9 ms·

Gore point stripe faded: https://imgur.com/a/xHq57 https://imgur.com/a/xHq57 Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6346515,-122.104109,3a,75y,84.96h,99.

Gore point stripe faded: https://imgur.com/a/xHq57 https://imgur.com/a/xHq57 Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6346515,-122.104109,3a,75y,84.96h,99.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4LqOilvG6oJ1oNApEwLi6A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6346515,-122.104109,3a,75y,8...

fossuser 9y ago
Can somebody just go out there and paint the road? There have been at least two other video near collisions of people driving on that section - it seems dangerous.
- pen2l 9y ago
  Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves. This reminds me when I was living in the Midwest and there was this one spot where I had to do a u turn in my commute which was very dangerous because of some tree branches obstructing view of oncoming traffic. One day I almost got into an accident and since it shook me quite a lot, I wrote an email to the city that the tree branch needed to be trimmed so I could see better. Sure enough I got an email back a few days later from a woman saying they “understand my frustrations” or something like that. I thought I did my part and went on with my day. Fast forward about a month, and I almost get in an accident at the same spot, man I was fucking furious that my communication with city was just “ohh we understand” —- instead of employing a sea of men and women telling me that they “understand” why could they have just not just trimmed the tree and improved safety. If I was still living there I think I would have just gone with my chainsaw and done it myself.
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    > Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves. Seems to work for Portland Anarchist Road Care: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-want-to-fix-your-streets-potholes/519588/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-w...
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Seems to. If this becomes widespread, cities could just abdicate attempts at road work- do it yourself, citizen. (But not the taxes, obviously, those still need to be paid in full.)
  - jonathankoren 9y ago
    Back in 2001, Richard Ankrom[0], installed his own Interstate 5 exit sign to an existing official Caltrans sign in Los Angeles, in order to better inform drivers of where the exit was. The sticker, was made to Caltrans and DOT specifications, and affixed in broad daylight. Since the initial installation, Caltrans replaced the sign, but now adds the I-5 signage themselves. Guerrilla public service can work people. ;) [0] http://ankrom.org/freeway_signs.html http://ankrom.org/freeway_signs.html
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Sorry, this doesn't scale. Yes, this was a benevolent alteration, and sort-of-approved ex post; once this would become a widespread modus operandi, most edits would be neutral at best, but likely to be malevolent - "I want my ad on the sign!" "I don't want the X-bound traffic to go by my street, let's move them over to the next exit!" "your edit is worse than my previous edit!" The traffic signage is not Wikipedia, for multiple reasons.`
- bobsil1 9y ago
  Agree. Note, this is a different gore point (92/880) than the one from the 85/101 crash.
Someone1234 9y ago
If your point is "Autopilot only works on perfect roads" then they might have well pull the plug right now. Dirt, snow, rain, fog, dark, and other common conditions could obscure even correctly painted lines, and it just isn't realistic to expect perfect roads throughout such a large network anyway (in particular as human drivers can infer the line is meant to be there from the neighboring lines). At its core, a system like Autopilot is meant to stand in for humans. Plus in this video where they reproduced the accident there was a full chevron pattern so the argument is flawed/wrong anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I
- jijojv 9y ago
  Agreed. That was in Chicago. It also was reproduced exactly in CA crash location in https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier-markings-fatal-model-x-accident/ https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Indeed. His Tesla was clearly following the clearest left-side white line. Which unfortunately pointed the car right at the gore point. But what amazes me is that Tesla autopilot apparently won't swerve or stop when it sees an unmoving object straight ahead. Whether it's a semi, a fire truck, or a gore point. But I gather that trying to detect that stuff generates too many false positives. And that overall, it would arguably cause more accidents net. Edit: I have faced that ambiguity myself. When driving, perhaps foolishly, in fog so dense that I could only see the lines on the road.
    - Animats 9y ago
      But what amazes me is that Tesla autopilot apparently won't swerve or stop when it sees an unmoving object straight ahead. It won't even brake unless the thing in front looks like the back end of a car or truck. Even then, if it's stationary, it may still get hit. It won't swerve, ever; it has no logic for that. Four times that we know of, a Tesla has plowed into a vehicle partly blocking a lane. Putting something on the road which pretends to self-drive and can't detect solid obstacles is criminal.
z6 9y ago
No real excuse for Tesla, but seriously why are our roads so bad. This is one of the wealthiest areas in the world and a busy stretch of road.
- brandmeyer 9y ago
  > but seriously why are our roads so bad. Degraded paint does not a bad road make. Roads are optimized for human drivers that can leverage additional context to make their decisions. Many countries don't even bother to stripe their roads at all.
  - z6 9y ago
    Huh? Which developed countries don't have road markings on highways? Paint is just one aspect. There are also plenty of cracks and uneven pavement as you can see from the street view.
    - cheschire 9y ago
      You said road, he said road. The additional caveat of “highway” wasn’t added until you realized his mental model was different than yours. Now imagine trying to teach a car these things!
      - z6 9y ago
