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Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

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Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#511

Post by studentrob »

dimino wrote: post #490
studentrob wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must every critical argument I make be balanced with something positive in order to demonstrate I'm not 100% against Tesla? Tesla definitely done great things. They're just not front and center in the news at the moment. I think it's best to look at the data or issues being discussed rather than some hidden motive. When I discuss politics, I don't just say "I'm voting for Billy", I try to say, "I like Billy's positio…

It's not about balance, it's about you willing to make guesses regarding the bad things Tesla has done, and not make guesses about the potential good things. This isn't a "let's give 50% time to the creationists" kind of thing, this is a "let's not stretch only one side of the truth" kind of thing. You said the equivalent of, "I'm voting for X because of my speculation about Y but I refuse to speculate about Z as it…

> It's not about balance, it's about you willing to make guesses regarding the bad things Tesla has done, and not make guesses about the potential good things.

You're being pedantic. I can wager guesses about good things too. They're just not pertinent to the focus of this article. Constructive criticism, for me, is a positive thing.

> You said the equivalent of, "I'm voting for X because of my speculation about Y but I refuse to speculate about Z as it does not fit my current argument."

I gave some raw analysis of the statistics drawn, further here [1], and all you can do is complain that I am somehow voting against Tesla. I never said any such thing. I said we should demand more transparency from them about accident data. I made some further speculation about Tesla's likelihood to do this on their own because it supports the argument that we should be part of this conversation.

To expand on that, I think we should ask this of all companies that enable driver-assist. Currently, California requires monthly reports on accidents involving fully autonomous vehicles. I think it makes sense to do that for every car [2].

If you think Tesla and other companies will become more transparent and you don't feel the need to do anything, great, that's your prerogative.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087603

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084226

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#512

Post by D-Coder »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #197
greendestiny wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you? Can I wire an old iphone into the control system of your car and fire up opencv and a bit of depth estimation and lane following send you off?

Aren't we talking about a plane? And I said I trust a computer more , not that the presence of a computer is automatically enough. I'm not getting in a manually-controlled plane that's flying centimeters from a hard surface. I will get in some computer-controlled planes doing the same. (At the very least I want a real-time OS and dedicated range sensors. And the confidence of a plane owner who would lose millions of…

The plane is zero centimeters from a hard surface at the beginning and end of the flight.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#513

Post by laksjd »

ethbro wrote: post #397
wiz21c wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the guy comes forward and says "I'm going to make an autopilot for the masses". He/We know it's tough to do. The guy release its autopilot. It's not quite ready for prime time. Double problem : the guy goes into a tough business alone, the guy makes stuff that's not 100% ready. I like it when people try to do hard stuff, that's fine and maybe heroic. But they have to be prepared : if testing the whole thing must take…

> if testing the whole thing must take 10 years to be safe and a gazillion dollars, then so be it. If it's too much to shoulder, then they should not enter the business That sounds like a succinct explanation for why we've been stuck in LEO since December 19, 1972. We've got 7 billion+ humans on the surface of our planet. We lose about 1.8/s to various tragedies. Most of which are of less import than helping automate…

I don't think the issue is that Tesla's cars are dangerous. The issue people are raising is that they pretend, at least through implications, that their cars can safely drive for you.

Tesla is also not doing any kind of super special research into self driving cars. The system their cars use is (afaik) an OEM component (provided by MobileEye) that powers the driver assist features of many other brands, too.

Instead of actually improving the technology they have chosen to lower the safety parameters in order to make it seem like the system is more capable than it actually is.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#514

Post by kirkbauer »

electic wrote: post #272

The most glaring flaw here is the name - Autopilot. It gives the driver the impression this is a true self-driving system. I have seen videos of people sleeping in their Tesla while Autopilot is engaged. A more appropriate name might be "co-pilot"

I can see how the name could be misleading to some people. However, I think the term is quite accurate. In an aircraft, Autopilot takes care of the basics of flying the plane while the pilot is fully responsible for what is happening, watching out for traffic, and ready to take over if necessary. This is exactly what it means for Tesla as well.

In any case, as somebody who has used it off and on for 6 months in all kinds of situations it is clear that it has limitations but it is also easy to know when to be worried. Its best use is in stop-and-go freeway traffic. Its worse use is on smaller curvy surface streets. It is also really nice for distance driving on freeways.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#515

Post by kirkbauer »

the_common_man wrote: post #7

Nobody reads manuals and follows instructions . I feel Tesla is going to learn this lesson that hard way. From the article: "We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads," it said. Tesla states clearly in its owner's manual that drivers should stay alert and keep their hands on the wheel to avoid accidents when the Autopilot feature is engaged.

