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Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

269 points by extesy 8y ago

jijojv 8y ago
Also discussed at the RealTesla https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/8n20d9/this_morning_a_tesla_sedan_driving_outbound/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/8n20d9/this_morn...
- jumelles 8y ago
  I never knew about that subreddit, thanks!
melling 8y ago
“You are about to hit a solid object. Stop.” Why can’t we solve the most basic use case? We don’t have the sensors and it’s all done with cameras?
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  It’s a solved issue, but Tesla doesn’t use LIDAR so it will never be solved for them.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    But they use Radar and ultrasonic sensors, which should be enough (and even better, since LIDAR doesn't work in fog).
    - trhway 8y ago
      They doesn't seem to build any 3D scene. Their radar doesn't seem to be sweeping in any axis, so it is good only for detection in narrow sector along the road surface. This is in particular was stated as the reason behind that case of driver being decapitated by driving under the road crossing semi truck. Their ultrasonic i'd suppose have similar fixed direction functionality and probably for much smaller distances.
      - mentat 8y ago
        Binocular vision can do it just fine under most circumstances. Subaru Outback with Eye Sight is better than AP for this by far.
  - etherael 8y ago
    Why not? Isn't this the solution? I do remember hearing a while back that the cost for a lidar rig was around 5k, but given the fact it would save lives this seems like an obvious move?
    - stevenwoo 8y ago
      Musk has stated publicly multiple times that he believes autonomous driving can be solved without LIDAR and directed the team at Tesla to not use it. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-self-driving-car-tesla https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-s...
- userbinator 8y ago
  Too many false positives; sensors would only be usable for cars that moved a few km/h at most. Even if you're driving normally, various other objects appear in your path all the time.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    So don’t ship it then? Honestly, it seems like a fairly fundamental feature, doesn’t it?
  - bschwindHN 8y ago
    Sounds like a bad excuse to me
  - twblalock 8y ago
    And yet the forward collision warning on a lot of inexpensive cars like Hondas would have warned the driver and then hit the brakes in this situation. We clearly don't have an epidemic of cars with forward collision warning systems slamming on their brakes for no reason, so those systems must be able to deal with the false positives somehow.
- dirkgently 8y ago
  We? We have already solved it. They (Tesla) hasn't.
olliej 8y ago
I really wish all the car manufacturers would stop with this bullshit "you still have to be driving it" self driving nonsense. Claiming that the driver is still responsible for driving the car, while using a system designed to encourage the "driver" to not pay attention is a dumb idea, and all I can see is this kind of thing leading to regulations the delay actual self driving cars. I'm not a self-driving car fanboy or anything. I don't think it's just around the corner, but it's clearly going to happen /eventually/ and I can't imagine it being more dangerous than regular drivers. But this kind of "self driving but not" features feel like the sort of thing that calls to government agencies for regulation, and sufficiently "dumb" mistakes from these systems seems like the sort of thing that triggers a reactive over-regulation.
- AceJohnny2 8y ago
  Blame Elon Musk. I'm serious. He's been promising "self-driving" for years, except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from. The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. His engineers know this, which is why Tesla's self-driving group has had such a high turnover rate over the last few years. Musk keeps overriding them.
  - ModernMech 8y ago
    > The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. Not just the model/UI but the actual sensor suite. Remember, the Tesla that resulted in a decapitation had over-saturated cameras that couldn't see a tractor trailer. Of course, that's where the UI comes into play, because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter, he would have seen the tractor trailer as well.
    - jfim 8y ago
      That's the thing, how do you make an UI that unambiguously conveys that the car hasn't seen an object in front of it, so that the driver can react to it? Maybe with AR the car could highlight the objects detected so that the driver can brake if the car doesn't see an object it knows about, but a head mounted display seems pretty clunky.
shanghaiaway 8y ago
Another auto pilot crash. List so far: 1 Hebei, Fatal China crash https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting-tesla-over-aut-1823189786 https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting... 2 Florida, Fatal Joshua Brown crashes into truck. https://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got-numerous-warnin-1796226021 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got... 3 Mountain view, Fatal Model X crash. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-on-during-deadly-mountain-view-crash/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-o... 4 Reference to auto-pilot crash in Hayward. http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-tesla-crash-in-september-showed-similarities-to-fatal-mountain-view-accident/3302389/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-tesla-crash-... 5 You You Xue crashes in Greece http://abc7news.com/automotive/millbrae-driver-says-tesla-model-3-was-in-autopilot-when-it-crashed-in-greece/3525746/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/millbrae-driver-says-tesla-mo... 6 Utah autopilot crash, Tesla driver injured, Firetruck driver injured. https://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Unclear-if-Tesla-s-Autopilot-engaged-in-crash-12913423.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Unclear-i... 7 Texas autopilot crash 'Car crashed, then continued to accelerate' https://www.dallasnews.com/business/autos/2016/08/25/dallas-man-says-tesla-crashed-continued-accelerate-using-autopilot-kaufman https://www.dallasnews.com/business/autos/2016/08/25/dallas-... 8 SF VC autopilot crash, she took over control just before the autopilot crash, Tesla blamed her for being in control when the crash happened. In her words 'its your fault if you take control, its your fault when you do not take control'. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-autopilot-related-crash-dispute-california/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-autopilot-related-c... 9 Laguna Canyon road crash into a parked vehicle. Driver injured. https://twitter.com/LBPD_PIO_45/status/1001541486146547717 https://twitter.com/LBPD_PIO_45/status/1001541486146547717 10 FenderBender Crash video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus&feature=youtu.be 11 Wisconsin Model X crash https://www.carcomplaints.com/news/2018/insurance-company-sues-tesla-model-x-crash.shtml https://www.carcomplaints.com/news/2018/insurance-company-su... 12. Culver City crash into Fire Truck http://abc7.com/traffic/2-federal-agencies-investigate-tesla-crash-in-culver-city/2985342/ http://abc7.com/traffic/2-federal-agencies-investigate-tesla... 13 Autopilot crash in Germany https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-germany-crash/tesla-crashes-into-bus-in-germany-driver-says-used-autopilot-idUSL8N1C55Y7 https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-germany-crash/tesla-cr... 14. Model X crashes into Semi in California. Not many details. https://electrek.co/2017/03/27/tesla-model-x-autopilot-crash-semi/ https://electrek.co/2017/03/27/tesla-model-x-autopilot-crash... 15. Laguna Canyon road crash into semi at same spot as (9) april 10, 2017. http://ktla.com/2018/05/29/tesla-on-autopilot-crashes-into-laguna-beach-police-patrol-vehicle/ http://ktla.com/2018/05/29/tesla-on-autopilot-crashes-into-l... There are probably more crashes that have not been reported prominently and not disclosed by Tesla either.
iamleppert 8y ago
“Come check out our really awesome manual auto-pilot! It’s fully manual automatically!”
Shivetya 8y ago
they need to reign this in fast before the NHTSA forces their hand. supposedly they already on that agencies bad side and the last thing Tesla needs is a big recall or stop sale. they will upset some of their fans but in the end it may be safer to OTA restrict its usage.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Yes Tesla are leveraged so that they are far more vulnerable to a crisis of confidence than any of the traditional manufacturers.
ucaetano 8y ago
2 fire trucks, 1 police cruiser. Tesla really is sticking it to the man!
- bobsil1 8y ago
  Also Chinese highway sweeper.
- mertd 8y ago
  Usually other types of vehicles get a handsome ticket when they stop somewhere they should not.
jfim 8y ago
From TFA: > "Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn't make the car impervious to all accidents, and before a driver can use Autopilot, they must accept a dialogue box which states that 'Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings,'" a Tesla spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Does this dialog box appear every time the car is started or is it a one time thing, just like terms of services?
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  The next evolution in clickwrap licensing, this time its fatal.
- zwily 8y ago
  One time thing. The display does tell you to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel on every activation though.
  - xvf22 8y ago
    Lovely... But if it works great 99.9% of the time it may just lull you into a false sense of security. Not saying the driver isn't at fault but this is especially true for Tesla where a firmware update may change autopilot behaviour in ways the driver doesn't expect.
- ThatPlayer 8y ago
  The car should be able to detect if those 'center dividers and clear lane markings' are visible warn the user, or shutdown.
  - mentat 8y ago
    The information should already be in their mapping systems. It should not offer to activate on unsupported roads. It will offer to activate in downtown with stop signs even couple hundred feet in the small city I live in. It will offer to activate driving through a residential neighborhood...
aviv 8y ago
Tesla made a huge mistake naming this feature "Autopilot".
- readhn 8y ago
  ditto
danso 8y ago
Assuming that every major AP collision, it is pretty amusing that the latest non-fatal ones have all coincidentally involved emergency vehicles. I imagine it must be related to how such vehicles have the right to park just about anywhere, including on roadways in which drivers do not expect parked vehicles.
- gwern 8y ago
  The photo looks like it was parked in a marked parking spot (those white crossed lines indicating each slot along the curb).
  - goshx 8y ago
    Half on the sidewalk, half on the road.
    - gwern 8y ago
      After being crashed into. Why would they have driven up onto the curb when there's so much empty space and all the other cars in the photo are parked fully in the street? Not to mention, being further in should make it easier to avoid, not harder.
mikeash 8y ago
How many non-Autopilot cars have crashed into parked vehicles? It happens a lot, to the extent that a lot of states have “move over” laws explicitly designed to reduce it. Does Autopilot actually make the problem worse, or is it just more newsworthy?
- mirceal 8y ago
  Pardon my ignorance: what is a “move over” law? What do you need to do?
  - mikeash 8y ago
    It means that when passing a stopped emergency vehicle, you need to change lanes to avoid passing right next to them (“move over”) or slow down substantially.
    - mirceal 8y ago
