16 ms·

Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

118 points by velmu 7y ago

clouddrover 7y ago
Bloomberg article on the same: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/tesla-to-face-fresh-autopilot-scrutiny-after-company-snubs-ntsb https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/tesla-to-...
gok 7y ago
From the CNBC article [1]: > The NTSB also called out Huang’s employer, Apple, for failing to set a strict policy for its employees banning non-emergency use of mobile devices while driving Yeah the real problem here is insufficient employer paternalism during commutes. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/ntsb-calls-out-tesla-and-apple-for-neglecting-driver-safety.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/ntsb-calls-out-tesla-and-app...
- mr_toad 7y ago
  I see a lot of comments here and elsewhere that amount to exhortations to protect people from their own stupidity, whether that be Tesla, or the Government, or whoever. Never underestimate the ingenuity of idiots. No matter how carefully you design your safety protocols, some genius-level moron will find a way of getting themselves killed.
  - quadrifoliate 7y ago
    The entire point of driver licensing is to "protect people from their own stupidity" by teaching them how to drive. Now you have companies using nudge-nudge-wink-wink terms like "Autopilot" that purport to be able to drive the car for you, while also saying in their EULA or whatever that actually, it doesn't work like that. I think it's quite reasonable, from a point of view of preventing false advertising to stop this. Removing all references to "Autopilot" and similar and replacing them with sensible descriptions like "Driver Steering Assist" like the other car manufacturers are using would definitely satisfy me.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  > policy for its employees banning non-emergency use of mobile devices while driving While this may be irrelevant to the current Tesla case, it's a big problem in general with all office workers. I know several people who will "join the meeting from their car" and set up a huge threat to their own safety, and that of people sharing the road with them. If anyone reading this does it as well, or puts people working under them in a position where they feel they have to do it – please stop! The NTSB says so as well.
noahtallen 7y ago
I thought autopilot did have a mechanism to get the driver’s attention when they stop touching the wheel?
- crmrc114 7y ago
  Just googled this and found this nifty little bit o' kit https://www.autopilotbuddy.com/ https://www.autopilotbuddy.com/ Guess we are really going to need eye tracking in any proper system that does this much 'autopilot' for drivers.
  - gjs278 7y ago
    you can buy the shitty eye tracking cars. I won’t. they won’t even work with sunglasses.
  - nathanaldensr 7y ago
    This is hilarious: > Do Not Use the AutopilotBuddy on public streets. The Autopilot Buddy is not for street use, it is for closed track use only. The AutopilotBuddy Nag Reduction Device is no longer available to USA Residents. Look, ma! I'm driving on a track with no hands! What a joke.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      You wouldn't? It sounds like a fun thing to try. (Yes, obviously you wouldn't be going anywhere near full speed.)
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Just put a 1/2 filled 1L water bottle in the steering wheel. It's cheaper. And if you get thirsty you always have water handy.
  - lgats 7y ago
    http://www.steering-wheel-ipad.com/ http://www.steering-wheel-ipad.com/ Similar ‘product’... but this one is a joke
- 7y ago
crmrc114 7y ago
Good, for a car that uses AI to control windshield wipers ( https://www.inverse.com/article/39877-elon-musk-tesla-ai-wipers https://www.inverse.com/article/39877-elon-musk-tesla-ai-wip... ) You cannot tell me that Tesla cant be bothered to do something like simple driver attention checking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection Tesla does not want to fix this issue- because they have to know that a large number of their buyers are wanting the car specifically to abuse the assertive technology. When a rental Ford Fusion yells at me using Adaptive Cruise without sensing my interaction with the wheel you have got to be kidding me that Tesla cannot take the lead on this technology.
- xxpor 7y ago
  Autopilot yells at you too if you don't interact with the steering wheel.
  - crmrc114 7y ago
    Totally, but when using AI to control wipers its sad they cant be bothered to respond to safety regulators when they could be leaders in this tech by simply adding a camera system that monitors the driver like some other automakers are experimenting with implementing.
    - jsight 7y ago
      Tesla has a camera that they could use for this. They claim that its performance was not great. I hope that some comparisons are made between vehicles so equipped vs the ones that are not, in order to provide further evidence. Although that is difficult, as in many cases the "cooperative" manufacturers have not yet implemented such features. They have only promised to implement them, sometimes in vehicles years away from production.
      - filoleg 7y ago
        Using the camera for that purpose might be a bit problematic (in terms of a technical challenge, not as that adjective would normally be used by twitter mobs). One very common scenario (that I have no idea how it would manage to handle) is someone driving with sunglasses on.
dmitrygr 7y ago
I remain amazed that Tesla can keep marketing "autopilot" and "full self driving" as such, despite the obviousness of the fact that it has and will continue to keep killing people silly enough to believe the hype. Hopefully the NTSB recommendations on this include better and clearer explanations that full self-driving is anything but, and that those recommendations get implemented into serious laws with serious penalties. I get that it is easy to outsell your rivals when you can market fairy tales. I just don't think it's okay when people start getting killed because of it.
