9 ms·

Why Teslas Keep Striking Parked Firetrucks and Police Cars

46 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

hoseja 5y ago
What is the average firetrucks-stricken per million driven km for other cars?
- enkid 5y ago
  This is a good question. I couldn't find statistics for striking parked vehicles, but apparently there's something like 20000 accidents a year involving Emergency vehicles. [0] [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018720818786132 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187208187861...
- PinguTS 5y ago
  Does not matter, because it is not a systematic failure. But when a piece of software deployed by an OEM has a problem, then it is a systematic failure where all cars of that OEM are having the very same problem and then the OEM has to do something.
  - chubot 5y ago
    Yeah exactly, a failure that is different than a human failure is going to be noticed, even if it's not more common. It's probably hard to intuit, and no one explicitly thinks about this (except AI engineers and researchers), but emergency vehicles are parked in a way that is "obvious" to human drivers. Every situation is different -- how much shoulder there is, etc. What the visibility is. The driver unconsciously makes a judgement call to be visible (to humans). There is no way they can judge how an AI is going to view them (which changes from time to time, and across AIs). So the only solution is for the AI to err in the same way that humans do, or not at all.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    It doesn't excuse anything, but it does matter
    - PinguTS 5y ago
      Remember when there was the case of unexpected speeding leading to accident by one OEM? It doesn't matter the question of "Oh, what was the accident rate when people where unexpectedly speeding?" What matters was that single type of car by one OEM. If that OEM has some type of problem with its cars, then its a systematic failure which needs to be investigated and resolved by that OEM.
      - darkerside 5y ago
        This belongs in the straw man Hall of Fame. The stuck accelerator is the problem and crashes are the terrible symptom. You would compare how often Toyota's accelerators stuck compared to other manufacturers in bringing a class action suit, would you not? Similarly, if the AI driver crashes in that situation in a similar (or even less) rate to the base rate (manual driving), you would likely not reasonably bring a suit. Either way you should arrive to improve the AI, but the base rate does matter, and telling someone their question does not matter because you personally don't care about it is bullshit.
        542354234235 5y ago
        The base rate of results doesn’t necessarily matter when you are talking about two different causes. For a stuck accelerator, you are comparing the same cause (stuck accelerator) leading to the same result (fast acceleration leading to dangerous driving conditions). You can’t compare the base rate of fast acceleration leading to dangerous driving conditions, that can happen for many reasons, including intentional driver choice, and make any meaningful conclusion. Because the base rate of an equipment failure (stuck accelerator) leading to fast acceleration, and the base rate of individual driver choice leading to fast acceleration aren’t the same thing. It is the same here. Comparing individual human choices and errors leading to striking emergency vehicles with an equipment failure (Tesla’s detection and control software) leading to striking emergency vehicles is not a comparison and it is no more an excuse to not hold Tesla accountable than it would be to not hold Toyota accountable because their accelerators stick less often than a teenager decided to mash the gas on his new car and wrecks it.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Unless it is no more than the average, in which case it may not be a systematic failure. Which was their point I believe? A systematic failure would be striking every emergency vehicle for instance.
    - PinguTS 5y ago
      A systematic failure is striking every emergency vehicles in the same circumstances. So it needs to be investigated what are the circumstances and the OEM needs to resolve the issue.
      - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
        I get it; a computer can address these things by fixing software once. People have to be trained one at a time. This is really the glory of automated driving - once an issue is identified, it can be addressed in all the vehicles of that type simultaneously.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  I wasn't sure of your comment was being sarcastic or not. In any case the article clearly suggests that it's a systemic issue due to using too few sensor modalities in conjunction with too little training data. Hence it's not restricted to firetrucks, but many new, unlearned situations.
- smt88 5y ago
  There aren't separate stats for stationary firetrucks, but looking at all collisions with emergency vehicles (including at high speed), it's in the order of magnitude of 15,000 collisions with more than 3 trillion miles driven. Tesla is so many orders of magnitude worse in this area than human drivers that it will be laughable for them to try to resort to Musk's usual lie -- that Teslas are better drivers than humans.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Here in NL is not uncommon for police vehicles to be the instigator of the accident ( high speed manouvres etc ).
    - adityasaky 5y ago
      How does that work when we're considering stationary first responders though?
      - the-dude 5y ago
        I am replying to someone who pulls up numbers for all accidents with emergency vehicles, because those stationary numbers do not exist. My remark on that is : non-stationary emergency vehicles also cause accidents, so the number is not comparable with Teslas/SmashedEmergencyVehicle.
        ahahahahah 5y ago
        Sure, but not counting those makes Tesla look even worse in the comparison. Even in the very best comparison you can come up with for Tesla, they are still many magnitudes worse than other cars.
bob33212 5y ago
Why do Fords keep striking parked police cars? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+on+traffic+stop https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+...
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Compared to Teslas, they statistically do not. You may make an argument that they do compared to other makes of manually driven cars, but you'd have to adjust for all sorts of variables, and a YouTube search won't do that for you.