      Thanks. I was already doing this even though I don’t know of any law that requires it where I live. You learn something every day.
      - yason 8y ago
        I would assume they would teach you basic things like these in the driving school? I suppose that's not the case? Learning a "new" thing like that would probably make me hastily begin to wonder what else I might be missing.
        mirceal 8y ago
        I think you need to differentiate between knowing about something and knowing about the precise label something has.
        mikeash 8y ago
        The first move over law was enacted in 1996 and they didn’t become standard until the 2000s. Believe it or not, a lot of us went to driving school before that.
readhn 8y ago
how is autopilot feature still allowed to be called auto pilot? it mistakenly leads people to believe that it can drive itself. The name literally means - a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. After multiple deaths now the head of marketing at Tesla should be criminally prosecuted (or whoever is the big shot who signed off on this name).
- Filligree 8y ago
  Its capabilities are about on par with an airplane autopilot. I have a lot of problems with Tesla, including the way they market this, but the name is accurate.
  - dirkgently 8y ago
    Well, then they should also provide the same regorous training that the pilots recieve, or make Tesla available to those who are equally trained.
    - Filligree 8y ago
      That, I can agree with. One might also argue that a mere autopilot does not imply good enough capabilities to work in a cluttered, dense environment such as roads.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    Pilots require a much higher level of licensing however.
  - buvanshak 8y ago
    > Its capabilities are about on par with an airplane autopilot. Some one should study you. Because I don't know how someone with a brain can be so stupid...Not considering the possiblity that you are paid for it, because everyone knows that there are no shills on hackenews...
RobLach 8y ago
I remember reading people saying that insurance premiums will plummet for Teslas because of how much safer they will be on the road. Today I read Tesla is getting into the insurance business because premiums are getting out of hand. It makes some sense since internally they’ll have more data they can use to deny claims. It’s interesting how reality plays out. https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insurance-model-s-most-expensive-car/ https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insurance...
- mikeash 8y ago
  I’m skeptical that it’s because premiums are getting out of hand. The report that Teslas are the most expensive to insure only looked at the top of the line version of each model. For the Model S they looked at the P100D, which costs something like $140,000, and is one of the fastest accelerating street cars ever made. I’m not surprised that’s expensive to insure, but that doesn’t mean a more mundane one will be.
  - tim333 8y ago
    They seem to have impressive repair costs. If I was an insurer I'd quote high because of that, not because they were more likely to crash. (eg https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/20/heres-what-7000-of-damage-looks-like-on-a-tesla-model-3/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/20/heres-what-7000-of-dama...)
- carlivar 8y ago
  To be fair, a major reason they are expensive to insure is because parts and labor are in low supply and high demand, thus high repair costs.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Also, aluminum is expensive to repair.
readhn 8y ago
They should name the feature smart cruise control. Case closed. IT does not imply self driving capability but rather more advanced cruise control system. Which is basically what it is. Nobody is going to set a cruise control to a certain speed and look away from the road!!!
- mikeash 8y ago
  The numerous drivers I see texting every day would beg to differ.
deleted 8y ago
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vblord 8y ago
In the car's defense... I think the police cruiser looked a lot like a highway median.
iamgopal 8y ago
Why they not partner with Google? I think they have much better talent pool at AI to handle this. I hope they are using all the crash data to make it more robust.
- wmf 8y ago
  Because Google/Waymo is using lidar which adds ~$150K to the cost of the car.
  - brandon 8y ago
    The cost of the Lidar hardware was down to $7,500 well over a year ago and may have come down even more in the intervening time: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-waymo-reduces-lidar-cost-90-in-effort-to-scale-self-driving-cars-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-waymo-reduces-lidar-c...
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    I thought it was more the fact Elon didn't like the aesthetics of the roof equipment, like he's trying to design an automobile the same way Apple designs a laptop
dmitrygr 8y ago
Good reading: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-... Basically this is a well-known issue in aviation. As automation gets better and better, humans rely on it more and more and get less and less able to handle even minute failures in it. Additionally humans are absolutely terrible at being able to be dropped into a complex situation and have to make immediate rational decisions about it - thus the failure mode of "in case of error, tell human to handle it" is a bad idea if time between "tell human about it" and "crash into things" is under ten seconds or so. This has been the subject of many NASA studies and NTSB reports and the above article does a good job presenting this info in a form a layman can understand. There are currently no known easy solutions, sadly.
lph 8y ago
How does Tesla fail so badly at basic collision avoidance?? Surely the LIDAR is able to detect an imminent collision, but at least in the recent fire truck and lane-split barrier incidents, the cars didn't even slow down?! That seems really fundamental. Edit: so they don't use lidar... Is this a machine vision failure, then?
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  People have stated in older threads that the lane assist will not brake for stationary objects - if it did, it would brake all the time due to all the false positives. The lane following is pretty impeccable right until the collision for the Chinese accident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo
- Cogito 8y ago
  My understanding is that they detect moving obstacles much more easily than stationary. This is because almost everything in the environment is stationary to the car, so it is hard to distinguish between stationary things in your way and stationary things just off to the side. So if the car in front of you slows down, it's obvious that you'll hit it if you don't slow down. A car parked partially in your lane might just look like regular noise to the sensors. That is, using the current technology, if they (correctly) classified the parked car as an obstacle then they would (incorrectly) classify so many non-dangerous situations as obstacles so as to make the system infeasible; the car would emergency brake constantly as it drives down the road. Some would say that until those obstacles can be classified correctly such technology should not be used at all, but I think it's probably doing more good than harm at the moment and hopefully a good solution can be found quickly. Even if they do fix this problem soon, I'm sure we'll hear plenty of stories where something goes wrong anyway, but hopefully they won't seem so obviously avoidable (who hits a parked car!)
  - s_m_t 8y ago
    How dumb of an idea is it to attach the camera/lidar/what have you to a 2 axis rail and move it around at a high speed to introduce some parallax movement to the scene?
sundvor 8y ago
Step 1: Stop calling it autopilot.
shyn3 8y ago
The fix is to implement self driving bumper cars.
deleted 8y ago
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itchyjunk 8y ago
Just like humans are self driving and self crashing the car, "auto-pilot" is doing the same. Machines are too good at learning from humans. /s
confiscate 8y ago
I don't get it, why is it so hard to detect stationary objects in front of you? wouldn't that be the "hello world" of any self-driving tech? Every time I ask this question, the response is "radar as a technology has too much noise, not accurate enough to detect stationary objects". But it DOES detect stationary objects. Otherwise no one would even turn on Tesla AP at all. Why is it so hard to detect stationary objects in front of you?
- childintime 8y ago
  The usual answer is that the signal that reflects of many stationary objects, like trees, cars, all of which have the same dopler shift and must normally be discarded. Still, this answer doesn't quite satisfy, because it ignores the very strong signal that exists right before a crash, which crash avoidance technologies do (seem to) use.
  - abalone 8y ago
    The difference is in the compare. A collision avoidance system is there to help correct driver errors, so even if it only works 50% of the time it is still a massive reduction in the accident rate. Whereas with autopilot the expectation is that it should be recognizing objects as good or better than drivers, so a 50% failure rate would be considered massively buggy. Note: Tesla also has a collision avoidance system, which is actually on all the time and a distinct feature from autopilot (although it uses the same underlying sensors).
- mentat 8y ago
  Subaru Eye Sight does this reliably and actually auto brakes correctly. Going from that to APv2 has been a real step back. There's a curve on 92W that it consistently try to accelerate you into an embankment. I think Elon just doesn't understand the real world reality of how bad AP is.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    And Tesla's newer vehicles have the same sensors as Eye Sight, they just choose not to use them for Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB). Tesla's fans always defend the failure of their AEB by pointing out flaws in radar, while entirely ignoring that Tesla's vehicles have contained front facing optical cameras for years now. The Tesla shouldn't have hit the divider in the previous accident, the optical (visual light) camera should have seen it, even if radar didn't. Why doesn't Tesla's system work as well as Sabaru's Eye Sight?
abalone 8y ago
I keep wondering what the customer benefit of Level 2 autopilot is if not to lower your attention and relax your mind. Tesla's "out" is that drivers are supposed to retain full attention and oversight of the autopilot system -- but then if you strictly follow this rule, what is the benefit of autopilot? I can see the benefit to Tesla and future Tesla customers of essentially crowdsourced fleet learning. But what is the benefit right now if you strictly follow the rule of remaining alert enough to intervene at a second's notice? In previous threads the best explanation I got from Tesla owners was that it frees you from the "details of physically driving" so you "can now supervise instead."[1] That just seems suspect. Supervising autopilot to the degree required to correct sudden mistakes seems, to me, to be probably very close to the mental load of the details of steering yourself. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17151116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17151116
- wpietri 8y ago
  Yes. There is zero chance I'd use a system like this. Regular freeway driving is already boring enough that I worry about losing focus. (I supplement with things like caffeine and audiobooks.) There's some threshold of interventions/minute that I think humans just aren't very good at. Which is why there are systems like Threat Image Projection, which turns baggage scanning into what is effectively a video game: https://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/products/rapiscan-threat-image-projection https://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/products/rapiscan-threat-...
