9 ms·

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 usin

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.
  - foota 8y ago
    I think the idea is that the UI needs to force you to always pay attention.
  - jellicle 8y ago
    I don't think people realize that "Tesla Autopilot" will never, ever, ever stop for an object in front of it. Tesla has said repeatedly it isn't designed to do so. If you run a Tesla toward a brick wall with Autopilot on, it will crash into it 100 out of 100 times. It will hit ANYTHING in the lane ahead of you. It isn't designed to stop in such cases. So there's no need for a UI. If there's something ahead of you, you must stop or you will hit it full speed without braking.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      What? That's not true. It can and does brake for objects in front of you that it senses. Its ability to sense objects is sadly very incomplete, but it does (quite often, but not often enough) successfully sense objects and slow or stop for them. See page 93 of this owner's manual, for example: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_s_owners_manual_north_america_en_us.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_s_owners_man... (What it won't do is steer around obstructions in a lane, either full or partial.)
      - beamatronic 8y ago
        What is the difference between “objects in front of you that it senses” and “obstructions in a lane”?
        aetherson 8y ago
        Well, I guess the second doesn't presuppose that it senses them. But I think you concentrated on the wrong thing: Autopilot is not designed to steer around obstructions. Autopilot is designed to brake for obstructions. It sometimes fails to brake for obstructions. But it sometimes succeeds in braking for obstructions. It never steers around obstructions, even if it senses them perfectly.
        vsl 8y ago
        Emergency braking is designed to lessen the impact, not prevent crash. See manual. This is mostly for avoiding crashes into a car that suddenly stops in front of you, I.e. in lower speed city traffic and jams. For this, detection within a few meters is all you need - ultrasound sensors might do. If the velocity delta is 120km/h, you’re not going to meaningfully slow down when already this close.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      They definitely can and do stop. There are plenty of videos of accidents avoided because of stopping, and this is a rather common feature on most mid to high-end cars now, commonly called a collision avoidance system and grouped under the umbrella of pre-crash safety systems. The avoidance feature is designed to stop the car in the event of an unavoidable obstacle directly ahead. It doesn't guarantee a stop but it will still apply the brakes faster and more fully than a human can react and thus shed more speed from the impact. Pre-crash safety will also tighten the seatbelts, move seat positions, close windows, and inflate auxiliary airbags in preparation, and these are all well-tested and proven features.
  - gehwartzen 8y ago
    The problem is that the "paying attention" part of driving is actually one of the most mentally taxing for the driver and it seems the pay attention 100% of the time is basically the same as saying 5% of the time an event might occurs that requires your immediate action. The problem being that if you have to jump into action to avoid something catastrophic 'sometimes' you basically have to be paying full attention all the time in order to collect enough contextual information about the incident. It's the same as watching someone toss a baseball to you and catching it vs your friend yelling "Headts up!" as a baseball is already flying through the air at your head.
    - anonymfus 8y ago
      Japanese train drivers are famous for pointing at things to always keep attention. May be similar system can be used for cars: for example car could narrate objects it sees and ask driver to point at them with hand, then check with depth sensor and gesture recognition that user pointed correctly, and then slow down and stop if user pointed wrong.
      - plttn 8y ago
        But that has the problem of "computer recognizes 'car', asks fleshy meat-bag to point at 'car', sees meat-bag point at 'car'". It doesn't learn anything about the environment from that, so to me it doesn't change anything.
      - zrobotics 8y ago
        So wait, rather than just pay attention to the road when driving my old beater, I could constantly be pointing at things and struggling with poor voice recognition? Somehow this sounds like more work than just driving the car myself.
  - beamatronic 8y ago
    Well, how does an airplane do it. A loud robot voice that goes “PULL... UP...”
    - glandium 8y ago
      If a loud robot voice goes "PULL UP", airplane pilots still have much more than a couple seconds to do something about it.
