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Meanwhile a Tesla on autopilot crashes into a stationary police car on the highway. As much as I like the tech I still think we are years away from self drivin

by thdrdt 6y ago

Meanwhile a Tesla on autopilot crashes into a stationary police car on the highway. As much as I like the tech I still think we are years away from self driving cars. Edit: as other pointed out it looks like this recent accident was with a 4 year old autopilot version (software, 8 year old hardware). So it is not completely fair to use it as example. But the reason I used it is because detecting stationary objects should be the basics of any self driving vehicle.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
I assume you're referring to the incident from a few days ago, in which case, you're withholding so much information that this is wildly misleading. That was a first-generation Tesla Model S, which means it is using the first version of autopilot, developed by Mobileye, from 2012. So you're only correct if you choose to ignore eight years of progress.
- tmalsburg2 6y ago
  You're assuming that the latest version would not have produced this accident, but do we actually known this?
- oldgradstudent 6y ago
  Happens regularly with all versions of Autopilot. Here's a recent one with a Tesla Model 3: https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ
  - WA 6y ago
    I wonder why this can even happen. Tesla cars have some kind of radar for front distance, no?
    - oldgradstudent 6y ago
      Reportedly[1], radar cannot reliably distinguish between trucks blocking the road, manhole covers, overhead signs, overpasses, and a lot of other stuff. If the car stops for every radar returns that looks like something that blocks the lane, it will perform emergency brakes for ghosts all the time. The Tesla (and others) do is to ignore returns from stationary objects in certain circumstances. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
      - m463 6y ago
        Thinking about how radar works - it would be easier to detect a slow moving car than a stopped one. In other words, driving at 50 mph and coming up on a car going 10 mph, you would get two strong signals -- one strong one for the world going -50mph, and a smaller one for a car going -40 mph. A stationary vehicle however - it would be indistinguishable from everything else that is stopped.
        LeoPanthera 6y ago
        The "autopilot" on my Nissan Leaf explicitly warns you, in big, red text, that it cannot detect stopped cars if you are driving faster than 30mph. As long as they're moving, even slowly, it has no problems.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Yeah, I recall Waymo bragging they could do this years ago... a few months before a Google engineer reported to a Slate reporter that a Google Self-Driving Car would happily run any red light that wasn't in its map in advance... The long tail of edge cases in self-driving is vast, and each one needs to be individually addressed.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  So long as it requires an internet or similar connection I think its mainly useless. I rather a self driving car that works whether Google is damned and none existent or not. That would be impressive, you download OSM or better maps and terrain details of the world and the car based on where it travels knows where you are despite not getting a GPS signal cause reasons. We should be able to do this sort of fauly tolerance in software.
- vmception 6y ago
  > The long tail of edge cases in self-driving is vast, and each one needs to be individually addressed. But when a single car encounters an issue, all cars get updated at once. Just keep solving those captchas people, they really need to know what a crosswalk looks like.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    My searches produce an inordinate number of captchas, thus proving that Google can't identify humans, even in the very limited environment of Google searches. Which doesn't bode well for the cars. It appears that reasonably rapid use of inurl: makes it think you're a bot.
    - vmception 6y ago
      Captcha's aren't to identify humans, they are to train AI. It is easy for me to understand the tolerance level, I know which images it understands and which images it likely doesn't. I can easily finish captchas without selecting all images of crosswalks. Anyway, your point seems to have the purpose mixed up. Pointing out images of crosswalks trains the same system that some cars use or will use.
manmal 6y ago
Humans crash into things, too, you know. Let’s see what the next AP version (optimized for the new hardware) is like, I read it‘s due to be released soon.
- passerby1 6y ago
  Humans are held responsible for what they do. But who is gonna go to jail if Tesla kills someone? Owner? Enginneers? Maybe car itself?
  - kerng 6y ago
    If breakes dont work, who is held accountable? These things have pretty pragmatic solutions and arent really much different to other areas. Elon Musk said in the past if it's a AP failure, then Tesla is accountable.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Except in the fine print there is a clause that says the driver has to always be able to take control in time to avoid crashes and hence Tesla is not at fault unless AP somehow actively prevents the driver from taking control.
  - ximeng 6y ago
    You sue whoever looks to be to blame. So perhaps the victim’s family sues the car owner. The car owner then sues the car manufacturer if they feel it was to blame. If the company feels an individual engineer was to blame they might sue the engineer. Basically just let the courts figure out the balance between societal harm and responsibility.
  - dheera 6y ago
    The idea that we need to find a single escape-goat to blame and throw in jail for every accident is a very antiquated way to think about justice. There are many cases where nobody is at fault, or multiple people are collectively at fault. I would much prefer we think in terms of overall safety. If human drivers have 30000 deaths a year, and switching to autonomous driving results in 1000 deaths per year, we've made progress as a society. We don't need to hunt down and throw people (or cars) in jail for those 1000 deaths. We should instead demand that engineers investigate those 1000 deaths and try to find ways to get them as close to 0 as possible. Throwing people in jail is a waste of resources that could be diverted towards achieving better safety. The engineers should be investigating and making improvements, not sitting in a jail cell. (Of course, if there is intentional negligence that resulted in 1000 deaths when there would normally be 500, that's another story.)
jaxn 6y ago
Recently? I have about 20k mile on autopilot and it has gotten much better.
- ronaldj 6y ago
  3 days ago... https://electrek.co/2020/08/26/tesla-driver-autopilot-watching-movie-when-crash-police-car/ https://electrek.co/2020/08/26/tesla-driver-autopilot-watchi...
  - jrv 6y ago
    "The Model S was a pre-refresh Model S, which means that it was likely using the first version of Tesla’s Autopilot, which hasn’t been updated in a while'
    - izacus 6y ago
      Which sounds pretty horrible if you think about it - how many of those obsolete software stacks are driving around out there without any clear notification to drivers that they're lacking in quality?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - kerng 6y ago
    This was 2012 software by the way. Not anywhere close to current Autopilot
    - oldgradstudent 6y ago
      Here's a recent one with a Model 3: https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      Good thing no one would consider using a car older than 4 years.
dheera 6y ago
Almost all of the Tesla autopilot crashes could have been avoided if they used LIDAR on their cars. But of course, if they used LIDAR on their cars, they wouldn't be able to ship hundreds of thousands of cars.
andy_ppp 6y ago
Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving; they aren’t the same thing and you are required to stay in control of the vehicle which clearly didn’t happen with this crash. Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch. I see this a bit like air travel where over time every kink in the software will be filtered out. The software will be safer than human drivers at launch so I’m not extremely concerned. Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs. I don’t know but I’m sure this will happen in the next few years for Tesla and for non highway driving it will be extremely safe. N of one incidents (of real self driving) will probably still happen but as long as what went wrong is learnable from I think it’s acceptable.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Not that I want to cast total doubt but it will take a lot of training before machines learn all the dumb crap that humans do whilst driving. What if you have a seizure whilst driving, or another self driving car from another company just went berzerk and shifts lanes for whatever insane reason? With planes its a lot simpler since its much less likely for planes to come into such close proximity typically.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  "Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving" No I was not. I understand autopilot is not self driving. But since even basic collision detection is still difficult the step from autopilot to self driving will take years imho. "Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch." Maybe. But imho that day will still be years from now. "Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs." When self driving is ready for the road I believe it will be much safer than people behind the wheel. Systems like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping and autopilot are already safer than people. The problem right now is that all the 'glitches' are potential deadly. Imagine all the cars in the world would to become self driving with the current tech. It would be a mess. The moment self driving cars would make less of a mess than humans it will be ready for the road.