- nullc 7y ago
  I recently commented to a new Tesla buyer that their car seemed nice but I couldn't see myself ever spending so much money on a car. They responded by gushing that self-driving would be available within a couple years and then the car would be making money and would pay for itself in no time so the car was actually better than free. I asked why wouldn't they just wait until it was actually available and the claimed that at that point tesla would raise the prices to hundreds of thousands per car because of all the income they earn. It took me a little effort to not respond by backing away slowly. Are these beliefs widespread and is tesla promoting them? Or was I just talking to an isolated weirdo?
  - pengaru 7y ago
    Yikes, I had no idea Tesla's kool-aid was so effective.
  - jsight 7y ago
    I've run into people who believe those claims. I've also run into people (on Reddit) who believed that some wealthy billionaire was buying a lot of Teslas in 2019 and hoarding them in parking garages in plans of launching a self-driving car once the software can do it. When I pointed out the absurdity, I was shocked by how many disagreed. It took time to even realize how many were legitimately not joking. Thankfully, this line of thinking is far from the majority.
  - tenacious_tuna 7y ago
    anecdotal evidence with n=1, but I'm a Tesla owner who refuses to pay for the "Full Self Driving" tech, expressly because I think it's way further off and overhyped compared to what I'd actually want for the cost. I especially think the "your car becomes a taxi and pays for itself" gimmick is beyond fantasy. I chalk it up to Musk being an actually mildly insane CEO, which has benefits to go with its downsides. As for the cost of the car, I wanted an EV with more range than other manufacturers provided. (I also make use of the longer range on a regular basis--probably about 2 times a month?) (edit:) I also wanted a car that Went Fast. Not practical in any real sense, but a lot of fun. There are around a dozen Tesla owners at my company. As far as I know, none of them are banking on their cars being a taxi and earning tons of dough. At least one has the FSD upgrade, and uses it primarily to back his car out of the garage on its own so his kids don't bang up the doors when they get in.
agumonkey 7y ago
maybe this will make Elon musk think twice
free652 7y ago
The problem is that the autopilot almost works, so drivers dont need to pay attention most of the time.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  This is actually a phenomenon that is well studied (as it happens, by NTSB). Automation that is 99% reliable - kills! Less is unrelible enough that you notice and watch it carefully, more is reliable enough to actually rely on. It is like the uncanny valley of automation.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
    >Automation that is 99% reliable kills! It also saves more lives than it kills people. So?
    - djannzjkzxn 7y ago
      Depending on the numbers, the “saves more than it kills” standard may be 99.9% or 99.9999%. You need data to answer the question and any claims should be backed up by numbers, followed by a bunch of analysis. It’s definitely not something we can prove about currently sold technology with a one-line quip.
    - falcolas 7y ago
      > It also saves more lives than it kills people. So? Do you have data that the rest of us don't - that is data which identifies incursions (that is near-crash interactions which do not end in a crash) where vehicular automation acts correctly and human drivers do not? If not, than you really can't make that statement. You can say that "Tesla's luxury cars running under autopilot show fewer crashes per mile than average for all cars", and be accurate, but that's not "saving lives".
    - LoSboccacc 7y ago
      it's not quite there yet, unless you believe at the stats published by Tesla that compares apples and oranges.
BooneJS 7y ago
That concrete is terrible there. At night it’s hard to see the painted lines but the lines made by the concrete totally bend towards that left exit. Challenging to tell which lines to follow to stay in your lane. I don’t mean to give Tesla a pass mor marketing autopilot, but that section of road is hard for humans too.
- swiley 7y ago
  I'm not sure the driving problem is defined well enough to be solvable and this is a great example of that. That's probably why ML gets used so much, you can't really prove it's incorrect but it works a lot of the time so you can get away with selling it until someone dies.
KingMachiavelli 7y ago
> Two, the cushion already was severely damaged. After a Toyota Prius crashed into it two months earlier, the length of the attenuator was shortened, offering less protection against the 3-foot-tall concrete median wall behind it. Maybe the repairing crash mitigation devices of frequent & deadly hazards should be a higher priority. Or maybe better marking the 'gore' lane as in its current state it's simply an empty lane that would look identical to a real lane (i.e if you can't see the divider then it looks like a normal lane). I don't get why we aren't looking into slightly changing our roads to better work with self driving cars when all it takes is a little more paint.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  > I don't get why we aren't looking into slightly changing our roads to better work with self driving cars when all it takes is a little more paint. Because 99.9999% of drivers are human and have no issues seeing the concrete barriers and not hitting them head on at full speed. Until self driving is better than humans in all cases it will not be acceptable. Nobody will spend money to adapt roads to self driving cars until they comprise a significant percent of cars (read: decades from now, if ever)
  - drewrv 7y ago