        A highway is a road. The context is quite clear since we're talking about the crash site.
        cheschire 9y ago
        Exactly! To you its crystal clear, but if the other party were additionally considering all the non-highway accidents, then the distinction may not be so clear to them until you provided the additional metadata. Now consider how you may feel about a car which has decided based on all available data that this strip of road is a lane. Its crystal clear to that car until its suddenly not. You reacted with what appeared to me to be very restrained aggression (typical and acceptable, no offense intended) as you struggled to figure out if they were just being dense on purpose or were actually ignorant. I dont feel either were accurate but your message conveyed that was what you felt to me. A car simply says “hey i dont know what im doing anymore. Help!”
petters 9y ago
But the car should still detect (i) That there is an obstacle fast approaching. (ii) That all cars in front of it is doing something else -- time to slow down.
- dangero 9y ago
  Right, I fail to see how an obstacle as large as a divider is not seen in time. If this is the case, then the system is inadequate to see many types of debris that could be on the road.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, it also apparently can't detect stationary semi trailers or fire trucks. So expecting it to detect a little gore point is iffy. But why can't it?
    - mdorazio 9y ago
      It's mostly due to limited sensors and immature algorithms. If you think about a sharp left turn with a wall on the right side of the road, there is a "stationary object" (the wall) in front of the vehicle throughout the turn that will be detected by radar and cameras. In order to navigate a situation like this, an autonomous vehicle has to have additional decision-making in place to effectively override "stationary object in front of me = stop" logic. But once you do that, it gets tricky to determine when you should ignore the "stationary object" and when you shouldn't. On top of this, Tesla opted not to include LIDAR as a sensor in its vehicles, so it does not get a 3D point cloud to help identify what an object is and what to do with it. Instead, there's a high reliance on the cameras and radar, but these have some limitations. For example, it's difficult for a camera to distinguish between two objects of similar brightness and color, so for example if there's a white semi-trailer in front of a white wall 100ft away, the camera might not "see" the trailer. This can create situations where sensors are reporting conflicting data, which is bad - for example in the trailer situation, the camera would be saying "there's nothing in front of me until a wall 100ft away", but the radar would be saying "no there's something right in front of me". Or the radar might not "see" an obstacle that is a few feet off the ground while the camera is saying "there's something in front of me". Resolving these conflicts is hard.
oldgradstudent 9y ago
To paraphrase Rumsfeld: As you know, you drive on the roads you have, not the roads you might want or wish to have at a later time.
cjhopman 9y ago
Based on (1) my experience seeing that people in non-Tesla vehicles tend to cross late from the 85 ramp to 101, (2) the wear pattern in that photo, (3) the number of Tesla vehicles travelling that route, and (4) the numerous examples of Tesla autopilot being total shit at handling that situation from the #2 lane, I wonder how much of that paint fading is due to Tesla autopilot being completely terrible.
Tempest1981 9y ago
Here is where the Mountain View 85/101 crash occurred. Pictures taken this week: https://m.imgur.com/a/acAL8 https://m.imgur.com/a/acAL8 More faded than the last StreetView pics. I also wonder if the line -- where the asphalt meets concrete -- contributed. Maybe it looked like the shoulder. Granted, there is also a yellow line.
- mkirklions 9y ago
  Is it only Tesla's and Ubers that are crashing? I havent heard of GM killing anyone with their car.
babar 9y ago
That is not the location of the accident. The accident happened at the HOV left exit from 101 to 85. Streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4112791,-122.076645,3a,75y,96.66h,64.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFm_Oog8GmlvqYok5UrQECg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4112791,-122.076645,3a,75y,9...
- bobsil1 9y ago
  Sep. '17 crash was at 92/880 March '18 was at 101/85
taneq 9y ago
It seems pretty consistent in the other videos they're showing, too. The left-hand lane marking splits into two lines ahead of the gore point. If the further of those two lines from the car is significantly stronger than the other, then the car will choose that as its new 'left lane' (rather than always choosing the nearer one) and follow it straight into the gore point. I don't think this is a mysterious bug, so much as a significant corner case where their system fails.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
return0 9y ago
That's a bit disconcerning, i mean, obviously not all roads are going to be painted properly so you would assume that they have a myriad other ways to figure out that this is a road bifurcating and not far away there's a huge (1m+) obstacle. I 've been researching driving car literature but i find there's surprisingly little detail about the kind of data used and safeguards taken. Makes you wonder if the entire field is really as mature as it claims to be. I mean , if it fails in the perfectly large american roads, how is it going to perform in chaotic traffic in some old european cities and beyond where almost nothing can be taken for granted? Does anyone know of a comprehensive review of the technology that goes in an AV from the past 1-2 years ?
temuser 9y ago
woah. did not knew just because of a line accidents may cause.
ashelmire 9y ago
The system needs to be able to look more than 30 feet ahead. 30 feet of faded lines shouldn't affect it so much that it leaves the lane and collides with a clearly visible wall. What's it going to do in snow? Or in low-light conditions with a blown headlight? At the very least, the system should slow down significantly and warn the driver if there's not high confidence in where it should be going.