  - bob33212 5y ago
    OK, can you provide some statistics with sources? How many police cars were hit on the side of the road last year? What is the breakdown of the Make/Model that hit them?
brixon 5y ago
Telsa is only a level 2 self driving car, but it has been sold as something way more advanced (Telsa has since pulled back some of the hype). A lot of people don't understand that there are even levels at all.
- bcrl 5y ago
  In a safety culture oriented organization drivers would have to receive training before operating a machine like this. Some please explain why exactly isn't that the case with Level 2 self driving cars? Drivers clearly don't understand the limitations of the system.
  - brixon 5y ago
    You have to pass a driving test at age 16 (in US), after that you never need to test again (sometimes eye checks when you are old), cause um... nothing changes about driving or cars or rules in the next 64+ years it would seem.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  A lot of people don't understand that there are even levels at all. People shouldn't really have to. The phrase "self driving car" is a binary yes/no in common, regular English. I don't know if this is Tesla's fault or some committee's fault (SAE?), but it's really terrible marketing to call things "self driving cars" when they can't drive by themselves. Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required.
  - curryst 5y ago
    I'm certain the colloquial use will remain, but "doesn't require a driver" should really be the one to get it's own name. Fully Autonomous Vehicle or Driverless Autonomous Vehicle. "Self-driving car" is just woefully inadequate to describe the capabilities it encompasses. A century old Model T with a brick on the accelerator could be accurately described as a "self-driving car". It's not very good at driving, but neither are drunk people and we still say that they're driving. Likewise, I would argue that a car that can maintain speed and steer itself to stay in it's lane is conceptually closer to a "self-driving car" than it is a "fully manual car". > Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required. That's going to be a licensing thing. Frankly it probably is time for the government to step in and create some kind of licensing for cars that indicates they're fully autonomous. Even if they aren't going to issue any at the moment, it would be good to set the direction that only cars with whatever government seal are actually able to operate without a driver. Then it'd be a little harder for companies to play word games.
twic 5y ago
Why did Tesla decide not to use radar any more? What wavelengths do other cars' radars operate at? How big are the apertures?
- sschueller 5y ago
  I can only think of three reasons: incompetence, arrogance or cost. I tend to think it's mostly arrogance in believing the self driving "problem" can be purely done with cameras and software. Cost as well as availability of parts became an issue this year as well.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    My bet is on cost. It's the stated reason not to use lidar and it only makes sense to apply to radar (not knowing the cost of a radar sensor compared to camera - please share if you do). Elon may not be a great engineer but he is a genius businessman in many aspects so that would also make sense.
    - phpnode 5y ago
      I'm sure aesthetics play a large role too, lidar is not only costly, it's bulky and ugly. To a layman the sole reliance on cameras seems like one of Tesla's biggest mistakes.
      - enriquto 5y ago
        > lidar is not only costly, it's bulky and ugly. This is quite subjective. My opinion is not very representative, but I for one find teslas horrifically bulky and ugly (and most other cars, in fact). They all look like gigantic broken eggshells. On the other hand, a lidar rig looks very cool.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      Imaging radars are way more expensive than cameras, but the type useful in the most basic collision avoidance costs just few dollars. There is no reason to not to have them in a car priced $100k, even just as a failsafe backup to the videocamera. In the future though, mass produced single chip radars have all the chances to beat every other sensing method on cost.
Maxburn 5y ago
As a human I find dealing with going around emergency vehicles at night is a bit troublesome. The emergency lights are overwhelming and obscure your vision from other things, like some worker near the vehicle. Also the human distraction that is target fixation can sink your attention on the emergency scene and distract you from checking your lane to see if it's clear. I don't think this situation is limited to tesla...
- smt88 5y ago
  Humans don't have a systemic difficulty avoiding emergency vehicles. Teslas do. I believe your anecdote, but it's uncommom. Colliding with parked emergency vehicles is extremely rare, almost non-existent. Source: working in auto insurance
  - bob33212 5y ago
    Humans do have a problem with this. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+on+traffic+stop https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+...
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      That's besides the point though. There's still a human that's able to react to new situations (albeit very slowly) on the road. Teslas apparently can't do that very well. The question is: how do we fix this? And is this potential for regulation? For me personally, this is one of my biggest hangups with these new technologies: they're black boxes. We don't know how they work, and they change all the time. Companies can get most of the general cases correct, but as for the panoply of edge cases, how do we approach them? How should insurance companies approach them? Whose at fault here, who pays who? There's just so many unanswered questions with automated driving that a lot of people don't really want to solve, they just want the technology out there and we'll worry about the edge cases later...as in, we'll worry about it when people start dying. "Move fast and break things", that retarded shit. I hate it. This SV frat programmer mentality is now bleeding over into automobiles, an industry that does indeed need to be shaken up, but not when it's at the expense of lives. Treating driving software like it's a fucking web application that can be fixed later is malicious negligence.
dagw 5y ago