    > Because 99.9999% of drivers are human and have no issues seeing the concrete barriers and not hitting them head on at full speed. In this particular case, a human driver did crash head-on into the barrier somewhat recently.
    - cjhopman 7y ago
      According to https://dot.ca.gov/programs/traffic-operations/census/traffic-volumes/2017/route-101 https://dot.ca.gov/programs/traffic-operations/census/traffi..., ~125,000 cars drive through that area per day (scroll to "JCT. RTE. 85", divide by 2). According to the report, the previous collision was 2 months earlier, so ~7.5Million cars passed through there. 99.9999% doesn't seem that far off.
- 7y ago
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/5nRO8 https://archive.md/5nRO8
tristanb 7y ago
I don't agree with many of the points here. My partner bought a Tesla, I had little interest in them. I now would buy no other car. The autopilot has changed how I drive forever. We regularly take long three hour drives to get to a scenic spot that I would never consider doing in another car. With autopilot engaged, I am monitoring everything - probably with more accuracy then if I was driving, due to the decreased cognitive load. I don't get tired, like I do in an other car, with all the negative effects that come with that. Im a safe driver, and autopilot makes me better at driving. I am not surprised that if you don't follow the instructions bad things can happen. (I believe statistically less than meat powered driving). That is on the human, not the technology. The guy in the article was playing a phone game. He crashed into a barrier he had had problems with before. Same guy, playing a phone game, whilst on cruise control in a BMW. Should we regulate that? No, we should regulate idiots in cars.
- mayneack 7y ago
  YMMV and all, but I've had a similar experience with just adaptive cruise control for long drives. Driving the 7 hours from LA to Utah became pretty easy to do without having to break/speed up every few minutes with normal traffic. It still falls short in stop and go traffic, which I think teslas do well in.
  - ObsoleteNerd 7y ago
    Adaptive cruise control is incredible. I regularly do a 4 hour freeway drive (every week or two) and have noticed a distinct decrease in tiredness since using it. I feel an order of magnitude more aware of it surroundings when not having to constantly worry about whether I’m doing the speed limit (the freeway here has lots of cops and hidden speed cameras) and I find the entire drive so much more relaxing now. I couldn’t own a car without it anymore. I definitely don’t feel Tesla is responsible for the crashes caused by people ignoring all the warnings and notices. People have been ignoring warnings and dying in stupid ways since warnings first existed.
    - wil421 7y ago
erik_landerholm 7y ago
My friend has one and uses the auto-pilot responsibly, works very well. Until someone shows me concrete evidence that autopilot is responsible for an inordinate amount of accidents at a rate higher than normal human driving,...this seems like a huge waste of time and fear mongering.
- ravedave5 7y ago
  That's the thing, Tesla tracks these stats and driving with auto-pilot has less accidents - https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
  - ohmaigad 7y ago
    Comparing specific cases to the national average probably isn't the most trustworthy source. Not really apples to apples comparison.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The comparison has been criticized, though, as Tesla's autopilot's current limitations mean it's generally engaged in safer-than-average conditions - highway driving, no snow, newer vehicles, etc. It's like comparing your primary care doc's outcomes against a world-class brain surgeon. More people come out of the PCP's office alive, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're the better doctor.
    - foepys 7y ago
      Since Tesla Autopilot is only working in Highway-like environments, we should compare this to highway accidents. In Germany for example only 6.2% of all deadly accidents happen on the Autobahn. So Tesla is clearly using deceptive marketing by comparing the average across all deadly road accidents.
  - czzr 7y ago
    I looked at the first report in your link. It says: “we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged.” And then: “By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles” This is true. It’s also a complete lie. It’s set up to make you think that this proves Autopilot is safer than human drivers, but it compares a national stat for all cars in all possible driving conditions to a Tesla stat for high end cars in good weather freeway driving. The latter are inherently much safer. But so many people are falling for this blatant lying - plenty of examples in this thread alone. I hate that this works for them, and that it just encourages others to lie similarly. I wish we had higher standards, as a society.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zaroth 7y ago
The CDC reports that every day in the US about 9 people are killed, and more than 1,000 injured due to distracted driving. [1] Annually, over 1 million people die globally in car crashes. Driving is both the source of trillions of dollars of economic value annually, as well as the cause of ~$1 trillion a year in economic damages (including pain, suffering, and loss of life). A focused and alert human is, overall, fairly awesome at driving, even in surprisingly adverse conditions. Humans, however, can also be lazy, easily distracted, and make irresponsible choices. Cars to some extent try to protect humans against making these bad choices (like seat belt warnings) but to other extents respect that humans are not to be subjugated by a machine, and this means even being allowed to make bad decisions. ADAS systems like AutoPilot and Level 3-5 self-driving are the most promising solution to the daily devastation that occurs on our roadways. This is literally a multi-trillion dollar problem. For