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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot
- WheelsAtLarge 7y agoQuestion: if the guy thought the Autopilot was failing, why did he continue to use it?
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoI have used Tesla’s autopilot...it has its moments...I don’t think it can make decisions within 10 second windows before obstacles. It’s also very dodgy at certain merges. I take it off autopilot. On a slightly diff note: I wanted a demo of auto parallel parking and also reverse parallel parking and summon feature after the last update. I went to the Tesla showroom. They were super nice but refused to demonstrate due to liability issues. They stood aside and a little away ..gave me instructions. Worked like a charm and it was awesome...but didn’t inspire confidence.
- majestik 7y agoI rented a Tesla Model S from Enterprise recently and learned they don’t enable Autopilot due to liability issues.
- chairmanwow1 7y agoThis is good to know. I was planning to rent one to show my family when they visit.
- fiddlerwoaroof 7y agoAutopilot or the Full Self Driving features? Autopilot itself is just lane assist and adaptive cruise control: the lane-changing features aren’t part of it.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoFrom previous reporting on this incident in 2018: > “The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision,” Tesla said. “The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.” 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... Also, the safety barrier that would've reduced the force of the impact had not been replaced after a recent accident just days before. > Earlier this week, Tesla said the divider was missing a safety barrier designed to reduce the impact of a crash. The automaker provided an image of the location taken a day before the collision that appeared to show the barrier had not been replaced following a recent crash. Reddit thread and Youtube video with a Model S driver reproducing the AP behavior due to the lane markings and uneven pavement: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/899i1w/my_model_s_failing_in_autopilot_where_the_model_x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/899i1w/my_mode... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJSjeHDvfY&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJSjeHDvfY&feature=youtu.be
- taneq 7y agoIt's the curse of SAE Level 3. The driver is responsible for monitoring a system that works fine 99% of the time, they start to feel a false sense of security and when it does fail they're not paying as much attention as they need to be. This is also why SAE autonomy levels are a poor measure of a vehicle's capabilities, but that's another rant.
- qeqeqeqe 7y agoIt's still safer than not having it.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoNot if it requires constant supervision, yet lulls the driver into a false sense of security such that they are predisposed to not provide that constant supervision.
- taneq 7y agoArguably no, it's not. This is why Waymo stopped working on level 3 and switched to level 4/5 systems. It's also why most vehicle manufacturers up until now have only supplied ADAS features which provide backup to the human driver (lane departure warnings, emergency braking assistance etc.) rather than features which drive while using the human driver as backup. There are a few coming out soon (SuperCruise, Pro Pilot) that will offer some degree of level 2/3 operation. It'll be very interesting to see how that goes liability-wise.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y agoI heard of a similar situation, there are times when trains almost drive themselves so the engineers don't need to pay much attention. The problem is when things go wrong and they need to act. Sometimes the engineers are so involved in other things that they fail to act. That's one of the theories given for the cause of the 2008 Chatsworth train crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collisio...
- LatteLazy 7y agoHe needed to finish KrazyKupKakes level 18.
- cptskippy 7y agoThat's the real question. The title should be "Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot but continued to use it and didn't have his hands on the wheel when the crash occurred."
- harrisonjackson 7y agoTesla says autopilot works but that driver should be ready to intervene. This is terrifying - like having a kid riding shotgun that might just reach out and turn the wheel while you are on the highway. Anyone who has driven with autopilot, how quickly might it react to a perceived obstacle? Would it take a hard turn into a median faster than a person could reasonably react if it thought there was something in the road or that the road took a hard left? Edit Ready to intervene can mean a lot of things - ready to take over in traffic or inclement weather vs firm grip on the wheel to resist rogue hard turns Actual quote from the article >Tesla says Autopilot is intended to be used for driver assistance and that drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.
- smileysteve 7y agoFrom my experience, not a hard turn. The worst was it was raining and inconstant lane markings around a turn. I wondered if it was going to make the turn or if it was going to make it too late towards the sidewall. It also takes very little interaction for it to pop out of self driving
- aaron_m04 7y ago> It also takes very little interaction for it to pop out of self driving That itself could be dangerous if it isn't very obvious to the driver that autopilot is no longer engaged.
- jaxn 7y agoAwareness of who is in control is a skill that you develop. There are audio, visual, and tactile queues.
- revscat 7y agoWhen it disengages itself it issues a series of loud tones and the display flashes red. A message also appears saying “TAKE OVER IMMEDIATELY”. In cases where the driver takes over, there is audial, visual, and tactile feedback letting you know it has been successfully disengaged.
- thbr99 7y agoDon't text and autopilot on level 3, which is a nascent technology. An engineer should know better. Wonder why a level 3 is allowed to market as an 'autopilot'.
- Balgair 7y ago> An engineer should know better Maaaaybe? I'm not a hydraulic engineer and won't pretend to be one. So I hire plumbers when things go wrong. If they screw up, I don't tend to blame myself though. I think the same logic would apply to the deceased.
- denkmoon 7y agoI feel that an engineer in almost any field should understand failsafe vs fail-deadly. Tesla's autopilot is definitely not a failsafe system. While this is somewhat callous, if this engineer had taken that seriously he would still be alive.
- jacobush 7y agoOr if Tesla had
- denkmoon 7y agoNobody at Tesla claims that this is a failsafe system. In fact, they specifically tell you to be ready to take over at any time. That is not a system I would rely upon, personally. Are companies bound to only selling failsafe products? Of course not, we'd never get anything done. I do find it somewhat immoral that Tesla are using their customers as beta testers for this, but nobody has been forced into this. Nobody is forced to use Autopilot.
- jacobush 7y agoI think something about responsibility changes at scale. If a Tesla was a bespoke machine, I'd have no issues. But they know that if they position a feature and posture just-so-and-so, a certain fraction of their customers will get it "the wrong way". What did they do to alleviate this? Nothing, in my not so humble opinion.
