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Tesla Model S Autopilot Reliability – Why Americans Should Love Tesla

130 points by Osiris30 10y ago

simonsarris 10y ago
> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization but investing your entire fortune in a quest to build a self-driving electric car is treated like dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. It makes you wonder why Elon Musk couldn't just be content sitting on his Paypal money and living the lifestyle of the famous one percent. It certainly would have been less hassle. I wish this sentiment was more common. Don't we all want the future to win?
- adventured 10y ago
  > We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. Despite that bogus claim being endlessly repeated by the press and other cynics. Meanwhile Tesla has actually raised billions of dollars in capital. And meanwhile, Elon Musk is considered a visionary that is taking the human race forward and has accomplished breathtaking feats of technological integration and application. Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for what they're accomplishing, apps to take selfies are not - and they're not being lauded anywhere. (and no, Snapchat isn't an app to take selfies, it's a communication platform that is extraordinarily valuable to people and properly so) The author rehashed a very commonly abused strawman and then proceeded to beat on it.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back I think the public perception problem is that "people invest in / read about things they understand." By definition, people are less likely to understand an enterprise predicated on cutting edge research than a realization of an existing market need by deploying existing technology. So the bubble talks about Snapchat but not battery technology startups (side gripe about deplorable state of popular scientific reporting).
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    > Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. --- Snapchat is an example of one that has, just fyi. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0YH13Z http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0Y... > Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
    - danso 10y ago
      Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app. As the quote in your excerpt says, it's a "messaging" app. I don't use Snapchat myself, but the fact that it has enamored both the kids and whatever the hell pre-millennials who are too young to be Gen-X are called, even to the point of replacing Facebook as their goto way of communicating and sharing life experiences, makes me think that it's worth something to society.
      - rplst8 10y ago
        These platforms are worth nothing to society per se. They are worth something to investors in the potential returns they might yeild once they find a way to turn the aggregate data and metadata into a more acurate advertising model.
- crikli 10y ago
  Everyone wants the future to win, even if they can't articulate what the hell that means, but who wants to disagree with it, because it sounds really cool, and nobody wants to not be cool. It's easy to take this glowing 10,000 foot view of Musk/Tesla. Get down much lower and there are...issues that smack very much of dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. Exhibit one is marketing a car that as being able to drive itself, then blaming drivers when the car fails to drive itself. Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    Pure electric cars, pushing towards driverless electric cars. I'm fine with government money being spent on a future free of fossil-fuel-fed explosion engines and human-driven bumper cars.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - btilly 10y ago
    Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC. This comment doesn't even pass the laugh test for anyone who knows what happened to him in 2008 when all of his money was tied in his companies and then he got sued for divorce. He literally wound up running 3 companies that were imploding in different ways, and had to borrow from friends just to make living expenses. He pulled everything off by the skin of his teeth, starting with his 4th SpaceX launch getting into space instead of blowing up as the first three rockets did. He will raise money in every way that he can. Yes, this includes finding ways to get subsidies from the government if the government is willing to provide them. But it also includes investing his own money, time and effort. (And risking his life - his roadmap includes colonizing Mars, and he's serious about moving to that colony.)
    - 10y ago
- krisoft 10y ago
  I want the future to win. And we are one bug away from a Hindenburg moment. So if I think what they do is reckless I will say so. It's ludicrous to expect that an otherwise untrained, average human can keep up his or her attention while day by day the automation just works. It's just not how human psychology works. Someone called this particular kind of operation here the "deadly valley" because it's good enough to lure you to be relaxed and not good enough to solve all the kind of possible problems. I absolutely want the future to win, and I'm terribly afraid that Tesla in its hastiness might hurt the progress.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    This issue has been long studied by the airlines and airplane manufactures, and they've still not found a solution http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how-too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-lead-to-deadly-plane-crashes http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilo...
    - webXL 10y ago
      > While flight experts credit automated systems with helping improve safety and making airline operations more efficient, they caution that an overreliance on automation leaves pilots unprepared for tricky situations that require their expertise. Despite more crowded skies and terrorist attacks, airline safety has improved since (or perhaps during) autopilot came along [1]. Definitely not causation, but you could argue that autopilot allows pilots to fly more and make air travel more affordable, reducing the reliance on less safe forms of travel. Plus, if it bleeds it leads, and the public wants solutions for everything, despite having an improved quality of life from the technology (most likely). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_other_modes_of_travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_...
      - intrasight 10y ago
        There is no doubt that we are better off with autopilot than without (true in planes and will soon be true in cars). The point of this ongoing research in human factors is to create systems where the pilot/driver work in tandem with the autopilot so that when the autopilot needs to hand control back to a human, the human is capable of receiving back control.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  The comparison is shit. Anyone can make a comparison that puts their position first, it is no different than politicians selling our rights down the drain "for the children". Your hyperbole isn't much better. The simple facts are, it does not work well enough to ensure the absolute safety of those using it or those not using it. It is horribly named for what it can actually do. Tesla needs to step up and admit it is not ready for prime time and since they cannot guarantee how their customers use it they cannot in good faith allow non designated testers from using it
