3 ms·

This feels like the physical world version of writing at the top of your autopilot function if(thisSpecificCattleGrid) return True //Skip the auto

This feels like the physical world version of writing at the top of your autopilot function if(thisSpecificCattleGrid) return True //Skip the autopilot for this case Like... yeah, that will stop the autopilot from crashing when you come across that cattle grid. It doesn't change the fact that your autopilot has some known bad behaviour and you've got no idea where else it'll show up.

rasz 6y ago
But the automation is not crashing into anything. Automatic obstacle avoidance systems in current cars are only allowed to engage brakes. Something doesnt add up in that story.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  The story doesn't say cars left the road by swerving off the side. I think they left it vertically because it was shaped like a jump and they were just driving too fast. It also doesn't say automatic braking/obstacle avoidance caused them to leave the road. Nor does it say the road was altered because of automatic anything. This looks like a massive reading comprehension problem that people here are suffering from. Journalists are experts in being pedantically correct in all their facts but leaving the careless reader with a completely wrong idea of what happened.
  - rasz 6y ago
    What does this: >Cars have come off the road trying to cross a cattle grid after sensors mistook it for a wall and slammed on the brakes. mean according to you?
    - exporectomy 6y ago
      Wow. I actually didn't see that, even after re-reading it looking specifically for it. I had to ctrl-F to find it. It's in bold under the picture so I probably mistook it for general non-article clutter and ignored it. Reading comprehension problem here too! It does use that causality avoidance word "after". That's technically honest because the author only knows the sequence of events, not the causality, but it also means we only know that too. In an extreme case, it might not even be the same cars that mistook it for a wall as the ones that came off the road, but it also might not be the autonomy that caused them to come off the road, but the driver's actions in response to the braking.
- nicky0 6y ago
  I think that sudden engaging the brakes is what caused the accidents.
t0mas88 6y ago
It shows up in other places as well, The Netherlands has a lot of traffic islands at crossings, they often have a metal "fence" on it around schools to force kids on bikes to zig-zag (slowing them down instead of crossing at speed). It's very manufacturer dependent how these are handled. The systems I have experience with are Volvo, Tesla and BMW and they handle things quite differently. My girlfriend's Volvo was very trigger happy on the emergency brake feature, it would hit the brakes for traffic islands all the time because it didn't know you were going to steer around it. It nearly caused us to be rear-ended at 50 km/h a couple of times. My BMW and previous Tesla on the other hand almost completely ignore stationary road-side kind of objects. Both have never braked for a traffic island in the few years that I drove them. The downside is I guess that there are known cases of Tesla Autopilot driving into things (the famous lane-divider incident comes to mind). BMW doesn't sell their system as autopilot, but their manual also has a big warning to be aware of things blocking the road and not to rely on the car to stop for those. So I expect their system, faced with that same lane-divider would probably also crash into it.

rasz 6y ago

But the automation is not crashing into anything. Automatic obstacle avoidance systems in current cars are only allowed to engage brakes. Something doesnt add up in that story.

exporectomy 6y ago
The story doesn't say cars left the road by swerving off the side. I think they left it vertically because it was shaped like a jump and they were just driving too fast. It also doesn't say automatic braking/obstacle avoidance caused them to leave the road. Nor does it say the road was altered because of automatic anything. This looks like a massive reading comprehension problem that people here are suffering from. Journalists are experts in being pedantically correct in all their facts but leaving the careless reader with a completely wrong idea of what happened.
- rasz 6y ago
  What does this: >Cars have come off the road trying to cross a cattle grid after sensors mistook it for a wall and slammed on the brakes. mean according to you?
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    Wow. I actually didn't see that, even after re-reading it looking specifically for it. I had to ctrl-F to find it. It's in bold under the picture so I probably mistook it for general non-article clutter and ignored it. Reading comprehension problem here too! It does use that causality avoidance word "after". That's technically honest because the author only knows the sequence of events, not the causality, but it also means we only know that too. In an extreme case, it might not even be the same cars that mistook it for a wall as the ones that came off the road, but it also might not be the autonomy that caused them to come off the road, but the driver's actions in response to the braking.
nicky0 6y ago
I think that sudden engaging the brakes is what caused the accidents.

t0mas88 6y ago

It shows up in other places as well, The Netherlands has a lot of traffic islands at crossings, they often have a metal "fence" on it around schools to force kids on bikes to zig-zag (slowing them down instead of crossing at speed). It's very manufacturer dependent how these are handled. The systems I have experience with are Volvo, Tesla and BMW and they handle things quite differently. My girlfriend's Volvo was very trigger happy on the emergency brake feature, it would hit the brakes for traffic islands all the time because it didn't know you were going to steer around it. It nearly caused us to be rear-ended at 50 km/h a couple of times. My BMW and previous Tesla on the other hand almost completely ignore stationary road-side kind of objects. Both have never braked for a traffic island in the few years that I drove them. The downside is I guess that there are known cases of Tesla Autopilot driving into things (the famous lane-divider incident comes to mind). BMW doesn't sell their system as autopilot, but their manual also has a big warning to be aware of things blocking the road and not to rely on the car to stop for those. So I expect their system, faced with that same lane-divider would probably also crash into it.