- shiftpgdn 7y agoIMHO the fault ultimately lies with Caltrans. Poorly drawn lane markers resulted in a human driver hitting the barrier just days before destroying the arresting system. If the lanes had been painted correctly and the arresting system replaced the Tesla driver would not have died.
- thbr99 7y agoOh yeah, you should come drive on Montreal roads. Lane markers don't exist.
- threeseed 7y agoThis is all conjecture. You don't know that the driver would still be alive if the lanes were painted correctly etc. Autopilot could still misidentify the barrier as we've seen it do in other situations.
- shiftpgdn 7y agoFive drivers hit the same barrier the year before the Tesla accident and a second human piloted vehicle fataly struck the same barrier just two months after the Tesa crash. It is absolutely a road design and maintenance issue.
- newnewpdro 7y agoHow many drivers didn't hit the same barrier that year? It just seems like an edge case that's catching inattentive drivers off guard, which IMHO is a category including Tesla's on autopilot. And it seems Tesla agrees here; they require drivers pay attention when using Autopilot. If your vehicle runs into a barrier on Autopilot, you weren't paying attention.
- falcolas 7y agoIt’s also a road design and marking issue. But poor roads and markings are normal, outside the biggest cities. For a good portion of the year, you can’t rely on being able to see any road markings in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.
- empath75 7y agoTesla should not be allowed to market their cars as self driving or call the product autopilot. It’s a fancy driver assist system that will sometimes kill you if you actually take Tesla marketing bullshit at face value.
- salimmadjd 7y agoThis is sad and tragic. I remember going with a friend on a Tesla test drive. He was eager to try the Autopilot system. And within a few minutes we got freaked out with what seem to us as unpredictable action and we turned it off. I think the engineer should have never relied on it. Especially if he had concerns with the system. At the same time, "Autopilot" is misleading and Tesla does own responsibility here. Even if it's purely a marketing term it's designed to up sell you on a half-baked technology. They should call it "Driver assist" or something like "cruise control plus". It's a heartbreaking story.
- keanzu 7y agoGM calls theirs Super Cruise which is true hands-free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeK0F-D3gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeK0F-D3gg
- bonestamp2 7y agoI like the idea of super cruise -- it seems like a lidar scan of the freeway would have prevented Huang's death. But, obviously the freeway changes over time so I wonder how frequently GM re-scans the freeways. Lidar is expensive of course, but it also seems so obvious that the lidar needs to be onboard the vehicle.
- keanzu 7y agoNot sure but apparently they detect road works and are able to update the maps remotely.
- bonestamp2 7y agoInteresting, thanks. Tesla should put Lidar in their Semi Trucks. Since they'll be constantly driving the whole country, they would have a lot of regularly updated scan data that they could deploy to their lower price point vehicles that only have cameras.
- bananabreakfast 7y ago
- voodooranger 7y agobreaking news from 2018? there’s nothing new here, including the deceased driver’s alleged complaints.
- thbr99 7y agoShort sellers on HN !
- thedance 7y agoThe news is that the NTSB released new information. Unfortunately their site is now down.
- LatteLazy 7y agoI'm not the person you replied to, but is this new info? I could have sworn I read all this last year...
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- Thorrez 7y agoYeah, and this article from 2018 has even more information, because it says Walter complained to the dealer, not just to his family as this new article says. >Walter Huang's family tells Dan Noyes he took his Tesla to the dealer, complaining that -- on multiple occasions -- the Autopilot veered toward that same barrier -- the one his Model X hit on Friday when he died. https://abc7news.com/3275600/ https://abc7news.com/3275600/ I guess maybe there's a small chance that the old article was wrong, and he didn't in fact complain to the dealer. But that in itself would be newsworthy in my view.
- imvetri 7y agoSorry to hear that.
- 32gbsd 7y agoLast stat i saw was something along the lines of 3k people dieing in crashes everyday. I personally "almost crash" at least 4 times a day. Driving is a dangerous game.
- ksml 7y agoYou almost crash at least 4 times a day?? I have no stats but I don't think that's normal. You should be driving much more defensively if that's the case.
- moneywoes 7y agoHow much space do you keep in between other drivers and yourself?
- 32gbsd 7y agoIts not about space. Its about how quickly the space can change from driving along to full on collision if a mistake is made by myself or several hundred other cars.
- unlinked_dll 7y agoYou have more time to react when you have more space
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- throwaway724 7y agoI'm increasingly of the opinion that technology like this will never see broad regulatory approval. I just can't see an argument where any agency will be comfortable with acceptable losses, and I don't see any endgame in which this technology does not result in an infinitesimal, but non-zero amount of fatal errors.
- keanzu 7y agoOn a regulatory basis true self driving only needs to outperform humans. Humans are good at driving but imperfect we have a nasty tendency to get ourselves into accidents, both fatal and non. My thought was that the public would fear and refuse to use the technology but some brave souls are jumping right in. My opinion: full self driving is only a matter of time. At some point in the future insurance companies will figure out that self driving is less dangerous than human drivers and start offering cheaper premiums and deductibles to self driving only cars.
- perl4ever 7y ago"At some point in the future insurance companies will figure out that self driving is less dangerous than human drivers and start offering cheaper premiums and deductibles to self driving only cars" Where does the faith in the tech and its future come from though? Wouldn't it be more logical to wait and then say "hey, Geico is offering a 20% discount if I buy a new car with these features, guess they must really make a difference" rather than going around proclaiming how much safer they are in advance?
- ww520 7y agoI have a car with the "autopilot" feature like the Tesla, but they call it adaptive cruise control and lane assist. The adaptive cruise control works pretty well; I guess it only needs to check the radar to see what's in front to slow down. The lane assist is problematic in recognizing different kind of lanes and would steer off course from time to time. I guess the current state of "autopilot" technology is simply not there.
- Jtsummers 7y agoSubaru? I gave up on lane assist because of a turn heading home from my old office. It really wanted to drive off that bridge and I didn't trust it to recover properly. It seemed safer to just turn it off after that.
- ww520 7y agoIt's another Japanese brand.