TL;DR Almost certainly due to the fact that these vehicles tend to be surrounded by flashing lights in 'random' shapes and colors, and that is confusing the cameras and AI.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Flashing lights are common and important in the real world. If they confuse AI, then AI isn't ready. No excuses, either figure it out or don't claim you are ready.
dboreham 5y ago
In my state (Montana) there is a law that vehicles must move one lane away from a parked emergency vehicle (leaving an empty lane between you and the emergency vehicle). I wonder if Tesla's firmware understands it needs to do that?
- 404mm 5y ago
  I’m curious too. There are several states with a variation of this law. It tends to be: move over if you can or slow down by 20 below the speed limit if you cannot.
- tommi 5y ago
  While it might be interesting to know what it does in such cases, it shouldn't matter. You as a human should always take full control when encountering unusual activity on road. Relying on currently available driving aid systems to handle edge cases is just begging for trouble.
w_t_payne 5y ago
I wonder if this is something to do with temporal integration periods in the HDR or AGC processing in the camera, in which case it might be an algorithm developed by an camera imager supplier (for example someone like OmniVision) rather than Tesla themselves. Does anyone know which imagers Tesla uses in the cameras on their cars?
julianlam 5y ago
What's equally laughable and gutsy to me is Tesla's assertion that they can achieve parity with cameras, what radar (and now lidar) have been doing for decades. When Mr. Rajkumar details how a camera works (he did dumb it down for the layperson quite a bit), it seems almost laughable that a technology like that can even work in a real-world scenario like vehicular traffic. I've always been of the mind that this technology can only work if you reduce the number of variables at play... that means removing the human element altogether (and even then, mother nature may have other plans), meaning self-driving cars should have their own roads. Pipe dream, I know.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > if you reduce the number of variables at play... that means removing the human element altogether (and even then, mother nature may have other plans), meaning self-driving cars should have their own roads. Why a pipe dream? It's one of the most sound solutions to the problem at the moment. This is the model China went with its self-driving pilot projects for example.
- hourislate 5y ago
  Musk spoke about this (JRE Podcast) and he compared the camera to eyes. He said that the only way we'll ever achieve full self driving is creating a system that is at least as good or better than human eyes.
  - qzw 5y ago
    That’s a fine goal, but let’s not then call a system that has nowhere near the acuity, resolution, or dynamic range, and is not hooked up to a (trained) human brain, “Full Self Driving”.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  Our brains dont have lidar though. right?
  - c-cube 5y ago
drcongo 5y ago
I expected the entire article to read "Because Tesla is just a grift on the gullible. The end."
strebler 5y ago
This problem is actually pretty obvious to fix and you don't even need a neural net - it can definitely be done "old school" computer vision. Simply detect the presence of "flashing emergency lights" in the oncoming lane and disable autopilot when present. No object detector needed. The signal is so strong it's literally flashing extremely brightly in a regular, predictable pattern - any vision grad student should be able to figure this out. Could there be false positives? Yep, but very few things will flash quite like that, and most half baked vision engineers can do this. The worst case is literally simply the driver taking over on occasion at night (maybe near strip clubs? lol)
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  I don't think the problem is as simple as that. Sure flashy lights with reflectors confuse the current model sure, but can we consider that an edge-case and work from there? Also LED's flash too in a regular pattern too. I don't know though, seems like something that would have been accounted for as it's a pretty important part of driving awareness...maybe they didn't think people would want to stay on "full auto" when a police/Emergency vehicle is in the vicinity since you might have to do some sort of maneuver to get out of it's way. So yeah, I'll say it's an edge case for now. Disclaimer: I'm an idiot so take my view with a boeing 747 load of salt
- burntwater 5y ago
  The solution of disabling autopilot in the presence of flashing emergency lights seems so incredibly obvious to me, that I can only assume I'm missing some glaring reason for it to not have been the case since day one.
  - plain4 5y ago
    This seems like it would create a great attack vector for Teslas. Setup a flashing red light on a corner and watch the Teslas fly off the road.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > This problem is actually pretty obvious to fix and you don't even need a neural net So can be controlled collisions as such. Simplest FMCW radars are more than enough for every emergency braking system on the market. It's not uncommon to even use them in parallel with some more "brainy" radar imagers like on Mercedes cars. That is to make a collision preventable in case the main imaging computer hangs, or crashes.
bananapub 5y ago
because it isn't a proper self-driving car and people need to stop thinking or acting like it is.
- eloisius 5y ago
  It would help if it wasn't marketed as one.
  - 988747 5y ago
    It would help if Tesla was fined $1B for false advertising then... Even naming the whole thing "Autopilot" qualifies as punishable offence, in my opinion.
    - 542354234235 5y ago
      It is so insane to me how people keep putting the burden of understanding the capabilities and limits of a computer and engineering system on consumers, who aren’t engineering or computer experts, and not putting the burden on the company full of engineers and computer experts to properly and adequately inform the consumer. Or the burden of consumers, that are not legally trained in any way, of having a full understanding the implications of legal matters, and not the company with a staff of lawyers, in properly and adequately explaining it.
    - sidibe 5y ago
      It's so egregious, see https://tesla.com/autopilot https://tesla.com/autopilot: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons." Can't believe what they've been allowed to do until now.

