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MIT study finds Tesla drivers become inattentive when Autopilot is activated

146 points by camjohnson26 5y ago

throwawayboise 5y ago
Also, water is wet.
- Kydlaw 5y ago
  It could have been with the study wasn't conducted with the measures to prevent attention drop activated.
- coding123 5y ago
  I don't know about that, the consensus on that seems to be leaning towards water NOT being wet. https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-water-wet https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-water-wet
rvz 5y ago
> The point of this study is not to shame Tesla, but rather to advocate for driver attention management systems that can give drivers feedback in real time or adapt automation functionality to suit a driver’s level of attention. Currently, Autopilot uses a hands-on-wheel sensing system to monitor driver engagement, but it doesn’t monitor driver attention via eye or head-tracking. Precisely. I said this before and now this study supports my previous points even further [0]. Using the wheel to monitor driver attention is not even close to good enough to determine if the driver is paying attention or not. Comma.ai seems to be able to implement eye-tracking for their driver monitoring system. I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28208921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28208921
- Lendal 5y ago
  Especially since there's a hardware camera built in to every Tesla, right at the driver's eye level. I'd rather have that system than the wheel sensor. Accidentally applying too much force on the steering wheel disables the autopilot while too little force doesn't register. It's annoying, trying to get the amount of Goldilocks force just right. But the eyes don't lie.
  - elif 5y ago
    pro-tip: either of the scrollwheels, volume adjustment or speed adjustment, are considered driver inputs. I typically go +1 kph, -1 kph its not even noticable
    - romwell 5y ago
      Pro-tip #2: if you insert the belt buckle into the clip before getting into the seat, the system thinks you have buckled up, it's not even noticeable
      - elif 5y ago
        I guess i have to explain that applying torque to the wheel is less safe than adjusting your volume. My tip is a safety tip, your joke doesn't really apply?
      - Lendal 5y ago
        You're talking about defeating a safety feature in an unsafe manner. I'm talking about how to let the car know I'm paying attention without inadvertently disabling autopilot in the process. Not comparable at all.
        romwell 5y ago
        >You're talking about defeating a safety feature in an unsafe manner You're this close to getting my point
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere but I think the 2021 Tesla models do this [1]. That said, I'm not sure if this is enough - this is the same issue Google faced which led them to believe they had to go L4 of bust. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22457430/tesla-in-car-camera-driver-monitoring-system https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22457430/tesla-in-car-cam...
- sschueller 5y ago
  We should absolutely shame Tesla. Their marketing is selling "Full Self Driving" and have many times in the past hinted that autopilot is something it isn't. Elon claiming that your car will be a RoboTaxi in - 2 years also doesn't help and makes people think autopilot must be quite good. How is a regular Joe supposed to know?
  - moduspol 5y ago
    The multiple warnings and the dialogue that explicitly requires confirmation might be a good hint. But I think we all know this problem hasn't materialized in crash data, because if it did, that's what we'd be talking about. Instead it's just more FUD about the names of features, some of which are explicitly not yet delivered.
    - romwell 5y ago
      The problem didn't materialize in crash data, eh? It absolutely did. Why we're not talking about it is another issue. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/02/25/ntsb-teslas-autopilot-steered-model-x-into-highway-median-causing-fatal-mountain-view-crash https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/02/25/ntsb-teslas-a...
      - moduspol 5y ago
        Are Tesla's cars with Autopilot involved in fatal crashes at a notably higher rate than comparable cars? If the answer were "yes," you wouldn't be pointing me to anecdotes. You'd be pointing me to that data. The lack of that data is why, despite years, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and millions upon millions of miles driven, people are still blaming the names of features. It's time to move on. Over 100 people die in the US per day in traffic accidents. How many years need to pass before a handful of anecdotes and speculation doesn't pass as valid criticism?
        stefan_ 5y ago
        Yes, why do we care that Boeing withheld crucial information about the MCAS? Is two crashed planes a lot compared to other plane models? Why do we determine the root cause for every crashed plane, there aren't a lot of those anymore? There is statistics, and then there is addressing obvious design flaws. The latter is worth doing a lot more than the former.
- falcolas 5y ago
  > I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. Perhaps we shouldn't expect that of people? If you've taken the vast burden of driving off their minds, we should accept that human nature means they'll stop paying attention to driving. That, however, explicitly implies that automation needs to be much better before it can be used.
- elif 5y ago
  > I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. You are surprised for no cause. Tesla uses exactly that system. https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/version/2021.4.15.11/release-notes https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/version/2021.4...