- rimliu 7y agoProbably Honda. My Civic has both plus Crash Avoidance system. All are very handy and work surprisingly well. I wish automakers would spend more effort on developing these driver-aid systems to increase safety instead of chasing the pipe-dream of self-driving cars.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoA lot of rental cars I've used in Italy have this lane assist feature. Italian roads often have... inconsistent or incomplete... markings. After the first day driving I had to Google how to switch it off, because it tried to crash the car several times. I don't understand how these features can be launched in this state.
- rhlsthrm 7y agoAnecdotally to the contrary, in California where the lane markings are quite good in most areas, the Tesla AP works great.
- sneak 7y agoAt the risk of sounding callous: how many Tesla drivers have previously complained about autopilot and not been killed whilst using it? How many non-Tesla drivers were killed in the same timespan by driving manually? This seems like a very naked appeal to emotion, and not relevant to the situation.
- danielinoa 7y agoAccording to this article: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30877577/driver-tesla-model-x-crash-complained-autopilot https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30877577/driver-tesla-mod... "Data from his phone indicates that a mobile game was active during his drive and that his hands were not on the wheel during the six seconds ahead of the crash."
- spookthesunset 7y agoGotta love how quick Tesla is to throw their customers under the bus using telemetry data the customer cannot access on their own..
- ztjio 7y agoTheir customer is perfectly aware of whether he has a video game going on in his hands instead of a steering wheel. No telemetry needed from that perspective.
- spookthesunset 7y agoYeah but it is auto pilot! It can drive itself!! You have no idea how many Tesla drivers will openly admit to taking their hands off the wheel and eyes of the road in order to take off a coat, tend to a child, etc. I work with somebody who claimed to do just that routinely. Here is somebody from a few days ago bragging about taking their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22231927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22231927
- revscat 7y agoPeople already do the things you listed, though. Hell, when my kids were in car seats I frequently had to reach around behind me to soothe them via touch. AutoPilot would have been a godsend, because I wouldn’t have had to stress out so much about juggling two things at once. This is the part where you call me irresponsible, right? It seems like every discussion on this topic follows that pattern. The fact remains, though, that humans are in cars, and have all the weirdness that goes along with it. AP makes it easier. A lot.
- runako 7y agoI am intrigued by Teslas, and am considering purchasing one. However, I would feel better about the purchase if there was absolutely no autopilot software or hardware on board. Ideally that would mean zero, including non-autopilot builds of all system and control software so there is no chance the car will ever engage autopilot. Is it possible to buy a Tesla completely devoid of autopilot, or is this type of accident potentially a risk in all of them?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 7y agoCan't you just not use it? The driver in the crash activated autopilot intentionally shortly before the crash. He did that and then took his hands off the wheel. I can't comment on autopilots general reliability but using it appears to be entirely optional...
- viklove 7y agoAs a software engineer it's hard to trust code that you know has flaws, because there could be a flaw that causes autopilot to automatically turn on. Extremely unlikely, I know, but it's definitely a nagging thought. It would be nicer if there were a mechanical cutoff (not really possible in this case) so you could be absolutely sure. I know, I know -- you can design software so that this type of flaw is completely impossible, but as a user I have no way of verifying this, and my trust has already been eroded by the feature I'm trying to disable so I really want to verify it.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 7y agoApparently it's a $7,000 option.
- runako 7y agoThat can be enabled remotely: "Full Self-Driving Capability is available for purchase post-delivery, prices are likely to increase over time with new feature releases" That means the hardware and software are in the vehicles for purchase via the website. Hence my question.
- Trias11 7y ago"Safety remains Caltrans top priority," he said. Where these Corp dummies are trained to claim that <the thing we totally screwed> is our top priority? This keeps repeating after every incident exposing ignorance and lack of care and attention to essential things.
- curiousgal 7y agoThis happened 2 years ago. It was a left-hand exit (why are those even a thing?). The seperator did not have contracting protectors because a car had previously crashed into them, I wonder why. No one ever dies in car accidents. Hence, Tesla is super bad for marketing its autopilot according to HN.
- toast0 7y agoThere's a left-hand exit there because there's an interchange between freeways, and the HOV lane exits on the left, to enable free flowing HOV traffic to avoid merging through general traffic to get to a right exit. At this interchange, I've seen lots of human drivers change between the exiting HOV lane and the continuing HOV lane (or vice versa) much later than is safe; presumably because they were surprised that their lane was exiting, or they noticed the exit too late, but didn't want to miss it. I haven't seen anyone drive in between the two lanes as if it was a lane, though; and usually the late lane changers are braking, not accelerating. It is unfortunate that the crash attenuator wasn't reset. Looking at the docs for a similar attenuator[1], it seems like resetting is somewhat involved, and you'd need a trained and properly equipped repair crew to do it, even if the time required is not that much. Scheduling is probably an issue. [1] https://www.dmtraffic.com/assets/sci_smart_cushion_design_and_installation_manual_2015.pdf https://www.dmtraffic.com/assets/sci_smart_cushion_design_an... page 9-13
- freepor 7y agoComplains to his wife that Autopilot steers him towards concrete barrier; continues to use Autopilot.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoSigh. It's like the NTSB's complaints about the FAA: tombstone, reactive regulation rather than proactively implementing recommendations. I don't mean to dogpile on Tesla in particular, I think autonomous driving will eventually be far, far safer in the long-term than human-error piloting, but it won't be outlawed because of egos. >>> Q: Is it still the case that there are several classes of insufficiently-solved autonomous driving problems? IIRC one of the big ones is/was recognizing stationary objects in the motorway when traveling at high speed (80 mph / 129 kph). Shouldn't one of the "prime directives" of autonomous driving be that it cannot operate at speeds higher than it can stop or avoid objects and people? These conditions include blind curves in the hills, children darting out from in front of parked cars, fog, rain or headlights/darkness. IIRC, is another difficult problem recognizing pedestrians or people on strange modes of transport, such as winter clothing, different heights, skin tones or doing things like being on stilts or riding a unicycle? PS: when a type of system becomes relied on pervasively, so-called "edge-cases" become everyday occurrences.