46 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

hoseja 5y ago

What is the average firetrucks-stricken per million driven km for other cars?

enkid 5y ago
This is a good question. I couldn't find statistics for striking parked vehicles, but apparently there's something like 20000 accidents a year involving Emergency vehicles. [0] [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018720818786132 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187208187861...
PinguTS 5y ago
Does not matter, because it is not a systematic failure. But when a piece of software deployed by an OEM has a problem, then it is a systematic failure where all cars of that OEM are having the very same problem and then the OEM has to do something.
- chubot 5y ago
  Yeah exactly, a failure that is different than a human failure is going to be noticed, even if it's not more common. It's probably hard to intuit, and no one explicitly thinks about this (except AI engineers and researchers), but emergency vehicles are parked in a way that is "obvious" to human drivers. Every situation is different -- how much shoulder there is, etc. What the visibility is. The driver unconsciously makes a judgement call to be visible (to humans). There is no way they can judge how an AI is going to view them (which changes from time to time, and across AIs). So the only solution is for the AI to err in the same way that humans do, or not at all.
- darkerside 5y ago
  It doesn't excuse anything, but it does matter
  - PinguTS 5y ago
    Remember when there was the case of unexpected speeding leading to accident by one OEM? It doesn't matter the question of "Oh, what was the accident rate when people where unexpectedly speeding?" What matters was that single type of car by one OEM. If that OEM has some type of problem with its cars, then its a systematic failure which needs to be investigated and resolved by that OEM.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      This belongs in the straw man Hall of Fame. The stuck accelerator is the problem and crashes are the terrible symptom. You would compare how often Toyota's accelerators stuck compared to other manufacturers in bringing a class action suit, would you not? Similarly, if the AI driver crashes in that situation in a similar (or even less) rate to the base rate (manual driving), you would likely not reasonably bring a suit. Either way you should arrive to improve the AI, but the base rate does matter, and telling someone their question does not matter because you personally don't care about it is bullshit.
      - 542354234235 5y ago
        The base rate of results doesn’t necessarily matter when you are talking about two different causes. For a stuck accelerator, you are comparing the same cause (stuck accelerator) leading to the same result (fast acceleration leading to dangerous driving conditions). You can’t compare the base rate of fast acceleration leading to dangerous driving conditions, that can happen for many reasons, including intentional driver choice, and make any meaningful conclusion. Because the base rate of an equipment failure (stuck accelerator) leading to fast acceleration, and the base rate of individual driver choice leading to fast acceleration aren’t the same thing. It is the same here. Comparing individual human choices and errors leading to striking emergency vehicles with an equipment failure (Tesla’s detection and control software) leading to striking emergency vehicles is not a comparison and it is no more an excuse to not hold Tesla accountable than it would be to not hold Toyota accountable because their accelerators stick less often than a teenager decided to mash the gas on his new car and wrecks it.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Unless it is no more than the average, in which case it may not be a systematic failure. Which was their point I believe? A systematic failure would be striking every emergency vehicle for instance.
  - PinguTS 5y ago
    A systematic failure is striking every emergency vehicles in the same circumstances. So it needs to be investigated what are the circumstances and the OEM needs to resolve the issue.
    - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
      I get it; a computer can address these things by fixing software once. People have to be trained one at a time. This is really the glory of automated driving - once an issue is identified, it can be addressed in all the vehicles of that type simultaneously.
Pyramus 5y ago