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  On the contrary, the fact that it takes an entire fortune to build a self-driving electric car is also very telling. Building an "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is a lower CODB, obviously, but it's a product people apparently value and it can be done by a small team[0] instead of a fleet. There have been a few HN threads that discussed successful software/games/webapps that were developed by a single person (Slither.IO) Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? The chief point I'm making is it's all very relative. Rushing headfirst into a new world sounds nice, but have we even stopped to consider and react on the negative impact that Social Media and our current innovations have made? [0] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-users-50-engineers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-use...
  - brandonmenc 10y ago
    > Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? If it's coupled with basic income, yes.
    - FilterSweep 10y ago
      Where is this "basic income" coming from?
      - brandonmenc 10y ago
        Yeah, that's definitely part of the problem.
- gkya 10y ago
  What does it mean for future to win? Is this a buzzword for transforming people's daily lives into a market for the latest brain farts of bright kids? Does it mean to over-spendingly reinvent the wheel?
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >I wish this sentiment was more common. It might be a valid argument if any of us actually thought that Pokemon Go was the apex of human civilization. But we don't.
- studentrob 10y ago
  > Don't we all want the future to win? Yes. To get there, we can ask for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems.
- ModernMech 10y ago
  If the "future winning" means beta testing driverless car technology on unsuspecting victims, then that's not a future I want to live in, sorry. Look, I'm a robotics engineer, so my job security and career prospects directly depend on technologies like autonomous cars becoming mainstream. That said, the way Tesla is rolling out this technology is just irresponsible. An excellent post from yesterday [1] succinctly outlined the deficiencies of the system, which are now obvious to people outside of Tesla. Given this list, if I were in charge there, this technology would NOT see the light of day until these defects were properly fixed. Beyond the technical problems, there is also a social issue that Tesla is exacerbating. For the last few years now, the general public has been hearing from a variety of popular media sources that autonomous cars are "right around the corner". People have been told that these cars will use their superior computer minds to virtually eliminate traffic accidents. Now you have Tesla producing a car with a feature that sounds a lot like "driverless car" to normal people; right or wrong, it seems like people are treating it with the expectation that it's one of these magical life-saving driverless cars they've been hearing about. To Tesla's credit, the feature does work well given the correct conditions. The common user probably couldn't tell you the difference between "autopilot" and an actual autonomous car. Yet, the user is not properly aware of the limits of the system, and Tesla itself doesn't do much to educate users about those limits. Further, Tesla doesn't seem to do anything to keep users safe when they get close to those edges. What you have here is insufficient and untested technology being used in a production environment by users who have the wrong expectations about what the technology is. The result, as we have seen, ends in death. And no, these failures are not inevitable conclusions of statistics. These failures are due to concrete, identifiable engineering and messaging issues that can and should have been corrected before the product was ever introduced to production cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011
  - chronolitus 10y ago
    I agree with that sentiment, however > unsuspecting victims Is a bit much in my opinion. They are operating heavy machinery, and decide not to follow the clearly stated operational guidelines. People are not children, driving a car is a responsibility. Note: I'm not saying that such accidents aren't tragic, or that the drivers 'deserve it' in any way. Simply pointing out that no one forced anyone to take their hands off the wheel, or subject themselves to driverless testing.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > Don't we all want the future to win? Just because you call it progress doesn't make it so.
kiba 10y ago
If autopilot is slightly better than a human driver, why not use it? It's an incredibly low standard, sure, but more lives are saved, and it only to get better from then on. The only problem is the public's perceived unwillingness to accept such risks in using autopilot.
- Tobani 10y ago
  The actual problem is that autopilot doesn't remove the driver from the situation enough. It gives people the illusion that they can hand off driving to the computer, but in reality they still need to be doing 90% of what they would be doing anyway. They have to stay engaged in the act of driving. Giving people the illusion that they don't have to stay engaged is where I think the problem is. Until the car is driving itself entirely, I'm not sure there's much to be gained.
  - drcross 10y ago
    >It gives people the illusion that they can hand off driving to the computer. The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta. >I'm not sure there's much to be gained. There's miles and miles of data to be gained.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      > The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta. We're now in the world of software and users. "Multiple warnings" aren't enough. Chernobyl had multiple warnings. The car should quit if the driver doesn't have his hands on the wheel during a beta test.
    - Someone1234 10y ago
      If I am a driver next to someone being a guinea pig for this beta software, where did I agree to that? Tesla can get the driver to sign off on the risks, but that doesn't extend to other road users who are also at risk from bugs or defects.
- falcolas 10y ago
WWKong 10y ago
0.76 fatalities for 100 million Tesla autopilot miles driven? Is that extrapolated?
- hughes 10y ago
  Not sure what you mean by extrapolated. It doesn't mean that 0.76 people died, it means that 1 person died after 130 million autopilot miles were driven.
dodosayak 10y ago
When Tesla stops building "someone may die" into their decision matrix, I'll consider buying a Tesla.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  By the same logic you should never buy a car period. All forms of transport have to accept the possibility of fatalities to a certain extent. The test for Tesla is are they safer, not are they perfect.
topbanana 10y ago
Why is Tesla risking time, money and reputation on making their cars self-driving? The primary goal is surely to get everyone into electric powered cars so we can move to cleaner power, and lower localised pollution.
- drcross 10y ago
  It depends on if you believe the perspective that Musk doesnt care about time, money and reputation but wants to spur on the rest of the car manufacturers to compete, in some sort of altruistic, noble effort.
  - pm90 10y ago
    I'm not denying he doesn't have that motivation, but let's not kid ourselves here: he's an entreprenuer first and the looking for every way to make his product stand out in the market. A market which will soon be flooded with electric cars produced by the major car companies as well. And they are betting big on autonomous driver technology as well [0]. [0]: http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-silicon-valley-detroit/ http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-silicon-valley-detroit/
- studentrob 10y ago
  Musk is obsessed with AI just like the rest of us, and he has a lot of sway within the company. I'm not sure it is necessary to do alongside the likes of Google and other AI experts. Musk does not have a background in AI
- secabeen 10y ago
  Because Tesla wants their cars to be the best cars on the road, not the best electric cars on the road. Autopilot and other features are part of that value proposition.