  - elif 5y ago
    since i'm being downvoted for this?? here's a link describing it?? https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/565/tesla-rolling-out-driver-monitoring-system-to-vehicles-with-radar https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/565/tesla-rolling-out-driv...
    - rvz 5y ago
      Did you not realize that the driver in the image has just tricked the so-called 'Driver monitoring system' with a static image? Just like how lots of drivers have fooled the wheel sensors? I was expecting this to be more advanced than Comma.ai, but after seeing this, I'm even more disappointed with Tesla. What if the driver is using autopilot when they are driving at night? It appears that there is no night vision in the car cabin cameras of this system. [0] That means that it can't determine the driver's attentiveness when you are driving in the night; the most dangerous time to drive. Therefore, this system is unreliable and very dangerous and it already can be fooled. I'm afraid that this implementation is still not good or safe enough to use. [0] https://insideevs.com/news/529788/tesla-driver-monitoring-camera-test/ https://insideevs.com/news/529788/tesla-driver-monitoring-ca...
      - elif 5y ago
        you can "trick" a roller coaster into decapitating you as well... not sure what that has to do with me explaining that the system the commenter was requesting is in fact implemented.
        rvz 5y ago
mehrdada 5y ago
It is not clear to me that the metrics of attention people traditionally use are optimally desirable when evaluating Autopilot-like systems. Anecdotally, I have found myself not staring forward anywhere as much, but in fact I am more attentive at what other drivers are doing and taking control where necessary--in effect delegating the lowly work to the machine. I do feel this is much safer than constantly forcing me to look at the road in front of me or touching something.
- nojito 5y ago
  Given that there really is scant proof that backup cameras work in keeping people safe, the hypothesis that autopilot makes people safe is shaky at best.
  - romwell 5y ago
    We can test this hypothesis by looking at fatalities per mile driven, aaaaaaaand humans are still better drivers at this point.
    - belltaco 5y ago
      Source?
      - romwell 5y ago
        Source of what? Parent comment's purely unsubstantiated hypothesizing? Ask them, or find out yourself. The search engine is that way. I will respond with sources to claims made with sources.
        belltaco 5y ago
        Source of what you claimed, I'll copy paste your entire comment for your convenience and memory >We can test this hypothesis by looking at fatalities per mile driven, aaaaaaaand humans are still better drivers at this point. What makes you think humans are better based on fatalities per mile driven? Is that just a guess or do you have any sources?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slownews45 5y ago
Did MIT study whether the "inattentive" drivers had higher accident rates and fatality rates than other drivers? That should be the question. "MIT study shows folks drive 5MPH faster with seatbelts on" - doesn't mean we should get rid of seatbelts if overall damage and accidents / injury rates are reduced. Im serious - do the study. Put someone in a 6 hour drive or simulator for an SF to LA drive or something, one in a car with tesla's drivers aids one without. Then have something happen (sudden braking / someone cutting in front of you etc) on drive in half of the trips. Who crashes? The "inattentive" tesla driver? Or the other driver. Based on my own observation, there are drivers in regular cars texting, looking up directions, playing with their phone maybe for music? I've seen people putting on makeup, sitting at a light for 5 minutes on their phone (when it is green) etc. I've seen people drift out of their lanes crazily. These are folks in normal cars. I've seen folks speeding and swerving in and out of traffic, some without using blinkers etc.
- Kydlaw 5y ago
  The study doesn't say if it's bad or good. They just say that attention decreases with Autopilot is on. The question you ask is completely different and thus, not brought into the article.
- mwint 5y ago
  I’ve only driven a Tesla with Autopilot once, for ten minutes or so. By the end of it, I was struck by how much more time I was spending looking far ahead, or looking in the mirrors for longer. It felt like I switched to farther-field situational awareness once I was confident the car wouldn’t rear end the dude in front of me. So if attentiveness is measured as “staring at the license plate in front of me”, my attentiveness went down. But I felt safer since I was looking hundreds of yards down the road for situations I might have to handle or avoid, at a longer timescale.
  - sjburt 5y ago
    This is how I feel as well (having driven many miles with a Comma), but I have no idea if I represent an average driver or if my perceived attentiveness matches what is really happening. I do think that it is very easy for me to spend longer looking at a screen or button when the autopilot is driving for me, since there is no immediate penalty (lane line, rumble strips, etc) for looking away.
bertil 5y ago
What was the control for that observation? Before and after engagement or arriving on a highway with and without Auto-pilot?
sklargh 5y ago
MIT finds water is wet.
- romwell 5y ago
  "MIT finds water is wet; HackerNews disagrees"
  - stevage 5y ago
    HackerNews points out that ice is not wet.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      in a freezer
    - mewpmewp2 5y ago
      Also would a single water molecule be wet? Or is it group of water molecules that are wet? "Water is wet" folks should clarify as it definitely doesn't seem water would always be wet.
