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NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

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Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#81

Post by Natsu »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
Natsu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No you're right, the police happily pointed out that the woman was homeless and seemed to blame the victim. Why would they do that? Because A.R.S says that pedestrians have a duty to yield outside of crosswalks and they normally make the police's accident report available shortly after any accident. I know because I was over there not very long ago trying to get one for someone else. It's just off of Mill Ave., not…

> Because A.R.S says that pedestrians have a duty to yield outside of crosswalks and they normally make the police's accident report available shortly after any accident. Regardless, it is normal to wait until an investigation is complete before you start making statements. Making premature statements actually makes the results of any investigation look suspect. Pretty dumb move. Oh, and even if the woman is at fault…

Unless they're doing something special I haven't read about, that was the investigation by police. They don't spend a long time on every accident in my experience. What happened in our case was the driver turning left was cited for failure to yield. Case closed, next.

And I think a lot of people here don't have much experience driving these roads at night. More lights don't really help, there are too many lights on some level, you can see stoplights and such a good mile away, and pedestrians are moving shadows at night.

I had to train myself to notice them more after some weird experiences like the strange, uncoordinated bicyclist driving circles in the middle of a road for no reason in the middle of the night.

I'm sure there are things Uber and the safety driver could've done better, but I fully believe they really didn't notice them. That's right near an overpass and moving between lit and shadowed places also screws with your vision.

And FWIW, I've driven extensively here at night and I know that stretch of Mill Ave. rather well. I used to drive from Mill Ave to Van Buran, going through Papago park.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#82

Post by Animats »

wpietri wrote: post #13
icegreentea2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the NTSB was truly focused on providing investigations that minimize future risk (this is separate from blame, responsibility or punishment), then it's pretty clear that it should ideally be able to work in as neutral of an environment as possible. Tesla is also clearly trying to control the narrative, and I think NTSB's usual MO is that there simply be as little narrative as possible until something as close to g…

Yeah, I have huge respect for the NTSB. I think they're a big reason air travel is so safe. You'd never see an airline energetically trying to assign blame like this, and I'm disappointed that Tesla's PR operation is spinning vigorously before the investigation is over.

Right. Aviation and the NTSB understand each other. Commercial aviation accidents seldom have a single cause, because decades of hard work have eliminated all the single causes of failure. It usually takes a whole chain of failures to bring down an airliner, and it takes long, complicated investigations to figure out exactly what happened.

Crash investigations tend to have conclusions like "A happened, and that would have been survivable except that B also happened, and the pilots were distracted dealing with A while B was the more serious problem." There's a whole field of "cockpit resource management" which deals with such issues.

The NTSB's job is not to assign blame. It's to understand exactly what happened and figure out how to keep it from happening again.

This crash is somewhat similar to the four other Tesla crashes where a stationary obstacle was partially obstructing the left edge of a lane. We know that Teslas will plow into such obstructions. Here's the area of 101 leading up to the crash.[1] Note the width of the space between the lines marking the gore area, the pointy section as the exit lane tapers off. It becomes a full lane wide, and widens very slowly. It's possible that the lane following system locked into the gore area as a lane, and followed it right into the barrier.

CALTRANS standards call for a sign in the gore area.[2] But drivers keep hitting them. Replacing them is dangerous work, because there's live traffic and not enough room for a block vehicle. Especially here, because this is a left exit designed for high speed. So one of the options is to put the sign overhead, well ahead of the split. That's what CALTRANS did here. Tesla's system, of course, does not understand such a sign.

Federal standards recommend striping in the gore area.[3] But CALTRANS does not usually do that. Probably because standard truck-mounted lane striping sprayers can't do it without shutting down the freeway.

I look forward to seeing NTSB's take on all this.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4107387,-122.0752862,3a,75y,... [2] http://www.dot.ca.gov/trafficops/tcd/exit-gore.html [3] http://www.fdot.gov/roadway/ds/06/idx/17345.pdf

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#83

Post by cynix »

bicubic wrote: post #59
cmsonger wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: My wife drives a Tesla Model S with AP. Inattentive drivers more than overconfident drivers. You look down and stare at your phone for 10 seconds in a normal car and you are punished pretty quickly and learn not to do it. You look down and start at your phone for 10 seconds in a Tesla with AP and "nothing bad happens" ... almost all of the time. And that's the problem with this version of AP. Yes, Tesla s…

The problem with Tesla’s ‘autopilot’ is that it’s anything but. Asking drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel while not steering guarantees that their attention will wander, because their brain isn’t getting enough stimulus to keep focused on the task. I don’t know why it’s not clear to most people by now. The current Tesla ‘autopilot’ is simply more dangerous than manual driving because it har…

> Asking drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel while not steering guarantees that their attention will wander, because their brain isn’t getting enough stimulus to keep focused on the task.

From my experience, it's no different from your run-of-the-mill cruise control systems requiring, but not enforcing, that you keep your foot hovering above the brake pedal. I don't feel it's more dangerous than standard cruise control systems.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#84

Post by mrtksn »

maccam94 wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we have a valid use case for a blockchain? edit: can someone explain what’s so wrong with this comment please?

Blockchains do nothing to make the source of information trustworthy, they can only prove the information was created before a particular point in time. You could doctor a photo/video and put it on the blockchain just as easily as a real photo. You would only be able to tell it's fake if the original version was added first (if there's an original to begin with). There's a fundamental analog hole[1] when connecting a…

I see, people imagine that Tesla would use a defeat device to put doctored logs prior the crash. However this would not work since the car can’t put logs that say that everything is fine and did everything right because people would notice that’s incorrect as soon as they compare it with the evidence collected on the crash site.