by thdrdt 6y ago

LeoPanthera 6y ago

I assume you're referring to the incident from a few days ago, in which case, you're withholding so much information that this is wildly misleading. That was a first-generation Tesla Model S, which means it is using the first version of autopilot, developed by Mobileye, from 2012. So you're only correct if you choose to ignore eight years of progress.

tmalsburg2 6y ago
You're assuming that the latest version would not have produced this accident, but do we actually known this?
oldgradstudent 6y ago
Happens regularly with all versions of Autopilot. Here's a recent one with a Tesla Model 3: https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ
- WA 6y ago
  I wonder why this can even happen. Tesla cars have some kind of radar for front distance, no?
  - oldgradstudent 6y ago
    Reportedly[1], radar cannot reliably distinguish between trucks blocking the road, manhole covers, overhead signs, overpasses, and a lot of other stuff. If the car stops for every radar returns that looks like something that blocks the lane, it will perform emergency brakes for ghosts all the time. The Tesla (and others) do is to ignore returns from stationary objects in certain circumstances. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
    - m463 6y ago
      Thinking about how radar works - it would be easier to detect a slow moving car than a stopped one. In other words, driving at 50 mph and coming up on a car going 10 mph, you would get two strong signals -- one strong one for the world going -50mph, and a smaller one for a car going -40 mph. A stationary vehicle however - it would be indistinguishable from everything else that is stopped.
      - LeoPanthera 6y ago
        The "autopilot" on my Nissan Leaf explicitly warns you, in big, red text, that it cannot detect stopped cars if you are driving faster than 30mph. As long as they're moving, even slowly, it has no problems.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Yeah, I recall Waymo bragging they could do this years ago... a few months before a Google engineer reported to a Slate reporter that a Google Self-Driving Car would happily run any red light that wasn't in its map in advance... The long tail of edge cases in self-driving is vast, and each one needs to be individually addressed.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
So long as it requires an internet or similar connection I think its mainly useless. I rather a self driving car that works whether Google is damned and none existent or not. That would be impressive, you download OSM or better maps and terrain details of the world and the car based on where it travels knows where you are despite not getting a GPS signal cause reasons. We should be able to do this sort of fauly tolerance in software.
vmception 6y ago
> The long tail of edge cases in self-driving is vast, and each one needs to be individually addressed. But when a single car encounters an issue, all cars get updated at once. Just keep solving those captchas people, they really need to know what a crosswalk looks like.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  My searches produce an inordinate number of captchas, thus proving that Google can't identify humans, even in the very limited environment of Google searches. Which doesn't bode well for the cars. It appears that reasonably rapid use of inurl: makes it think you're a bot.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Captcha's aren't to identify humans, they are to train AI. It is easy for me to understand the tolerance level, I know which images it understands and which images it likely doesn't. I can easily finish captchas without selecting all images of crosswalks. Anyway, your point seems to have the purpose mixed up. Pointing out images of crosswalks trains the same system that some cars use or will use.

