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New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

theautopian.com

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Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#81
post #64
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unclear because FSD is supposed to switch to autopilot on highways. The driver said it was in FSD mode but they may just not realize that switchover occurs.

In any case, navigate on autopilot can change lanes on the highway without user intervention so it seems like an insignificant detail.

Not sure what you mean. If autopilot has a bug then there is a good chance a lot of other cars do too, since (afaik) autopilot is not at its core Tesla proprietary tech like FSD.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that disengaging the system is difficult. The problem is that deciding whether to disengage is difficult. If you're catching up to a slower car, maybe you should disengage the cruise control. Or maybe you shouldn't. You can't tell. This means that cruise control goes from being something that relieves stress on you to something that causes additional stress.

Seems like the car should have a UI that says something like "Car ahead is 15km/h slower, I will brake to maintain 50 meters distance between us, current distance: 70 meters, approach speed: 4m/s, will start braking in 3 seconds.", so the driver knows that the computer is aware of what's going on. Use some pretty graphs/animations to make it easier to understand.

I’ve had two cars with the feature.

Both have a very simple there/not their car silhouette to let you know if it detects the car in front of you. Just below that they also have some sort of colored to tell you how close the car is (good, clothes, to close). Last is a silhouette of your car. All three in a simple stack.

It’s an excellent design, perfectly glanceable. I did rent a car once that showed you how many feet away the car in front of you was. It was kind of interesting but I found it completely useless.

Realistically when the car in front of you starts getting close enough that the indicator changes, the car is already slowly slowing down. If it turns red, your car is slowing down faster.

You really don’t need any of the numbers, and they would likely take longer for a person to process than the simple visual imagery does.

I haven’t had an issue of not understanding what the car is/is going to do. The only real prop I’ve experienced is some cars are willing to accelerate/decelerate much faster than I want them to, largely for comfort reasons.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#84

I think what's interesting here is it's likely the first instance where Tesla FSD has been involved in an accident which affected other drivers. [Edit] From the video the Tesla is making a lane change and stopping simultaneously which means there could be a case of the Tesla FSD/driver doing a unsafe lane change.[1] Most of the time FSD just wrecks the Tesla itself or injures the driver of the Tesla (i.e. running int…

> I think what's interesting here is it's likely the first instance where Tesla FSD has been involved in an accident which affected other drivers.

In a pileup like this it's basically never the fault of the front car, unless maybe if they are purposely causing the accident for insurance fraud or something. Maybe the driver will get cited for failing to maintain the minimum speed, but legally this isn't much different than if someone backed into the Tesla while it was parked in a parking garage.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#85
You know what else is "semi-automated driving"?

A six year old behind the wheel sitting in your lap.

That's also known plainly as "illegal".

I have no fucking idea why this is being tolerated on our public roads, nor why SAE has even classified these child-equivalent levels of autonomy as if they're acceptable.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#86

The question that is never answered in this kind of story is: 1. How many fatalities per mile does tesla FSD have, compared to its best alternative if we ban it? 2. Focusing on specific failure cases is not relevant since the political decision to allow it is all or nothing. 3. It'd be perfectly logical to accept road testing FSD, even if it's significantly worse in some areas, as long as this is not exploitable, AND…

Other people have said it before, but the issue is that the Tesla crashes we are seeing are ones that a human would trivially avoid. Most people, especially non technical people, aren’t going to care about numbers that say it’s safer or better on net when the car still occasionally does things that humans view as crazy or stupid.

I guess people have no business being on the roads then, because all of the actual crashes in that video were vehicles driven by humans. If they had been following the rules of the road with proper spacing between vehicles, they wouldn't have gotten in this collision after all.

I think you're overestimating human drivers frankly. Collisions like this one happen between humans every day, multiple times per day across North America, you just don't hear about it because normal human error is at fault.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#87

I have a VW Golf and it has what it calls "adaptive cruise control". What makes it different from my older (simple) cruise control is that it will slow down and speed up again as necessary without my intervention. For example, if I set the speed to 70 mph and it gets close to a car ahead that is only going 65 mph, it will slow down and maintain what the software believes is a safe distance. Similarly, if a car in an…

My friend was using adaptive cruise control while towing a caravan. A car merged in front of him, his car applied heavy braking to maintain the desired distance (not necessarily to avoid a crash) but didn't compensate for the weight of the caravan. Almost lost traction, lead to heavy swerving. He's vowed to never use it again.

To be fair most people who are driving cars aren't towing caravans, so this seems like an extreme edge case.

I heavily use adaptive cruise control and I've never had any issues with it, though I'm always ready to take over in case anything complicated starts happening. It's a nice feature because it saves a lot of energy when the driving is very easy, and then you just drive normally otherwise.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#88
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the Tesla changed lanes, into the passing lane no less, and then immediately slowed down significantly. So the first car to hit it may have had a very safe distance between it in the next car, but the Tesla cut that significantly with its sudden maneuver.

It's a popular opinion but I think it's wrong. If they weren't all so close together some of that could habe been avoided. The Tesla indicated for a very long time telling other what it's gonna do.

The Tesla cut into the lane with 3 car-lengths or less behind it and rapidly decelerated. The two cars behind are going to collide because the first one, who was safely positioned before the Tesla changed lanes, didn't have time to react and the second car was probably not able to either, because the brake lights in front didn't come on until too late. Then, there was a couple cars that were probably tailgating, and finally the whole thing is a snafu.

I can't tell if the people making these comments about the drivers behind the Tesla being responsible are such defensive drivers that they never leave less than 6 seconds in front of them, or they're tailgaters themselves, or just being mendacious.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#89
post #10

Seems to me that the cars behind the Tesla are the omas at fault?

No, you cannot swoop into a lane and stand on the brakes. Nobody was following the Tesla until he put himself directly in front of an overtaking car with not enough room.

Yes, the Tesla was possibly at fault for the first collision. It was not at fault for the 7 subsequent collisions.

Re: New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

#90

The question that is never answered in this kind of story is: 1. How many fatalities per mile does tesla FSD have, compared to its best alternative if we ban it? 2. Focusing on specific failure cases is not relevant since the political decision to allow it is all or nothing. 3. It'd be perfectly logical to accept road testing FSD, even if it's significantly worse in some areas, as long as this is not exploitable, AND…

The problem with point 1 is that it's just not good at convincing people. If you have a situation where automation fails but a human would have done better, then it doesn't matter unless the statistics are overwhelmingly in your favor, which I doubt they are in this case.

This is a discussion that comes up a lot in medical technology, and if I had to guess why this form of rhetoric fails is not just because it's easier to empathize with a human, but also because when the failure case seems "simple", the issue seems a lot more like an oversight and systemic issue. That in turn makes the probability of failure probably look much higher than it really is, while also implying further undiscovered oversights.

That also kinda addresses point 2, in that, specific failure case or not, it implies a weak system with obvious oversights. That definitely doesn't help the political case for complete FSD approval.

I'm generally skeptical of this utilitarian, rationalist form of rhetoric, if only because it's overly optimistic about the ability to overcome issues in some amorphous future. Sure, a future with full FSD is probably a net good, and we can even say it's probably in within our lifetimes, but the claim that future mitigated harms outweighs all current harms of live-testing FSD won't win enough people over, and drowns out other possible policies like advocating for adapting our infrastructure to support FSD rather than having cars attempt to read signs and signals designed for humans.

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