xyzzy21 5y ago
No! Really? LOL. Of course they are!
dmix 5y ago
This is why a Comma.ai style system putting a camera facing the driver to make sure they are paying attention and awake is essential. Even ignoring self-driving a big number of accidents happen when people fall asleep at the wheel. I’m not sure whats stopping them. It can be done locally to avoid privacy concerns. It also has better UX than the weird wheel touch sensors on some vehicles where you have to be touching the wheel at all times when activated (I haven’t decided if that make sense as a requirement, leaning towards no).
- elisharobinson 5y ago
  the goal is no wheel , just set a destination and put your seatbelt . From that perspective it would make sense to put least amount of effort on driver monitoring.
  - cma 5y ago
    That's like saying if the eventual goal is realistic telepresence through BCI, we should just go ahead and remove the seatbelts to quit wasting effort on things that won't be in the final vision.
  - after_care 5y ago
    If that’s the goal we should invest in buses, because you essentially described buses.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      Buses don't take me from my home to where I want to go, they carry me between fixed stops. The parent commenter has described a taxi.
    - mewpmewp2 5y ago
      You can't set destination with buses, also they usually don't have seatbelts. I have no idea where you are finding any similarity here. If anything it would be similar to an Uber.
- 5y ago
yawboakye 5y ago
When academic studies are dedicated to trivial stuff that is either obvious to an unscientific mind (saying this to calm you down) or would be easily debunked in another study, and worse, from an institution inextricably linked to science, is there any wonder that when they come out and say "masks are safe" many unscientific minds (doubling down to still make you feel good) don't give a hoot? But I guess the days when academic study (time, funds, energies, raw intellect) was spent on more pressing issues are behind us and we'd have to deal with these types of studies going forward. I'm so looking forward to the MIT study that finds that most of HN comments are not read.
aledalgrande 5y ago
we did not need an MIT study to know this haha
zarkov99 5y ago
Of course they do, that is the point of AP. The question that matters is if the drivers are safer, to themselves and others, than they would be without AP. From what I have read this is undoubtedly true.
mtreis86 5y ago
How does it compare to cruise control? I can't turn that on without feeling less attentive.
saltmeister 5y ago
what a surprise
elisharobinson 5y ago
i went through the article .. read the paper it was based on ... saw the data they sited .... saw the conclusion they reached ... was severely worried of the state of academia and what qualifies as "research" >> the only significant conclusion this paper had was a driver was more than 22% likely to look at the "down and center stack" when on AP >> the paper was based on data found on this https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751968 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751968 paper author by none other than my favourite podcaster D Lex Friedman . the study is conducted on 25 cars all either model S/X from 2016-2019 AKA pre fsd hardware and driver monitoring. >> now tesla has a big screen on the center console and i would find it natural to see the navigation when im not driving. BUT all other aspects of driving were not that far from normal ... turns out people do all sorts of dumb stuff with or without AP >> this took me less than 15 mins of googling and i was baffled by how something so stupid could go past even the most bare bone peer review . and then i found about "The Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium (AVT)"https://agelab.mit.edu/avt https://agelab.mit.edu/avt the sponsor of some of the co-authors . Which curiously has major car companies and suppliers listed as partners except for tesla . i dont have the inside info on how money changes hands in academia ... but the whole thing looks pretty bad personally i am biased towards Tesla (aka tesla fanboy) . But i feel there is enough wrong here to justify my case that this was a academia sponsored hit piece not to different from climate change deniers or tobacco companies.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Your comment on the AVT... I have no idea, or no horse in the race, but Tesla is also famously averse to avoiding or pushing back against industry bodies, up to and including the NTSB (I know that's not an "industry body"), but I think there's more to be confirmed there before we think "legacy auto trying to beat down upstart". Was Tesla invited to the Consortium?
  - elisharobinson 5y ago
    So you have no issue with the sample size being so small and exclusively comming from older models of Tesla's s and X lineup . Making a claim about Tesla as a whole today.
teawrecks 5y ago
It's either that or they have to be hyper-attentive, constantly on the ready to catch a dumb mistake that the autopilot might make, which would be more stressful than just driving it yourself.
WalterBright 5y ago
"Researchers studying glance data from 290 human-initiated Autopilot disengagement epochs found drivers may become inattentive when using partially automated driving systems." Next up, researchers discover that people like ice cream.
sjg007 5y ago
I think your brain just turns off since it doesn't have to manage the task anymore. I mean keeping your brain engaged, for example when your spouse or someone says don't be a backseat driver is stressful and you really have no control over it. So I imagine if autopilot is good enough I would definitely relax. The issue with that is you have to be quick enough intervene if the car goes off the rails.