astrocat 10y ago
>In any even remotely sane universe... Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War. While I generally agree with the author's sentiment, I think part of the difference with why Tesla is getting so much flak instead of praise is because the pioneers of yore were astronauts, scientists and soldiers who took risks they understood, and did it willingly. But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that. At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.
- studentrob 10y ago
  > But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that. Yeah. The author of this article has the same observation [1]. Tesla seems to have been caught off-guard by pushback against its driver-assistance system. Yet, everyone knew there would be pushback if a fatality occurred. > At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development. Fan bases are important, particularly ones that include people who can be give constructive criticism. 100% praise or 100% critique is rarely useful in identifying the path forward. It's a windy road. Everything Musk says is not gospel. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-c...
danso 10y ago
> Again, in any sane world nobody would pay any attention to the opinions of completely unqualified individuals on any given topic. There's a reason I write for Road & Track and not Men's Health, for example, and it has something to do with the fact that I've literally had more racing wins in my life than I've eaten salads. If I started pontificating about whether a particular protein supplement built more muscle mass and got you more ripped than another one, the readers would be entirely right to point out that I am not a doctor and that I have never been seen to bench press more than 255 pounds, not even once. Reminds me of the Tragedy of Theranos. A company valued at $9 billion, staffed to the gills with engineers and medical experts who were building a revolutionary disruptive way to draw and test blood, was taken down based on the accusations of a newspaper reporter who has never run his own startup, nevermind having not attained enough medical expertise to even competently check someone's temperature. I'm being a little facetious here. There's a difference between a cable news reporter blabbing about something that happened 7 minutes ago to fill an hour of airtime with controversy and fear, and a 5-month investigation by a Pulitzer-winning reporter. But let's not shit on the laypersons who dare to challenge the clergy. But in one aspect I agree with the OP. People who aren't experts and who don't bother to check with other experts should perhaps be mindful before they propagate uninformed armchair analysis. But let's make that cut both ways. These uninformed reporters should also hold their tongues when a company touts any technical feature. Maybe that would reduce the incentive for the Elon Musks of the world to name things in viral-headline-friendly ways, e.g. "Autopilot" for advanced driver assist. Tesla has benefited heavily from the press corps ignorance about technology -- you think Tesla has received $4 billion in government subsidies based on technical merit alone? And now they're paying for it. Maybe 10 years from now we'll all agree that that was a good strategic gamble. But it doesn't mean Tesla should be given kid glove treatment today, after the effort they've put in to manipulate the press to their own benefit.
- studentrob 10y ago
  > People who aren't experts and who don't bother to check with other experts should perhaps be mindful before they propagate uninformed armchair analysis I believe some of this controversy began with an article by Fortune [1] in which they claimed Musk overlooked some business reporting requirements. Do you agree that a financial news outlet is qualified to judge a company based on how they report to the SEC? The world of corporate finance is their wheel house, and that spans to any company, tech or not. The larger the valuation of the company, the more interesting the news would be to them. Fortune's readers are current or would-be Tesla investors. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-stock-sale/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-stoc...
madengr 10y ago
Best quote: "These individuals are assisted in their quest by a media that long ago decided that it was completely okay with killing the society on which it parasitically feeds."
studentrob 10y ago
> Here's a statistic for you: 1.08 fatalities per 100 million miles driven. According to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, that's the death rate on the American road as of 2014, the last year for which there is complete data. This one per 100 million miles statistic keeps getting thrown around. I think we can come up with a better number for comparison (see #'ed list below) I also think we can push for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems. California already requires monthly reports on all accidents involving completely autonomous vehicles [0]. We should be getting this for systems offering driver-assistance across all states. Tesla seems unlikely to report on this until their competitors are forced to report on it too. Here are a few reasons why the 100 million figure isn't as good as it could be, (1) Those 100 million miles include all roads, not just divided ones where autopilot is likely to be activated (2) Autopilot is less likely to be activated during adverse conditions like rain, ice and snow (3) The 100 million figure includes all types of vehicle deaths, including those from motorcycles. Motorcycle deaths should not be compared to car deaths (4) The vehicle price is lost in such an average. Safety reports are best done when considering cost. Obviously a 2016 Tesla is going to be safer than a 1990 beater I'd like to see someone report a more useful statistic for comparison using available data such as this [1]. This guy [2] says it is 1 in 150 million when considering only divided roads. That would make Tesla's autopilot less safe than the average American driver given current statistics. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_tesla_appears_surprised_over_criticism_of/d59eazl https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_te...
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Given the large error-bar on the Tesla data, you have no idea if Tesla is less safe or more safe than the average American driver.
  - studentrob 10y ago
noonespecial 10y ago
We're at the place with self-driving that air travel found itself at in the 20's. From here on in each new technological update and safety regulation will like likely be based on some unfortunate and unforeseen event. Like they say when you study the rules of aviation: Each one is written on a tombstone.
- gkya 10y ago
  Most often, you don't die in an air accident if you're not on a plane. With AI vehicles sharing the road with manual vehicles and pedestrians, the case is different.
JoelSutherland 10y ago
Fatalities per 100 million miles driven is not a great metric for measuring the reliability of Autopilot. That number is influenced not just by Autopilot avoiding accidents, but also by the overall safety of the car. Teslas are incredibly safe in accidents. The current 25% lead that Autopilot has over the average is probably not attributable to Autopilot at all, and instead to the overall safety of the vehicle. * Fatality rates vary by make/model quite a bit (up to 8x). Some of this is surely attributable to the relative driving skill of purchasers, but most is probably the safety of the cars themselves. Given the spread seen in this IIHS report I would guess that Autopilot performs worse than the average human. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates
- studentrob 10y ago