  - vsl 8y ago
    Try it before making such sure if yourself statements. In my experience it’s LESS boring to drive with autopilot and I pay MORE attention to the actually important, potentially dangerous, things like what’s coming up (you’re actively aware of longer stretch forward, which also means you know you’re coming up to a stretch that autopilot won’t be able to handle well in advance and have plenty of time to disengage) and the cars around it (not watching lanes closely frees you to give all your attention to cars around you).
- ohashi 8y ago
  The benefit for Tesla would be selling more cars because people think they are getting a technology that isn't really ready but Tesla's claiming is (but also claiming not really, read the fine print).
SCAQTony 8y ago
More overpromising and deadly consequences. He has overpromised on delivery dates, autopilot abilities, he has underestimated capital requirements, and timeline trips to Mars. Perhaps Tesla should consider a new CEO and Elon take a move to a more figurehead position?
oliv__ 8y ago
If you need to stay alert and have your hands on the wheel, why is the damn thing called "Autopilot"!? This should not be legal.
keerthiko 8y ago
Tesla could still salvage this somewhat by loudly rebranding Autopilot to "Cruise Control 2.0" and issuing a serious apology. But somehow they (or just Elon?) seem unreasonably averse to doing that. The man is losing hero-status by the minute.
calgoo 8y ago
I liked a comment from the hosts of The Grand Tour (paraphrasing): "When the owners of the car companies that promote these self-driving cars will allow the cars to drive them along the Yungas Road in Bolivia without a steering wheel, then it can be classified as safe."
ryeguy_24 8y ago
This is another problem with the “imperfect specialist”. Fortunately and unfortunately we don’t need to grow our own vegetables anymore. Most of us have adopted the concept of buying vegetables from “specialists” who grow them more efficiently then we can. So, we use these specialists and detach ourselves from the growing process altogether. Then we receive a batch of Romain Lettuce comes with ecoli and die. This doesn’t happen often but we’ve delegated this task to someone else and inherited the imperfections of their process. I’d argue vegetable growing is pretty damn safe these days. I’m ok with that risk. But I don’t think Tesla is anywhere near worth the delegation of my driving. I’ll keep my brained turned on for now.
xfactor973 8y ago
I could be wrong but that looks like an autopilot 1 car which is an older version of the tech that they're not really developing anymore. The newer autopilot 2 and 2.5 is what they're going forward with for now. That also doesn't look like a highway and autopilot isn't designed to handle that yet.
fareesh 8y ago
Autopilot is like the steering wheel, brake, stickshift, etc. You don't get to blame an accident on it. Airplanes have autopilot as well. We live in a world where movies like jackass are made, based on real people and their attitudes. It's not reasonable to suggest that safety labels or terminology can fix everything. Some people are plain irresponsible and foolish.
alphabettsy 8y ago
Tesla and the driver are at fault here. Tesla for not prohibiting operation on the types of roadways where it is not designed to be used and the driver for using it where it’s not designed to be used.
TeeWEE 8y ago
"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." I can't read the article. Weird. is this because of GDPR?
- exolymph 8y ago
  Yep, it's because of GDPR.
mymythisisthis 8y ago
When will the right mirror be replaced with a camera and dedicated screen. Until the 1980s cars didn't even have a mirror on the right side. Getting rid of the mirror will make cars more aerodynamic. It will also make cars safer, no more knocking over cyclists with the right side mirror. It will make cars cheaper to maintain, mirrors are expensive to maintain.
Shank 8y ago
Totaled? Maybe insurance totaled, but that police cruiser looks relatively in fact from the picture. The driver's side door is open and and it doesn't look like it was crumpled in any way in that zone. The rear driver's side passenger door looks like it took more damage, and the entire frame of the cruiser still looks like it's in relatively okay condition. The Tesla is in the same shape. I'm not trying to downplay the impacts of the driver or Autopilot here, but even if a police officer was in the cruiser, it doesn't look like it would have been as catastrophic as the article implies.
TeeWEE 8y ago
Everybody is so hard on Tesla. And I do agree that the name "AutoPilot" gives the wrong impression of what it can do. But think about it like Elon Musk would: If AutoPilot is statistically saver that a car without AutoPilot then it's good enough to be sold on production cars. Tesla cars are saver that normal cars statistically. Off course, picking one crash and saying AutoPilot sucks is statistically not the right approach. I do agree that Tesla should improve on this. But crashing into a parked car probably means that the driver was playing with his phone, or the cars touch screen too much. Tesla should have systems in place that detects the driver not paying attention. (something better than touching the steer)
paul7986 8y ago
Pay up the nose to be a billionaires guinea pig so he can go can down in history as a pioneer of robot cars while while you go up in flames...HELL NO!!!
dingo_bat 8y ago
To successfully develop self-driving cars, without spending NASA moon mission like time and money, we need to put a value on a human life. Maybe even different values for passenger, driver, pedestrian, other motorists, policemen, etc. Then the risk, time, and money to spend will be easily defined. If some task will take a software engineer (paid $150k/year) half year to develop but only increase safety enough to save 1 pedestrian per decade, and a pedestrian is valued at $50k, then maybe the dev can work on something else. Numbers are made up just to illustrate the point. But this is how Tesla, or any other self-driving car-maker can quickly bring self-driving tech to the public in a cost-effective manner, and within reasonable time-frames.
- rubidium 8y ago
  Your guess at numbers, even though made up, have a concerning low regard for human life. Since they're required to, the us dept of transportation puts it at just over 6 million. Priceless is of course the right answer, but engineering wise you're in the 5-10 million range.
flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago
My sinister side is tingling... How convenient for non-autopilot auto manufacturers... to have a competitor out there boasting semi-autopilot capabilities... I wonder how many of these "autopilot crashes" could be machinations... if not already, then in the future perhaps?
- cm2012 8y ago
  Or, the incredibly more likely and predicted option is that you shouldn't promote a self driving car that requires constant attention from the driver. Comments on every HN thread have literally warned about this for years.
mrtest002 8y ago
In the last 24 hours, 100 people died in car crashes - but 2 crashes a year apart and its "why does this keep happening". I realize the numbers are not comparable - however, 100 people dying a day is seen as act of God, but 100% driver-less society and getting 1 person dying a week will get these cars banned probably.
Animats 8y ago
Has Tesla blamed the driver yet? They might get away with that here. The road was not divided and unsuitable for their lane-keeping system. The pavement markings are unusual.[1] Of course, as usual, their obstacle detection failed to detect a stationary obstacle that didn't look like the rear end of a car in the same lane. We need a minimum standard for a vehicle which takes automated control of steering and braking. It must reliably stop for obstacles. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BjqTZoD5Yws https://goo.gl/maps/BjqTZoD5Yws
- joshuakcockrell 8y ago
  Here's the exact spot on that road that matches the picture in the article https://goo.gl/maps/pj3X4gAuG672 https://goo.gl/maps/pj3X4gAuG672
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
pmontra 8y ago
Los Angeles Times blocked Europe because of GDPR. Here's a link we can read from there https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot/tesla-hits-parked-california-police-vehicle-driver-blames-autopilot-idUSKCN1IU2SZ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot/tesla-hit...
Tomte 8y ago
I wish all those advanced assist functions in today's upper middle-class cars would trickle down to cheaper cars faster. That would give us much more safety now. It seems Teslas autopilot cannot reliably do much more than conventional lane assist etc. Tesla could disable autonomous lane changing and autonomous changing of streets, requiring driver's input for all changes of direction (that are not smoothing out, but staying in lane), and it would be really good. But Tesla needs the impression of game-changing, not just best-in-class for financial markets reasons. I believe authorities should order call-backs and force Tesla to disable all traces of autonomy.
- Maxion 8y ago
  The thing is, a tesla crashing while running on autopilot is more newsworthy than a tesla crashing while being driven. We should not let anecdotal evidence drive our fears.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    I don't see how this comment could possibly be a reply to mine.
mannykannot 8y ago
That disclaimer wears thinner each time someone does something stupid like this. Tesla can keep repeating it until a third party gets killed or maimed, or it can act responsibly.
djsumdog 8y ago
Let's make the roads out of rubber and the wheels out of pavement. I feel like this is the backwards mentality with autonomous vehicles. I wrote a while ago about how they simply cannot solve the transportation problem, at least not in a way that's cheaper than just building mass transit: https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-so... I realize this particular case is different with us talking about assistance/safety features, but I still feel we're going the wrong direction here. These features reduce your awareness. They're like a teenage driver you constantly have to monitor, but worse. They teach people to be comfortable and less alert with systems that have potentially fatal bugs that we can't yet identify. We can build mass transit now, at a fraction of the cost of developing the tech for automated vehicles. There are so many corner cases, with highways, city driving conditions that simply cannot pan out for autonomous vehicles without a lot of testing; and a lot of people getting injured and dying. I wish people would shelve this pipe dream for now. Maybe once we have really solid rail transport again in the US, like we use to decades ago, and rich and poor people can have a means to work even in smaller cities; then we can work on frivolous junk that will benefit the few that can afford it. Right now we just run the risk of killing more people who can't.
- tim333 8y ago
  We've had mass transit for a century. I don't see much harm in trying something new that may save a million lives per year.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    But we haven't, not in America. Sure the rest of the world does, but we've lost most of our mass transit over the past century. Knowing you can get on a train at 2am and make it home does play a significant role in reducing drunk driving, and can benefit people of all income levels.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
theCricketer 8y ago
Elon Musk has constantly underestimated the difficulty of autonomous driving. This video (https://youtu.be/wsixsRI-Sz4?t=1h18m28s https://youtu.be/wsixsRI-Sz4?t=1h18m28s) shows Elon Musk, two years ago, saying the following: "I basically consider autonomous driving to be a solved problem". "A Model S and Model X can drive with greater safety than a person, already. Right now." "We are less than two years away from complete autonomy".
TekMol 8y ago