- jellicle 8y ago
  The NTSB report said that the driver was not watching any movie.
- cma 8y ago
  > 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. Reports at the time said he was watching it on a portable DVD player, not the Tesla screen. Not sure about the NTSB report someone just cited though. If that report really said he wasn't watching anything, I wonder how that rumor started?
- deelowe 8y ago
  > because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter This was proven to not be true: https://jalopnik.com/the-ntsb-to-partially-blame-teslas-autopilot-in-fatal-c-1803136365 https://jalopnik.com/the-ntsb-to-partially-blame-teslas-auto...
dirkgently 8y ago
Tesla's "Auto-pilot" is one of the most blatant market-speak lies I have come across lately, and they have been getting away it.
- beamatronic 8y ago
  I feel like I-5 between SF and LA is probably one of the safer places to use it. Any place else, maybe not so much.
  - wooter 8y ago
    typical fear-based, anti-freedom, anti-progress response in these comments. The NHTSA found a 40% crash rate reduction from Tesla's autopilot. So yea "blame Elon Musk"
    - tptacek 8y ago
      No, that's not at all clear, and is in fact unlikely; rather: some of the capabilities in the basket of features Tesla calls "autopilot" are associated with lower crash rates, and it's not at all clear which; there are steep reductions in accidents, possibly exceeding Tesla's numbers, from cars with automatic emergency braking. Just because AEBs are useful safety features does not mean that auto-steering is necessarily on net a safe feature.
      - rohit2412 8y ago
        Thank you for saying this. I'm just astounded people don't question things logically
    - intortus 8y ago
      No, the NHTSA found no such thing. They did, however, determine that Tesla was not participating in their investigations in good faith.
    - simion314 8y ago
      This is false, stop this Tesla propaganda with false facts.
Apocryphon 8y ago
It's time to hold all of these tech CEOs accountable for their wild promises and myth-making at the expense of the public good.
eanzenberg 8y ago
It’s pure arrogance. In the model 3 when you are in autopilot they have video games and memes to play/watch on the giant screen. How does this pass regulation and is allowed to be sold? Building products to actively distract an operator of a 2 ton vehicle moving 60 mph?
- mikeash 8y ago
  What are you talking about? There are no games or memes.
  - eddieh 8y ago
    Um https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998988641702526977 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998988641702526977
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Suddenly we’re trusting Elon to deliver on his tweets?
      - desdiv 8y ago
        Here are the easter eggs in action, on a production vehicle: https://youtu.be/1GrNv3ow9H8?t=640 https://youtu.be/1GrNv3ow9H8?t=640 Weird, the tweet was dated 2018-05-22 but the Youtube video shows easter eggs already deployed by 2018-05-23. I know all Tesla vehicles have automatic over-the-air updates but that's still surprisingly quick. Must be Musk playing around with his time machine again.
        mikeash 8y ago
        Yes, there are easter eggs. I was replying to a comment that said “video games.”
        desdiv 8y ago
ashleyn 8y ago
I test drove a Volvo S90 recently. The Pilot Assist feature almost feels like a gimmick due to the attention required. If you don't give steering input in five seconds, Pilot Assist disables itself. It basically requires enough of your attention that there's little difference between using it and not using it. It seems pretty clear to me that Volvo only has Pilot Assist in the first place as a method to gather data via telemetry for the next generation of self-driving vehicles, because it otherwise doesn't seem to add anything useful to the driving experience. Consequently, I haven't heard of any notable incidents where Pilot Assist caused an accident. I haven't test driven Enhanced Autopilot but I see people on YouTube taking their hands off the wheel completely for much longer than the Volvo let me do. Tesla seems like they're pushing something half-baked out and representing it as something it isn't.
- MBCook 8y ago
  I’ve found lane keeping assistants to be fantastic, but you have to think of them as ASSISTING. It’s not going to drive for you. But it does an amazing job of basically canceling out crosswinds when you find yourself driving down the highway. It makes a huge difference, it makes it much less tiring/frustrating. Going slow on a windless day? Straight street? Not that useful. For helping with very gentle curves or very annoying crosswinds it’s quite nice.
  - intortus 8y ago
    And for basic station keeping in relatively predictable stop and go traffic. It relieves you of some unnecessary micromanagement but it's not autonomous.
- vsl 8y ago