  It's not even a good figure for comparing fatalities. See my comment here [1] Those 100 million miles include non-divided roads, motorcycle deaths, adverse weather conditions, and cheaper, older cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087603
wibr 10y ago
"It's possible to walk into a dealership and buy a car that drives itself on the freeway about as safely as you would if you were driving the thing. " How did the author arrive at this conclusion? "In any even remotely sane universe, this achievement would be celebrated in the most hyperbolic fashion possible by every man, woman, and child on the planet. " So everyone who doesn't do that is not remotely sane? "Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War." It's a car. "Note that the harshest critics of Tesla and its products are not affiliated with Nissan, General Motors, BMW, or Ford. Instead, they are gadflies who rarely have any industry experience whatsoever. " Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- studentrob 10y ago
  > Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel). Great point.
- noxToken 10y ago
  > Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel). Drive-by upvotes that are based on the title. People love Tesla.
svalorzen 10y ago
Since the Tesla autopilot will only work on long, clear stretches of road with high visibility and very predictable traffic, it's not really hard to see why the statistic would look better than it really is. I can build an autopilot to drive a car with zero fatalities ever; it just goes forward on an infinitely straight road. Statistics can only be compared under the same conditions, otherwise it's just pointless self-delusion.
kctess5 10y ago
I keep seeing the "130 million miles of Autopilot control per fatality" statistic, especially in the context of "look these cars are better than humans" but I think this is incredibly disingenuous. First of all, you can't just take a sample size of 1 for an effectively random event and then do (total miles driven) / 1 = 1300000000 miles/fatality and pretend like that has any statistical significance. Furthermore, during those entire 130 million miles, there was theoretically a human also sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if the system failed. If there was no human behind the wheel, the cars would not have been able to attain 130 million miles of drive time without a very large number of crashes. When humans drive, there is no intelligent being ready to take over whenever we make a mistake as is the case for Autopilot. In my opinion, using this "statistic" is a very lazy way of hiding behind the numbers in dealing with a very non-obvious issue.
- fmihaila 10y ago
  > Furthermore, during those entire 130 million miles, there was theoretically a human also sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if the system failed. Yes. That is the point, though. When Autopilot is used the way it is supposed to be used, it doesn't seem to decrease safety, and it may actually increase it. I agree with the point in your first paragraph, though.
  - kctess5 10y ago
    I would assert that you cannot make that claim, as there is no statistically significant evidence in support of it.
    - fmihaila 10y ago
      I wasn't making any kind of strong claim. I said "doesn't seem" and "may". My point is, whatever evidence we've got so far, it doesn't seem to indicate a decrease in safety. If anything, it seems to point (however feebly) towards a safety increase. IOW, the data so far doesn't support, in my view, the stance that Autopilot in its current form is unsafe, as long as it's used in accordance to the instructions.
billions 10y ago
Tesla launched autopilot like a startup in beta mode before big co's and regulators could slow it down. If you believe computers will eventually be safer drivers, would you prefer: A) Autopilot launches gradually over 20 years by a big co, costing hundreds of thousands of lives due to 10 year delay or B) Tesla launches fast below the radar, iterates quickly, makes data-driven incremental updates to autopilot and saves 10 years of human error deaths?
- rhino369 10y ago
  False dilemma C) put these tech features into the car but force the driver to keep actively driving the car getting the best of both worlds. AKA what every other automaker is doing.
  - billions 10y ago
    If you're doing what everybody else is doing, by definition, you are not making progress
outworlder 10y ago
Ever since I started driving in US streets, I've been shocked and terrified at the amount of people checking their cellphones in dangerous situations. Inching the car forward at a traffic light without even looking forward, texting doing 70+ mph on a bridge, yelling at their kids in the back seat, changing lanes without looking at their blind spots... I'd really prefer if those vehicles were driverless instead. And mine as well.
Animats 10y ago
One wonders what Tesla did to get that laudatory article. Tesla's "autopilot" problems come from bad engineering and bad human-factors design. I wrote on this in another topic yesterday.[1] It's not that automatic driving is bad; it's that Tesla's semi-automatic driving isn't very good. It's way under-sensored. Google and Volvo are ahead in this area. Volvo is very close to shipping their autopilot. They're testing now. In 2017, they will release 100 self-driving cars to customers. They do not require the driver to pay attention. Volvo's CEO says that if a Volvo self-driving car gets into an accident, it's Volvo's fault, and they will take full responsibility. Their "City Safety" anti-collision system has been on all new Volvo cars for a year now. Unlike Tesla's system, it's always on. Volvo has radar and LIDAR and cameras, more sensors than Tesla has. Volvo's self-driving car has even more sensors, for full coverage in all directions and redundancy. Redundant computers and actuators, too. And if it gets into a situation it can't handle, and the driver doesn't take over, it will pull over and stop. There's a way to do this right, and Volvo is a lot closer than Tesla is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12082893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12082893 [2] http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/intellisafe-autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/in...
- jayjay71 10y ago
  I love the work that Volvo is doing, but I am highly skeptical they will release a stage 4 autonomous vehicle in 1 year's time. You might be buying into their PR the same way everybody else bought into Tesla's PR.
  - ModernMech 10y ago
    Yes, some of that is PR and yet to be proven. But an appropriate sensor suite for the task of autonomous driving is not really a question. There's a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it. For robotics researchers, there's really two ways of looking at things. Some say "look, we as humans are proof that the only sensors you need to do autonomous driving are two cameras (out eyes). So the real research question is, how do we make a system that works with just these sensors?" The other camp says "In order to get away with just two sensors, you need human-level AI. We are not there and we're not going to be for a long time, so let's work within our current capabilities and engineer a proper system." As a community, robotics researchers now know what kind of engineered system works. In the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, EVERY car that finished the race had a 360 degree velodyne laser. It was very much a game-changing sensor for autonomous cars. For Tesla to now say "Oh, we'll do the same thing but without all the fancy sensors" is just incredible. Speaking in terms of the information that the cars acquire, Tesla is driving blind compared to its rivals.
ams6110 10y ago
> You don't have to buy a Tesla. You don't even have to like the cars. If only that were the case. It seems to me that more likely when someone says Teslas are too expensive, or not practical they get attacked as luddites and imbeciles.