All I see is this: "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." Maybe we should develop a habbit here on HN not to link to geo-fenced sites?
cherioo 8y ago
People always lament about how Tesla tries to mislead customer's about its capability, but is there actually data that shows this is truly the case among Tesla owners? How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? Even among non-Tesla cars, whose manufacturers don't try to "mislead", 71 percent of people believe automatic emergency braking can avoid all crashes [0]. Is this percentage higher or lower for Tesla, and is that difference warranted? [0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/08/hit-brakes-not-self-braking-cars-designed-stop/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/08/hit-brakes-not-self-braking... [1] Quote from above "When traveling at 45 mph and approaching a static vehicle, a scenario designed to push systems beyond the stated limitations, the systems designed to prevent crashes reduced speeds by 74 percent overall and avoided crashes in 40 percent of scenarios. In contrast, systems designed to lessen crash severity were only able to reduce vehicle speed by 9 percent overall."
- soziawa 8y ago
  > How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? I mean there is a warning telling you that it's not self driving. People are dumb, that's it.
  - azinman2 8y ago
    I don’t think it’s helpful or even correct to say “people are dumb,” as if this is purely a user problem. The system exists in a bad gray zone — one that works well enough most of the time you stop paying attention. But it’s not full proof, so you get the worst of cognitive bias here. Personally I think this faux self driving (literally falsely named auto pilot) should be outlawed. We cannot depend on people to take over when the car generally is handling the situation most of the time. Either manual or fully automatic — this in between will continue to cause too many bad accidents.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      Agree, if you are not actively driving, your attention, and therefore reaction time, will inevitably deteriorate. In addition to that your reaction time is further reduced by the fact that even if you anticipated a problem looking at the road, you need to wait long enough after when you expected the car to react before realising that the car didn’t react and you need to take over, which further reduces your reaction time. Which is why I have some sympathy for the drivers of experimental self driving cars. Doesn’t excuse them playing with their smartphone at the wheel but they are tasked with a really hard exercise while being legally liable if things go wrong.
cr4zy 8y ago
One way to avoid these types of crashes IMO is anomaly detection. It's quite simple to do anomaly detection in pixels using modern deep pixel prediction nets like PredNet. In my experiments you get a few seconds lead time on something like a car cutting you off (the car starts to head out of the lane before actually crossing it for example). This allows alerting the driver, and with a full windshield HUD you could even highlight the anomalous pixels on the windshield. The nice thing about this is that it can be trained in an unsupervised manner on all the available data. Some important details are to find anomalies in object bounding boxes, using something like Tensorflow's object detection pretrained net. Otherwise buildings with lots of striations would light up the anomaly detector. Also, you should detect anomalies in a human colorspace like CIELAB so that white cars (#fff) are not artificially weighted as more anomalous. Finally, you could use this as input to a planner like Model Predictive Control where a higher cost is incurred for approaching anomalous objects.
- toxik 8y ago
  Great you solved AD with this one simple trick!
iamtew 8y ago
Is the article available to Europeans somewhere? All I'm getting is a message with this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. On the other hand, I'm wondering how much I want to read an article from a website where they must track me to when I just want to read something...
- reacharavindh 8y ago
  Same here. If nothing, GDPR at least brings awareness to the general public about the level of unnecessary tracking that all these websites do.
- perlgeek 8y ago
  For now I'll flag any article on HN that isn't readable in Europe. Reducing availability to readers should come with some social media penalty.
- amyjess 8y ago
  archive.is is your friend. http://archive.is/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tesla-collision-20180529-story.html http://archive.is/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-l...
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  It's also quite disconcerting to consider the implications of this. Since we 'opt in' to the articles we click on, tracking what individuals read and then building a profile based off of that would be quite informative, and quite invasive. And then sharing, trading (to expand the profile), and selling it to other companies? Really nasty stuff.
  - iamtew 8y ago
    That's exactly why the GDPR is put in place, to give users transparency and force website to ask the users consent before tracking. You'll see some sites have quite an extensive menu of opting in to various tracking etc. For example Engadget or TechCrunch have a popup asking you to give consent, or not, before using the website. This is how it should be done. Then there's other websites that shows you all it's tracking and ask you to just accept, there's no option to refuse, which is against GDPR, as implied consent is no longer valid. And then you'll have websites like latimes that just goes "fuck it, we'll just block 500 million people in EU instead!"
fijal 8y ago
I enjoy how "EU" means "outside of us". I'm in South Africa and it's blocked for the eu
- mkj 8y ago
  Maybe they're using browser timezones
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    That wouldn't be enough, there is EU territory outside Europe. (French Guyana, Martinique, Réunion etc.)
cameldrv 8y ago
Tesla Autopilot doesn't see stationary objects. It sees moving objects with its radar, and tries to avoid hitting them. It sees lane markings with its camera, and it tries to stay between them. Sometimes lane markings are confusing, worn, or inconsistent. If that happens, your Tesla will smash you at 70mph into a concrete barrier/police car. It will not slow down if it is uncertain about the lane markings, it will not beep if there is a stationary object ahead.
SriniK 8y ago
I really wish everyone had a chance to use the autopilot feature and judge themselves. I use it every single day and trust the machine. Issue is, with every complex system, there are few ins and outs that users need to know - like lane merge buffer lines, sharp lane merges by another vehicle in front of view, etc. Within your first few rides(below 10), users could pretty much guess when it works and when it might have issues. On labeling the feature, it is marked clearly BETA and wiggle prompt is shown pretty much in all the confusing cases - so alert is never missed for me. My only gripe is with all these incidents, Tesla is forced to update the feature to make it less user friendly or take out completely. I genuinely feel safe and come home every single day with less stress. Elon's tantrums are not helping the situation either.
- yellow_postit 8y ago
  Blaming the users doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. If the system needs users “guessing” about its behavior maybe it should be gates behind a test with periodic checkpoints as the software behavior changes.
- jijojv 8y ago
  I have been using AP2 every day for more than a year now as its very convenient but inherently dangerous as its addictive and provides a false sense of security as it works great ~ 90-95% of the time. I would not be opposed to an auto-steer ban to force Tesla to get their priorities straight about stationery object detection and auto-braking and stop scamming people about their self-driving if its really years away. You can still use adaptive cruise which eases all the commute hassles yet forces you to be actively engaged.
- nikofeyn 8y ago
  can i ask why you “trust” the system with your life so much? there’s not a single piece of software i trust in my daily life. i mean, something as simple as an iPad, phone, computer, tv, etc. hardly goes a day without a glitch, but yet people are ready to trust “self-driving” auto features as if they’ve never experienced a software failure before. and normally, it isn’t a software failure in the strictest sense. it’s a human error embedded in software. so i ask myself, do i trust the however many overworked, sleep deprived, wide-eyed engineers’ abstract and concrete thought now embedded in cars’ active driving systems? the answer is no way.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Articles like this should really include incident rates per miles driven for the self driving vehicle and compare that against human rates. Without that this feels a lot like an intentional effort to mislead. What matters are the crash rates. E.g. - how many humans crashed into an unmoving vehicle yesterday? An immense number but of course they also drove far more miles as well. So the question is exactly how many miles? The first milestone for vehicular automation is not perfection, but to simply be better, and in the worst case - comparable, to humans. Given the media's tendency to try to make big news out of every single self driving vehicle crash, it seems like we're already approaching (if not passing) this first milestone, as these articles are relatively rare while these vehicles have driven hundreds of millions of miles in autopilot. I can't find the latest number, but back in October 2016 Tesla already had 222 million miles under autopilot. It's safe to assume it's now some substantial multiple of that. Some time it would be interesting to see media releases around the time we transitioned from horses/carriages to automobiles, to see how the state of the media has changed. Or perhaps it has always been this way. "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. - Thomas Jefferson, 1807"
hagreet 8y ago
Unavailable in most European countries. #GDPRproductivity
soziawa 8y ago
> Cota said. > Cota said. > Cota said. Three times in a row, has this article been written by a robot? It doesn't feel like something a human would write.
mirimir 8y ago
I can't figure out the geometry of this accident. It looks like the Tesla hit the cruiser near the left rear wheel. And the cruiser was pushed sideways over the curb. But its right rear tire looks to be inflated. So why would the Tesla have been heading toward the roadside? Was the cruiser perhaps parked in the middle of the roadway?
jread 8y ago
I live in Laguna, cycled by this accident today, own a Tesla, and can attest to consistent autopilot issues in this section of the highway. The road widens with a turnoff to the right, and in my experience that is exactly the direction autopilot wants to go every time, rather than follow the center line, even when it is tracking a lead vehicle that does so. There are no lines to the right, so I’m not quite sure why it does this. But, I can understand how an innattentive driver might end up in this situation because until this point in the road autopilot works great.
__m 8y ago
Elon Musk: „Fake News!“
rasz 8y ago
"Elon Musk, has said it repeatedly warns drivers to stay alert" Its AutoPilot, why the hell are all those people expecting it to Pilot the car Auto matically? ....
torgian 8y ago
Sounds like Tesla has the right idea?
DanBC 8y ago
> The Palo Alto-based automaker, led by Elon Musk, has said it repeatedly warns drivers to stay alert, keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicle at all times while using the Autopilot system. That Tesla is taking so long to learn what "human factors" are is painful, especially since HF has been part of other industries for decades.
SpecialistEMT 8y ago
Acab :D