fossuser 9y ago

Can somebody just go out there and paint the road? There have been at least two other video near collisions of people driving on that section - it seems dangerous.

pen2l 9y ago
Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves. This reminds me when I was living in the Midwest and there was this one spot where I had to do a u turn in my commute which was very dangerous because of some tree branches obstructing view of oncoming traffic. One day I almost got into an accident and since it shook me quite a lot, I wrote an email to the city that the tree branch needed to be trimmed so I could see better. Sure enough I got an email back a few days later from a woman saying they “understand my frustrations” or something like that. I thought I did my part and went on with my day. Fast forward about a month, and I almost get in an accident at the same spot, man I was fucking furious that my communication with city was just “ohh we understand” —- instead of employing a sea of men and women telling me that they “understand” why could they have just not just trimmed the tree and improved safety. If I was still living there I think I would have just gone with my chainsaw and done it myself.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  > Holy shit that’s a good idea, we should just fucking do it ourselves. Seems to work for Portland Anarchist Road Care: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-want-to-fix-your-streets-potholes/519588/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-w...
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Seems to. If this becomes widespread, cities could just abdicate attempts at road work- do it yourself, citizen. (But not the taxes, obviously, those still need to be paid in full.)
- jonathankoren 9y ago
  Back in 2001, Richard Ankrom[0], installed his own Interstate 5 exit sign to an existing official Caltrans sign in Los Angeles, in order to better inform drivers of where the exit was. The sticker, was made to Caltrans and DOT specifications, and affixed in broad daylight. Since the initial installation, Caltrans replaced the sign, but now adds the I-5 signage themselves. Guerrilla public service can work people. ;) [0] http://ankrom.org/freeway_signs.html http://ankrom.org/freeway_signs.html
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Sorry, this doesn't scale. Yes, this was a benevolent alteration, and sort-of-approved ex post; once this would become a widespread modus operandi, most edits would be neutral at best, but likely to be malevolent - "I want my ad on the sign!" "I don't want the X-bound traffic to go by my street, let's move them over to the next exit!" "your edit is worse than my previous edit!" The traffic signage is not Wikipedia, for multiple reasons.`
bobsil1 9y ago
Agree. Note, this is a different gore point (92/880) than the one from the 85/101 crash.