  > Consequently, I haven't heard of any notable incidents where Pilot Assist caused an accident. It may be, but is not necessarily “consequently”. That Volvo is not cool to write about plays a role. You don’t read about boring daily crashes either.
Alex3917 8y ago
> Blame Elon Musk. I'm serious. If you want to fix the problem, just charge him with attempted murder of a cop.
buvanshak 8y ago
Entities like Elon Musk is a symptom of the worsening of the disease of stupidity that has gotten hold of the global human population.... It is not really surprising when our whole system of existence has the stupidity and weakness of its inhabitants at its foundation. Point is, this will only get worse. Because any "progress" along the current lines asks the common man to be more stupid...
admyral 8y ago
No offense but this is exactly the attitude that inhibits progress and led the auto industry to languish in mediocrity for years. If you wait until the technology would prevent all accidents, you'd be waiting forever.
- api 8y ago
  It needs to be as good as an average human. Do we have enough stats to compare yet?
  - admyral 8y ago
    As good as a human at what? It's 100% better at not falling asleep behind the wheel or driving while under the influence which statistically are the most common cause of traffic accidents.
  - jcims 8y ago
    They are falling way behind in blasting errant pedestrians. Stories from the last 24hrs. https://www.google.com/search?q=pedestrian+killed&prmd=nvi&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&biw=414&bih=660 https://www.google.com/search?q=pedestrian+killed&prmd=nvi&s...
- foolfoolz 8y ago
  tell this to the families of the people who have died
  - wooter 8y ago
    The NHTSA found a 40% crash rate reduction from Tesla's autopilot. So how about you tell all the people who lives have been saved that you wish they hadn't been because you're an emotional reactionary
    - olliej 8y ago
      I believe many people have found issues with the data used and how they were prevented. Also it's worth comparing the common case of accidents - bumper to bumper, etc on a freeway which I'd except all self driving systems to instantly reduce the rate of just by increasing the distance to the next car - to the number of serious crashes - e.g. driving into parked vehicles, concrete pillars - those have entirely different failure modes. That said, the reality is that the types of self driving systems currently deployed - Tesla or whomever - are all fundamentally flawed because they do two things: * Require attention from the human driver at all times * Cause driver inattention The first is fairly clear, literally every one of these products is prefaced with "the driver is still in control of the vehicle and must remain attentive", and the latter is clearly demonstrated because of all of the different mechanisms that the manufacturers are deploying to try and deal with the fact that if you tell a human to pay attention to a specific task, but they aren't doing that specific task, they will not pay attention. Every system tried just increases the time required for a human driver to adapt to unconsciously managing the various "pay attention" alarms. The solution is fully self driving cars. We don't have that yet. I fully expect them to be safer once we get there.
ajross 8y ago
> except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from Outrageously false. These incidents are so rare that they have whole news stories written about every single one. How many crashes were there in Laguna Beach yesterday? Tesla accident rates in aggregate are quite good. Under autopilot the data is noisy but still underneath the level of an average car (not as low as luxury vehicles in the same price range, though). Claiming that it "isn't ready" is innumerate nonsense. It could clearly be better, sure. So could you. And no one is demanding to revoke your license, because you aren't a scary AI.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  How many Tesla's are there? How many crash without autopilot, and how many crash with autopilot? How does this compare with other low-ownership rate cars in the same class? Seems to me that it's premature to me making bold claims like this. Of cars costing over $100k, what's the accident rate?
  - ajross 8y ago
    There were numbers thrown around in the last thread on this, I gave you my memory. The answer is "Teslas are safe enough". Human drivers with the same accident rate wouldn't raise even a hair on an eyebrow. And the "bold claims" bit is exactly backward. You are the one claiming that the technology "isn't ready" based on sensationalist local news story and not actual numbers.
- olliej 8y ago