- ironmagma 7y agoThat would be all speeds. The worst case is that the computer doesn’t recognize an object as being on a collision path until after impact is imminent, which could be due to the object being filtered out as rain, classified as vegetation, improper predicted trajectory... any time you set up rules for self driving cars, things get very fuzzy very fast.
- smallstepforman 7y agoAs a software engineer, all I have to do is think that my colleges wrote the auto pilot code, and that would keep me from ever turning the feature on.
- WilliamEdward 7y agoThis kind of thing makes me think software engineering should require an actual accreditation like a formal engineering job does.
- asdff 7y agoTry to avoid putting your life in the hands of closed source software.
- mkl 7y agoWouldn't that make it impossible to drive almost any modern vehicle? Or fly in any modern passenger aeroplane?
- bagacrap 7y agoOr use the healthcare system
- WilliamEdward 7y agoOk i'll just stop using airlines and GPS, i guess.
- shrimpx 7y agoI don’t know why open source would make much of a difference in this case. It’s not like open source means guaranteed correctness.
- throwaway5752 7y agoThere are going to be Autopilot crashes and people should disable it if they uncomfortable with putting their lives in the hands of Tesla's software. I would be. But I see no reason to not believe to not believe what they have on https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport It shows Teslas have much fewer accidents than the average car, and that Teslas with autopilot enabled are substantially safe per mile than with autopilot disabled (25-50% more miles driven per accident). The article says a Prius hit the same place as this Tesla the week before. But the NTSB isn't investigating Toyota.
- stiglitz 7y agoTeslas are more expensive than the average car (hence might be driven more carefully), and autopilot is more likely to be enabled in predictable driving environments like highways.
- dmix 7y ago> more likely to be enabled in predictable driving environments like highways. Which is what it was designed for and which is a much easier problem to solve than inner-city driving. Which IMO I feel like more self-driving companies should have focused on first to perfect their systems. We used feature phones before smartphones for a reason, hardware/software is best developed incrementally.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agohence might be driven more carefully I don't know where you get that idea from, when I'm out cycling it's generally the people in expensive cars that don't pay much attention.
- stiglitz 7y agoYou’re more likely to notice expensive cars, and also more likely to notice cars with unsafe drivers.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
- crca 7y agoTesla publishes their safety numbers in terms of accidents per x millions of miles driven. If you believe their numbers then Autopilot in its current configuration is clearly safer than a purely human operated vehicle. Having driven on Autopilot for about 85% of the total time I’ve spent in a Tesla, its been a life changer. But obviously YMMV. It really sucks that this specific interchange has cost so many lives - and it’s apparent that there’s some frailty of the code that makes autopilot vehicles more susceptible. In general when it comes to crashes on Autopilot, it’s important to keep perspective. If you take your hands off the wheel and look at your phone for 6 seconds in any other car you’re going to have a bad time. On Autopilot, it took a confluence of bad road design, poor road maintenance, and an unlikely software fault to initiate a crash.
- mettamage 7y ago> If you take your hands off the wheel and look at your phone for 6 seconds in any other car you’re going to have a bad time. Which is why you don't do it in any other car. I don't know much about autopilot, but because we as humans don't know when it can go wrong, it's easier to get it into situations it wasn't designed for. This is not true for the 6 seconds any other car scenario as we will be predicting what the steering wheel and traffic in front of us might do.
- crca 7y agoVery true. Tesla has done a lot to try and make it clear to drivers that they must remain vigilant - in this particular case it sounds like the driver ignored several auditory tactile warnings to resume control of the vehicle, in addition to the standard warnings when Autopilot is activated. Short of changing the name I think they’ve done everything they can to manage expectations for Autopilot once you’re in the car, but humans don’t always work like that.
- riffraff 7y agoI do think changing the name would be the responsible thing to do. If you call something a knife you can't 100% blame the customers if they try to use it to cut stuff, even if you say "Knife™ should not be used for cutting"
- fxtentacle 7y agoI avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the issues. You know this effect when you open a new book and immediately spot a typo? I felt that way looking at state of the art AI vision papers. The first paper would crash, despite me using the same GPU as the authors. Turns out they got incredibly lucky not to trigger a driver bug causing random calculation errors. The second paper converted float to bool and then tried to use the gradient for training. That's just plain mathematically wrong, a step function doesn't have a non-zero gradient. The third paper only used a 3x3 pixel neighborhood for learning long-distance moves. Doesn't work, I cannot learn about New York by waking around in my bathroom. That gave me the gut feeling that most people doing the research were lacking the necessary mathematical background. AI is stochastical gradient descent optimization, after all. Thanks to TensorFlow, it is nowadays easy to try out other people's AI. So I took some photos of my road and put them through the state of the art computer visible AIs trained with KITTY, a self-driving car dataset of German roads. All of them couldn't even track the wall of the house correctly. So now I'm afraid to use anything self-driving ^_^
- liability 7y agoOptimistically; maybe everybody is hiding their 'secret sauce'. But I expect you're probably right.
- fxtentacle 7y agoI was optimistic like that in university. Great times :) But then I went into consulting and saw that big companies have teams of lawyers that settle proactively out of court to keep inconvenient truths out of the public opinion. Like the first few exploding iPhones. (Just an example, never worked there) BTW, did you hear about the Uber crash where their AI couldn't track a pedestrian and then killed her?
- adaisadais 7y agoTesla has some blame in this for sure but Caltrans (maintainers of the 101) are equally if not more to blame. California is rich in capital but so poor infrastructure. Moving here from South Carolina(where taxes are much lower and roads are paltry) I was shocked at how dismal a state many of the roads are and at the sheer amount of time it takes to complete. Patrick Collison of Stripe actually wrote a blog piece(1) condemning SF for their lack of speed when it comes to road maintenance. There is no end in sight. Until we we a nation hold our governments accountable for road maintenance and proper engineering we will never have any great resolution. (1) https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast
- mgoetzke 7y agoMany US citizens I talk to, seem to have the stance that they do not want to pay any taxes and that taxation is theft. I am sure California and others could do more and be held accountable (every service provider should and must be), but that attitude has to change too.