an ADAS system to be most effective, it must be reliable and predictable, and it also must be easy to use. An ADAS system cannot increase driver safety if the driver turns it off, or won't turn it on because it's too annoying. As a Tesla owner I can definitively state, that the safest way for me to drive is with AutoPilot enabled, with my hands on the wheel, and looking out the damn windows. This is how cars are supposed to be driven, and it's how Tesla consistently tells its drivers to drive the car. While Tesla consistently and repeatedly instructs drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and to remain alert, it doesn't stop humans from taking their focus off the road, just like humans do consistently with or without AutoPilot. My point is basically this; it does not necessarily make driving more safe to make AutoPilot impossible to abuse. The way most drivers that I see on the road are operating their vehicle, it should be illegal to drive without AutoPilot. In short, I think it's important to understand that a technology can literally save lives while still not saving every life. It's a tragedy every time someone dies on the roads, and it will be a miracle when we have technology fully deployed that can prevent 99% of those deaths. [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...
veeralpatel979 7y ago
I wonder why they chose the name Autopilot! The name seems to imply something the tech does something that it's not, though in all fairness to Tesla, they are very clear about the fact that Autopilot does require an attentive human at the wheel.
dmitrygr 7y ago
Some of the info NTSB released, direct from them: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.as...
Rebelgecko 7y ago
I dunno if LA Times changed the headline after this was submitted to HN, but it's actually "NTSB slams Tesla, Apple and regulators over a fatal Autopilot crash" The "slamming" of Apple seems particularly lame. Partially it's because they make iPhones, but the head of the NTSB also seems to be implying that an employer has a responsibility to prevent its employees from engaging in risky behaviors when they're off the clock.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  > an employer has a responsibility to prevent its employees from engaging in risky behaviors when they're off the clock _IF_ (and I absolutely don't know in this case, but we've all certainly heard of it before) an employer expects that you will be responsive just because you have a phone with email / Slack access, etc., let alone if they factor that into performance, whether it be informal or formal, then perhaps they do (though certainly a minority, and, again, I have no idea about this particular instance and employer).
Glyptodon 7y ago
I think it's bizarre that they call out Apple. Like what, they add "though shall not game and drive" to a document somewhere or put it in a memo and magically things like this wouldn't happen?
Animats 7y ago
The fundamental problem with Tesla's driver assistance system is straightforward - it won't brake for anything other than a car rear end. So far, Teslas on autopilot have hit at speed at least two semitrailers, a fire truck, a street sweeper, and various other objects partly obstructing a lane. The NTSB has pictures of most of these.[1] In most cases there's no braking at all - the thing just plows into the obstacle at full speed. Musk's decision not to use LIDAR is paid for in blood. [1] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2020-HWY18FH011-BMG.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2020-HWY18FH011-BMG.a...
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Musk's decision not to use LIDAR is paid for in blood. LIDAR is not the only way to record depth information. Saying that LIDAR is some kind of savior device is heavily into "solve all your fusion problems with this one weird trick" territory.
  - SQueeeeeL 7y ago
    Okay, but from the statement, whatever alternative they're using isn't working
  - totalZero 7y ago
    Don't be ridiculous. It's more like "see better with different glasses."
    - ebg13 7y ago
      Do you have a paper comparing states of the art flash LIDAR to real time high density stereo that makes you think it's better? Because my experience with the field has been that lasers aren't better for this except for very specific non-real-world scenarios.
      - ip26 7y ago
        Why is a paper required? Many of Tesla's early self-driving accidents involved low contrast scenes where the system was unable to distinguish, e.g., a white object from a wall, or a blue object from the sky. This is always a weakness with optical, even for our own eyeballs.
deegles 7y ago
If I was a passenger in a Tesla, I would not let the driver turn on Autopilot. If they refused, I would get out and get a rideshare.
- tristanb 7y ago
  Have you tried it?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I can say "I'd rather not take cyanide" without having to try it first.
    - tristanb 7y ago
      Sure but cyanide definitively kills you, and you're talking about a product of which (it appears) you have had no first hand experience.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        I have no first hand experience with cyanide.
davidgardner 7y ago
"In a 2017 study for Rand Corp., researchers assessed 500 different what-if scenarios for the development of [self-driving] technology. In most, the cost of waiting for almost-perfect driverless cars, compared with accepting ones that are only slightly safer than humans, was measured in tens of thousands of lives. “People who are waiting for this to be nearly perfect should appreciate that that’s not without costs,” says Kalra, a robotics expert who’s testified before Congress on driverless-car policy." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-09/tesla-s-autopilot-could-save-the-lives-of-millions-but-it-will-kill-some-people-first https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-09/tesla-s-a...