I wasn't sure of your comment was being sarcastic or not. In any case the article clearly suggests that it's a systemic issue due to using too few sensor modalities in conjunction with too little training data. Hence it's not restricted to firetrucks, but many new, unlearned situations.
smt88 5y ago
There aren't separate stats for stationary firetrucks, but looking at all collisions with emergency vehicles (including at high speed), it's in the order of magnitude of 15,000 collisions with more than 3 trillion miles driven. Tesla is so many orders of magnitude worse in this area than human drivers that it will be laughable for them to try to resort to Musk's usual lie -- that Teslas are better drivers than humans.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Here in NL is not uncommon for police vehicles to be the instigator of the accident ( high speed manouvres etc ).
  - adityasaky 5y ago
    How does that work when we're considering stationary first responders though?
    - the-dude 5y ago
      I am replying to someone who pulls up numbers for all accidents with emergency vehicles, because those stationary numbers do not exist. My remark on that is : non-stationary emergency vehicles also cause accidents, so the number is not comparable with Teslas/SmashedEmergencyVehicle.
      - ahahahahah 5y ago
        Sure, but not counting those makes Tesla look even worse in the comparison. Even in the very best comparison you can come up with for Tesla, they are still many magnitudes worse than other cars.

bob33212 5y ago

Why do Fords keep striking parked police cars? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+on+traffic+stop https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+...

happytoexplain 5y ago
Compared to Teslas, they statistically do not. You may make an argument that they do compared to other makes of manually driven cars, but you'd have to adjust for all sorts of variables, and a YouTube search won't do that for you.
- bob33212 5y ago
  OK, can you provide some statistics with sources? How many police cars were hit on the side of the road last year? What is the breakdown of the Make/Model that hit them?

brixon 5y ago

Telsa is only a level 2 self driving car, but it has been sold as something way more advanced (Telsa has since pulled back some of the hype). A lot of people don't understand that there are even levels at all.

bcrl 5y ago
In a safety culture oriented organization drivers would have to receive training before operating a machine like this. Some please explain why exactly isn't that the case with Level 2 self driving cars? Drivers clearly don't understand the limitations of the system.
- brixon 5y ago
  You have to pass a driving test at age 16 (in US), after that you never need to test again (sometimes eye checks when you are old), cause um... nothing changes about driving or cars or rules in the next 64+ years it would seem.
dfxm12 5y ago
A lot of people don't understand that there are even levels at all. People shouldn't really have to. The phrase "self driving car" is a binary yes/no in common, regular English. I don't know if this is Tesla's fault or some committee's fault (SAE?), but it's really terrible marketing to call things "self driving cars" when they can't drive by themselves. Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required.
- curryst 5y ago
  I'm certain the colloquial use will remain, but "doesn't require a driver" should really be the one to get it's own name. Fully Autonomous Vehicle or Driverless Autonomous Vehicle. "Self-driving car" is just woefully inadequate to describe the capabilities it encompasses. A century old Model T with a brick on the accelerator could be accurately described as a "self-driving car". It's not very good at driving, but neither are drunk people and we still say that they're driving. Likewise, I would argue that a car that can maintain speed and steer itself to stay in it's lane is conceptually closer to a "self-driving car" than it is a "fully manual car". > Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required. That's going to be a licensing thing. Frankly it probably is time for the government to step in and create some kind of licensing for cars that indicates they're fully autonomous. Even if they aren't going to issue any at the moment, it would be good to set the direction that only cars with whatever government seal are actually able to operate without a driver. Then it'd be a little harder for companies to play word games.