- qaq 7y agoCalifornia has tax level on par with most of EU and would be pretty much the most left leaning state in US.
- chillacy 7y agoCA already has some of the highest taxes in the nation but the roads and public transportation aren't leaps and bounds better than the cheaper states. I'm not convinced raising taxes would help without fixing the accountability issue.
- albertTJames 7y agoIf you know your autopilot is malfunction on a certain highway segment, you have observed it malfunction several times. Why would you still use it ? If you were a brain surgeon, and observed that your brand new ultrasonic scalpel created bleeding, reported it, but decided to still used it. The day a patient dies of an hemorrage post-surgery, would it be the fault of the company producing the ultrasonic scalpel or yours ? Those clowns admit to knowing it was faulty exactly where it crashed and are still suing Tesla. This habit of Americans to sue every time they have an issue is exhausting.
- ryanmarsh 7y agoI drive with autopilot (auto steer as Tesla calls it) daily. Frankly it’s a mixed bag. Anyone who has used it with any frequency should know how dangerous it can be. I use it because it usually brakes faster than I do when traffic suddenly slows down. It also slams on the brakes at random points on a 3 mile stretch of highway on my way home. For some reason it thinks the speed limit is suddenly 45 and brakes aggressively. I’m afraid one day I’ll get rear ended when it does that.
- terminaljunkid 7y agoPeople have these vague notions about what technology can do because "influential" people in our industry read sci-fi badly like children.
- zed88 7y agoThe fundamental problem lies in the usage of the word 'autopilot' for a glorified cruise control system.
- mgoetzke 7y agoWhy are there still these death traps on Highways ? No matter whether driving on AutoPilot or Lane Assist or manually, it is statistically quite likely a car can and will drift of for a second. I have trouble thinking of any such places on the German Autobahn where drifting of would lead to a full head on collision with a concrete barrier.
- focus2020 7y agoOpen source software and dataset to verify its effectiveness but restrict it for commercial purpose would help build confidence in auto pilot.
- 1024core 7y agoI don't understand something. He had complained in the past about AutoPilot steering the car towards the divider. Then why was he still using the AutoPilot in that situation??!
- bmat 7y agoFor every tragedy, there are tragedies avoided. I can attest to a few. In the last 10,000 miles, Autopilot has: safely swerved to avoid a car that would have sideswiped me, preemptively braked after detecting the 2nd car ahead (not visible to me) had slammed on its brakes, and avoided colliding with a completely stopped vehicle in the center lane of the freeway. And FWIW I've never felt misled about Autopilot's capabilities. I started off skeptical and it's since earned my partial trust in limited scenarios. Ironically its hiccups actually make me more attentive since, ya know, I don't want it to kill me.
- hvidgaard 7y agoThat squarely puts Autopilot in the "Driver Aid" category. That is fine, just don't go telling people that it can drive unassisted.
- bmat 7y agoBefore owning a Tesla I did feel like Autopilot was overhyped, but I now realize that's more because of media coverage than anything Tesla is actively conveying. The vehicle software actively encourages driver attentiveness. Moreover when you actually experience Autopilot, it becomes abundantly clear that it can't drive unassisted.
- hvidgaard 7y agoThen don't call it Autopilot and stop saying it will be able to drive you on the highway soon.
- WA 7y ago> Moreover when you actually experience Autopilot, it becomes abundantly clear that it can't drive unassisted. I think it's different: On long stretches of highway, it actually can drive mostly unassisted. It can't drive unassisted in city traffic or in construction sites, but I totally understand why people would overrate its capabilities. In clear and good conditions, it's actually more than a simple drive assistant.
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- LoSboccacc 7y agoI don't understand, why did he kept trusting the autopilot on that stretch of road after the first incident?
- _ph_ 7y agoThe headline alone should show, what is odd with this case. * Tesla clearly states, that the autopilot is a driving aid and should not be used unobserved. * The engineer complained about the autopilot not working perfectly at the very place of crash. (Quite understandeable when seeing the state of the road and mostly absence of line markings in videos of the crash site). * Evidence seems to show that prior to the crash he did not pay attention while driving on autopilot at this very part of the road. So I really don't get why anyone whould trust their life to a driving assist by not paying attention and closely supervising the system. Where I think the lawsuit should have a merit and a good chance of succeeding is the state of road and the maintenance by Caltrans. They are in my eyes liable for the deadly outcome of the crash and that there was a crash at all: * Left exits by themselves are a safety issue and should not exist (extremely rare here in Europe). * The line markings were almost non-existant. Potentially dangerous sections of roads should have very good line-markings. * As a consequence, it seems to be common that cars crash into this divider. That there was a "reusable" crash protection at it, should show the dangers of this section clearly. * The crash protection was not active which lead to the deadly nature of the crash, as a car had crashed into it a week before. No other protections were in place (traffic cones, barrels) So this section is shown as being very dangerous as human drivers regularly crash into the divider, there are no traffic cones (or have been destroyed by people almost crashing into the divider) and it was not secured after the last crash. The exit and the left lane should have been closed for traffic as long as the crash bareer is not in place.
- ardit33 7y agoNice, blaming the victim there..... Bad pavement markings and "work in progress" sections, exist in almost every major highway... it is not an exceptional case, and it should not be treat such. The expectations is that the technology should work, or give you enough advance warning for you to take control... There have been plenty of videos, where the tesla autopilot seems to just steer straight towards a side wall, with no warning whatsoever... A Lidar would/might have prevented it... it would have served as a warning that the car is going to smash straight ahead into a solid wall and that the visual cues (lines in the pavement) are misleading.... I don't think just a camera system is good enough for automated driving.... I feel Elon is beta testing with people's lives...
- jmspring 7y agoSuing caltrans for failing to maintain the roads? Probably the same people that voted for Newsom and the redirection of funds for roads to high speed rail boon doggies.