269 points by extesy 8y ago

Also discussed at the RealTesla https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/8n20d9/this_morning_a_tesla_sedan_driving_outbound/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/8n20d9/this_morn...

jumelles 8y ago
I never knew about that subreddit, thanks!

melling 8y ago

“You are about to hit a solid object. Stop.” Why can’t we solve the most basic use case? We don’t have the sensors and it’s all done with cameras?

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
It’s a solved issue, but Tesla doesn’t use LIDAR so it will never be solved for them.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  But they use Radar and ultrasonic sensors, which should be enough (and even better, since LIDAR doesn't work in fog).
  - trhway 8y ago
    They doesn't seem to build any 3D scene. Their radar doesn't seem to be sweeping in any axis, so it is good only for detection in narrow sector along the road surface. This is in particular was stated as the reason behind that case of driver being decapitated by driving under the road crossing semi truck. Their ultrasonic i'd suppose have similar fixed direction functionality and probably for much smaller distances.
    - mentat 8y ago
      Binocular vision can do it just fine under most circumstances. Subaru Outback with Eye Sight is better than AP for this by far.
- etherael 8y ago
  Why not? Isn't this the solution? I do remember hearing a while back that the cost for a lidar rig was around 5k, but given the fact it would save lives this seems like an obvious move?
  - stevenwoo 8y ago
    Musk has stated publicly multiple times that he believes autonomous driving can be solved without LIDAR and directed the team at Tesla to not use it. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-self-driving-car-tesla https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/16988628/elon-musk-lidar-s...
userbinator 8y ago
Too many false positives; sensors would only be usable for cars that moved a few km/h at most. Even if you're driving normally, various other objects appear in your path all the time.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  So don’t ship it then? Honestly, it seems like a fairly fundamental feature, doesn’t it?
- bschwindHN 8y ago
  Sounds like a bad excuse to me
- twblalock 8y ago
  And yet the forward collision warning on a lot of inexpensive cars like Hondas would have warned the driver and then hit the brakes in this situation. We clearly don't have an epidemic of cars with forward collision warning systems slamming on their brakes for no reason, so those systems must be able to deal with the false positives somehow.
dirkgently 8y ago
We? We have already solved it. They (Tesla) hasn't.

olliej 8y ago

I really wish all the car manufacturers would stop with this bullshit "you still have to be driving it" self driving nonsense. Claiming that the driver is still responsible for driving the car, while using a system designed to encourage the "driver" to not pay attention is a dumb idea, and all I can see is this kind of thing leading to regulations the delay actual self driving cars. I'm not a self-driving car fanboy or anything. I don't think it's just around the corner, but it's clearly going to happen /eventually/ and I can't imagine it being more dangerous than regular drivers. But this kind of "self driving but not" features feel like the sort of thing that calls to government agencies for regulation, and sufficiently "dumb" mistakes from these systems seems like the sort of thing that triggers a reactive over-regulation.

AceJohnny2 8y ago
Blame Elon Musk. I'm serious. He's been promising "self-driving" for years, except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from. The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. His engineers know this, which is why Tesla's self-driving group has had such a high turnover rate over the last few years. Musk keeps overriding them.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  > The manufacturer puts a warning label, but the usage model/UI is clearly flawed. Not just the model/UI but the actual sensor suite. Remember, the Tesla that resulted in a decapitation had over-saturated cameras that couldn't see a tractor trailer. Of course, that's where the UI comes into play, because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter, he would have seen the tractor trailer as well.
  - jfim 8y ago
    That's the thing, how do you make an UI that unambiguously conveys that the car hasn't seen an object in front of it, so that the driver can react to it? Maybe with AR the car could highlight the objects detected so that the driver can brake if the car doesn't see an object it knows about, but a head mounted display seems pretty clunky.

shanghaiaway 8y ago

Another auto pilot crash. List so far: 1 Hebei, Fatal China crash https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting-tesla-over-aut-1823189786 https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting... 2 Florida, Fatal Joshua Brown crashes into truck. https://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got-numerous-warnin-1796226021 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got... 3 Mountain view, Fatal Model X crash. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-on-during-deadly-mountain-view-crash/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-o... 4 Reference to auto-pilot crash in Hayward. http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-tesla-crash-in-september-showed-similarities-to-fatal-mountain-view-accident/3302389/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-team-exclusive-tesla-crash-... 5 You You Xue crashes in Greece http://abc7news.com/automotive/millbrae-driver-says-tesla-model-3-was-in-autopilot-when-it-crashed-in-greece/3525746/ http://abc7news.com/automotive/millbrae-driver-says-tesla-mo... 6 Utah autopilot crash, Tesla driver injured, Firetruck driver injured. https://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Unclear-if-Tesla-s-Autopilot-engaged-in-crash-12913423.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Unclear-i... 7 Texas autopilot crash 'Car crashed, then continued to accelerate' https://www.dallasnews.com/business/autos/2016/08/25/dallas-man-says-tesla-crashed-continued-accelerate-using-autopilot-kaufman https://www.dallasnews.com/business/autos/2016/08/25/dallas-... 8 SF VC autopilot crash, she took over control just before the autopilot crash, Tesla blamed her for being in control when the crash happened. In her words 'its your fault if you take control, its your fault when you do not take control'. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-autopilot-related-crash-dispute-california/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-autopilot-related-c... 9 Laguna Canyon road crash into a parked vehicle. Driver injured. https://twitter.com/LBPD_PIO_45/status/1001541486146547717 https://twitter.com/LBPD_PIO_45/status/1001541486146547717 10 FenderBender Crash video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus&feature=youtu.be 11 Wisconsin Model X crash https://www.carcomplaints.com/news/2018/insurance-company-sues-tesla-model-x-crash.shtml https://www.carcomplaints.com/news/2018/insurance-company-su... 12. Culver City crash into Fire Truck http://abc7.com/traffic/2-federal-agencies-investigate-tesla-crash-in-culver-city/2985342/ http://abc7.com/traffic/2-federal-agencies-investigate-tesla... 13 Autopilot crash in Germany https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-germany-crash/tesla-crashes-into-bus-in-germany-driver-says-used-autopilot-idUSL8N1C55Y7 https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-germany-crash/tesla-cr... 14. Model X crashes into Semi in California. Not many details. https://electrek.co/2017/03/27/tesla-model-x-autopilot-crash-semi/ https://electrek.co/2017/03/27/tesla-model-x-autopilot-crash... 15. Laguna Canyon road crash into semi at same spot as (9) april 10, 2017. http://ktla.com/2018/05/29/tesla-on-autopilot-crashes-into-laguna-beach-police-patrol-vehicle/ http://ktla.com/2018/05/29/tesla-on-autopilot-crashes-into-l... There are probably more crashes that have not been reported prominently and not disclosed by Tesla either.

iamleppert 8y ago

“Come check out our really awesome manual auto-pilot! It’s fully manual automatically!”

Shivetya 8y ago

they need to reign this in fast before the NHTSA forces their hand. supposedly they already on that agencies bad side and the last thing Tesla needs is a big recall or stop sale. they will upset some of their fans but in the end it may be safer to OTA restrict its usage.

jessaustin 8y ago
Yes Tesla are leveraged so that they are far more vulnerable to a crisis of confidence than any of the traditional manufacturers.

ucaetano 8y ago

2 fire trucks, 1 police cruiser. Tesla really is sticking it to the man!

bobsil1 8y ago
Also Chinese highway sweeper.
mertd 8y ago
Usually other types of vehicles get a handsome ticket when they stop somewhere they should not.

jfim 8y ago

From TFA: > "Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn't make the car impervious to all accidents, and before a driver can use Autopilot, they must accept a dialogue box which states that 'Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings,'" a Tesla spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Does this dialog box appear every time the car is started or is it a one time thing, just like terms of services?

throwaway2048 8y ago
The next evolution in clickwrap licensing, this time its fatal.
zwily 8y ago
One time thing. The display does tell you to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel on every activation though.
- xvf22 8y ago
  Lovely... But if it works great 99.9% of the time it may just lull you into a false sense of security. Not saying the driver isn't at fault but this is especially true for Tesla where a firmware update may change autopilot behaviour in ways the driver doesn't expect.
ThatPlayer 8y ago
The car should be able to detect if those 'center dividers and clear lane markings' are visible warn the user, or shutdown.
- mentat 8y ago
  The information should already be in their mapping systems. It should not offer to activate on unsupported roads. It will offer to activate in downtown with stop signs even couple hundred feet in the small city I live in. It will offer to activate driving through a residential neighborhood...

aviv 8y ago

Tesla made a huge mistake naming this feature "Autopilot".

readhn 8y ago
ditto

danso 8y ago

Assuming that every major AP collision, it is pretty amusing that the latest non-fatal ones have all coincidentally involved emergency vehicles. I imagine it must be related to how such vehicles have the right to park just about anywhere, including on roadways in which drivers do not expect parked vehicles.

gwern 8y ago
The photo looks like it was parked in a marked parking spot (those white crossed lines indicating each slot along the curb).
- goshx 8y ago
  Half on the sidewalk, half on the road.
  - gwern 8y ago
    After being crashed into. Why would they have driven up onto the curb when there's so much empty space and all the other cars in the photo are parked fully in the street? Not to mention, being further in should make it easier to avoid, not harder.

mikeash 8y ago

How many non-Autopilot cars have crashed into parked vehicles? It happens a lot, to the extent that a lot of states have “move over” laws explicitly designed to reduce it. Does Autopilot actually make the problem worse, or is it just more newsworthy?

mirceal 8y ago
Pardon my ignorance: what is a “move over” law? What do you need to do?
- mikeash 8y ago
  It means that when passing a stopped emergency vehicle, you need to change lanes to avoid passing right next to them (“move over”) or slow down substantially.
  - mirceal 8y ago
    Thanks. I was already doing this even though I don’t know of any law that requires it where I live. You learn something every day.
    - yason 8y ago
      I would assume they would teach you basic things like these in the driving school? I suppose that's not the case? Learning a "new" thing like that would probably make me hastily begin to wonder what else I might be missing.
      - mirceal 8y ago
        I think you need to differentiate between knowing about something and knowing about the precise label something has.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        The first move over law was enacted in 1996 and they didn’t become standard until the 2000s. Believe it or not, a lot of us went to driving school before that.

readhn 8y ago

how is autopilot feature still allowed to be called auto pilot? it mistakenly leads people to believe that it can drive itself. The name literally means - a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. After multiple deaths now the head of marketing at Tesla should be criminally prosecuted (or whoever is the big shot who signed off on this name).

