. I doubt their intent was for "would" to be interpreted as "100%".

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#500

Post by xkemp »

neuronic wrote: post #441
Alupis wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. What really bugs me, as someone working in consulting as a hands-on backend developer with a previous background in technical consulting at an accounting Big4 (student job), is the insane amount of PR, politics and marketing talk by people who have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what they are talking about. I witnessed politicians an…

Predicting with All-Caps confidence that autonomous driving is "decades away" is at least as indefensible as overly optimistic predictions were.
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