Someone1234 9y ago

If your point is "Autopilot only works on perfect roads" then they might have well pull the plug right now. Dirt, snow, rain, fog, dark, and other common conditions could obscure even correctly painted lines, and it just isn't realistic to expect perfect roads throughout such a large network anyway (in particular as human drivers can infer the line is meant to be there from the neighboring lines). At its core, a system like Autopilot is meant to stand in for humans. Plus in this video where they reproduced the accident there was a full chevron pattern so the argument is flawed/wrong anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I

jijojv 9y ago
Agreed. That was in Chicago. It also was reproduced exactly in CA crash location in https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier-markings-fatal-model-x-accident/ https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-autopilot-crash-barrier...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mirimir 9y ago
  Indeed. His Tesla was clearly following the clearest left-side white line. Which unfortunately pointed the car right at the gore point. But what amazes me is that Tesla autopilot apparently won't swerve or stop when it sees an unmoving object straight ahead. Whether it's a semi, a fire truck, or a gore point. But I gather that trying to detect that stuff generates too many false positives. And that overall, it would arguably cause more accidents net. Edit: I have faced that ambiguity myself. When driving, perhaps foolishly, in fog so dense that I could only see the lines on the road.
  - Animats 9y ago
    But what amazes me is that Tesla autopilot apparently won't swerve or stop when it sees an unmoving object straight ahead. It won't even brake unless the thing in front looks like the back end of a car or truck. Even then, if it's stationary, it may still get hit. It won't swerve, ever; it has no logic for that. Four times that we know of, a Tesla has plowed into a vehicle partly blocking a lane. Putting something on the road which pretends to self-drive and can't detect solid obstacles is criminal.

z6 9y ago

No real excuse for Tesla, but seriously why are our roads so bad. This is one of the wealthiest areas in the world and a busy stretch of road.

brandmeyer 9y ago
> but seriously why are our roads so bad. Degraded paint does not a bad road make. Roads are optimized for human drivers that can leverage additional context to make their decisions. Many countries don't even bother to stripe their roads at all.
- z6 9y ago
  Huh? Which developed countries don't have road markings on highways? Paint is just one aspect. There are also plenty of cracks and uneven pavement as you can see from the street view.
  - cheschire 9y ago
    You said road, he said road. The additional caveat of “highway” wasn’t added until you realized his mental model was different than yours. Now imagine trying to teach a car these things!
    - z6 9y ago
      A highway is a road. The context is quite clear since we're talking about the crash site.
      - cheschire 9y ago
        Exactly! To you its crystal clear, but if the other party were additionally considering all the non-highway accidents, then the distinction may not be so clear to them until you provided the additional metadata. Now consider how you may feel about a car which has decided based on all available data that this strip of road is a lane. Its crystal clear to that car until its suddenly not. You reacted with what appeared to me to be very restrained aggression (typical and acceptable, no offense intended) as you struggled to figure out if they were just being dense on purpose or were actually ignorant. I dont feel either were accurate but your message conveyed that was what you felt to me. A car simply says “hey i dont know what im doing anymore. Help!”

petters 9y ago

But the car should still detect (i) That there is an obstacle fast approaching. (ii) That all cars in front of it is doing something else -- time to slow down.