Filligree 8y ago
Its capabilities are about on par with an airplane autopilot. I have a lot of problems with Tesla, including the way they market this, but the name is accurate.
- dirkgently 8y ago
  Well, then they should also provide the same regorous training that the pilots recieve, or make Tesla available to those who are equally trained.
  - Filligree 8y ago
    That, I can agree with. One might also argue that a mere autopilot does not imply good enough capabilities to work in a cluttered, dense environment such as roads.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Pilots require a much higher level of licensing however.
- buvanshak 8y ago
  > Its capabilities are about on par with an airplane autopilot. Some one should study you. Because I don't know how someone with a brain can be so stupid...Not considering the possiblity that you are paid for it, because everyone knows that there are no shills on hackenews...

RobLach 8y ago

I remember reading people saying that insurance premiums will plummet for Teslas because of how much safer they will be on the road. Today I read Tesla is getting into the insurance business because premiums are getting out of hand. It makes some sense since internally they’ll have more data they can use to deny claims. It’s interesting how reality plays out. https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insurance-model-s-most-expensive-car/ https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insurance...

mikeash 8y ago
I’m skeptical that it’s because premiums are getting out of hand. The report that Teslas are the most expensive to insure only looked at the top of the line version of each model. For the Model S they looked at the P100D, which costs something like $140,000, and is one of the fastest accelerating street cars ever made. I’m not surprised that’s expensive to insure, but that doesn’t mean a more mundane one will be.
- tim333 8y ago
  They seem to have impressive repair costs. If I was an insurer I'd quote high because of that, not because they were more likely to crash. (eg https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/20/heres-what-7000-of-damage-looks-like-on-a-tesla-model-3/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/20/heres-what-7000-of-dama...)
carlivar 8y ago
To be fair, a major reason they are expensive to insure is because parts and labor are in low supply and high demand, thus high repair costs.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Also, aluminum is expensive to repair.

readhn 8y ago

They should name the feature smart cruise control. Case closed. IT does not imply self driving capability but rather more advanced cruise control system. Which is basically what it is. Nobody is going to set a cruise control to a certain speed and look away from the road!!!

mikeash 8y ago
The numerous drivers I see texting every day would beg to differ.

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vblord 8y ago

In the car's defense... I think the police cruiser looked a lot like a highway median.

iamgopal 8y ago

Why they not partner with Google? I think they have much better talent pool at AI to handle this. I hope they are using all the crash data to make it more robust.

wmf 8y ago
Because Google/Waymo is using lidar which adds ~$150K to the cost of the car.
- brandon 8y ago
  The cost of the Lidar hardware was down to $7,500 well over a year ago and may have come down even more in the intervening time: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-waymo-reduces-lidar-cost-90-in-effort-to-scale-self-driving-cars-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-waymo-reduces-lidar-c...
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  I thought it was more the fact Elon didn't like the aesthetics of the roof equipment, like he's trying to design an automobile the same way Apple designs a laptop

dmitrygr 8y ago

Good reading: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-... Basically this is a well-known issue in aviation. As automation gets better and better, humans rely on it more and more and get less and less able to handle even minute failures in it. Additionally humans are absolutely terrible at being able to be dropped into a complex situation and have to make immediate rational decisions about it - thus the failure mode of "in case of error, tell human to handle it" is a bad idea if time between "tell human about it" and "crash into things" is under ten seconds or so. This has been the subject of many NASA studies and NTSB reports and the above article does a good job presenting this info in a form a layman can understand. There are currently no known easy solutions, sadly.

lph 8y ago

How does Tesla fail so badly at basic collision avoidance?? Surely the LIDAR is able to detect an imminent collision, but at least in the recent fire truck and lane-split barrier incidents, the cars didn't even slow down?! That seems really fundamental. Edit: so they don't use lidar... Is this a machine vision failure, then?

stevenwoo 8y ago
People have stated in older threads that the lane assist will not brake for stationary objects - if it did, it would brake all the time due to all the false positives. The lane following is pretty impeccable right until the collision for the Chinese accident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo
Cogito 8y ago
My understanding is that they detect moving obstacles much more easily than stationary. This is because almost everything in the environment is stationary to the car, so it is hard to distinguish between stationary things in your way and stationary things just off to the side. So if the car in front of you slows down, it's obvious that you'll hit it if you don't slow down. A car parked partially in your lane might just look like regular noise to the sensors. That is, using the current technology, if they (correctly) classified the parked car as an obstacle then they would (incorrectly) classify so many non-dangerous situations as obstacles so as to make the system infeasible; the car would emergency brake constantly as it drives down the road. Some would say that until those obstacles can be classified correctly such technology should not be used at all, but I think it's probably doing more good than harm at the moment and hopefully a good solution can be found quickly. Even if they do fix this problem soon, I'm sure we'll hear plenty of stories where something goes wrong anyway, but hopefully they won't seem so obviously avoidable (who hits a parked car!)
- s_m_t 8y ago
  How dumb of an idea is it to attach the camera/lidar/what have you to a 2 axis rail and move it around at a high speed to introduce some parallax movement to the scene?

sundvor 8y ago

Step 1: Stop calling it autopilot.

shyn3 8y ago

The fix is to implement self driving bumper cars.

deleted 8y ago

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itchyjunk 8y ago

Just like humans are self driving and self crashing the car, "auto-pilot" is doing the same. Machines are too good at learning from humans. /s

confiscate 8y ago

I don't get it, why is it so hard to detect stationary objects in front of you? wouldn't that be the "hello world" of any self-driving tech? Every time I ask this question, the response is "radar as a technology has too much noise, not accurate enough to detect stationary objects". But it DOES detect stationary objects. Otherwise no one would even turn on Tesla AP at all. Why is it so hard to detect stationary objects in front of you?

childintime 8y ago
The usual answer is that the signal that reflects of many stationary objects, like trees, cars, all of which have the same dopler shift and must normally be discarded. Still, this answer doesn't quite satisfy, because it ignores the very strong signal that exists right before a crash, which crash avoidance technologies do (seem to) use.
- abalone 8y ago
  The difference is in the compare. A collision avoidance system is there to help correct driver errors, so even if it only works 50% of the time it is still a massive reduction in the accident rate. Whereas with autopilot the expectation is that it should be recognizing objects as good or better than drivers, so a 50% failure rate would be considered massively buggy. Note: Tesla also has a collision avoidance system, which is actually on all the time and a distinct feature from autopilot (although it uses the same underlying sensors).
mentat 8y ago
Subaru Eye Sight does this reliably and actually auto brakes correctly. Going from that to APv2 has been a real step back. There's a curve on 92W that it consistently try to accelerate you into an embankment. I think Elon just doesn't understand the real world reality of how bad AP is.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  And Tesla's newer vehicles have the same sensors as Eye Sight, they just choose not to use them for Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB). Tesla's fans always defend the failure of their AEB by pointing out flaws in radar, while entirely ignoring that Tesla's vehicles have contained front facing optical cameras for years now. The Tesla shouldn't have hit the divider in the previous accident, the optical (visual light) camera should have seen it, even if radar didn't. Why doesn't Tesla's system work as well as Sabaru's Eye Sight?

abalone 8y ago

I keep wondering what the customer benefit of Level 2 autopilot is if not to lower your attention and relax your mind. Tesla's "out" is that drivers are supposed to retain full attention and oversight of the autopilot system -- but then if you strictly follow this rule, what is the benefit of autopilot? I can see the benefit to Tesla and future Tesla customers of essentially crowdsourced fleet learning. But what is the benefit right now if you strictly follow the rule of remaining alert enough to intervene at a second's notice? In previous threads the best explanation I got from Tesla owners was that it frees you from the "details of physically driving" so you "can now supervise instead."[1] That just seems suspect. Supervising autopilot to the degree required to correct sudden mistakes seems, to me, to be probably very close to the mental load of the details of steering yourself. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17151116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17151116

wpietri 8y ago
Yes. There is zero chance I'd use a system like this. Regular freeway driving is already boring enough that I worry about losing focus. (I supplement with things like caffeine and audiobooks.) There's some threshold of interventions/minute that I think humans just aren't very good at. Which is why there are systems like Threat Image Projection, which turns baggage scanning into what is effectively a video game: https://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/products/rapiscan-threat-image-projection https://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/products/rapiscan-threat-...
- vsl 8y ago
  Try it before making such sure if yourself statements. In my experience it’s LESS boring to drive with autopilot and I pay MORE attention to the actually important, potentially dangerous, things like what’s coming up (you’re actively aware of longer stretch forward, which also means you know you’re coming up to a stretch that autopilot won’t be able to handle well in advance and have plenty of time to disengage) and the cars around it (not watching lanes closely frees you to give all your attention to cars around you).
ohashi 8y ago
The benefit for Tesla would be selling more cars because people think they are getting a technology that isn't really ready but Tesla's claiming is (but also claiming not really, read the fine print).