  The problem is that the argument being presented: "self driving is safer" is defeated by very obvious failures (driving into pillars, police cars, and people) that are /exactly/ the kinds of things that a computer should be able to handle. Human caused accidents in these situations are almost invariably due to inattentiveness that should not apply to any automated system. So we get to the problem of "if it can't do handle the specific obvious case where it should be absolutely superior" (I would argue an automated system should not have ever been able to make either the police cruiser or the 280 crash in any circumstances. Those were both in perfect conditions - clear weather, etc, etc), how can we trust it to handle any of the complex situations that a self driving car necessarily must handle? The Tesla system solves this by simply saying "the driver is still driving, we're merely assisting", but that assistance leads to inattentiveness - that's human nature, you have to design around it - which should be fine, if the systems were able to handle that, but that clearly are not. I would argue that given the configuration of the Tesla system they are less safe, not necessarily due to net accidents, but rather because of the failure modes of the accidents. Bumper to bumper accidents on a freeway happen all the time, even driving perfectly you can end up in them because not everyone else is driving perfectly. The problem with things like the Tesla system is that it's generally fine, except in those cases where it drives at speed into objects because it gets confused. If your vision or mental state leaves you unable to safely account for large obstructions you aren't allowed to drive. Because it isn't safe.
mrb 8y ago
«the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough» What data are you basing this statement on? Or is this just your vague gut feeling based on reading about a few accidents in the news? I thought statistical data showed otherwise, that the technology was safe enough (ie. better than humans). Edit: removed "debunked stats".
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  These numbers from Tesla have been debunked several times (see every older discussion on this on HN) because of the flawed methodology (mostly comparing apples to oranges).
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Reading that blog entry makes me more distrustful of Tesla than I was, because I don't think it's appropriate to compare Autopilot miles to generic human driver miles. Autopilot is not suitable for all types of driving. The most readily accessible statistics that would be more comparable would be fatalities on interstates. US interstate deaths are about 1 per 183 million miles, so while Autopilot may be safer, it's not as clear depending on the uncertainty of the 320 million mile figure. Also, German drivers on the autobahn have roughly half the fatality rate, which is better than the claim for Autopilot. All in all, I think an honest assessment would be that it's probably as good as an average driver in good conditions who isn't drunk. But rhetoric about saving 900K lives raises my hackles - I do not want to trust the source of this sort of PR with my life.
Iv 8y ago
Nope, I am still blaming government (and I am in no way a Musk fanboy) Self-driving tech has been there for decades. Convoy driving of trucks (one human-driven truck in front, several trucks following its lead) on highways was developed in the 90s. On well-maintained infrastructures, automated driving is a problem that was solved before deep learning. The fact that we don't have an automatic lane-driving mode for highways as a standard feature in new cars is a political failure. In 1997 a huge and successful demonstrator for an automated highway system was made. And legislator did not follow up by allowing on the road the systems they spent more than 10 billions to develop. [1] In my opinion, a technology should be considered ready/safe enough if it is x times safer than the average driver. Zero accident is a crazy requirement. 10 times safer as human is much more reasonable but no politician will accept that. And obviously it is easier to develop a safe system on some well known and well maintained road segments (e.g. highways) than on 100% of the roads and dirt roads on the North American continent. So yes, the only way for an economic actor to get into there is to bend the existing rules, as rules for automated vehicles were never made. You can't sell a car saying "no need to look at the road, I'll drive for you" so you put a disclaimer, while making sure people understand that you actually made a self-driving car. You can't sell a self-driving car and argue that your rate of accident is acceptable because the laws for such a notions are not there. A single accident in your self-driving car (that may be 10 times safer than a manual car) and you will be considered responsible. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-national-automated-highway-system-that-almost-was-63027245/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-national-automate...