crackercrews 5y ago
I saw a friend 'drive' with autopilot, and it was scary. He was basically dozing at 80 MPH. Made me rethink my aspiration to have such a vehicle.
antattack 5y ago
The study did not measure attentiveness but rather it was recording driver glances 20s before disengagement and compared it to 10s of glances after.
sddat 5y ago
Mercedes and other added such functions from beginning , because the risk is obvious. Tesla deliberately didn’t use them, to deliver a false freedom during driving . This is not a technical glitch , it’s marketing and cost saving vs. safety
abdel_nasser 5y ago
people complain about, for example, people looking at the road slightly less often when using FSD. but people are out to lunch when i point out that i see every other driver on the road craning their neck over a smartphone. people point out that FSD crashed into things. but they are out to lunch when i point out that people crash into a hundred things every day because they are looking at their smart phones, doing their makeup or drinking alcohol. its just a flaccid argument that people are being endangered because they might misinterpret the unmistakable warnings and reminders in teslas self driving system, thinking it could do more than it does. when i can go to an average american bar at last call and not see a swarm of people stumbling into their cars -- or when i can look at other drivers and see 1/4 of them staring at their phones rather than 1/3 -- then i might worry about it. if you have a shred of intellectual honesty, you will campaign against things that actually endanger drivers rather than something that not only is relatively safe but gets safer with every year and stands to save countless lives if it works.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  People using smartphones while driving are absolutely distracted. Whether they think they are capable of managing that distraction (and how well that perception actually maps to reality), the distraction is understood and explicit. In contrast, one of the challenges with FSD is that the driver often acts as though there's no distraction at all, and that their inattention to the road (apropos of detecting 'attentiveness') is a non-issue "because the car is driving and paying attention". That's what this study is about - that markers that Tesla and other manufacturers are using to measure attentiveness may not be particularly accurate.
  - abdel_nasser 5y ago
    there is no study, including this one, that supports what you are saying. one of the challenges is that the driver often, "often" where is this often coming from? do you sit in with drivers and watch them? they often do this. you are completely making that up.
abdel_nasser 5y ago
lex fridman, who is directly involved in this study, has said that people using FSD are actually more attentive when the car is driving itself. he said it on one of his recent podcasts. this is why "water is wet" is so unbelievably annoying. the truth gets stamped out because people want to believe their own rhetoric rather than meticulously confirm their beliefs with science. this study is shoddy as hell but it aligns with what tesla detractors want to believe so it goes totally unchallenged.
User23 5y ago
This sounds like risk compensation[1]. Improved driver assist makes people feel safer, and thus they pay less attention. I don't know if that research is actually sound, but it sounds plausible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
Isn't the end goal of autopilot is the option to "become inattentive"?
- sidibe 5y ago
  That's the goal of autonomous vehicles. Not autopilot. Surprisingly, not "full self driving" either. In both of those you have to be fully alert because the car can do something very dumb any moment. FSD and autopilot on highways are still bad enough that sober people are mostly going to be paying attention. I think this approach is doomed though, there is going to be a dangerous time where it's too good to pay sustained attention but not good enough that you don't have to pay attention. the way Cruise and Waymo are doing it seems much much safer.
taf2 5y ago
When I change glasses I always engage autopilot first. My eye site is pretty bad and so while I’m fumbling with my sun glasses case I have autopilot engaged. Maybe it helps I do keep my eye on the road and one hand on the ready… I don’t know seems like a safer way to do things…
gentle 5y ago
I'm shocked.
gentle 5y ago
The number of Tesla apologists on this site blows my mind.
rastafang 5y ago
I'm more attentive when I drive over the speed limit...
rkagerer 5y ago
"...drivers become inattentive when Autopilot is activated" Isn't that kind of the ultimate point of an "autopilot"? It's a misnomer and I'm still unclear just how useful one is which isn't developed enough to let you achieve that.
shapefrog 5y ago
MIT really put the yards into this unexpected headline finding. Just what will they think of next? There is less sunshine at night?
gdubs 5y ago
One thing I don’t see mentioned is the fact that there’s a limited capacity of attentiveness in our brains. We get tired. So, while the implication here is that the inattentive drivers are at greater risk — something best measures with overall crash statistics — it’s also a valid hypothesis that over enough miles, the hyperattentive are at greater risk due to fatigue. If Tesla is indeed reporting lower crashes per mile with autopilot engaged, it suggests to me that the fatigue from paying constant attention is a bigger overall risk?
- sidibe 5y ago
  It's been covered a million times, but Tesla's reporting is useless. It's apples to oranges comparison for marketing purposes. I wish we had more third party data.
binarytaco 5y ago
Okay, and? That's the point of autopilot.