twic 5y ago

Why did Tesla decide not to use radar any more? What wavelengths do other cars' radars operate at? How big are the apertures?

sschueller 5y ago
I can only think of three reasons: incompetence, arrogance or cost. I tend to think it's mostly arrogance in believing the self driving "problem" can be purely done with cameras and software. Cost as well as availability of parts became an issue this year as well.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  My bet is on cost. It's the stated reason not to use lidar and it only makes sense to apply to radar (not knowing the cost of a radar sensor compared to camera - please share if you do). Elon may not be a great engineer but he is a genius businessman in many aspects so that would also make sense.
  - phpnode 5y ago
    I'm sure aesthetics play a large role too, lidar is not only costly, it's bulky and ugly. To a layman the sole reliance on cameras seems like one of Tesla's biggest mistakes.
    - enriquto 5y ago
      > lidar is not only costly, it's bulky and ugly. This is quite subjective. My opinion is not very representative, but I for one find teslas horrifically bulky and ugly (and most other cars, in fact). They all look like gigantic broken eggshells. On the other hand, a lidar rig looks very cool.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Imaging radars are way more expensive than cameras, but the type useful in the most basic collision avoidance costs just few dollars. There is no reason to not to have them in a car priced $100k, even just as a failsafe backup to the videocamera. In the future though, mass produced single chip radars have all the chances to beat every other sensing method on cost.

Maxburn 5y ago

As a human I find dealing with going around emergency vehicles at night is a bit troublesome. The emergency lights are overwhelming and obscure your vision from other things, like some worker near the vehicle. Also the human distraction that is target fixation can sink your attention on the emergency scene and distract you from checking your lane to see if it's clear. I don't think this situation is limited to tesla...

smt88 5y ago
Humans don't have a systemic difficulty avoiding emergency vehicles. Teslas do. I believe your anecdote, but it's uncommom. Colliding with parked emergency vehicles is extremely rare, almost non-existent. Source: working in auto insurance
- bob33212 5y ago
  Humans do have a problem with this. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+on+traffic+stop https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+car+hit+...
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    That's besides the point though. There's still a human that's able to react to new situations (albeit very slowly) on the road. Teslas apparently can't do that very well. The question is: how do we fix this? And is this potential for regulation? For me personally, this is one of my biggest hangups with these new technologies: they're black boxes. We don't know how they work, and they change all the time. Companies can get most of the general cases correct, but as for the panoply of edge cases, how do we approach them? How should insurance companies approach them? Whose at fault here, who pays who? There's just so many unanswered questions with automated driving that a lot of people don't really want to solve, they just want the technology out there and we'll worry about the edge cases later...as in, we'll worry about it when people start dying. "Move fast and break things", that retarded shit. I hate it. This SV frat programmer mentality is now bleeding over into automobiles, an industry that does indeed need to be shaken up, but not when it's at the expense of lives. Treating driving software like it's a fucking web application that can be fixed later is malicious negligence.

dagw 5y ago

TL;DR Almost certainly due to the fact that these vehicles tend to be surrounded by flashing lights in 'random' shapes and colors, and that is confusing the cameras and AI.

bluGill 5y ago
Flashing lights are common and important in the real world. If they confuse AI, then AI isn't ready. No excuses, either figure it out or don't claim you are ready.

dboreham 5y ago

In my state (Montana) there is a law that vehicles must move one lane away from a parked emergency vehicle (leaving an empty lane between you and the emergency vehicle). I wonder if Tesla's firmware understands it needs to do that?