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.
- foota 8y ago
  I think the idea is that the UI needs to force you to always pay attention.
- jellicle 8y ago
  I don't think people realize that "Tesla Autopilot" will never, ever, ever stop for an object in front of it. Tesla has said repeatedly it isn't designed to do so. If you run a Tesla toward a brick wall with Autopilot on, it will crash into it 100 out of 100 times. It will hit ANYTHING in the lane ahead of you. It isn't designed to stop in such cases. So there's no need for a UI. If there's something ahead of you, you must stop or you will hit it full speed without braking.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    What? That's not true. It can and does brake for objects in front of you that it senses. Its ability to sense objects is sadly very incomplete, but it does (quite often, but not often enough) successfully sense objects and slow or stop for them. See page 93 of this owner's manual, for example: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_s_owners_manual_north_america_en_us.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_s_owners_man... (What it won't do is steer around obstructions in a lane, either full or partial.)
    - beamatronic 8y ago
      What is the difference between “objects in front of you that it senses” and “obstructions in a lane”?
      - aetherson 8y ago
        Well, I guess the second doesn't presuppose that it senses them. But I think you concentrated on the wrong thing: Autopilot is not designed to steer around obstructions. Autopilot is designed to brake for obstructions. It sometimes fails to brake for obstructions. But it sometimes succeeds in braking for obstructions. It never steers around obstructions, even if it senses them perfectly.
        vsl 8y ago
        Emergency braking is designed to lessen the impact, not prevent crash. See manual. This is mostly for avoiding crashes into a car that suddenly stops in front of you, I.e. in lower speed city traffic and jams. For this, detection within a few meters is all you need - ultrasound sensors might do. If the velocity delta is 120km/h, you’re not going to meaningfully slow down when already this close.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    They definitely can and do stop. There are plenty of videos of accidents avoided because of stopping, and this is a rather common feature on most mid to high-end cars now, commonly called a collision avoidance system and grouped under the umbrella of pre-crash safety systems. The avoidance feature is designed to stop the car in the event of an unavoidable obstacle directly ahead. It doesn't guarantee a stop but it will still apply the brakes faster and more fully than a human can react and thus shed more speed from the impact. Pre-crash safety will also tighten the seatbelts, move seat positions, close windows, and inflate auxiliary airbags in preparation, and these are all well-tested and proven features.
- gehwartzen 8y ago
  The problem is that the "paying attention" part of driving is actually one of the most mentally taxing for the driver and it seems the pay attention 100% of the time is basically the same as saying 5% of the time an event might occurs that requires your immediate action. The problem being that if you have to jump into action to avoid something catastrophic 'sometimes' you basically have to be paying full attention all the time in order to collect enough contextual information about the incident. It's the same as watching someone toss a baseball to you and catching it vs your friend yelling "Headts up!" as a baseball is already flying through the air at your head.
  - anonymfus 8y ago
    Japanese train drivers are famous for pointing at things to always keep attention. May be similar system can be used for cars: for example car could narrate objects it sees and ask driver to point at them with hand, then check with depth sensor and gesture recognition that user pointed correctly, and then slow down and stop if user pointed wrong.
    - plttn 8y ago
      But that has the problem of "computer recognizes 'car', asks fleshy meat-bag to point at 'car', sees meat-bag point at 'car'". It doesn't learn anything about the environment from that, so to me it doesn't change anything.
    - zrobotics 8y ago
      So wait, rather than just pay attention to the road when driving my old beater, I could constantly be pointing at things and struggling with poor voice recognition? Somehow this sounds like more work than just driving the car myself.
- beamatronic 8y ago
  Well, how does an airplane do it. A loud robot voice that goes “PULL... UP...”
  - glandium 8y ago
    If a loud robot voice goes "PULL UP", airplane pilots still have much more than a couple seconds to do something about it.
jellicle 8y ago
The NTSB report said that the driver was not watching any movie.
cma 8y ago
> 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. Reports at the time said he was watching it on a portable DVD player, not the Tesla screen. Not sure about the NTSB report someone just cited though. If that report really said he wasn't watching anything, I wonder how that rumor started?
deelowe 8y ago
> because if the driver hadn't been watching Harry Potter This was proven to not be true: https://jalopnik.com/the-ntsb-to-partially-blame-teslas-autopilot-in-fatal-c-1803136365 https://jalopnik.com/the-ntsb-to-partially-blame-teslas-auto...