130 points by Osiris30 10y ago

> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization but investing your entire fortune in a quest to build a self-driving electric car is treated like dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. It makes you wonder why Elon Musk couldn't just be content sitting on his Paypal money and living the lifestyle of the famous one percent. It certainly would have been less hassle. I wish this sentiment was more common. Don't we all want the future to win?

adventured 10y ago
> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. Despite that bogus claim being endlessly repeated by the press and other cynics. Meanwhile Tesla has actually raised billions of dollars in capital. And meanwhile, Elon Musk is considered a visionary that is taking the human race forward and has accomplished breathtaking feats of technological integration and application. Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for what they're accomplishing, apps to take selfies are not - and they're not being lauded anywhere. (and no, Snapchat isn't an app to take selfies, it's a communication platform that is extraordinarily valuable to people and properly so) The author rehashed a very commonly abused strawman and then proceeded to beat on it.
- ethbro 10y ago
  > Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back I think the public perception problem is that "people invest in / read about things they understand." By definition, people are less likely to understand an enterprise predicated on cutting edge research than a realization of an existing market need by deploying existing technology. So the bubble talks about Snapchat but not battery technology startups (side gripe about deplorable state of popular scientific reporting).
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. --- Snapchat is an example of one that has, just fyi. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0YH13Z http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0Y... > Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
  - danso 10y ago
    Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app. As the quote in your excerpt says, it's a "messaging" app. I don't use Snapchat myself, but the fact that it has enamored both the kids and whatever the hell pre-millennials who are too young to be Gen-X are called, even to the point of replacing Facebook as their goto way of communicating and sharing life experiences, makes me think that it's worth something to society.
    - rplst8 10y ago
      These platforms are worth nothing to society per se. They are worth something to investors in the potential returns they might yeild once they find a way to turn the aggregate data and metadata into a more acurate advertising model.
crikli 10y ago
Everyone wants the future to win, even if they can't articulate what the hell that means, but who wants to disagree with it, because it sounds really cool, and nobody wants to not be cool. It's easy to take this glowing 10,000 foot view of Musk/Tesla. Get down much lower and there are...issues that smack very much of dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. Exhibit one is marketing a car that as being able to drive itself, then blaming drivers when the car fails to drive itself. Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC.
- themartorana 10y ago
  Pure electric cars, pushing towards driverless electric cars. I'm fine with government money being spent on a future free of fossil-fuel-fed explosion engines and human-driven bumper cars.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- btilly 10y ago
  Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC. This comment doesn't even pass the laugh test for anyone who knows what happened to him in 2008 when all of his money was tied in his companies and then he got sued for divorce. He literally wound up running 3 companies that were imploding in different ways, and had to borrow from friends just to make living expenses. He pulled everything off by the skin of his teeth, starting with his 4th SpaceX launch getting into space instead of blowing up as the first three rockets did. He will raise money in every way that he can. Yes, this includes finding ways to get subsidies from the government if the government is willing to provide them. But it also includes investing his own money, time and effort. (And risking his life - his roadmap includes colonizing Mars, and he's serious about moving to that colony.)
  - 10y ago
krisoft 10y ago
I want the future to win. And we are one bug away from a Hindenburg moment. So if I think what they do is reckless I will say so. It's ludicrous to expect that an otherwise untrained, average human can keep up his or her attention while day by day the automation just works. It's just not how human psychology works. Someone called this particular kind of operation here the "deadly valley" because it's good enough to lure you to be relaxed and not good enough to solve all the kind of possible problems. I absolutely want the future to win, and I'm terribly afraid that Tesla in its hastiness might hurt the progress.
- intrasight 10y ago
  This issue has been long studied by the airlines and airplane manufactures, and they've still not found a solution http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how-too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-lead-to-deadly-plane-crashes http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilo...
  - webXL 10y ago
    > While flight experts credit automated systems with helping improve safety and making airline operations more efficient, they caution that an overreliance on automation leaves pilots unprepared for tricky situations that require their expertise. Despite more crowded skies and terrorist attacks, airline safety has improved since (or perhaps during) autopilot came along [1]. Definitely not causation, but you could argue that autopilot allows pilots to fly more and make air travel more affordable, reducing the reliance on less safe forms of travel. Plus, if it bleeds it leads, and the public wants solutions for everything, despite having an improved quality of life from the technology (most likely). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_other_modes_of_travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_...
    - intrasight 10y ago
      There is no doubt that we are better off with autopilot than without (true in planes and will soon be true in cars). The point of this ongoing research in human factors is to create systems where the pilot/driver work in tandem with the autopilot so that when the autopilot needs to hand control back to a human, the human is capable of receiving back control.
Shivetya 10y ago
The comparison is shit. Anyone can make a comparison that puts their position first, it is no different than politicians selling our rights down the drain "for the children". Your hyperbole isn't much better. The simple facts are, it does not work well enough to ensure the absolute safety of those using it or those not using it. It is horribly named for what it can actually do. Tesla needs to step up and admit it is not ready for prime time and since they cannot guarantee how their customers use it they cannot in good faith allow non designated testers from using it
FilterSweep 10y ago
On the contrary, the fact that it takes an entire fortune to build a self-driving electric car is also very telling. Building an "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is a lower CODB, obviously, but it's a product people apparently value and it can be done by a small team[0] instead of a fleet. There have been a few HN threads that discussed successful software/games/webapps that were developed by a single person (Slither.IO) Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? The chief point I'm making is it's all very relative. Rushing headfirst into a new world sounds nice, but have we even stopped to consider and react on the negative impact that Social Media and our current innovations have made? [0] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-users-50-engineers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-use...
- brandonmenc 10y ago
  > Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? If it's coupled with basic income, yes.
  - FilterSweep 10y ago
    Where is this "basic income" coming from?
    - brandonmenc 10y ago
      Yeah, that's definitely part of the problem.
gkya 10y ago
What does it mean for future to win? Is this a buzzword for transforming people's daily lives into a market for the latest brain farts of bright kids? Does it mean to over-spendingly reinvent the wheel?
forgetsusername 10y ago
>I wish this sentiment was more common. It might be a valid argument if any of us actually thought that Pokemon Go was the apex of human civilization. But we don't.
studentrob 10y ago
> Don't we all want the future to win? Yes. To get there, we can ask for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems.
ModernMech 10y ago
If the "future winning" means beta testing driverless car technology on unsuspecting victims, then that's not a future I want to live in, sorry. Look, I'm a robotics engineer, so my job security and career prospects directly depend on technologies like autonomous cars becoming mainstream. That said, the way Tesla is rolling out this technology is just irresponsible. An excellent post from yesterday [1] succinctly outlined the deficiencies of the system, which are now obvious to people outside of Tesla. Given this list, if I were in charge there, this technology would NOT see the light of day until these defects were properly fixed. Beyond the technical problems, there is also a social issue that Tesla is exacerbating. For the last few years now, the general public has been hearing from a variety of popular media sources that autonomous cars are "right around the corner". People have been told that these cars will use their superior computer minds to virtually eliminate traffic accidents. Now you have Tesla producing a car with a feature that sounds a lot like "driverless car" to normal people; right or wrong, it seems like people are treating it with the expectation that it's one of these magical life-saving driverless cars they've been hearing about. To Tesla's credit, the feature does work well given the correct conditions. The common user probably couldn't tell you the difference between "autopilot" and an actual autonomous car. Yet, the user is not properly aware of the limits of the system, and Tesla itself doesn't do much to educate users about those limits. Further, Tesla doesn't seem to do anything to keep users safe when they get close to those edges. What you have here is insufficient and untested technology being used in a production environment by users who have the wrong expectations about what the technology is. The result, as we have seen, ends in death. And no, these failures are not inevitable conclusions of statistics. These failures are due to concrete, identifiable engineering and messaging issues that can and should have been corrected before the product was ever introduced to production cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011
- chronolitus 10y ago
  I agree with that sentiment, however > unsuspecting victims Is a bit much in my opinion. They are operating heavy machinery, and decide not to follow the clearly stated operational guidelines. People are not children, driving a car is a responsibility. Note: I'm not saying that such accidents aren't tragic, or that the drivers 'deserve it' in any way. Simply pointing out that no one forced anyone to take their hands off the wheel, or subject themselves to driverless testing.
duaneb 10y ago
> Don't we all want the future to win? Just because you call it progress doesn't make it so.