404mm 5y ago
I’m curious too. There are several states with a variation of this law. It tends to be: move over if you can or slow down by 20 below the speed limit if you cannot.
tommi 5y ago
While it might be interesting to know what it does in such cases, it shouldn't matter. You as a human should always take full control when encountering unusual activity on road. Relying on currently available driving aid systems to handle edge cases is just begging for trouble.

w_t_payne 5y ago

I wonder if this is something to do with temporal integration periods in the HDR or AGC processing in the camera, in which case it might be an algorithm developed by an camera imager supplier (for example someone like OmniVision) rather than Tesla themselves. Does anyone know which imagers Tesla uses in the cameras on their cars?

julianlam 5y ago

What's equally laughable and gutsy to me is Tesla's assertion that they can achieve parity with cameras, what radar (and now lidar) have been doing for decades. When Mr. Rajkumar details how a camera works (he did dumb it down for the layperson quite a bit), it seems almost laughable that a technology like that can even work in a real-world scenario like vehicular traffic. I've always been of the mind that this technology can only work if you reduce the number of variables at play... that means removing the human element altogether (and even then, mother nature may have other plans), meaning self-driving cars should have their own roads. Pipe dream, I know.

baybal2 5y ago
> if you reduce the number of variables at play... that means removing the human element altogether (and even then, mother nature may have other plans), meaning self-driving cars should have their own roads. Why a pipe dream? It's one of the most sound solutions to the problem at the moment. This is the model China went with its self-driving pilot projects for example.
hourislate 5y ago
Musk spoke about this (JRE Podcast) and he compared the camera to eyes. He said that the only way we'll ever achieve full self driving is creating a system that is at least as good or better than human eyes.
- qzw 5y ago
  That’s a fine goal, but let’s not then call a system that has nowhere near the acuity, resolution, or dynamic range, and is not hooked up to a (trained) human brain, “Full Self Driving”.
throwaway98797 5y ago
Our brains dont have lidar though. right?
- c-cube 5y ago

drcongo 5y ago

I expected the entire article to read "Because Tesla is just a grift on the gullible. The end."

strebler 5y ago

This problem is actually pretty obvious to fix and you don't even need a neural net - it can definitely be done "old school" computer vision. Simply detect the presence of "flashing emergency lights" in the oncoming lane and disable autopilot when present. No object detector needed. The signal is so strong it's literally flashing extremely brightly in a regular, predictable pattern - any vision grad student should be able to figure this out. Could there be false positives? Yep, but very few things will flash quite like that, and most half baked vision engineers can do this. The worst case is literally simply the driver taking over on occasion at night (maybe near strip clubs? lol)

vagrantJin 5y ago
I don't think the problem is as simple as that. Sure flashy lights with reflectors confuse the current model sure, but can we consider that an edge-case and work from there? Also LED's flash too in a regular pattern too. I don't know though, seems like something that would have been accounted for as it's a pretty important part of driving awareness...maybe they didn't think people would want to stay on "full auto" when a police/Emergency vehicle is in the vicinity since you might have to do some sort of maneuver to get out of it's way. So yeah, I'll say it's an edge case for now. Disclaimer: I'm an idiot so take my view with a boeing 747 load of salt
burntwater 5y ago
The solution of disabling autopilot in the presence of flashing emergency lights seems so incredibly obvious to me, that I can only assume I'm missing some glaring reason for it to not have been the case since day one.
- plain4 5y ago
  This seems like it would create a great attack vector for Teslas. Setup a flashing red light on a corner and watch the Teslas fly off the road.
baybal2 5y ago
> This problem is actually pretty obvious to fix and you don't even need a neural net So can be controlled collisions as such. Simplest FMCW radars are more than enough for every emergency braking system on the market. It's not uncommon to even use them in parallel with some more "brainy" radar imagers like on Mercedes cars. That is to make a collision preventable in case the main imaging computer hangs, or crashes.

bananapub 5y ago

because it isn't a proper self-driving car and people need to stop thinking or acting like it is.

eloisius 5y ago
It would help if it wasn't marketed as one.
- 988747 5y ago
  It would help if Tesla was fined $1B for false advertising then... Even naming the whole thing "Autopilot" qualifies as punishable offence, in my opinion.
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    It is so insane to me how people keep putting the burden of understanding the capabilities and limits of a computer and engineering system on consumers, who aren’t engineering or computer experts, and not putting the burden on the company full of engineers and computer experts to properly and adequately inform the consumer. Or the burden of consumers, that are not legally trained in any way, of having a full understanding the implications of legal matters, and not the company with a staff of lawyers, in properly and adequately explaining it.
  - sidibe 5y ago
    It's so egregious, see https://tesla.com/autopilot https://tesla.com/autopilot: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons." Can't believe what they've been allowed to do until now.