SCAQTony 8y ago

More overpromising and deadly consequences. He has overpromised on delivery dates, autopilot abilities, he has underestimated capital requirements, and timeline trips to Mars. Perhaps Tesla should consider a new CEO and Elon take a move to a more figurehead position?

oliv__ 8y ago

If you need to stay alert and have your hands on the wheel, why is the damn thing called "Autopilot"!? This should not be legal.

keerthiko 8y ago

Tesla could still salvage this somewhat by loudly rebranding Autopilot to "Cruise Control 2.0" and issuing a serious apology. But somehow they (or just Elon?) seem unreasonably averse to doing that. The man is losing hero-status by the minute.

calgoo 8y ago

I liked a comment from the hosts of The Grand Tour (paraphrasing): "When the owners of the car companies that promote these self-driving cars will allow the cars to drive them along the Yungas Road in Bolivia without a steering wheel, then it can be classified as safe."

ryeguy_24 8y ago

This is another problem with the “imperfect specialist”. Fortunately and unfortunately we don’t need to grow our own vegetables anymore. Most of us have adopted the concept of buying vegetables from “specialists” who grow them more efficiently then we can. So, we use these specialists and detach ourselves from the growing process altogether. Then we receive a batch of Romain Lettuce comes with ecoli and die. This doesn’t happen often but we’ve delegated this task to someone else and inherited the imperfections of their process. I’d argue vegetable growing is pretty damn safe these days. I’m ok with that risk. But I don’t think Tesla is anywhere near worth the delegation of my driving. I’ll keep my brained turned on for now.

xfactor973 8y ago

I could be wrong but that looks like an autopilot 1 car which is an older version of the tech that they're not really developing anymore. The newer autopilot 2 and 2.5 is what they're going forward with for now. That also doesn't look like a highway and autopilot isn't designed to handle that yet.

fareesh 8y ago

Autopilot is like the steering wheel, brake, stickshift, etc. You don't get to blame an accident on it. Airplanes have autopilot as well. We live in a world where movies like jackass are made, based on real people and their attitudes. It's not reasonable to suggest that safety labels or terminology can fix everything. Some people are plain irresponsible and foolish.

alphabettsy 8y ago

Tesla and the driver are at fault here. Tesla for not prohibiting operation on the types of roadways where it is not designed to be used and the driver for using it where it’s not designed to be used.

TeeWEE 8y ago

"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." I can't read the article. Weird. is this because of GDPR?

exolymph 8y ago
Yep, it's because of GDPR.

mymythisisthis 8y ago

When will the right mirror be replaced with a camera and dedicated screen. Until the 1980s cars didn't even have a mirror on the right side. Getting rid of the mirror will make cars more aerodynamic. It will also make cars safer, no more knocking over cyclists with the right side mirror. It will make cars cheaper to maintain, mirrors are expensive to maintain.

Shank 8y ago

Totaled? Maybe insurance totaled, but that police cruiser looks relatively in fact from the picture. The driver's side door is open and and it doesn't look like it was crumpled in any way in that zone. The rear driver's side passenger door looks like it took more damage, and the entire frame of the cruiser still looks like it's in relatively okay condition. The Tesla is in the same shape. I'm not trying to downplay the impacts of the driver or Autopilot here, but even if a police officer was in the cruiser, it doesn't look like it would have been as catastrophic as the article implies.

TeeWEE 8y ago

Everybody is so hard on Tesla. And I do agree that the name "AutoPilot" gives the wrong impression of what it can do. But think about it like Elon Musk would: If AutoPilot is statistically saver that a car without AutoPilot then it's good enough to be sold on production cars. Tesla cars are saver that normal cars statistically. Off course, picking one crash and saying AutoPilot sucks is statistically not the right approach. I do agree that Tesla should improve on this. But crashing into a parked car probably means that the driver was playing with his phone, or the cars touch screen too much. Tesla should have systems in place that detects the driver not paying attention. (something better than touching the steer)

paul7986 8y ago

Pay up the nose to be a billionaires guinea pig so he can go can down in history as a pioneer of robot cars while while you go up in flames...HELL NO!!!

dingo_bat 8y ago

To successfully develop self-driving cars, without spending NASA moon mission like time and money, we need to put a value on a human life. Maybe even different values for passenger, driver, pedestrian, other motorists, policemen, etc. Then the risk, time, and money to spend will be easily defined. If some task will take a software engineer (paid $150k/year) half year to develop but only increase safety enough to save 1 pedestrian per decade, and a pedestrian is valued at $50k, then maybe the dev can work on something else. Numbers are made up just to illustrate the point. But this is how Tesla, or any other self-driving car-maker can quickly bring self-driving tech to the public in a cost-effective manner, and within reasonable time-frames.

rubidium 8y ago
Your guess at numbers, even though made up, have a concerning low regard for human life. Since they're required to, the us dept of transportation puts it at just over 6 million. Priceless is of course the right answer, but engineering wise you're in the 5-10 million range.

flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago

My sinister side is tingling... How convenient for non-autopilot auto manufacturers... to have a competitor out there boasting semi-autopilot capabilities... I wonder how many of these "autopilot crashes" could be machinations... if not already, then in the future perhaps?

cm2012 8y ago
Or, the incredibly more likely and predicted option is that you shouldn't promote a self driving car that requires constant attention from the driver. Comments on every HN thread have literally warned about this for years.

mrtest002 8y ago

In the last 24 hours, 100 people died in car crashes - but 2 crashes a year apart and its "why does this keep happening". I realize the numbers are not comparable - however, 100 people dying a day is seen as act of God, but 100% driver-less society and getting 1 person dying a week will get these cars banned probably.

Animats 8y ago

Has Tesla blamed the driver yet? They might get away with that here. The road was not divided and unsuitable for their lane-keeping system. The pavement markings are unusual.[1] Of course, as usual, their obstacle detection failed to detect a stationary obstacle that didn't look like the rear end of a car in the same lane. We need a minimum standard for a vehicle which takes automated control of steering and braking. It must reliably stop for obstacles. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BjqTZoD5Yws https://goo.gl/maps/BjqTZoD5Yws

joshuakcockrell 8y ago
Here's the exact spot on that road that matches the picture in the article https://goo.gl/maps/pj3X4gAuG672 https://goo.gl/maps/pj3X4gAuG672
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

pmontra 8y ago

Los Angeles Times blocked Europe because of GDPR. Here's a link we can read from there https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot/tesla-hits-parked-california-police-vehicle-driver-blames-autopilot-idUSKCN1IU2SZ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot/tesla-hit...

Tomte 8y ago

I wish all those advanced assist functions in today's upper middle-class cars would trickle down to cheaper cars faster. That would give us much more safety now. It seems Teslas autopilot cannot reliably do much more than conventional lane assist etc. Tesla could disable autonomous lane changing and autonomous changing of streets, requiring driver's input for all changes of direction (that are not smoothing out, but staying in lane), and it would be really good. But Tesla needs the impression of game-changing, not just best-in-class for financial markets reasons. I believe authorities should order call-backs and force Tesla to disable all traces of autonomy.

Maxion 8y ago
The thing is, a tesla crashing while running on autopilot is more newsworthy than a tesla crashing while being driven. We should not let anecdotal evidence drive our fears.
- Tomte 8y ago
  I don't see how this comment could possibly be a reply to mine.

mannykannot 8y ago

That disclaimer wears thinner each time someone does something stupid like this. Tesla can keep repeating it until a third party gets killed or maimed, or it can act responsibly.

djsumdog 8y ago

Let's make the roads out of rubber and the wheels out of pavement. I feel like this is the backwards mentality with autonomous vehicles. I wrote a while ago about how they simply cannot solve the transportation problem, at least not in a way that's cheaper than just building mass transit: https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-so... I realize this particular case is different with us talking about assistance/safety features, but I still feel we're going the wrong direction here. These features reduce your awareness. They're like a teenage driver you constantly have to monitor, but worse. They teach people to be comfortable and less alert with systems that have potentially fatal bugs that we can't yet identify. We can build mass transit now, at a fraction of the cost of developing the tech for automated vehicles. There are so many corner cases, with highways, city driving conditions that simply cannot pan out for autonomous vehicles without a lot of testing; and a lot of people getting injured and dying. I wish people would shelve this pipe dream for now. Maybe once we have really solid rail transport again in the US, like we use to decades ago, and rich and poor people can have a means to work even in smaller cities; then we can work on frivolous junk that will benefit the few that can afford it. Right now we just run the risk of killing more people who can't.

tim333 8y ago
We've had mass transit for a century. I don't see much harm in trying something new that may save a million lives per year.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  But we haven't, not in America. Sure the rest of the world does, but we've lost most of our mass transit over the past century. Knowing you can get on a train at 2am and make it home does play a significant role in reducing drunk driving, and can benefit people of all income levels.
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theCricketer 8y ago

Elon Musk has constantly underestimated the difficulty of autonomous driving. This video (https://youtu.be/wsixsRI-Sz4?t=1h18m28s https://youtu.be/wsixsRI-Sz4?t=1h18m28s) shows Elon Musk, two years ago, saying the following: "I basically consider autonomous driving to be a solved problem". "A Model S and Model X can drive with greater safety than a person, already. Right now." "We are less than two years away from complete autonomy".