dirkgently 8y ago

Tesla's "Auto-pilot" is one of the most blatant market-speak lies I have come across lately, and they have been getting away it.

beamatronic 8y ago
I feel like I-5 between SF and LA is probably one of the safer places to use it. Any place else, maybe not so much.
- wooter 8y ago
  typical fear-based, anti-freedom, anti-progress response in these comments. The NHTSA found a 40% crash rate reduction from Tesla's autopilot. So yea "blame Elon Musk"
  - tptacek 8y ago
    No, that's not at all clear, and is in fact unlikely; rather: some of the capabilities in the basket of features Tesla calls "autopilot" are associated with lower crash rates, and it's not at all clear which; there are steep reductions in accidents, possibly exceeding Tesla's numbers, from cars with automatic emergency braking. Just because AEBs are useful safety features does not mean that auto-steering is necessarily on net a safe feature.
    - rohit2412 8y ago
      Thank you for saying this. I'm just astounded people don't question things logically
  - intortus 8y ago
    No, the NHTSA found no such thing. They did, however, determine that Tesla was not participating in their investigations in good faith.
  - simion314 8y ago
    This is false, stop this Tesla propaganda with false facts.

Apocryphon 8y ago

It's time to hold all of these tech CEOs accountable for their wild promises and myth-making at the expense of the public good.

eanzenberg 8y ago

It’s pure arrogance. In the model 3 when you are in autopilot they have video games and memes to play/watch on the giant screen. How does this pass regulation and is allowed to be sold? Building products to actively distract an operator of a 2 ton vehicle moving 60 mph?

mikeash 8y ago
What are you talking about? There are no games or memes.
- eddieh 8y ago
  Um https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998988641702526977 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998988641702526977
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Suddenly we’re trusting Elon to deliver on his tweets?
    - desdiv 8y ago
      Here are the easter eggs in action, on a production vehicle: https://youtu.be/1GrNv3ow9H8?t=640 https://youtu.be/1GrNv3ow9H8?t=640 Weird, the tweet was dated 2018-05-22 but the Youtube video shows easter eggs already deployed by 2018-05-23. I know all Tesla vehicles have automatic over-the-air updates but that's still surprisingly quick. Must be Musk playing around with his time machine again.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        Yes, there are easter eggs. I was replying to a comment that said “video games.”
        desdiv 8y ago

ashleyn 8y ago

I test drove a Volvo S90 recently. The Pilot Assist feature almost feels like a gimmick due to the attention required. If you don't give steering input in five seconds, Pilot Assist disables itself. It basically requires enough of your attention that there's little difference between using it and not using it. It seems pretty clear to me that Volvo only has Pilot Assist in the first place as a method to gather data via telemetry for the next generation of self-driving vehicles, because it otherwise doesn't seem to add anything useful to the driving experience. Consequently, I haven't heard of any notable incidents where Pilot Assist caused an accident. I haven't test driven Enhanced Autopilot but I see people on YouTube taking their hands off the wheel completely for much longer than the Volvo let me do. Tesla seems like they're pushing something half-baked out and representing it as something it isn't.

