Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#511

Post by Splines » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #200

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analy…

> Of wrong comparisons: you should check the autopilot against a rested and concentrated driver that drives slowly and with a lot of care. Since in the statistics otherwise you do not account for the fact that when you drive, you are in control, and you can decide your level of safety. Such a diligent driver that goes to crash because of an immature software is terrible.

Do these car companies test their software by just leaving it on all the time in a passive mode and measuring the deviance from the human driver?

I'd think that at least in MV case, you'd see a higher incidence of lane following difference at this spot and it would warrant an investigation.

Something like this isn't easy but for a company as ambitious as Tesla it doesn't sound unreasonable. Such a crash with such an easy repro should have been known about a long long time ago.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#512

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #503

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethics works by consensus. If the majority of the public become convinced that they prefer to die as a result of their choices than as a result of the choices of a machine they have no control over, even if the machine kills less often, then the machine is not an ethical choice anymore. Basically, forcing people to die in one specific way stinks to high heaven. As to why we use certain technologies, that is not so cl…

> Basically, forcing people to die in one specific way stinks to high heaven Then these people should stop trying to force me to accept a less safe method of transportation, by preventing me from using new technology! Yeah, those people shouldn't be forced to use a self driving care. As they are ALREADY not being forced to do. Nobody is being forced to use the technology. Just don't use it if you don't like it. It is…

Ok, you take the red tape away from silencers and short barreled rifles and I'll take it away from your self driving cars.

I'm all for less red tape.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#513

Post by haldean » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #314

antirez wrote: post #200

What is happening was clear to many since the start: Tesla incarnates the behavior of his founder, exaggerating the technology that is really available right now, and selling it as a product without the premise for it to be safe. A product that kinda drives your car but sometimes fails, and requires you to pay attention, is simply a crash that we are waiting to happen. And don't get trapped by the "data driven" analy…

Everyone talking about statistical evidence should take a look at this NHTSA report [1]. For example, "Figure 11. Crash Rates in MY 2014-16 Tesla Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles Before and After Autosteer Installation", where they are 1.3 and 0.8 per million miles respectively. Unfortunately, this report seems to have shot itself in the foot by apparently using 'Autopilot' and 'Autosteer' interchangeably, so it lea…

That could be because the car is usually right when it thinks it's in danger; this crash happened because it incorrectly thought it was safe. Having an assistive device that emergency-brakes or steers around obstacles is great as long as there's very few false positives, as long as its assistive and not autonomous. Once it's autonomous, you need to have extremely, extremely low false negative rates as well.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#514

Post by dwighttk » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #510

dwighttk wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cars are classicist, like it or not. as a trained classicist, I take exception to the idea a car could do what I do

I meant it as an adjective, not as a noun (I'd have added 'a' in front). Is it incorrect?

You'd want "classist" if you mean prejudice against a class

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#515

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #269

teppix wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics also includes all the cases where drivers are not paying attention as they should, and it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).

Drivers not paying attention in non-autopilot vehicles is an increasing problem with the prevalence of smart phones. In places where it's illegal to text and drive I don't think you're going to get out of a ticket by telling the police officer "it's okay because Tesla was driving". I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused s…

Fire needs oxygen, fuel and an ignition source. A battery provides the latter two in very close proximity to each other.

How often does a damaged and leaking fuel tank start a fire?

How often does a lithium battery that has been structurally compromised start a fire?

Fire safety is a major negative for lithium batteries. That much electrical energy in that form factor can only be so safe.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#516

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #237

dawnerd wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best solution is to keep the driver engaged, IE still holding the wheel and showing they are paying attention. It's how all the other cars with lane assist do it. Cant go more than 30 seconds of not touching the wheel before it complains. It's not perfect but it sure beats the driver being so used to it they start doing other things like watching movies on their laptop.

No that's not the best solution. The best solution is to not have it at all until it's actually good enough to self-drive you. 30 seconds is a HUGE amount of time to react on a highway. You'll be long dead by the time another 25 seconds pass if the accident happens just 5 seconds after you took your hands off the wheel. And this is exactly what happened in the recent crash.

Not going to ever be able to prevent someone from taking their eyes/hands off the road. The point is to keep reminding them to pay attention.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#517

Post by jijojv » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #509

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They're not comparable at all. Google/Waymo uses lidar and has been at it since 2009 and per https://waymo.com/faq they are "fully automated vehicle" but alas not for sale yet. If it's already fully automated, then why is it not for sale, yet?

The required hardware is too expensive to make it commercially feasible.

Is it ? It's down to 8k https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i...

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#518

Post by quotemstr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #508

quotemstr wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of millions of people in the US. Most of them drive. Is a few tens of thousands fatalities that bad in an absolute sense?

Are you serious? Yes, a stadium full of people dying every year is "that bad" in an absolute sense.

By what metric? You're leaving out any sense of proportion.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#519

Post by whichdan » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #467

whichdan wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is pretty classist...

The reason why people buy expensive cars is because it is one of the ways in which they can quickly and quietly signal wealth or status. Cars are classicist, like it or not. After all, how much better can a $500K supercar be compared to a $50K car? Definitely not ten times better, the speed limits are the same, seating capacity is likely smaller, there may be a marginal improvement in acceleration and a corresponding…

Oh I don't disagree. Rather, I was responding to the assertion that wealthy people are better drivers.

Re: Tesla crash in September showed similarities to fatal Mountain View accident

#520

Post by uhhhhhhh » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #260

teppix wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics also includes all the cases where drivers are not paying attention as they should, and it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).

> it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla). This is Tesla's big lie. In all their marketing, Tesla is comparing crash rates of their passenger cars to ALL vehicles, including trucks and motorcycles, which have higher fatality rates. Motorcycles are about 10x-50x more dangerous than cars. Not only that, they aren't controlling for variances in driver demographics - younger and old people hav…

You're complaining about one side using wildly misleading and baseless stats, but then turn around and throw out a completely baseless and fairly absurd claim with no attempt to even back or source it, and then claim that because some cars have 0 fatalities that means something.

The truth is somewhere in between Tesla's marketing and your wildly absurd 100x more fatal claim, but its much closer to Tesla than you.

Tesla's statistics (i.e. real numbers, but context means everything) do involve a whole whack of unrelated comparisons (buses, 18-wheelers, motorcycles) that all server to skew the stats in various ways, we can ignore them claiming to be slightly safer than regular cars.

However comparing more like to like, IIHS numbers for passenger cars driver deaths on highways puts Tesla at 3.2x more likely than all other cars to be involved in a fatal crash (1 death/428,000,000 miles driven vs tesla's 1 death/133,000,000 miles driven).

Of course this too is an unfair comparison. A 133hp econobox/prius vs a sports car in terms of performance is considered equal in that comparison. If one was really interested in accuracy, a comparison of high power AWD cars in similar price ranges driven on the same roads by the same demographics would be needed.

So by even standards clearly biased against Tesla, they are no where near 100x more fatal than other cars. Tesla's own numbers claim autopilot reduces accidents, and supposedly NHS numbers back them up.

Its important and critical to not believe marketing hype and lazy statistics. If you want people to take you seriously, countering hype and bad stats with equal or worse hype and worse counter stats is not the way to do it.