TekMol 8y ago

All I see is this: "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." Maybe we should develop a habbit here on HN not to link to geo-fenced sites?

cherioo 8y ago

People always lament about how Tesla tries to mislead customer's about its capability, but is there actually data that shows this is truly the case among Tesla owners? How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? Even among non-Tesla cars, whose manufacturers don't try to "mislead", 71 percent of people believe automatic emergency braking can avoid all crashes [0]. Is this percentage higher or lower for Tesla, and is that difference warranted? [0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/08/hit-brakes-not-self-braking-cars-designed-stop/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/08/hit-brakes-not-self-braking... [1] Quote from above "When traveling at 45 mph and approaching a static vehicle, a scenario designed to push systems beyond the stated limitations, the systems designed to prevent crashes reduced speeds by 74 percent overall and avoided crashes in 40 percent of scenarios. In contrast, systems designed to lessen crash severity were only able to reduce vehicle speed by 9 percent overall."

soziawa 8y ago
> How many times does "attention needed" beep is needed before customer can be considered reasonably informed that it is not fully self-driving? I mean there is a warning telling you that it's not self driving. People are dumb, that's it.
- azinman2 8y ago
  I don’t think it’s helpful or even correct to say “people are dumb,” as if this is purely a user problem. The system exists in a bad gray zone — one that works well enough most of the time you stop paying attention. But it’s not full proof, so you get the worst of cognitive bias here. Personally I think this faux self driving (literally falsely named auto pilot) should be outlawed. We cannot depend on people to take over when the car generally is handling the situation most of the time. Either manual or fully automatic — this in between will continue to cause too many bad accidents.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Agree, if you are not actively driving, your attention, and therefore reaction time, will inevitably deteriorate. In addition to that your reaction time is further reduced by the fact that even if you anticipated a problem looking at the road, you need to wait long enough after when you expected the car to react before realising that the car didn’t react and you need to take over, which further reduces your reaction time. Which is why I have some sympathy for the drivers of experimental self driving cars. Doesn’t excuse them playing with their smartphone at the wheel but they are tasked with a really hard exercise while being legally liable if things go wrong.

cr4zy 8y ago

One way to avoid these types of crashes IMO is anomaly detection. It's quite simple to do anomaly detection in pixels using modern deep pixel prediction nets like PredNet. In my experiments you get a few seconds lead time on something like a car cutting you off (the car starts to head out of the lane before actually crossing it for example). This allows alerting the driver, and with a full windshield HUD you could even highlight the anomalous pixels on the windshield. The nice thing about this is that it can be trained in an unsupervised manner on all the available data. Some important details are to find anomalies in object bounding boxes, using something like Tensorflow's object detection pretrained net. Otherwise buildings with lots of striations would light up the anomaly detector. Also, you should detect anomalies in a human colorspace like CIELAB so that white cars (#fff) are not artificially weighted as more anomalous. Finally, you could use this as input to a planner like Model Predictive Control where a higher cost is incurred for approaching anomalous objects.

toxik 8y ago
Great you solved AD with this one simple trick!

iamtew 8y ago

Is the article available to Europeans somewhere? All I'm getting is a message with this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. On the other hand, I'm wondering how much I want to read an article from a website where they must track me to when I just want to read something...

reacharavindh 8y ago
Same here. If nothing, GDPR at least brings awareness to the general public about the level of unnecessary tracking that all these websites do.
perlgeek 8y ago
For now I'll flag any article on HN that isn't readable in Europe. Reducing availability to readers should come with some social media penalty.
amyjess 8y ago
archive.is is your friend. http://archive.is/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tesla-collision-20180529-story.html http://archive.is/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-l...
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
It's also quite disconcerting to consider the implications of this. Since we 'opt in' to the articles we click on, tracking what individuals read and then building a profile based off of that would be quite informative, and quite invasive. And then sharing, trading (to expand the profile), and selling it to other companies? Really nasty stuff.
- iamtew 8y ago
  That's exactly why the GDPR is put in place, to give users transparency and force website to ask the users consent before tracking. You'll see some sites have quite an extensive menu of opting in to various tracking etc. For example Engadget or TechCrunch have a popup asking you to give consent, or not, before using the website. This is how it should be done. Then there's other websites that shows you all it's tracking and ask you to just accept, there's no option to refuse, which is against GDPR, as implied consent is no longer valid. And then you'll have websites like latimes that just goes "fuck it, we'll just block 500 million people in EU instead!"

fijal 8y ago

I enjoy how "EU" means "outside of us". I'm in South Africa and it's blocked for the eu

mkj 8y ago
Maybe they're using browser timezones
- Symbiote 8y ago
  That wouldn't be enough, there is EU territory outside Europe. (French Guyana, Martinique, Réunion etc.)

cameldrv 8y ago

Tesla Autopilot doesn't see stationary objects. It sees moving objects with its radar, and tries to avoid hitting them. It sees lane markings with its camera, and it tries to stay between them. Sometimes lane markings are confusing, worn, or inconsistent. If that happens, your Tesla will smash you at 70mph into a concrete barrier/police car. It will not slow down if it is uncertain about the lane markings, it will not beep if there is a stationary object ahead.

SriniK 8y ago

I really wish everyone had a chance to use the autopilot feature and judge themselves. I use it every single day and trust the machine. Issue is, with every complex system, there are few ins and outs that users need to know - like lane merge buffer lines, sharp lane merges by another vehicle in front of view, etc. Within your first few rides(below 10), users could pretty much guess when it works and when it might have issues. On labeling the feature, it is marked clearly BETA and wiggle prompt is shown pretty much in all the confusing cases - so alert is never missed for me. My only gripe is with all these incidents, Tesla is forced to update the feature to make it less user friendly or take out completely. I genuinely feel safe and come home every single day with less stress. Elon's tantrums are not helping the situation either.

yellow_postit 8y ago
Blaming the users doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. If the system needs users “guessing” about its behavior maybe it should be gates behind a test with periodic checkpoints as the software behavior changes.
jijojv 8y ago
I have been using AP2 every day for more than a year now as its very convenient but inherently dangerous as its addictive and provides a false sense of security as it works great ~ 90-95% of the time. I would not be opposed to an auto-steer ban to force Tesla to get their priorities straight about stationery object detection and auto-braking and stop scamming people about their self-driving if its really years away. You can still use adaptive cruise which eases all the commute hassles yet forces you to be actively engaged.
nikofeyn 8y ago
can i ask why you “trust” the system with your life so much? there’s not a single piece of software i trust in my daily life. i mean, something as simple as an iPad, phone, computer, tv, etc. hardly goes a day without a glitch, but yet people are ready to trust “self-driving” auto features as if they’ve never experienced a software failure before. and normally, it isn’t a software failure in the strictest sense. it’s a human error embedded in software. so i ask myself, do i trust the however many overworked, sleep deprived, wide-eyed engineers’ abstract and concrete thought now embedded in cars’ active driving systems? the answer is no way.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Articles like this should really include incident rates per miles driven for the self driving vehicle and compare that against human rates. Without that this feels a lot like an intentional effort to mislead. What matters are the crash rates. E.g. - how many humans crashed into an unmoving vehicle yesterday? An immense number but of course they also drove far more miles as well. So the question is exactly how many miles? The first milestone for vehicular automation is not perfection, but to simply be better, and in the worst case - comparable, to humans. Given the media's tendency to try to make big news out of every single self driving vehicle crash, it seems like we're already approaching (if not passing) this first milestone, as these articles are relatively rare while these vehicles have driven hundreds of millions of miles in autopilot. I can't find the latest number, but back in October 2016 Tesla already had 222 million miles under autopilot. It's safe to assume it's now some substantial multiple of that. Some time it would be interesting to see media releases around the time we transitioned from horses/carriages to automobiles, to see how the state of the media has changed. Or perhaps it has always been this way. "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. - Thomas Jefferson, 1807"

hagreet 8y ago

Unavailable in most European countries. #GDPRproductivity

soziawa 8y ago

> Cota said. > Cota said. > Cota said. Three times in a row, has this article been written by a robot? It doesn't feel like something a human would write.

mirimir 8y ago

I can't figure out the geometry of this accident. It looks like the Tesla hit the cruiser near the left rear wheel. And the cruiser was pushed sideways over the curb. But its right rear tire looks to be inflated. So why would the Tesla have been heading toward the roadside? Was the cruiser perhaps parked in the middle of the roadway?

jread 8y ago

I live in Laguna, cycled by this accident today, own a Tesla, and can attest to consistent autopilot issues in this section of the highway. The road widens with a turnoff to the right, and in my experience that is exactly the direction autopilot wants to go every time, rather than follow the center line, even when it is tracking a lead vehicle that does so. There are no lines to the right, so I’m not quite sure why it does this. But, I can understand how an innattentive driver might end up in this situation because until this point in the road autopilot works great.

__m 8y ago

Elon Musk: „Fake News!“

rasz 8y ago

"Elon Musk, has said it repeatedly warns drivers to stay alert" Its AutoPilot, why the hell are all those people expecting it to Pilot the car Auto matically? ....

torgian 8y ago

Sounds like Tesla has the right idea?

DanBC 8y ago

> The Palo Alto-based automaker, led by Elon Musk, has said it repeatedly warns drivers to stay alert, keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicle at all times while using the Autopilot system. That Tesla is taking so long to learn what "human factors" are is painful, especially since HF has been part of other industries for decades.

SpecialistEMT 8y ago

Acab :D