MBCook 8y ago
I’ve found lane keeping assistants to be fantastic, but you have to think of them as ASSISTING. It’s not going to drive for you. But it does an amazing job of basically canceling out crosswinds when you find yourself driving down the highway. It makes a huge difference, it makes it much less tiring/frustrating. Going slow on a windless day? Straight street? Not that useful. For helping with very gentle curves or very annoying crosswinds it’s quite nice.
- intortus 8y ago
  And for basic station keeping in relatively predictable stop and go traffic. It relieves you of some unnecessary micromanagement but it's not autonomous.
vsl 8y ago
> Consequently, I haven't heard of any notable incidents where Pilot Assist caused an accident. It may be, but is not necessarily “consequently”. That Volvo is not cool to write about plays a role. You don’t read about boring daily crashes either.

Alex3917 8y ago

> Blame Elon Musk. I'm serious. If you want to fix the problem, just charge him with attempted murder of a cop.

buvanshak 8y ago

Entities like Elon Musk is a symptom of the worsening of the disease of stupidity that has gotten hold of the global human population.... It is not really surprising when our whole system of existence has the stupidity and weakness of its inhabitants at its foundation. Point is, this will only get worse. Because any "progress" along the current lines asks the common man to be more stupid...

admyral 8y ago

No offense but this is exactly the attitude that inhibits progress and led the auto industry to languish in mediocrity for years. If you wait until the technology would prevent all accidents, you'd be waiting forever.

api 8y ago
It needs to be as good as an average human. Do we have enough stats to compare yet?
- admyral 8y ago
  As good as a human at what? It's 100% better at not falling asleep behind the wheel or driving while under the influence which statistically are the most common cause of traffic accidents.
- jcims 8y ago
  They are falling way behind in blasting errant pedestrians. Stories from the last 24hrs. https://www.google.com/search?q=pedestrian+killed&prmd=nvi&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&biw=414&bih=660 https://www.google.com/search?q=pedestrian+killed&prmd=nvi&s...
foolfoolz 8y ago
tell this to the families of the people who have died
- wooter 8y ago
  The NHTSA found a 40% crash rate reduction from Tesla's autopilot. So how about you tell all the people who lives have been saved that you wish they hadn't been because you're an emotional reactionary
  - olliej 8y ago
    I believe many people have found issues with the data used and how they were prevented. Also it's worth comparing the common case of accidents - bumper to bumper, etc on a freeway which I'd except all self driving systems to instantly reduce the rate of just by increasing the distance to the next car - to the number of serious crashes - e.g. driving into parked vehicles, concrete pillars - those have entirely different failure modes. That said, the reality is that the types of self driving systems currently deployed - Tesla or whomever - are all fundamentally flawed because they do two things: * Require attention from the human driver at all times * Cause driver inattention The first is fairly clear, literally every one of these products is prefaced with "the driver is still in control of the vehicle and must remain attentive", and the latter is clearly demonstrated because of all of the different mechanisms that the manufacturers are deploying to try and deal with the fact that if you tell a human to pay attention to a specific task, but they aren't doing that specific task, they will not pay attention. Every system tried just increases the time required for a human driver to adapt to unconsciously managing the various "pay attention" alarms. The solution is fully self driving cars. We don't have that yet. I fully expect them to be safer once we get there.

ajross 8y ago

> except the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough for what people are clearly using this from Outrageously false. These incidents are so rare that they have whole news stories written about every single one. How many crashes were there in Laguna Beach yesterday? Tesla accident rates in aggregate are quite good. Under autopilot the data is noisy but still underneath the level of an average car (not as low as luxury vehicles in the same price range, though). Claiming that it "isn't ready" is innumerate nonsense. It could clearly be better, sure. So could you. And no one is demanding to revoke your license, because you aren't a scary AI.