kiba 10y ago

If autopilot is slightly better than a human driver, why not use it? It's an incredibly low standard, sure, but more lives are saved, and it only to get better from then on. The only problem is the public's perceived unwillingness to accept such risks in using autopilot.

Tobani 10y ago
The actual problem is that autopilot doesn't remove the driver from the situation enough. It gives people the illusion that they can hand off driving to the computer, but in reality they still need to be doing 90% of what they would be doing anyway. They have to stay engaged in the act of driving. Giving people the illusion that they don't have to stay engaged is where I think the problem is. Until the car is driving itself entirely, I'm not sure there's much to be gained.
- drcross 10y ago
  >It gives people the illusion that they can hand off driving to the computer. The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta. >I'm not sure there's much to be gained. There's miles and miles of data to be gained.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    > The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta. We're now in the world of software and users. "Multiple warnings" aren't enough. Chernobyl had multiple warnings. The car should quit if the driver doesn't have his hands on the wheel during a beta test.
  - Someone1234 10y ago
    If I am a driver next to someone being a guinea pig for this beta software, where did I agree to that? Tesla can get the driver to sign off on the risks, but that doesn't extend to other road users who are also at risk from bugs or defects.
falcolas 10y ago

WWKong 10y ago

0.76 fatalities for 100 million Tesla autopilot miles driven? Is that extrapolated?

hughes 10y ago
Not sure what you mean by extrapolated. It doesn't mean that 0.76 people died, it means that 1 person died after 130 million autopilot miles were driven.

dodosayak 10y ago

When Tesla stops building "someone may die" into their decision matrix, I'll consider buying a Tesla.

Someone1234 10y ago
By the same logic you should never buy a car period. All forms of transport have to accept the possibility of fatalities to a certain extent. The test for Tesla is are they safer, not are they perfect.

topbanana 10y ago

Why is Tesla risking time, money and reputation on making their cars self-driving? The primary goal is surely to get everyone into electric powered cars so we can move to cleaner power, and lower localised pollution.

drcross 10y ago
It depends on if you believe the perspective that Musk doesnt care about time, money and reputation but wants to spur on the rest of the car manufacturers to compete, in some sort of altruistic, noble effort.
- pm90 10y ago
  I'm not denying he doesn't have that motivation, but let's not kid ourselves here: he's an entreprenuer first and the looking for every way to make his product stand out in the market. A market which will soon be flooded with electric cars produced by the major car companies as well. And they are betting big on autonomous driver technology as well [0]. [0]: http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-silicon-valley-detroit/ http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-silicon-valley-detroit/
studentrob 10y ago
Musk is obsessed with AI just like the rest of us, and he has a lot of sway within the company. I'm not sure it is necessary to do alongside the likes of Google and other AI experts. Musk does not have a background in AI
secabeen 10y ago
Because Tesla wants their cars to be the best cars on the road, not the best electric cars on the road. Autopilot and other features are part of that value proposition.

astrocat 10y ago

>In any even remotely sane universe... Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War. While I generally agree with the author's sentiment, I think part of the difference with why Tesla is getting so much flak instead of praise is because the pioneers of yore were astronauts, scientists and soldiers who took risks they understood, and did it willingly. But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that. At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.