manmal 6y ago

Humans crash into things, too, you know. Let’s see what the next AP version (optimized for the new hardware) is like, I read it‘s due to be released soon.

passerby1 6y ago
Humans are held responsible for what they do. But who is gonna go to jail if Tesla kills someone? Owner? Enginneers? Maybe car itself?
- kerng 6y ago
  If breakes dont work, who is held accountable? These things have pretty pragmatic solutions and arent really much different to other areas. Elon Musk said in the past if it's a AP failure, then Tesla is accountable.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Except in the fine print there is a clause that says the driver has to always be able to take control in time to avoid crashes and hence Tesla is not at fault unless AP somehow actively prevents the driver from taking control.
- ximeng 6y ago
  You sue whoever looks to be to blame. So perhaps the victim’s family sues the car owner. The car owner then sues the car manufacturer if they feel it was to blame. If the company feels an individual engineer was to blame they might sue the engineer. Basically just let the courts figure out the balance between societal harm and responsibility.
- dheera 6y ago
  The idea that we need to find a single escape-goat to blame and throw in jail for every accident is a very antiquated way to think about justice. There are many cases where nobody is at fault, or multiple people are collectively at fault. I would much prefer we think in terms of overall safety. If human drivers have 30000 deaths a year, and switching to autonomous driving results in 1000 deaths per year, we've made progress as a society. We don't need to hunt down and throw people (or cars) in jail for those 1000 deaths. We should instead demand that engineers investigate those 1000 deaths and try to find ways to get them as close to 0 as possible. Throwing people in jail is a waste of resources that could be diverted towards achieving better safety. The engineers should be investigating and making improvements, not sitting in a jail cell. (Of course, if there is intentional negligence that resulted in 1000 deaths when there would normally be 500, that's another story.)

jaxn 6y ago

Recently? I have about 20k mile on autopilot and it has gotten much better.

ronaldj 6y ago
3 days ago... https://electrek.co/2020/08/26/tesla-driver-autopilot-watching-movie-when-crash-police-car/ https://electrek.co/2020/08/26/tesla-driver-autopilot-watchi...
- jrv 6y ago
  "The Model S was a pre-refresh Model S, which means that it was likely using the first version of Tesla’s Autopilot, which hasn’t been updated in a while'
  - izacus 6y ago
    Which sounds pretty horrible if you think about it - how many of those obsolete software stacks are driving around out there without any clear notification to drivers that they're lacking in quality?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- kerng 6y ago
  This was 2012 software by the way. Not anywhere close to current Autopilot
  - oldgradstudent 6y ago
    Here's a recent one with a Model 3: https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ https://youtu.be/X3hrKnv0dPQ
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    Good thing no one would consider using a car older than 4 years.

dheera 6y ago

Almost all of the Tesla autopilot crashes could have been avoided if they used LIDAR on their cars. But of course, if they used LIDAR on their cars, they wouldn't be able to ship hundreds of thousands of cars.

andy_ppp 6y ago

Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving; they aren’t the same thing and you are required to stay in control of the vehicle which clearly didn’t happen with this crash. Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch. I see this a bit like air travel where over time every kink in the software will be filtered out. The software will be safer than human drivers at launch so I’m not extremely concerned. Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs. I don’t know but I’m sure this will happen in the next few years for Tesla and for non highway driving it will be extremely safe. N of one incidents (of real self driving) will probably still happen but as long as what went wrong is learnable from I think it’s acceptable.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
Not that I want to cast total doubt but it will take a lot of training before machines learn all the dumb crap that humans do whilst driving. What if you have a seizure whilst driving, or another self driving car from another company just went berzerk and shifts lanes for whatever insane reason? With planes its a lot simpler since its much less likely for planes to come into such close proximity typically.
thdrdt 6y ago
"Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving" No I was not. I understand autopilot is not self driving. But since even basic collision detection is still difficult the step from autopilot to self driving will take years imho. "Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch." Maybe. But imho that day will still be years from now. "Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs." When self driving is ready for the road I believe it will be much safer than people behind the wheel. Systems like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping and autopilot are already safer than people. The problem right now is that all the 'glitches' are potential deadly. Imagine all the cars in the world would to become self driving with the current tech. It would be a mess. The moment self driving cars would make less of a mess than humans it will be ready for the road.