cromwellian 8y ago
How many Tesla's are there? How many crash without autopilot, and how many crash with autopilot? How does this compare with other low-ownership rate cars in the same class? Seems to me that it's premature to me making bold claims like this. Of cars costing over $100k, what's the accident rate?
- ajross 8y ago
  There were numbers thrown around in the last thread on this, I gave you my memory. The answer is "Teslas are safe enough". Human drivers with the same accident rate wouldn't raise even a hair on an eyebrow. And the "bold claims" bit is exactly backward. You are the one claiming that the technology "isn't ready" based on sensationalist local news story and not actual numbers.
olliej 8y ago
The problem is that the argument being presented: "self driving is safer" is defeated by very obvious failures (driving into pillars, police cars, and people) that are /exactly/ the kinds of things that a computer should be able to handle. Human caused accidents in these situations are almost invariably due to inattentiveness that should not apply to any automated system. So we get to the problem of "if it can't do handle the specific obvious case where it should be absolutely superior" (I would argue an automated system should not have ever been able to make either the police cruiser or the 280 crash in any circumstances. Those were both in perfect conditions - clear weather, etc, etc), how can we trust it to handle any of the complex situations that a self driving car necessarily must handle? The Tesla system solves this by simply saying "the driver is still driving, we're merely assisting", but that assistance leads to inattentiveness - that's human nature, you have to design around it - which should be fine, if the systems were able to handle that, but that clearly are not. I would argue that given the configuration of the Tesla system they are less safe, not necessarily due to net accidents, but rather because of the failure modes of the accidents. Bumper to bumper accidents on a freeway happen all the time, even driving perfectly you can end up in them because not everyone else is driving perfectly. The problem with things like the Tesla system is that it's generally fine, except in those cases where it drives at speed into objects because it gets confused. If your vision or mental state leaves you unable to safely account for large obstructions you aren't allowed to drive. Because it isn't safe.

mrb 8y ago

«the damn technology isn't ready/safe enough» What data are you basing this statement on? Or is this just your vague gut feeling based on reading about a few accidents in the news? I thought statistical data showed otherwise, that the technology was safe enough (ie. better than humans). Edit: removed "debunked stats".

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
These numbers from Tesla have been debunked several times (see every older discussion on this on HN) because of the flawed methodology (mostly comparing apples to oranges).
perl4ever 8y ago
Reading that blog entry makes me more distrustful of Tesla than I was, because I don't think it's appropriate to compare Autopilot miles to generic human driver miles. Autopilot is not suitable for all types of driving. The most readily accessible statistics that would be more comparable would be fatalities on interstates. US interstate deaths are about 1 per 183 million miles, so while Autopilot may be safer, it's not as clear depending on the uncertainty of the 320 million mile figure. Also, German drivers on the autobahn have roughly half the fatality rate, which is better than the claim for Autopilot. All in all, I think an honest assessment would be that it's probably as good as an average driver in good conditions who isn't drunk. But rhetoric about saving 900K lives raises my hackles - I do not want to trust the source of this sort of PR with my life.

Iv 8y ago

Nope, I am still blaming government (and I am in no way a Musk fanboy) Self-driving tech has been there for decades. Convoy driving of trucks (one human-driven truck in front, several trucks following its lead) on highways was developed in the 90s. On well-maintained infrastructures, automated driving is a problem that was solved before deep learning. The fact that we don't have an automatic lane-driving mode for highways as a standard feature in new cars is a political failure. In 1997 a huge and successful demonstrator for an automated highway system was made. And legislator did not follow up by allowing on the road the systems they spent more than 10 billions to develop. [1] In my opinion, a technology should be considered ready/safe enough if it is x times safer than the average driver. Zero accident is a crazy requirement. 10 times safer as human is much more reasonable but no politician will accept that. And obviously it is easier to develop a safe system on some well known and well maintained road segments (e.g. highways) than on 100% of the roads and dirt roads on the North American continent. So yes, the only way for an economic actor to get into there is to bend the existing rules, as rules for automated vehicles were never made. You can't sell a car saying "no need to look at the road, I'll drive for you" so you put a disclaimer, while making sure people understand that you actually made a self-driving car. You can't sell a self-driving car and argue that your rate of accident is acceptable because the laws for such a notions are not there. A single accident in your self-driving car (that may be 10 times safer than a manual car) and you will be considered responsible. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-national-automated-highway-system-that-almost-was-63027245/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-national-automate...