- reallyscared 7y agoThe thing about self-driving cars is that even though we may get to a point where they are statistically better at driving than humans, the reasons they crash will be unrelated to the driver. This means that humans, thanks to modern life, are even further removed from any concept of self-determination. Being a responsible person and not driving while drunk, or driving in a reckless manner will no longer improve your chances of not being seriously hurt in a car crash. While driving on the roads already removes a lot of self-determination due to the fact that you can't control all the high-speed objects flying around you, there was at least some degree of improvement possible by being responsible. Once self-driving cars are available, whether you live or die will be up to random chance. Some people will be better off due to the self-driving cars, and others will be worse off, depending on if they were above the average or below in terms of their driving behaviour.
- siljon 7y agoHe complained once before about this stretch, and yet he kept driving auto pilot at the same location? I would never dare to do that, and sounds suicidal. Also I would never dare to fully trust auto-pilot and I think they should change the official name to driver assistance instead, until auto-pilot is ready. Which is how Tesla want to treat it according to the article: "Tesla says Autopilot is intended to be used for driver assistance and that drivers must be ready to intervene at all times."
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoI would not be quick to make assumptions like this. He could have experienced the issue like 1/20 times, and intended to remind himself to watch out when he gets to that spot. And maybe he forgot this time. It’s easy to get into a trance on long repetitive drives. It isn’t like he immediately did back to back drives and changed nothing the second time. And that’s the problem with an “autopilot 99.9% of the time, but still pay attention just in case” feature.
- mavhc 7y agoWhich is why Waymo never released half self driving technology, their early tests showed that even if they told Google engineers that they were being recorded and they'd be fired if they didn't watch the road, in a few weeks a lot of them trusted the software too much
- ReptileMan 7y agoIt is not suicidal, but probably worthy of a honorable mention in the annual Darwin Awards roundup since it was a very bad judgement on his part. As an engineer - he should have known better than to continue to use the feature the moment it became unreliable for reasons unknown. Those kind of failure modes are extremely devious killers.
- libpcap 7y agoIt's time Elon should really consider augmenting Tesla's cameras with LIDAR.
- holstvoogd 7y agoMy god the endless stream of 'tEslA BAd!' itt.. You all just mad you didn't buy stock? This man already knew autopilot would have trouble in this spot and yet choose to play on his phone. He is an idiot. And to those who way 'they shouldn't call it autopilot if it can't do full self driving!' I suggest you go read up on auto pilot. Direct from the definition: 'Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the vehicle.'
- mng2 7y agoI spent some time looking through the NTSB docket today. I was a little surprised that Apple was willing to provide logs from a development model iPhone. Evidence seems to point to the victim playing a game while commuting -- in my opinion this is a major indictment of Tesla's approach to self-driving, where the user is lulled into a false sense of security. Another docket was updated today, a Tesla crash in Florida eerily similar to the one a few years ago: semi turning across the highway, Tesla goes under the trailer. Not a great failure mode.
- jonplackett 7y agoObviously this is completely Tesla’s fault. But you gotta ask - if he knew it was malfunctioning there, why keep using it there?
- blackrock 7y agoAutopilot works great! Until the moment it kills you. Then you become the statistic. Better buy some life insurance with that expensive robotic car.
- xbmcuser 7y agoSo autopilot was having problems at a particular place every time and he was still using it. As much as Tesla is to be blamed the driver is too. Why the fuck would you trust something to work if you yourself have experienced it not working multiple times.
- trixie_ 7y agoNot just autopilot, but regular people too where confused by the road, "In the three years before the Tesla crash, the device was struck at least five times, including one crash that resulted in fatalities."
- vardump 7y agoI thought at first this was some new crash, but it actually occurred in 2018.
- nojvek 7y agoI’ve been using commaai EON for a while and very happy with it. They’ve done the “what it knows, what it knows it doesn’t know” very well. The system will beep hard at you when the vision system doesn’t have confidence. It only has confidence in well lit, well marked roads. Otherwise it yells at human to take over. Take eyes off the road, it yells at you. The disengagement rate is pretty high but I like it. I know it does 405 and I5 highways well and that’s where I use it. Easy to understand the limitations. They also make you explicitly say yes to all the limitations on first start.
- Forgivenessizer 7y agoBuried in the middle of the story: "In the three years before the Tesla crash, the device was struck at least five times, including one crash that resulted in fatalities. A car struck it again on May 20, 2018, about two months after the Tesla crash, the NTSB said." Well that story was a total waste of space and time and existence. The roadway is unsafe, and it has nothing to do with Tesla. As usual. I remember reading about a guy who wrecked his Tesla into one of those pieces of concrete Dallas loves to stick in lanes. And I thought, "I nearly did that once myself". You're driving along at 60mph, round a corner, out of nowhere there's a big piece of concrete angled a bit to pretend like it's a legit lane change, like "there, job done".
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- kraig911 7y agoFail fast, fail often doesn't work when your life is on the line. I'm sure Tesla did a good job testing but this is one of those things where the world simply is hard to work out what happened. Mind you that the self driving car is probably way better than a comparable human driver. Why do we not feel bad when a human accidentally kills himself from faulty programming too?
- lmilcin 7y agoWell, being an engineer and understanding how fraught with problems AI is (well, it is not AI it is just ML), I would not be handing my life to the algorithm yet. I understand these things are probably necessary step but maybe it shouldn't be possible for a car to drive in complex traffic without steering and focus of the human driver, yet.
- read_if_gay_ 7y ago> 50,000 cheeseburgers are eaten every three seconds in America. Utter bullshit.
- ailideex 7y agoMaybe there is something wrong with the coffee I have had today but I utterly fail to see the novelty or notoriety in the title as a whole or any subset of it. Can someone maybe point it out to me? People complain a lot. Engineers are people. People still do things they complain about. People die in crashes. Cars crash. Teslas are cars. What am I missing?