118 points by velmu 7y ago

Bloomberg article on the same: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/tesla-to-face-fresh-autopilot-scrutiny-after-company-snubs-ntsb https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-24/tesla-to-...

gok 7y ago

From the CNBC article [1]: > The NTSB also called out Huang’s employer, Apple, for failing to set a strict policy for its employees banning non-emergency use of mobile devices while driving Yeah the real problem here is insufficient employer paternalism during commutes. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/ntsb-calls-out-tesla-and-apple-for-neglecting-driver-safety.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/ntsb-calls-out-tesla-and-app...

mr_toad 7y ago
I see a lot of comments here and elsewhere that amount to exhortations to protect people from their own stupidity, whether that be Tesla, or the Government, or whoever. Never underestimate the ingenuity of idiots. No matter how carefully you design your safety protocols, some genius-level moron will find a way of getting themselves killed.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  The entire point of driver licensing is to "protect people from their own stupidity" by teaching them how to drive. Now you have companies using nudge-nudge-wink-wink terms like "Autopilot" that purport to be able to drive the car for you, while also saying in their EULA or whatever that actually, it doesn't work like that. I think it's quite reasonable, from a point of view of preventing false advertising to stop this. Removing all references to "Autopilot" and similar and replacing them with sensible descriptions like "Driver Steering Assist" like the other car manufacturers are using would definitely satisfy me.
quadrifoliate 7y ago
> policy for its employees banning non-emergency use of mobile devices while driving While this may be irrelevant to the current Tesla case, it's a big problem in general with all office workers. I know several people who will "join the meeting from their car" and set up a huge threat to their own safety, and that of people sharing the road with them. If anyone reading this does it as well, or puts people working under them in a position where they feel they have to do it – please stop! The NTSB says so as well.

noahtallen 7y ago

I thought autopilot did have a mechanism to get the driver’s attention when they stop touching the wheel?

crmrc114 7y ago
Just googled this and found this nifty little bit o' kit https://www.autopilotbuddy.com/ https://www.autopilotbuddy.com/ Guess we are really going to need eye tracking in any proper system that does this much 'autopilot' for drivers.
- gjs278 7y ago
  you can buy the shitty eye tracking cars. I won’t. they won’t even work with sunglasses.
- nathanaldensr 7y ago
  This is hilarious: > Do Not Use the AutopilotBuddy on public streets. The Autopilot Buddy is not for street use, it is for closed track use only. The AutopilotBuddy Nag Reduction Device is no longer available to USA Residents. Look, ma! I'm driving on a track with no hands! What a joke.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    You wouldn't? It sounds like a fun thing to try. (Yes, obviously you wouldn't be going anywhere near full speed.)
- jedberg 7y ago
  Just put a 1/2 filled 1L water bottle in the steering wheel. It's cheaper. And if you get thirsty you always have water handy.
- lgats 7y ago
  http://www.steering-wheel-ipad.com/ http://www.steering-wheel-ipad.com/ Similar ‘product’... but this one is a joke
7y ago

crmrc114 7y ago

Good, for a car that uses AI to control windshield wipers ( https://www.inverse.com/article/39877-elon-musk-tesla-ai-wipers https://www.inverse.com/article/39877-elon-musk-tesla-ai-wip... ) You cannot tell me that Tesla cant be bothered to do something like simple driver attention checking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection Tesla does not want to fix this issue- because they have to know that a large number of their buyers are wanting the car specifically to abuse the assertive technology. When a rental Ford Fusion yells at me using Adaptive Cruise without sensing my interaction with the wheel you have got to be kidding me that Tesla cannot take the lead on this technology.

xxpor 7y ago
Autopilot yells at you too if you don't interact with the steering wheel.
- crmrc114 7y ago
  Totally, but when using AI to control wipers its sad they cant be bothered to respond to safety regulators when they could be leaders in this tech by simply adding a camera system that monitors the driver like some other automakers are experimenting with implementing.
  - jsight 7y ago
    Tesla has a camera that they could use for this. They claim that its performance was not great. I hope that some comparisons are made between vehicles so equipped vs the ones that are not, in order to provide further evidence. Although that is difficult, as in many cases the "cooperative" manufacturers have not yet implemented such features. They have only promised to implement them, sometimes in vehicles years away from production.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      Using the camera for that purpose might be a bit problematic (in terms of a technical challenge, not as that adjective would normally be used by twitter mobs). One very common scenario (that I have no idea how it would manage to handle) is someone driving with sunglasses on.

dmitrygr 7y ago

I remain amazed that Tesla can keep marketing "autopilot" and "full self driving" as such, despite the obviousness of the fact that it has and will continue to keep killing people silly enough to believe the hype. Hopefully the NTSB recommendations on this include better and clearer explanations that full self-driving is anything but, and that those recommendations get implemented into serious laws with serious penalties. I get that it is easy to outsell your rivals when you can market fairy tales. I just don't think it's okay when people start getting killed because of it.