If the car was able to know what’s the right thing to do, it would not only put it into the logs but it would have prevented the crash by doing it(unless of course, Musk is a contract killer and the cars ar crashing intentionnaly with correctly pre-doctored logs).

That’s why I suggested to use a blockchain - to ensure that the logs are not modified post-mortem.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#85

Post by mrtksn »

MichaelGG wrote: post #63
mrtksn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we have a valid use case for a blockchain? edit: can someone explain what’s so wrong with this comment please?

Blockchain provides zero benefit in this case. People on HN are tired of people ignorantly (sorry) saying blockchain. You should state, for starters, why simple digital signatures are not enough.

No, you just lack imagination.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#86

Post by masklinn »

classicsnoot wrote: post #6
masklinn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it institutional secrecy or is it disapproval of unilateral disclosure of only a sub-set of elements of an ongoing inquest?

What is the distinction between the two that changes the justification? I see those things as part of each other, as in institutional secrecy is bred from ongoing inquests in perpetuity.

> What is the distinction between the two that changes the justification?

That one is a form of bias whereas the other is the opposite of bias: you don't want elements of an ongoing inquest to be released independently because they don't provide a complete picture of the investigative results, and thus provide a biased outlook on the event.

> I see those things as part of each other, as in institutional secrecy is bred from ongoing inquests in perpetuity.

NTSB inquests have never been "ongoing in perpetuity". They provide thorough and extensive public reports.

Their entire purpose is to minimise future risk and they're very good at that. The point of discretion until all the facts are in (what you insultingly call "institutional secrecy") is that until as much as possible is known, there may be a major piece missing from the data which changes everything.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#87

Post by masklinn »

tedunangst wrote: post #22
aurizon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has Tesla concealed - as you intimate? What does the NTSB know they are not telling? One hopes their report at the end will tell all.

I think the idea is we don't know what they're not telling us because they haven't told us what they're not telling us.

And even they might not know that they're "not telling us", because the investigation is ongoing and who knows what'll be uncovered?

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#88

Post by jacquesm »

Natsu wrote: post #81
jacquesm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because A.R.S says that pedestrians have a duty to yield outside of crosswalks and they normally make the police's accident report available shortly after any accident. Regardless, it is normal to wait until an investigation is complete before you start making statements. Making premature statements actually makes the results of any investigation look suspect. Pretty dumb move. Oh, and even if the woman is at fault…

Unless they're doing something special I haven't read about, that was the investigation by police. They don't spend a long time on every accident in my experience. What happened in our case was the driver turning left was cited for failure to yield. Case closed, next. And I think a lot of people here don't have much experience driving these roads at night. More lights don't really help, there are too many lights on s…

The police made those statements while the body was still warm, I highly doubt they could have properly investigated this particular accident in that time. It mostly looked like they were actively looking to pin the blame on the pedestrian somehow.

Note that as a part of the responsibility for a 2 ton piece of steel you get the expectation that you will do your best to keep the other traffic participants alive even when they break the rules, especially when they are more vulnerable than you are.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#89

Post by Natsu »

jacquesm wrote: post #88
Natsu wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're doing something special I haven't read about, that was the investigation by police. They don't spend a long time on every accident in my experience. What happened in our case was the driver turning left was cited for failure to yield. Case closed, next. And I think a lot of people here don't have much experience driving these roads at night. More lights don't really help, there are too many lights on s…

The police made those statements while the body was still warm, I highly doubt they could have properly investigated this particular accident in that time. It mostly looked like they were actively looking to pin the blame on the pedestrian somehow. Note that as a part of the responsibility for a 2 ton piece of steel you get the expectation that you will do your best to keep the other traffic participants alive even w…

They saw a video that showed that she failed to yield and found a body that wasn't anywhere near a crosswalk. There was nothing more for them to investigate at that point, because the other points weren't relevant. So they were very likely done with their investigation at that point.

It was a horrific accident and there's pretty much always something someone could have done better, but as far as traffic laws go, it was her responsibility to make sure it was safe to cross. I get that you disagree with that and I can see where you're coming from, but the law says the duty was on her side.

Uber could, and should, do better than this. I believe the NTSB can (and should) demand that of them and everyone else, in fact. But the cops don't even enter into that. They're pretty much just going to figure out which traffic laws were broken and who had right of way.

There's a fair point that maybe they should be able to, I don't know, inspect the LIDAR sensors or something, but I don't think anything like that will be practical for at least a decade or two. To my knowledge, that should be up to the NTSB for now.

Re: NTSB ‘unhappy’ with Tesla release of investigative information in fatal crash

#90

Post by Daviey »

maccam94 wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we have a valid use case for a blockchain? edit: can someone explain what’s so wrong with this comment please?

Blockchains do nothing to make the source of information trustworthy, they can only prove the information was created before a particular point in time. You could doctor a photo/video and put it on the blockchain just as easily as a real photo. You would only be able to tell it's fake if the original version was added first (if there's an original to begin with). There's a fundamental analog hole[1] when connecting a…

If telemetry data hashes are regularly added to a blockchain, then we can be confident that the full-data set matches the hash at a later date, and are not purely dependant on the honesty of a proprietary manufacturer.

If there is a concern that the original data collected might be doctored... then this is valid, but also should be the focus of tests and legislation.

Ie,

  - Currently, speedometers are legally required to be within a certain tolerance and calibrated.
  - VW Diesel scandal, was discovered and hurt the manufacturer badly.
The argument that not using a blockchain for storing referential data because it might be dishonest data doesn't strengthen the argument that we should purely trust the vendor, it makes it weaker!

(That said, I think this is pre-optimising and using blockchain for this today is overkill... but long term, I could very much see this being a valid use-case)

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