- mcrae 7y agoI mean like, he had previously complained about the car swerving towards a barrier on the 101. He later crashed his car into the same barrier while on Autopilot which took his life. I think the intuition is that like, if a piece of technology repeatedly shows itself to drive your car into a concrete barrier, maybe don't play video games while passing that same concrete barrier.
- Galaxeblaffer 7y ago... while using the same auto pilot that earlier steered your car towards certain doom
- agounaris 7y agoI don't get it! He complained that it was malfunctioning but he continued using it?
- KurtMueller 7y agoI can sense the fruition of a conspiracy theory here...
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- DennisP 7y agoI'm not convinced we should entirely blame Tesla, given that humans have been crashing into the same barrier: > In the three years before the Tesla crash, the device was struck at least five times, including one crash that resulted in fatalities. A car struck it again on May 20, 2018, about two months after the Tesla crash, the NTSB said. The article also says the engineer had complained about his Tesla veering towards this particular barrier. I don't understand why he still relied on the autopilot while driving past it.
- TLightful 7y agoSad story, and condolences to the man's family, but if I'd previously complained about such an issue before, I'd have been damned sure to be careful at that place again and/or would have lost any trust in the system until another iteration proves me otherwise. Yes, hindsight is 100% and we all make mistakes, but still.
- anjc 7y agoI hope people aren't commonly doing what this poor guy did, turning autopilot on and taking their hands off the wheel at 71mph. At this speed, the stopping distance is greater than the max effective distance of some of the forward looking cameras, and a collision means almost certain death. I'm surprised people will trust any autopilot system at a potentially fatal speed.
- jug 7y agoI wonder if we get skewed opinions about autopiloted cars because every story about them blows up, while people accidentally killing themselves in cars don’t.
- Dumblydorr 7y agoThis is from 2018 and the driver didn't even have his hands on the wheel, though he knew there were problems at that spot. Very careless driving. Personally I wouldn't use a mobile game while I'm driving a vehicle, nevermind software in development.
- StylusEater 7y agoWhy don’t we introduce some of the same requirements for drivers as we have for private pilots (think traditional bi-annual flight reviews)? Not only would we most likely reduce fatalities, accidents and injuries but we’d probably also eliminate many unsafe drivers from the road while placing a forcing function on public transit to increase usage. We’d probably also see a knock on effect to the training market and increase employment in that field. We might also see an increase in tax/fee income for government entities to help reduce reliance on gasoline taxes. Obviously I haven’t done a rigorous analysis but it would seem like a win all around in my humble opinion.
- 654wak654 7y agoAny politician/party who goes for such a policy would lose a lot of popularity. A slow rollout could happen where this short renewal time only applies to new licence holders, but then it'd take 20 years to really see its effects.
- simonswords82 7y agoCan't speak for the FAA but the CAA only requires me to sit with an instructor for one hour every two years to renew my SEP rating. It's not onerous and I think you're right, a sit down with an instructor every two years to correct any minor bad habits before they get out of control is an excellent idea.
- hurricanetc 7y agoComplains about autopilot. Plays video game in the car with hands off the wheel. Well, okay.
- dkarl 7y agoObviously Tesla is going to hide behind the consumer's decision here. Autopilot scared the shit out of this guy on multiple occasions, and he kept turning it on and trusting it with by far the most deadly thing he did every day. Odd choice when you put it that way, but one a lot of people make, I'm sure, maybe one that I would make. I really hope the government isn't too aggressive in hindering companies from doing self-driving car R&D on public roads, but I would be fine with the government saying consumers shouldn't be used as guinea pigs for systems that are less safe that typical human drivers. Anecdotal evidence can't establish that self-driving cars are less safe than humans (even if it establishes that they make mistakes that humans wouldn't) so I would expect a numbers-driven standard, but self-driving technology shouldn't be unleashed on consumers until it achieves at least a human level of safety.
- PerilousD 7y agoI use the radio in my car probably less than 1 percent of the time Im driving. Most of the time I'm listening to streaming media podcasts, soundcloud etc so why do all the accident reports stress DATA streaming on the phone like that isn't pretty normal these days? Clearly doesn't mean texting and driving although even texting can be done purely hands on wheel eyes straight ahead just using voice - its like the press is still living in 2002 not 2020.
- HoustonRefugee 7y agoI don't trust my car. I roll down the windows if I leave the keys in it for any reason so I don't get locked out when it decides to auto-lock itself or leaving it running or to step or whatever reason. I sure am not trusting it to drive itself. Maybe in 2150 when the technology is hammered out.
- mattcantstop 7y agoI have a Tesla and think Autopilot is neat. But I never rely on it, because it is blatantly not safe enough to be relied upon.
- 0000011111 7y agoIt looks like more non-auto piolet drivers have died at this location than auto piolet drivers.
- gwbas1c 7y agoRegular Tesla Autopilot driver here: I just don't get this situation. With Autopilot, it takes a tiny amount of pressure on the steering wheel to take over. The pressure is so small that, when Autopilot jerks the wheel, you're more likely to turn it off. So, assuming the driver was paying attention, with his hands on the wheel, this makes no sense. The only way the accident makes sense is if the driver fell asleep, wasn't paying attention, or accidentally turned off autopilot. And falling asleep, or not paying attention, is a real risk in any car. (Note: What I remember from older articles about this topic is that the car was nagging him for awhile to put his hands on the wheel.)
- Four8Five 7y agoI had a scary experience in a Model S on auto-pilot going over a bridge where the car swerved left and almost hit the concrete barrier. Not entirely sure what happened but since then, I've been hesitant to use auto-pilot 100% of the time.
- jryan49 7y agoWhy would you use it at all at that point? If this guy took his experience with autopilot the first time it almost crashed his car, he'd probably still be alive.