dangero 9y ago
Right, I fail to see how an obstacle as large as a divider is not seen in time. If this is the case, then the system is inadequate to see many types of debris that could be on the road.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, it also apparently can't detect stationary semi trailers or fire trucks. So expecting it to detect a little gore point is iffy. But why can't it?
  - mdorazio 9y ago
    It's mostly due to limited sensors and immature algorithms. If you think about a sharp left turn with a wall on the right side of the road, there is a "stationary object" (the wall) in front of the vehicle throughout the turn that will be detected by radar and cameras. In order to navigate a situation like this, an autonomous vehicle has to have additional decision-making in place to effectively override "stationary object in front of me = stop" logic. But once you do that, it gets tricky to determine when you should ignore the "stationary object" and when you shouldn't. On top of this, Tesla opted not to include LIDAR as a sensor in its vehicles, so it does not get a 3D point cloud to help identify what an object is and what to do with it. Instead, there's a high reliance on the cameras and radar, but these have some limitations. For example, it's difficult for a camera to distinguish between two objects of similar brightness and color, so for example if there's a white semi-trailer in front of a white wall 100ft away, the camera might not "see" the trailer. This can create situations where sensors are reporting conflicting data, which is bad - for example in the trailer situation, the camera would be saying "there's nothing in front of me until a wall 100ft away", but the radar would be saying "no there's something right in front of me". Or the radar might not "see" an obstacle that is a few feet off the ground while the camera is saying "there's something in front of me". Resolving these conflicts is hard.

oldgradstudent 9y ago

To paraphrase Rumsfeld: As you know, you drive on the roads you have, not the roads you might want or wish to have at a later time.

cjhopman 9y ago

Based on (1) my experience seeing that people in non-Tesla vehicles tend to cross late from the 85 ramp to 101, (2) the wear pattern in that photo, (3) the number of Tesla vehicles travelling that route, and (4) the numerous examples of Tesla autopilot being total shit at handling that situation from the #2 lane, I wonder how much of that paint fading is due to Tesla autopilot being completely terrible.

Tempest1981 9y ago

Here is where the Mountain View 85/101 crash occurred. Pictures taken this week: https://m.imgur.com/a/acAL8 https://m.imgur.com/a/acAL8 More faded than the last StreetView pics. I also wonder if the line -- where the asphalt meets concrete -- contributed. Maybe it looked like the shoulder. Granted, there is also a yellow line.

mkirklions 9y ago
Is it only Tesla's and Ubers that are crashing? I havent heard of GM killing anyone with their car.

babar 9y ago

That is not the location of the accident. The accident happened at the HOV left exit from 101 to 85. Streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4112791,-122.076645,3a,75y,96.66h,64.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFm_Oog8GmlvqYok5UrQECg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4112791,-122.076645,3a,75y,9...

bobsil1 9y ago
Sep. '17 crash was at 92/880 March '18 was at 101/85

taneq 9y ago

It seems pretty consistent in the other videos they're showing, too. The left-hand lane marking splits into two lines ahead of the gore point. If the further of those two lines from the car is significantly stronger than the other, then the car will choose that as its new 'left lane' (rather than always choosing the nearer one) and follow it straight into the gore point. I don't think this is a mysterious bug, so much as a significant corner case where their system fails.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

return0 9y ago

That's a bit disconcerning, i mean, obviously not all roads are going to be painted properly so you would assume that they have a myriad other ways to figure out that this is a road bifurcating and not far away there's a huge (1m+) obstacle. I 've been researching driving car literature but i find there's surprisingly little detail about the kind of data used and safeguards taken. Makes you wonder if the entire field is really as mature as it claims to be. I mean , if it fails in the perfectly large american roads, how is it going to perform in chaotic traffic in some old european cities and beyond where almost nothing can be taken for granted? Does anyone know of a comprehensive review of the technology that goes in an AV from the past 1-2 years ?

temuser 9y ago

woah. did not knew just because of a line accidents may cause.

ashelmire 9y ago

The system needs to be able to look more than 30 feet ahead. 30 feet of faded lines shouldn't affect it so much that it leaves the lane and collides with a clearly visible wall. What's it going to do in snow? Or in low-light conditions with a blown headlight? At the very least, the system should slow down significantly and warn the driver if there's not high confidence in where it should be going.