nullc 7y ago
I recently commented to a new Tesla buyer that their car seemed nice but I couldn't see myself ever spending so much money on a car. They responded by gushing that self-driving would be available within a couple years and then the car would be making money and would pay for itself in no time so the car was actually better than free. I asked why wouldn't they just wait until it was actually available and the claimed that at that point tesla would raise the prices to hundreds of thousands per car because of all the income they earn. It took me a little effort to not respond by backing away slowly. Are these beliefs widespread and is tesla promoting them? Or was I just talking to an isolated weirdo?
- pengaru 7y ago
  Yikes, I had no idea Tesla's kool-aid was so effective.
- jsight 7y ago
  I've run into people who believe those claims. I've also run into people (on Reddit) who believed that some wealthy billionaire was buying a lot of Teslas in 2019 and hoarding them in parking garages in plans of launching a self-driving car once the software can do it. When I pointed out the absurdity, I was shocked by how many disagreed. It took time to even realize how many were legitimately not joking. Thankfully, this line of thinking is far from the majority.
- tenacious_tuna 7y ago
  anecdotal evidence with n=1, but I'm a Tesla owner who refuses to pay for the "Full Self Driving" tech, expressly because I think it's way further off and overhyped compared to what I'd actually want for the cost. I especially think the "your car becomes a taxi and pays for itself" gimmick is beyond fantasy. I chalk it up to Musk being an actually mildly insane CEO, which has benefits to go with its downsides. As for the cost of the car, I wanted an EV with more range than other manufacturers provided. (I also make use of the longer range on a regular basis--probably about 2 times a month?) (edit:) I also wanted a car that Went Fast. Not practical in any real sense, but a lot of fun. There are around a dozen Tesla owners at my company. As far as I know, none of them are banking on their cars being a taxi and earning tons of dough. At least one has the FSD upgrade, and uses it primarily to back his car out of the garage on its own so his kids don't bang up the doors when they get in.

agumonkey 7y ago

maybe this will make Elon musk think twice

free652 7y ago

The problem is that the autopilot almost works, so drivers dont need to pay attention most of the time.

dmitrygr 7y ago
This is actually a phenomenon that is well studied (as it happens, by NTSB). Automation that is 99% reliable - kills! Less is unrelible enough that you notice and watch it carefully, more is reliable enough to actually rely on. It is like the uncanny valley of automation.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  >Automation that is 99% reliable kills! It also saves more lives than it kills people. So?
  - djannzjkzxn 7y ago
    Depending on the numbers, the “saves more than it kills” standard may be 99.9% or 99.9999%. You need data to answer the question and any claims should be backed up by numbers, followed by a bunch of analysis. It’s definitely not something we can prove about currently sold technology with a one-line quip.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    > It also saves more lives than it kills people. So? Do you have data that the rest of us don't - that is data which identifies incursions (that is near-crash interactions which do not end in a crash) where vehicular automation acts correctly and human drivers do not? If not, than you really can't make that statement. You can say that "Tesla's luxury cars running under autopilot show fewer crashes per mile than average for all cars", and be accurate, but that's not "saving lives".
  - LoSboccacc 7y ago
    it's not quite there yet, unless you believe at the stats published by Tesla that compares apples and oranges.

BooneJS 7y ago

That concrete is terrible there. At night it’s hard to see the painted lines but the lines made by the concrete totally bend towards that left exit. Challenging to tell which lines to follow to stay in your lane. I don’t mean to give Tesla a pass mor marketing autopilot, but that section of road is hard for humans too.

swiley 7y ago
I'm not sure the driving problem is defined well enough to be solvable and this is a great example of that. That's probably why ML gets used so much, you can't really prove it's incorrect but it works a lot of the time so you can get away with selling it until someone dies.

KingMachiavelli 7y ago

> Two, the cushion already was severely damaged. After a Toyota Prius crashed into it two months earlier, the length of the attenuator was shortened, offering less protection against the 3-foot-tall concrete median wall behind it. Maybe the repairing crash mitigation devices of frequent & deadly hazards should be a higher priority. Or maybe better marking the 'gore' lane as in its current state it's simply an empty lane that would look identical to a real lane (i.e if you can't see the divider then it looks like a normal lane). I don't get why we aren't looking into slightly changing our roads to better work with self driving cars when all it takes is a little more paint.