In order to enable autopilot you must agree to the terms right on the display screen. Again it is possible for people to not read them (although they are pretty brief).

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#516

Post by kirkbauer »

base698 wrote: post #124
alogray wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has this feature decreased safety? Tesla's first fatality came after 130 million autopilot miles whereas traditions in the US, we have one fatality every 90 million miles. If that continues to hold, this seems to be significantly safer with it's own set of caveats. Not altogether different than getting stuck in a burning car due to your seatbelt.

I actually worked out the math on this--Tesla is lying with statistics when they made this comment they did about 1 in 130 million miles. Here's what I did: 1 in 90 million rate: 1.1 x 10^8 Probability of No accident in one mile: 1 - 1.1 x 108 = ~9.9999999 x 10^8 Probability of No accident and driving 130 million miles: (9.99999999 x 10 ^ 8) ^ 130e6 = 0.24 Probability AT LEAST ONE ACCIDENT in 130 million miles = 1 -…

I agree that the fatality rate does not allow for any comparisons. Autopilot could cause significantly more or fewer fatalities than humans.

On the other hand, one also needs to consider accident rate. From what I understand, based on US averages, we should have had 50+ accidents out of 100+ million miles driven on AP, but we had about three.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#517

Post by wyldfire »

ekidd wrote: post #299
wyldfire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or in fact a legitimate reason to swerve? Reasoning about what's legitimate can be a really fine line. Oncoming car, raccoon, fawn, human, doe, coyote, elk: some of these obstacles might actually be net-safer to not swerve around [perhaps depending on speed]. I'd be really curious if any of the autopilots have a value system that tries to minimize damage/loss of life. And how does it value the exterior obstacle aga…

> elk I'm pretty sure that hitting a full-grown elk is a poor choice, and often a fatal one. A large, full-grown elk can weigh 600 pounds and stand 5 feet tall at the shoulder, which means it will probably go over the crumple zone and directly strike the windshield. This happens commonly with moose in New England, which run up to 800 pounds and 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder. A car will knock their legs out from under…

Yes, I included it precisely because there's no reason to ever hit an elk. "some of these obstacles ..." -- it's one of the extrema that you might imagine as test cases for this kind of a feature.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#518

Post by Vraxx »

curried_haskell wrote: post #505
Vraxx wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not lulling anybody into anything! The guy was given multiple warnings by the car that what he was doing was unsafe. The last of which was extremely pertinent to the crash. To quote the article, "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel". This is after the initial alerts telling him that he needs to remain vigilant while using this featu…

Not lulling anybody into anything? You damn well know that drivers are going to treat "driver assist" like it's an autopilot and put themselves into dangerous situations. Do you know anything at all about the way people behave? Give me a fucking break.

I guess I just don't know how many flashing warnings somebody has to ignore for it to finally be their fault.. At some point, their unwillingness to change their natural inclinations in the face of overwhelming evidence that they need to should have a negative consequence. This isn't like "just click through to ToS". If you buried it in the ToS or something similar, I absolutely agree with your point of view, but when you make it painstakingly clear in unavoidable manners I think we've crossed into territory of user responsibility. If this feature needs to be removed from Tesla cars (and I accept that potential future) I would definitely put that "fault" on the users of Tesla cars rather than Tesla based on the implementation I've read about.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#519

Post by Fej »

When is Tesla going to stop blaming the drivers? Whether it's their fault or not, it looks bad.

To be honest I don't feel comfortable with that kind of data collection anyway. I'll never even think about getting a Tesla until they give us an option to turn their tracking systems off. It's creepy and unnecessary.

Re: Tesla confirms “Autopilot” crash in Montana

#520

Post by talmand »

jessaustin wrote: post #481
talmand wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting to be able to purchase a Google self-driving car as well...

Maybe when they develop a safe, reliable autopilot system, they'll offer it for sale to the public. Some firms seem to have gotten that backwards... It has always seemed that Google view robocars as a long-term revolutionary concept, while car companies see them as another gaudy add-on like entertainment centers or heated seats. It's not yet clear which is the right stance to take as a firm, but Tesla's recent troubl…

Which is exactly why I think it's a rather unfair comparison. They are two different things that may have the same outcome.
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