studentrob 10y ago
> But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that. Yeah. The author of this article has the same observation [1]. Tesla seems to have been caught off-guard by pushback against its driver-assistance system. Yet, everyone knew there would be pushback if a fatality occurred. > At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development. Fan bases are important, particularly ones that include people who can be give constructive criticism. 100% praise or 100% critique is rarely useful in identifying the path forward. It's a windy road. Everything Musk says is not gospel. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-c...

danso 10y ago

> Again, in any sane world nobody would pay any attention to the opinions of completely unqualified individuals on any given topic. There's a reason I write for Road & Track and not Men's Health, for example, and it has something to do with the fact that I've literally had more racing wins in my life than I've eaten salads. If I started pontificating about whether a particular protein supplement built more muscle mass and got you more ripped than another one, the readers would be entirely right to point out that I am not a doctor and that I have never been seen to bench press more than 255 pounds, not even once. Reminds me of the Tragedy of Theranos. A company valued at $9 billion, staffed to the gills with engineers and medical experts who were building a revolutionary disruptive way to draw and test blood, was taken down based on the accusations of a newspaper reporter who has never run his own startup, nevermind having not attained enough medical expertise to even competently check someone's temperature. I'm being a little facetious here. There's a difference between a cable news reporter blabbing about something that happened 7 minutes ago to fill an hour of airtime with controversy and fear, and a 5-month investigation by a Pulitzer-winning reporter. But let's not shit on the laypersons who dare to challenge the clergy. But in one aspect I agree with the OP. People who aren't experts and who don't bother to check with other experts should perhaps be mindful before they propagate uninformed armchair analysis. But let's make that cut both ways. These uninformed reporters should also hold their tongues when a company touts any technical feature. Maybe that would reduce the incentive for the Elon Musks of the world to name things in viral-headline-friendly ways, e.g. "Autopilot" for advanced driver assist. Tesla has benefited heavily from the press corps ignorance about technology -- you think Tesla has received $4 billion in government subsidies based on technical merit alone? And now they're paying for it. Maybe 10 years from now we'll all agree that that was a good strategic gamble. But it doesn't mean Tesla should be given kid glove treatment today, after the effort they've put in to manipulate the press to their own benefit.

studentrob 10y ago
> People who aren't experts and who don't bother to check with other experts should perhaps be mindful before they propagate uninformed armchair analysis I believe some of this controversy began with an article by Fortune [1] in which they claimed Musk overlooked some business reporting requirements. Do you agree that a financial news outlet is qualified to judge a company based on how they report to the SEC? The world of corporate finance is their wheel house, and that spans to any company, tech or not. The larger the valuation of the company, the more interesting the news would be to them. Fortune's readers are current or would-be Tesla investors. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-stock-sale/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-stoc...

madengr 10y ago

Best quote: "These individuals are assisted in their quest by a media that long ago decided that it was completely okay with killing the society on which it parasitically feeds."

studentrob 10y ago

> Here's a statistic for you: 1.08 fatalities per 100 million miles driven. According to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, that's the death rate on the American road as of 2014, the last year for which there is complete data. This one per 100 million miles statistic keeps getting thrown around. I think we can come up with a better number for comparison (see #'ed list below) I also think we can push for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems. California already requires monthly reports on all accidents involving completely autonomous vehicles [0]. We should be getting this for systems offering driver-assistance across all states. Tesla seems unlikely to report on this until their competitors are forced to report on it too. Here are a few reasons why the 100 million figure isn't as good as it could be, (1) Those 100 million miles include all roads, not just divided ones where autopilot is likely to be activated (2) Autopilot is less likely to be activated during adverse conditions like rain, ice and snow (3) The 100 million figure includes all types of vehicle deaths, including those from motorcycles. Motorcycle deaths should not be compared to car deaths (4) The vehicle price is lost in such an average. Safety reports are best done when considering cost. Obviously a 2016 Tesla is going to be safer than a 1990 beater I'd like to see someone report a more useful statistic for comparison using available data such as this [1]. This guy [2] says it is 1 in 150 million when considering only divided roads. That would make Tesla's autopilot less safe than the average American driver given current statistics. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_tesla_appears_surprised_over_criticism_of/d59eazl https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_te...

greglindahl 10y ago
Given the large error-bar on the Tesla data, you have no idea if Tesla is less safe or more safe than the average American driver.
- studentrob 10y ago

noonespecial 10y ago

We're at the place with self-driving that air travel found itself at in the 20's. From here on in each new technological update and safety regulation will like likely be based on some unfortunate and unforeseen event. Like they say when you study the rules of aviation: Each one is written on a tombstone.

gkya 10y ago
Most often, you don't die in an air accident if you're not on a plane. With AI vehicles sharing the road with manual vehicles and pedestrians, the case is different.

JoelSutherland 10y ago

Fatalities per 100 million miles driven is not a great metric for measuring the reliability of Autopilot. That number is influenced not just by Autopilot avoiding accidents, but also by the overall safety of the car. Teslas are incredibly safe in accidents. The current 25% lead that Autopilot has over the average is probably not attributable to Autopilot at all, and instead to the overall safety of the vehicle. * Fatality rates vary by make/model quite a bit (up to 8x). Some of this is surely attributable to the relative driving skill of purchasers, but most is probably the safety of the cars themselves. Given the spread seen in this IIHS report I would guess that Autopilot performs worse than the average human. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

studentrob 10y ago
It's not even a good figure for comparing fatalities. See my comment here [1] Those 100 million miles include non-divided roads, motorcycle deaths, adverse weather conditions, and cheaper, older cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12087603

wibr 10y ago

"It's possible to walk into a dealership and buy a car that drives itself on the freeway about as safely as you would if you were driving the thing. " How did the author arrive at this conclusion? "In any even remotely sane universe, this achievement would be celebrated in the most hyperbolic fashion possible by every man, woman, and child on the planet. " So everyone who doesn't do that is not remotely sane? "Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War." It's a car. "Note that the harshest critics of Tesla and its products are not affiliated with Nissan, General Motors, BMW, or Ford. Instead, they are gadflies who rarely have any industry experience whatsoever. " Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
studentrob 10y ago
> Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel). Great point.
noxToken 10y ago
> Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel). Drive-by upvotes that are based on the title. People love Tesla.