dmitrygr 7y ago
> I don't get why we aren't looking into slightly changing our roads to better work with self driving cars when all it takes is a little more paint. Because 99.9999% of drivers are human and have no issues seeing the concrete barriers and not hitting them head on at full speed. Until self driving is better than humans in all cases it will not be acceptable. Nobody will spend money to adapt roads to self driving cars until they comprise a significant percent of cars (read: decades from now, if ever)
- drewrv 7y ago
  > Because 99.9999% of drivers are human and have no issues seeing the concrete barriers and not hitting them head on at full speed. In this particular case, a human driver did crash head-on into the barrier somewhat recently.
  - cjhopman 7y ago
    According to https://dot.ca.gov/programs/traffic-operations/census/traffic-volumes/2017/route-101 https://dot.ca.gov/programs/traffic-operations/census/traffi..., ~125,000 cars drive through that area per day (scroll to "JCT. RTE. 85", divide by 2). According to the report, the previous collision was 2 months earlier, so ~7.5Million cars passed through there. 99.9999% doesn't seem that far off.
7y ago

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/5nRO8 https://archive.md/5nRO8

tristanb 7y ago

I don't agree with many of the points here. My partner bought a Tesla, I had little interest in them. I now would buy no other car. The autopilot has changed how I drive forever. We regularly take long three hour drives to get to a scenic spot that I would never consider doing in another car. With autopilot engaged, I am monitoring everything - probably with more accuracy then if I was driving, due to the decreased cognitive load. I don't get tired, like I do in an other car, with all the negative effects that come with that. Im a safe driver, and autopilot makes me better at driving. I am not surprised that if you don't follow the instructions bad things can happen. (I believe statistically less than meat powered driving). That is on the human, not the technology. The guy in the article was playing a phone game. He crashed into a barrier he had had problems with before. Same guy, playing a phone game, whilst on cruise control in a BMW. Should we regulate that? No, we should regulate idiots in cars.

mayneack 7y ago
YMMV and all, but I've had a similar experience with just adaptive cruise control for long drives. Driving the 7 hours from LA to Utah became pretty easy to do without having to break/speed up every few minutes with normal traffic. It still falls short in stop and go traffic, which I think teslas do well in.
- ObsoleteNerd 7y ago
  Adaptive cruise control is incredible. I regularly do a 4 hour freeway drive (every week or two) and have noticed a distinct decrease in tiredness since using it. I feel an order of magnitude more aware of it surroundings when not having to constantly worry about whether I’m doing the speed limit (the freeway here has lots of cops and hidden speed cameras) and I find the entire drive so much more relaxing now. I couldn’t own a car without it anymore. I definitely don’t feel Tesla is responsible for the crashes caused by people ignoring all the warnings and notices. People have been ignoring warnings and dying in stupid ways since warnings first existed.
  - wil421 7y ago

erik_landerholm 7y ago

My friend has one and uses the auto-pilot responsibly, works very well. Until someone shows me concrete evidence that autopilot is responsible for an inordinate amount of accidents at a rate higher than normal human driving,...this seems like a huge waste of time and fear mongering.

ravedave5 7y ago
That's the thing, Tesla tracks these stats and driving with auto-pilot has less accidents - https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
- ohmaigad 7y ago
  Comparing specific cases to the national average probably isn't the most trustworthy source. Not really apples to apples comparison.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The comparison has been criticized, though, as Tesla's autopilot's current limitations mean it's generally engaged in safer-than-average conditions - highway driving, no snow, newer vehicles, etc. It's like comparing your primary care doc's outcomes against a world-class brain surgeon. More people come out of the PCP's office alive, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're the better doctor.
  - foepys 7y ago
    Since Tesla Autopilot is only working in Highway-like environments, we should compare this to highway accidents. In Germany for example only 6.2% of all deadly accidents happen on the Autobahn. So Tesla is clearly using deceptive marketing by comparing the average across all deadly road accidents.
- czzr 7y ago
  I looked at the first report in your link. It says: “we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged.” And then: “By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles” This is true. It’s also a complete lie. It’s set up to make you think that this proves Autopilot is safer than human drivers, but it compares a national stat for all cars in all possible driving conditions to a Tesla stat for high end cars in good weather freeway driving. The latter are inherently much safer. But so many people are falling for this blatant lying - plenty of examples in this thread alone. I hate that this works for them, and that it just encourages others to lie similarly. I wish we had higher standards, as a society.

