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

reuters.com

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

#591

Post by kelnos »

SoftTalker wrote: post #332
Arainach wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about lying to the public and stoking false expectations for years. If it's "fully self driving" Tesla should be liable for when its vehicles kill people. If it's not fully self driving and Tesla keeps using that name in all its marketing, regardless of any fine print, then Tesla should be liable for people acting as though their cars could FULLY self drive and be sued accordingly. You don't get to lie just b…

It’s your car, so ultimately the liability is yours. That’s why you have insurance. If Tesla retains ownership, and just lets you drive it, then they have (more) liability.

> It’s your car, so ultimately the liability is yours

No, that's not how it works. The driver and the driver's insurer are on the hook when something bad happens. The owner is not, except when the owner is also the one driving, or if the owner has been negligent with maintenance, and the crash was caused by mechanical failure related to that negligence.

If someone else is driving my car and I'm a passenger, and they hurt someone with it, the driver is liable, not me. If that "someone else" is a piece of software, and that piece of software has been licensed/certified/whatever to drive a car, why should I be liable for its failures? That piece of software needs to be insured, certainly. It doesn't matter if I'm required to insure it, or if the manufacturer is required to insure it.

Tesla FSD doesn't fit into this scenario because it's not the driver. You are still the driver when you engage FSD, because despite its name, FSD is not capable of filling that role.

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

#592

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

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?

> As soon as it’s good enough for Tesla to accept liability for accidents.

That makes a lot of sense and not just from a selfish point of view. When a person drives a vehicle, then the person is held responsible for how the vehicle behaves on the roads, so it's logical that when a machine drives a vehicle that the machine's manufacturer/designer is held responsible.

It's a complete con that Tesla is promoting their autonomous driving, but also having their vehicles suddenly switch to non-autonomous driving which they claim moves the responsibility to the human in the driver seat. Presumably, the idea is that the human should have been watching and approving everything that the vehicle has done up to that point.

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

#593

Post by dageshi »

szundi wrote: post #255
becquerel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Waymo has already beaten this metric.

Waymo is limited to cities that their engineers has to map and this map maintained. You cannot put a waymo in a new city before that. With Tesla, what you get is universal.

I think the Waymo approach is the one that will actually deliver some measure of self driving cars that people will be comfortable to use.

It won't operate everywhere, but it will gradually expand to cover large areas and it will keep expanding till it's near ubiquitous.

I'm dubious that the Tesla approach will actually ever work.

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

#594

Post by kelnos »

murderfs wrote: post #482
gambiting wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that's a useful argument.

I think we should start allowing autonomous driving when the "driver" is at least as safe as the median driver when the software is unsupervised. (Teslas may or may not be that safe when supervised, but they absolutely are not when unsupervised.)

But once we get to that point, we should absolutely ratchet those standards so automobile safety over time becomes just as safe as airline safety. Safer, if possible.

> 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.

That's a weird argument, because both pilots and drivers get thrown in jail if they fly/drive drunk. The standard is the same.

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

#595

Post by tsimionescu »

m463 wrote: post #176
massysett wrote: post #64

"Tesla says on its website its FSD software in on-road vehicles requires active driver supervision and does not make vehicles autonomous." Despite it being called "Full Self-Driving." Tesla should be sued out of existence.

I believe it's called "Full Self Driving (Supervised)"

The correct name would be "Not Self Driving". Or, at least, Partial Self Driving.

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

#596

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

krisoft wrote: post #578
kergonath wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated or outlandish. That’s how most engineering fields work. If a building collapses because of design flaws, then the builders and architects can be held responsible. Hell, if a car crashes because of a design or assembly flaw, the manufacturer is held responsible. Why should self-driving software be any different? If the software is not reliable enough, then don’t use it in a context where it c…

I think the example here is that the designer draws a bridge for a railway model, and someone decides to use the same design and sends real locomotives across it. Is the original designer (who neither intended nor could have foreseen this) liable in your understanding?

That's a ridiculous argument.

If a construction firm takes an arbitrary design and then tries to build it in a totally different environment and for a different purpose, then the construction firm is liable, not the original designer. It'd be like Boeing taking a child's paper aeroplane design and making a passenger jet out of it and then blaming the child when it inevitably fails.

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

#597

Post by [deleted] »

exe34 wrote: post #313
gambiting wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

> 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. just because we do something dumb in one scenario isn't a very persuasive reason to do the same in another. > then it cannot be allowed on public roads full stop, no matter how many lives it saves otherwise.…

[deleted]

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

#598

Post by cubefox »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #261
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #226

The interesting question is how good self-driving has to be before people tolerate it. It's clear that having half the casualty rate per distance traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? Accidents caused by human drivers are one of the largest causes of injury and death, but they're not newsworthy the way an accident involving automated driving is. It's all too easy to se…

I think we should not be satisfied with merely “better than a human”. Flying is so safe precisely because we treat any casualty as unacceptable. We should aspire to make automobiles at least that safe.

> I think we should not be satisfied with merely “better than a human”.

The question is whether you want to outlaw automatic driving just because the system is, say, "only" 50% safer than us.

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

#599

Post by tsimionescu »

tharant wrote: post #247
maeil wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part in parentheses has only recently been added.

Prior to that, FSD was labeled ‘Full Self Driving (Beta)’ and enabling it triggered a modal that required two confirmations explaining that the human driver must always pay attention and is ultimately responsible for the vehicle. The feature also had/has active driver monitoring (via both vision and steering-torque sensors) that would disengage FSD if the driver ignored the loud audible alarm to “Pay attention”. Sinc…

The problem is not so much the lack of disclaimers, it is the adberitising. Tesla is asking for something like 15 000 dollars for access to this "beta", and you don't get two modal dialogs before you sign up for that.

This is called "false advertising", and even worse - recognizing revenue on a feature you are not delivering (a beta is not a delivered feature) is not GAAP.

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

#600

Post by kergonath »

krisoft wrote: post #578
kergonath wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated or outlandish. That’s how most engineering fields work. If a building collapses because of design flaws, then the builders and architects can be held responsible. Hell, if a car crashes because of a design or assembly flaw, the manufacturer is held responsible. Why should self-driving software be any different? If the software is not reliable enough, then don’t use it in a context where it c…

I think the example here is that the designer draws a bridge for a railway model, and someone decides to use the same design and sends real locomotives across it. Is the original designer (who neither intended nor could have foreseen this) liable in your understanding?

Someone, at some point signed off on this being released. Not thinking things through seriously is not an excuse to sell defective cars.
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