svalorzen 10y ago

Since the Tesla autopilot will only work on long, clear stretches of road with high visibility and very predictable traffic, it's not really hard to see why the statistic would look better than it really is. I can build an autopilot to drive a car with zero fatalities ever; it just goes forward on an infinitely straight road. Statistics can only be compared under the same conditions, otherwise it's just pointless self-delusion.

kctess5 10y ago

I keep seeing the "130 million miles of Autopilot control per fatality" statistic, especially in the context of "look these cars are better than humans" but I think this is incredibly disingenuous. First of all, you can't just take a sample size of 1 for an effectively random event and then do (total miles driven) / 1 = 1300000000 miles/fatality and pretend like that has any statistical significance. Furthermore, during those entire 130 million miles, there was theoretically a human also sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if the system failed. If there was no human behind the wheel, the cars would not have been able to attain 130 million miles of drive time without a very large number of crashes. When humans drive, there is no intelligent being ready to take over whenever we make a mistake as is the case for Autopilot. In my opinion, using this "statistic" is a very lazy way of hiding behind the numbers in dealing with a very non-obvious issue.

fmihaila 10y ago
> Furthermore, during those entire 130 million miles, there was theoretically a human also sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if the system failed. Yes. That is the point, though. When Autopilot is used the way it is supposed to be used, it doesn't seem to decrease safety, and it may actually increase it. I agree with the point in your first paragraph, though.
- kctess5 10y ago
  I would assert that you cannot make that claim, as there is no statistically significant evidence in support of it.
  - fmihaila 10y ago
    I wasn't making any kind of strong claim. I said "doesn't seem" and "may". My point is, whatever evidence we've got so far, it doesn't seem to indicate a decrease in safety. If anything, it seems to point (however feebly) towards a safety increase. IOW, the data so far doesn't support, in my view, the stance that Autopilot in its current form is unsafe, as long as it's used in accordance to the instructions.

billions 10y ago

Tesla launched autopilot like a startup in beta mode before big co's and regulators could slow it down. If you believe computers will eventually be safer drivers, would you prefer: A) Autopilot launches gradually over 20 years by a big co, costing hundreds of thousands of lives due to 10 year delay or B) Tesla launches fast below the radar, iterates quickly, makes data-driven incremental updates to autopilot and saves 10 years of human error deaths?

rhino369 10y ago
False dilemma C) put these tech features into the car but force the driver to keep actively driving the car getting the best of both worlds. AKA what every other automaker is doing.
- billions 10y ago
  If you're doing what everybody else is doing, by definition, you are not making progress

outworlder 10y ago

Ever since I started driving in US streets, I've been shocked and terrified at the amount of people checking their cellphones in dangerous situations. Inching the car forward at a traffic light without even looking forward, texting doing 70+ mph on a bridge, yelling at their kids in the back seat, changing lanes without looking at their blind spots... I'd really prefer if those vehicles were driverless instead. And mine as well.

Animats 10y ago

One wonders what Tesla did to get that laudatory article. Tesla's "autopilot" problems come from bad engineering and bad human-factors design. I wrote on this in another topic yesterday.[1] It's not that automatic driving is bad; it's that Tesla's semi-automatic driving isn't very good. It's way under-sensored. Google and Volvo are ahead in this area. Volvo is very close to shipping their autopilot. They're testing now. In 2017, they will release 100 self-driving cars to customers. They do not require the driver to pay attention. Volvo's CEO says that if a Volvo self-driving car gets into an accident, it's Volvo's fault, and they will take full responsibility. Their "City Safety" anti-collision system has been on all new Volvo cars for a year now. Unlike Tesla's system, it's always on. Volvo has radar and LIDAR and cameras, more sensors than Tesla has. Volvo's self-driving car has even more sensors, for full coverage in all directions and redundancy. Redundant computers and actuators, too. And if it gets into a situation it can't handle, and the driver doesn't take over, it will pull over and stop. There's a way to do this right, and Volvo is a lot closer than Tesla is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12082893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12082893 [2] http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/intellisafe-autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/in...

jayjay71 10y ago
I love the work that Volvo is doing, but I am highly skeptical they will release a stage 4 autonomous vehicle in 1 year's time. You might be buying into their PR the same way everybody else bought into Tesla's PR.
- ModernMech 10y ago
  Yes, some of that is PR and yet to be proven. But an appropriate sensor suite for the task of autonomous driving is not really a question. There's a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it. For robotics researchers, there's really two ways of looking at things. Some say "look, we as humans are proof that the only sensors you need to do autonomous driving are two cameras (out eyes). So the real research question is, how do we make a system that works with just these sensors?" The other camp says "In order to get away with just two sensors, you need human-level AI. We are not there and we're not going to be for a long time, so let's work within our current capabilities and engineer a proper system." As a community, robotics researchers now know what kind of engineered system works. In the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, EVERY car that finished the race had a 360 degree velodyne laser. It was very much a game-changing sensor for autonomous cars. For Tesla to now say "Oh, we'll do the same thing but without all the fancy sensors" is just incredible. Speaking in terms of the information that the cars acquire, Tesla is driving blind compared to its rivals.

ams6110 10y ago

> You don't have to buy a Tesla. You don't even have to like the cars. If only that were the case. It seems to me that more likely when someone says Teslas are too expensive, or not practical they get attacked as luddites and imbeciles.