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Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

theguardian.com

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Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#91

Post by kube-system »

ActorNightly wrote: post #79
kube-system wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if Mary Barra was on TV telling everyone that you could "pretty much drive our cars drunk", and then put in fine print that drunk driving is bad and illegal.

There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Don't let your hate for Musk as a person cloud your judgement. These things are not comparable.

Musk has said about autopilot “the car drives itself”. And their latest level 2 driving assistance feature is called “full self driving”

I don’t dislike the guy, but this is irresponsible.

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#92

Post by Manuel_D »

PKop wrote: post #39
Manuel_D wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do neglectful people turn on cruise control and then rear-end other cars in their Volvos and GMs? I'm going to guess that there's plenty of such instances, but they're not as headline-prone as crashing Teslas. Hence, why this data would be useful for comparison.

Is Autopilot different than cruise control? Is it used differently? If they're not the same thing why equate them?

They are very similar in my view: they automate part of driving to reduce load on the driver. Traditional cruise control just maintains velocity. My Subaru's adaptive cruise control maintains velocity and controls distance relative to the car ahead. Tesla also keeps your car centered in lane, but is otherwise just adaptive cruise control. There's some more features in the "self-driving" cars, like auto-parking and overtaking - I don't have much experience with those, I've only used non-self-driving Tesla autopilot. For the normal Tesla autopilot, though, "adaptive cruise control plus lane-centering" seems to accurately describe it.

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#93

Post by salawat »

ActorNightly wrote: post #70
PKop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both, and unless you have a solution to eliminating stupid people, then the tech needs to be regulated out of the market so innocent people don't get killed on the roads due to this stupidity.

Regulated by whom..... the people who have absolutely zero clue about how even the basic technology works, and are only interested in getting reelected? Its funny how people rightfully criticize the government and laugh at videos of senator grilling the CEOs of Facebook or Google with stupid questions, but then as soon as a company does something that they don't like, they somehow expect those people to get their shi…

Stress testing is done in lab conditions damnit.

You don't buckle people in and yeet them against the wall that is your optimism! Half the bloody challenge of testing is setting up the conditions for actually getting meaningful data!

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#94

Post by warning26 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #90
warning26 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the benefit of an auto-drive function if you have to pay constant attention to it? Essentially, autopilot's main value proposition is that you don't need to pay attention to it -- and that's what makes it so dangerous.

As a bay-area commuter, the value prop is not having to micromanage the accelerator/brake/steering wheel in stop-and-go traffic. I did the commute for years in "regular" cars, and I've done it for years with autopilot, and autopilot is without a question a much easier commute. There is a continuum between actively driving the car and falling asleep in the back seat, and AP puts you somewhere on the left side of the m…

> the value prop is not having to micromanage the accelerator/brake/steering wheel in stop-and-go traffic

I largely agree with you here, having driven a car with adaptive cruise control in stop-and-go traffic and finding it to be a total game changer.

That said, I'd argue there's a huge difference between having the car micromanage the accelerator+brake versus having it micromanage the accelerator+brake+steering. With the former, the driver must remain engaged with the driving task (even though the most tedious aspect is taken care of), but with the latter, no engagement whatsoever is required.

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#95

Post by alphabettsy »

aeternum wrote: post #86
alphabettsy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How might the average person see the difference between a copilot and autopilot?

I think most people understand that a copilot is fully able to fly the plane themselves whereas an autopilot requires being monitored.

Interesting, that makes sense. I view it differently at first. In the front seat passenger of a car people are sometimes called the CoPilot and that’s what I thought of, someone is who looking out.

I don’t think the average person knows that an aircrafts autopilot requires constant monitoring.

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#96

Post by rimunroe »

ActorNightly wrote: post #79
kube-system wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if Mary Barra was on TV telling everyone that you could "pretty much drive our cars drunk", and then put in fine print that drunk driving is bad and illegal.

There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Don't let your hate for Musk as a person cloud your judgement. These things are not comparable.

> There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes.

Do you think that the average consumer knows this much about how plane autopilots work? If not, how is it relevant?

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#97

Post by PKop »

aeternum wrote: post #80
PKop wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is building "full self driving" using a feature called "Autopilot". You're playing stupid but nobody is fooled by this sophistry.

Doesn't Ford call their version Co-pilot360 or something? What are your thoughts on that?

If that system is suffering from errors that cause accidents it should be investigated, and if dangerous enough, banned.

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#98

Post by [deleted] »

aeternum wrote: post #86
alphabettsy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How might the average person see the difference between a copilot and autopilot?

I think most people understand that a copilot is fully able to fly the plane themselves whereas an autopilot requires being monitored.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#99

Post by PKop »

Manuel_D wrote: post #92
PKop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Autopilot different than cruise control? Is it used differently? If they're not the same thing why equate them?

They are very similar in my view: they automate part of driving to reduce load on the driver. Traditional cruise control just maintains velocity. My Subaru's adaptive cruise control maintains velocity and controls distance relative to the car ahead. Tesla also keeps your car centered in lane, but is otherwise just adaptive cruise control. There's some more features in the "self-driving" cars, like auto-parking and ov…

Yes so technically, and as marketed, they are not the same. A dumb setting that fixes velocity is not the same, in any way, as a sophisticated self-driving mechanism that aims to recognize the world around it and adjust multiple parameters dynamically. More surface area for errors, and a misguided sense in the driver that their car is smart and can manage this process itself without the same attention as a fixed-speed (and nothing else), dumb cruise control

Re: Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

#100

Post by PKop »

Manuel_D wrote: post #68
PKop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both, and unless you have a solution to eliminating stupid people, then the tech needs to be regulated out of the market so innocent people don't get killed on the roads due to this stupidity.

There's only so much a company can do to protect against user error. People stick their fingers down a running drain garbage disposal. People will look down the barrel of a loaded gun and pull the trigger. The question is not "has anyone hurt themselves?", the question is "does the product have reasonable safety precautions?"

Themselves? This is about their cars being a threat to everyone around them.

>so much a company can do

Yes, therefore the product should not be legal if these error's can't be minimized or the magnitude of the consequences are disastrous (random unpredictable crashing etc). "Errors" are not all created equal. Some are catastrophic and occur at random.

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