- crazygringo 7y agoYesterday here on HN there was a top thread about how a open dataset used for training self-driving cars is rife with missing labels and mislabeling. [1] Quite a few commenters insisted the issue was a non-issue -- that all datasets are noisy and mislabeling occurs all the time, that nobody's building actual self-driving cars from it, that surely if an object isn't labeled in one frame it'll be labeled in the next. Now obviously we don't what the cause of this particular crash was. But I will say that I found people's willingness to defend widespread sloppy labeling in training sets used for literal high-speed life and death situations rather shocking. And that, hopefully, crashes like this serve to remind us of the far greater responsibility we have with regards to quality and accuracy when it comes to building ML models for self-driving cars, rather than when we're merely predicting how likely a credit card customer is to pay their next bill on time, or which ad is likely to be most profitable. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22298882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22298882
- bagacrap 7y agoThe consensus was that the training set in question was not used for any real life situations. The only player in autonomous vehicles that doesn't understand the gravity of the technology is Tesla/Musk.
- scoot 7y agoThis was mention in the article discussed here when the family first sued: Tesla issued a statement placing the blame on Huang and denying moral or legal liability for the crash. “According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19802284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19802284
- neilpa 7y agoDoes anyone have a link to the actual NTSB documents linked in the article? > https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.as... Looks like the ntsb.gov site is currently down and they haven't been indexed on archive.org yet.
- aerovistae 7y agoI was quite confused by this. He knew the car was taking a consistently erroneous action that was likely to have fatal consequences, but he continued to use autopilot on that same stretch anyway. To be clear, I think Tesla has been cavalier and careless in their approach to autopilot. But Walter Huang knew what he was doing and did it anyway. His death is largely by his own hand. I don't see this as different from people who knowingly take other careless risks and pay a price.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoThink of the "dumb" folks who take a selfie on top of a skyscraper and then slip off. It's not until you are careening towards the abyss that the reality of the situation is fully learned. Up until then, only theoretical.
- dwild 7y agoReading this article I got a big flash when I read "slammed into a concrete barrier", because it nearly happened to me a few weeks ago and it shook me quite a bit to think of the implications. It wasn't a self driving car though, it was just a bit of aquaplaning, but I was still letting myself distracted enough too close to the concrete barrier and not be aware enough of my environment by missing the water accumulation on the side because of the melting ice/snow. That didn't made me think that cars are too complex and should no longer by driven, that made me think that I should be more careful on my driving. Yet here we are arguing whether that's a signal that we shouldn't allow autopilot feature. Autopilot or not, YOU are still the driver. If there's a mistake, YOU should be responsible for it. As long as there's a steering wheel, and I believe there will be one for a pretty long time, you are still the one responsible to make sure theses things doesn't happen. If you can't manage it, don't use autopilot, just like if I can't manage to drive, I won't use a car. Getting a driving license may seems like a formality, but it's not, it's a test to see whether you are apt to drive.
- allovernow 7y ago>Autopilot or not, YOU are still the driver. If there's a mistake, YOU should be responsible for it. As long as there's a steering wheel, and I believe there will be one for a pretty long time, you are still the one responsible to make sure theses things doesn't happen But that totally defeats the purpose of autopilot...
- dwild 7y ago> But that totally defeats the purpose of autopilot... Of a true autopilot, sure, but for now they all are pretty far from being one. For now it's only purpose is to have to make less effort while driving.
- fedxc 7y agoHow can Tesla be liable for this? You should not trust software to drive your car without human intervention. I don't understand the US culture where everyone is entitled to sue everyone.
- hyperbovine 7y agoShort answer is that the U.S. relies on litigation to fill the void left by a lack of regulation. Tesla wouldn't be liable for this in Europe because they're not even allowed to sell this technology there in the first place: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-s-model-x-autopilot-europe-regulations/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-s-model-x-aut...
- crad 7y agoSo guy notes autopilot malfunctions in a specific area of road, uses it anyway, and dies. Am I missing something?
- frankus 7y agoI can’t help but think that our culture-wide experiment in the normalization of deviance when it comes to speed limits (both how they are set and how they are observed) has something to do with this. A crash at 55 mph would have 40% less energy than at 71 mph.
- jbtule 7y agoThe NTSB report information is public, from the NTSB docket, https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx, he wasn't traveling at 71 miles per hour. "At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected." The autopilot accelerated into the barrier.
- frankus 7y agoCould that be because it effectively registered a lane change by the car it was following and was accelerating to the requested speed? Or are you suggesting that the Autopilot accelerated beyond the top speed set by the driver?
- jbtule 7y agoYou are right "traffic-aware cruise control speed was set to 75 mph". It was traveling slower due to traffic.
- microcolonel 7y agoTesla's autopilot has now actively hurtled their cars at full speed into concrete barriers on more than one occasion. They really need to work on this, or they will ruin self-driving for everyone. This is basically a new class of collision, this is not the ordinary way people die on highways. If they can not avoid actively smashing their customers at over 100km/h into solid concrete barriers, on major roads near their company headquarters, then I don't know how they can make this feature so accessible to a broad customer base.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoI am an expert in AI. Learned the symbolic kind before the AI winter, then worked on neural nets (stealthily) during the AI winter. Automonous driving cannot yet handle all the edge cases, and when it fails people die. What's worse is when it fails it cannot explain why it failed, so we just throw more training data at it and hope for the best. That's not engineering; that's ML cargo cult voodoo. Modern ML is great for finding family members in your photo collection, but nobody dies when it labels your dog your grandmother. Tesla makes great cars but I never use their autopilot. They should focus on what they do best and give up this obsession with autonomous driving.
- shaneprrlt 7y agoMakes you wonder if the point of technological progress is to actually make human existence safer and easier or if it's just to push up a stock price. I'm still hopeful it's the former. We'll hear the same canned response about how many lives have been saved, but just veering off into a concrete wall spontaneously? That's completely fucked. The fact that millions of these vehicles are deployed with this software running should concern every other driver on the roadway. Remember when Tesla said 1 million robotaxis by 2020? o_O
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- u801e 7y agoI've always thought that having a person take over from a computer when driving is a fundamentally flawed premise. People, by nature, are not going to devote enough attention to a task they're not actively involved in and they won't be able to take action fast enough to avoid an incident because of the time it takes to context switch from whatever they were doing to handling the situation that just came up.