Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#91

Post by ggreer » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:49 AM UTC

comeonseriously wrote: post #24

After several officers where nearly injured/injured/killed because drivers ran into them as they were stopped on the side of the road, some states instituted laws that say you either slow down to 45 or you move over a lane. Is that built into AutoPilot and whatever it's called on other brands? Humans have to do it, so cars should have to as well.

A couple weeks ago Tesla pushed an update that causes autopilot to brake and alert the driver when emergency vehicle lights are detected.[1]

1. https://twitter.com/Analytic_ETH/status/1440537502272536581

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#92

Post by MichaelZuo » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:52 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #16

Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems like something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to the "clearly better than human" level. This is purely anecdotal, but I find the automatic braking system on my Mazda CX-9 to be fairly annoying. Once every couple months or so, it has a false alarm and brakes while blaring out alerts, in an urban environment where I don't observe anything out of th…

It’s really the type of safety system consumers cannot reliably judge from first hand experiences since preventing a near accident will never be as vivid or memorable of an experience as it malfunctioning and nearly causing an accident.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#93

Post by adfrhgeaq5hy » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

namrog84 wrote: post #60

baybal2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Tesla even have a radar?

I dont think so. I thought their whole gimmick or goal was to drive entirely by cameras and nothing else. Because humans only have eyes. Though just speculation and no source.

Humans only have eyes... and the most powerful supercomputer in the world between their ears.

The goal is to cut costs and keep shipping during the chip shortage. Ignore the excuses.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#94

Post by UncleEntity » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #25

It always bugs me they trot out the Mountain View crash as an example where a Model X struck an unmarked and unprotected jersey barrier end in what visually looks like a traffic lane. Further that multiple human drivers had hit the divider in the same spot and a near fatal accident occurred literally the next day into the same barrier. If I put a brick wall on the freeway and paint it to look like a tunnel ala wil-e-…

The Mountain View crash where the driver reported that specific location to Tesla on multiple occasions and still let the robocar drive full speed into the jersey barrier on autopilot?

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#95

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #77

brokenmachine wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just keep on trucking along at full speed with your eyes closed, you reckon. Spoken like a true Tesla engineer.

I specifically laid out what I do, and what I believe most other people do, as humans having to cope with increased danger. I'm in no way trying to defend Tesla, but rather pointing out a general road hazard that needlessly exists and that perhaps isn't being handled gracefully by automation. This idea that a vehicle can always fall back to stopping comes from the same mistaken place as asserting that a human driver…

Well there's really only two options for a self driving car that has lost situational awareness - (1) keep going at the same speed, or (2) slow down and alert the driver (and possibly stop if the driver doesn't respond).

Choeger was suggesting that (2) was the prudent option. You replied and appeared to be suggesting the first option because slowing down was dangerous. But I contend that (1) is the more dangerous option if situational awareness has been lost.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#96

Post by oxplot » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

Has journalism been this lousy forever or is it just recently? Quoting numbers of complaints per manufacturer is meaningless.

How many cars with the given feature turned on exist from each manufacturer?

How many miles driven with the given feature on?

What speed were these cars at?

That’s just from top of my head.

Oh wait? Complaints? How is that a measure of safety? Let me add some more:

How many people were injured/killed?

What was the cost of repair from the accidents?

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#97

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

dazbradbury wrote: post #70

jacquesm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one on my 2016 C-class Mercedes was so bad that it almost caused two accidents. If not for years of pingpong... I got rid of it after having it checked out and declared healthy, if that system wasn't broken it might as well be. Worse than useless. Don't get a MB with automatic emergency braking unless you want to covertly commit suicide.

"The one on my 2016 C-class Mercedes was so bad that it almost caused two accidents. If not for years of pingpong..." Care to elaborate? Both how it nearly caused an accident, and how you avoided one seem interesting!

There were two instances that were particularly memorable, the first was when passing through a steel bridge with fairly narrow spacing, the car - without any warning - slammed on the brakes just as I was passing the entrance to the bridge. The road surface was wet from recent rain and the car immediately started to spin due to uneven grip. I managed to avoid the posts :) This happened once more in the same spot but then I was already more alert to this kind of nonsense so that time it was pretty uneventful even if the car - again - slammed on the brakes.

The other situation was when in a tight right hand turn a large advertising sign caused the car to believe I was about to have a head on collision (when in fact the object was merely passing right-to-left through my field of view). This caused me to end up on the wrong side of the road, if there had been opposing traffic it would have been a head on collision, exactly the thing it was trying to avoid.

I brought the car to the local dealership, they checked it over and pronounced it sound, I sold it a week later. Murderous beta grade - or not even beta grade, proof of concept - software in that car. I was pretty loyal to the brand but I don't think I'll ever have another one, besides the plastic bling interior the fact that they shipped that junk has made the brand worthless to me.

Now I drive a 24 year old car that was re-built end-to-end. It has an ECU, ABS, an aftermarket mp3 player / navigation combo and that's it.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#98

Post by antattack » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

AEB above 55mph is only designed to slow down, to lessen the impact, not to stop.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#99

Post by MBCook » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #59

Someone1234 wrote: post #49

Because Tesla effectively doesn't have AEB while AutoPilot is enabled. In a Tesla AEB should be an entirely self-contained ("dumber") system. Its only job should be to look for any ground-level object ahead and brake. It should do this using simpler but more reliable ("dumber") techniques like forward bumper-level radar or camera parallax, not NN/deep learning/object recognition/AI. To use an analogy, AEB should be l…

Does Tesla even have a radar?

They removed it on new models early this year.

Re: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes?

#100

Post by frosted-flakes » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #29

comeonseriously wrote: post #24

After several officers where nearly injured/injured/killed because drivers ran into them as they were stopped on the side of the road, some states instituted laws that say you either slow down to 45 or you move over a lane. Is that built into AutoPilot and whatever it's called on other brands? Humans have to do it, so cars should have to as well.

Every lane change is a possible collision. I wonder if that was taken into account.

If all lanes are full, in practice you don't need to, and shouldn't, evacuate the right lane. If there's space for you to change lanes safely, then do so.