7 ms·

Well, yes, they got that right, but I was speaking in terms of not thinking through the engineering in a mission critical design (and in the case of the TMI rea

Well, yes, they got that right, but I was speaking in terms of not thinking through the engineering in a mission critical design (and in the case of the TMI reactor it had to be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or whatever its predecessor was). TMI failed in this level of design thinking which would seem fairly obvious (as did NRC in plant design review) scares me in terms of overall engineering thinking. (In other words, if they got that wrong, what else did the designers get wrong). In the case of Tesla, they have to engineer so that the cars knows about obstacles before crashing into them. The fact that Tesla did not think through this pretty obvious scenario is frightening and suggests a fault in their overall process in engineering. I just feel that Tesla cannot be trusted in terms of engineering unless they have some very smart group check their design. I doubt BMW would have made such a mistake.

bllguo 10y ago
Please, stop with the fearmongering. You are coming to some weird conclusions.
- davidf18 10y ago
  No, I am someone who has a BS EE/CS degree that worked four years as an engineer at a large firm. It is not fear mongering. It is legitimate questioning about engineering, from someone who has the experience. For all of his self-promotion and as head of a car company and a rocket company, Elon Musk has never worked as an engineer for a large firm where he'd be mentored in engineering. For example, the CEO of GM is an engineer (EE) who was mentored in engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra And the same for IBM: (EE & CS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty
  - vvanders 10y ago
    > lack of engineering on the part of Tesla which I find frightening. That looks a tad like fear mongering.
    - davidf18 10y ago
      > That looks a tad like fear mongering. Please be specific. What is the fear mongering? It is a statement from someone educated as an engineer and trained as an engineer. Engineering, whether it is designing buildings, cars, airplanes, is thinking through the scenarios and testing for them. This seems to be a situation where they were ruling out overhead signs, but because of trucks clearance of these signs would be well over 10 feet and they could check for anything under 10 feet or 8 feet and should have. And, as I said before, if they didn't think this through, what else that we can't see are they not thinking through?
      - vvanders 10y ago
        Just because you're an engineer doesn't make all of your arguments automatically correct. I've got the word "Engineer" in my job title but I don't beat people over the head with it when I want to make an argument for a technical position. It's not like they haven't thought this through. Tesla has been clear that this is a Driver Assistance, not a full autonomous car. There are multiple warnings, including every time you enable auto pilot that makes it clear you must pay attention. This accident while tragic from current reports looks like the driver was not paying attention to the road. The best way that we're going to get to fully autonomous cars is to collecting real world data and I think auto pilot has been a reasonable approach in that direction.
        cbr 10y ago
        > I've got the word "Engineer" in my job title If by that you mean you're a software engineer, I do think it's fair to distinguish between getting an EE/CS degree vs say a BA in CS plus programming experience. (I write this as someone in the latter group.)
        vvanders 10y ago
        Yeah, the title is heavily overloaded for sure. The meta point I'm trying to share is that if you're trying to convince a technical audience(which HN certainly is) berating people by saying "I know better because I have this slip of paper" is the quickest way to get someone to dig in and dismiss your idea. Engineers are natural skeptics, arguing from the technical side will always be the stronger position.
neffy 10y ago
To be honest, I think BMW would have made exactly that mistake because nobody in Germany would ever be stupid enough to build a 65mph freeway with an uncontrolled crossing like that. And don't get me started on those highways on the east coast that have on ramps leading into the fast lane.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  If human drivers can deal with it driverless cars certainly can. Driverless cars aren't too timid to accelerate at 100% for a merge or to dart across a break in three lanes of traffic to take a left if the vehicle is capable of doing so effectively. Most people are. If anything uncontrolled intersections and high speed difference merges (200ft radius 270* on ramp I'm looking at you) more efficient to handle with driverless cars, provided they're capable of identifying the road (easy) all the non-static participants (hard).

bllguo 10y ago

Please, stop with the fearmongering. You are coming to some weird conclusions.

davidf18 10y ago
No, I am someone who has a BS EE/CS degree that worked four years as an engineer at a large firm. It is not fear mongering. It is legitimate questioning about engineering, from someone who has the experience. For all of his self-promotion and as head of a car company and a rocket company, Elon Musk has never worked as an engineer for a large firm where he'd be mentored in engineering. For example, the CEO of GM is an engineer (EE) who was mentored in engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barra And the same for IBM: (EE & CS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Rometty
- vvanders 10y ago
  > lack of engineering on the part of Tesla which I find frightening. That looks a tad like fear mongering.
  - davidf18 10y ago
    > That looks a tad like fear mongering. Please be specific. What is the fear mongering? It is a statement from someone educated as an engineer and trained as an engineer. Engineering, whether it is designing buildings, cars, airplanes, is thinking through the scenarios and testing for them. This seems to be a situation where they were ruling out overhead signs, but because of trucks clearance of these signs would be well over 10 feet and they could check for anything under 10 feet or 8 feet and should have. And, as I said before, if they didn't think this through, what else that we can't see are they not thinking through?
    - vvanders 10y ago
      Just because you're an engineer doesn't make all of your arguments automatically correct. I've got the word "Engineer" in my job title but I don't beat people over the head with it when I want to make an argument for a technical position. It's not like they haven't thought this through. Tesla has been clear that this is a Driver Assistance, not a full autonomous car. There are multiple warnings, including every time you enable auto pilot that makes it clear you must pay attention. This accident while tragic from current reports looks like the driver was not paying attention to the road. The best way that we're going to get to fully autonomous cars is to collecting real world data and I think auto pilot has been a reasonable approach in that direction.
      - cbr 10y ago
        > I've got the word "Engineer" in my job title If by that you mean you're a software engineer, I do think it's fair to distinguish between getting an EE/CS degree vs say a BA in CS plus programming experience. (I write this as someone in the latter group.)
        vvanders 10y ago
        Yeah, the title is heavily overloaded for sure. The meta point I'm trying to share is that if you're trying to convince a technical audience(which HN certainly is) berating people by saying "I know better because I have this slip of paper" is the quickest way to get someone to dig in and dismiss your idea. Engineers are natural skeptics, arguing from the technical side will always be the stronger position.

neffy 10y ago

To be honest, I think BMW would have made exactly that mistake because nobody in Germany would ever be stupid enough to build a 65mph freeway with an uncontrolled crossing like that. And don't get me started on those highways on the east coast that have on ramps leading into the fast lane.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
If human drivers can deal with it driverless cars certainly can. Driverless cars aren't too timid to accelerate at 100% for a merge or to dart across a break in three lanes of traffic to take a left if the vehicle is capable of doing so effectively. Most people are. If anything uncontrolled intersections and high speed difference merges (200ft radius 270* on ramp I'm looking at you) more efficient to handle with driverless cars, provided they're capable of identifying the road (easy) all the non-static participants (hard).