deleted 7y ago

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zaroth 7y ago

The CDC reports that every day in the US about 9 people are killed, and more than 1,000 injured due to distracted driving. [1] Annually, over 1 million people die globally in car crashes. Driving is both the source of trillions of dollars of economic value annually, as well as the cause of ~$1 trillion a year in economic damages (including pain, suffering, and loss of life). A focused and alert human is, overall, fairly awesome at driving, even in surprisingly adverse conditions. Humans, however, can also be lazy, easily distracted, and make irresponsible choices. Cars to some extent try to protect humans against making these bad choices (like seat belt warnings) but to other extents respect that humans are not to be subjugated by a machine, and this means even being allowed to make bad decisions. ADAS systems like AutoPilot and Level 3-5 self-driving are the most promising solution to the daily devastation that occurs on our roadways. This is literally a multi-trillion dollar problem. For an ADAS system to be most effective, it must be reliable and predictable, and it also must be easy to use. An ADAS system cannot increase driver safety if the driver turns it off, or won't turn it on because it's too annoying. As a Tesla owner I can definitively state, that the safest way for me to drive is with AutoPilot enabled, with my hands on the wheel, and looking out the damn windows. This is how cars are supposed to be driven, and it's how Tesla consistently tells its drivers to drive the car. While Tesla consistently and repeatedly instructs drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and to remain alert, it doesn't stop humans from taking their focus off the road, just like humans do consistently with or without AutoPilot. My point is basically this; it does not necessarily make driving more safe to make AutoPilot impossible to abuse. The way most drivers that I see on the road are operating their vehicle, it should be illegal to drive without AutoPilot. In short, I think it's important to understand that a technology can literally save lives while still not saving every life. It's a tragedy every time someone dies on the roads, and it will be a miracle when we have technology fully deployed that can prevent 99% of those deaths. [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...

veeralpatel979 7y ago

I wonder why they chose the name Autopilot! The name seems to imply something the tech does something that it's not, though in all fairness to Tesla, they are very clear about the fact that Autopilot does require an attentive human at the wheel.

dmitrygr 7y ago

Some of the info NTSB released, direct from them: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.as...

Rebelgecko 7y ago

I dunno if LA Times changed the headline after this was submitted to HN, but it's actually "NTSB slams Tesla, Apple and regulators over a fatal Autopilot crash" The "slamming" of Apple seems particularly lame. Partially it's because they make iPhones, but the head of the NTSB also seems to be implying that an employer has a responsibility to prevent its employees from engaging in risky behaviors when they're off the clock.

FireBeyond 7y ago
> an employer has a responsibility to prevent its employees from engaging in risky behaviors when they're off the clock _IF_ (and I absolutely don't know in this case, but we've all certainly heard of it before) an employer expects that you will be responsive just because you have a phone with email / Slack access, etc., let alone if they factor that into performance, whether it be informal or formal, then perhaps they do (though certainly a minority, and, again, I have no idea about this particular instance and employer).

Glyptodon 7y ago

I think it's bizarre that they call out Apple. Like what, they add "though shall not game and drive" to a document somewhere or put it in a memo and magically things like this wouldn't happen?

Animats 7y ago

The fundamental problem with Tesla's driver assistance system is straightforward - it won't brake for anything other than a car rear end. So far, Teslas on autopilot have hit at speed at least two semitrailers, a fire truck, a street sweeper, and various other objects partly obstructing a lane. The NTSB has pictures of most of these.[1] In most cases there's no braking at all - the thing just plows into the obstacle at full speed. Musk's decision not to use LIDAR is paid for in blood. [1] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2020-HWY18FH011-BMG.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2020-HWY18FH011-BMG.a...

ebg13 7y ago
> Musk's decision not to use LIDAR is paid for in blood. LIDAR is not the only way to record depth information. Saying that LIDAR is some kind of savior device is heavily into "solve all your fusion problems with this one weird trick" territory.
- SQueeeeeL 7y ago
  Okay, but from the statement, whatever alternative they're using isn't working
- totalZero 7y ago
  Don't be ridiculous. It's more like "see better with different glasses."
  - ebg13 7y ago
    Do you have a paper comparing states of the art flash LIDAR to real time high density stereo that makes you think it's better? Because my experience with the field has been that lasers aren't better for this except for very specific non-real-world scenarios.
    - ip26 7y ago
      Why is a paper required? Many of Tesla's early self-driving accidents involved low contrast scenes where the system was unable to distinguish, e.g., a white object from a wall, or a blue object from the sky. This is always a weakness with optical, even for our own eyeballs.

deegles 7y ago

If I was a passenger in a Tesla, I would not let the driver turn on Autopilot. If they refused, I would get out and get a rideshare.

tristanb 7y ago
Have you tried it?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I can say "I'd rather not take cyanide" without having to try it first.
  - tristanb 7y ago
    Sure but cyanide definitively kills you, and you're talking about a product of which (it appears) you have had no first hand experience.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I have no first hand experience with cyanide.

davidgardner 7y ago

"In a 2017 study for Rand Corp., researchers assessed 500 different what-if scenarios for the development of [self-driving] technology. In most, the cost of waiting for almost-perfect driverless cars, compared with accepting ones that are only slightly safer than humans, was measured in tens of thousands of lives. “People who are waiting for this to be nearly perfect should appreciate that that’s not without costs,” says Kalra, a robotics expert who’s testified before Congress on driverless-car policy." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-09/tesla-s-autopilot-could-save-the-lives-of-millions-but-it-will-kill-some-people-first https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-09/tesla-s-a...