146 points by camjohnson26 5y ago

throwawayboise 5y ago

Also, water is wet.

Kydlaw 5y ago
It could have been with the study wasn't conducted with the measures to prevent attention drop activated.
coding123 5y ago
I don't know about that, the consensus on that seems to be leaning towards water NOT being wet. https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-water-wet https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-water-wet

rvz 5y ago

> The point of this study is not to shame Tesla, but rather to advocate for driver attention management systems that can give drivers feedback in real time or adapt automation functionality to suit a driver’s level of attention. Currently, Autopilot uses a hands-on-wheel sensing system to monitor driver engagement, but it doesn’t monitor driver attention via eye or head-tracking. Precisely. I said this before and now this study supports my previous points even further [0]. Using the wheel to monitor driver attention is not even close to good enough to determine if the driver is paying attention or not. Comma.ai seems to be able to implement eye-tracking for their driver monitoring system. I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28208921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28208921

Lendal 5y ago
Especially since there's a hardware camera built in to every Tesla, right at the driver's eye level. I'd rather have that system than the wheel sensor. Accidentally applying too much force on the steering wheel disables the autopilot while too little force doesn't register. It's annoying, trying to get the amount of Goldilocks force just right. But the eyes don't lie.
- elif 5y ago
  pro-tip: either of the scrollwheels, volume adjustment or speed adjustment, are considered driver inputs. I typically go +1 kph, -1 kph its not even noticable
  - romwell 5y ago
    Pro-tip #2: if you insert the belt buckle into the clip before getting into the seat, the system thinks you have buckled up, it's not even noticeable
    - elif 5y ago
      I guess i have to explain that applying torque to the wheel is less safe than adjusting your volume. My tip is a safety tip, your joke doesn't really apply?
    - Lendal 5y ago
      You're talking about defeating a safety feature in an unsafe manner. I'm talking about how to let the car know I'm paying attention without inadvertently disabling autopilot in the process. Not comparable at all.
      - romwell 5y ago
        >You're talking about defeating a safety feature in an unsafe manner You're this close to getting my point
nemothekid 5y ago
>I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere but I think the 2021 Tesla models do this [1]. That said, I'm not sure if this is enough - this is the same issue Google faced which led them to believe they had to go L4 of bust. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22457430/tesla-in-car-camera-driver-monitoring-system https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22457430/tesla-in-car-cam...
sschueller 5y ago
We should absolutely shame Tesla. Their marketing is selling "Full Self Driving" and have many times in the past hinted that autopilot is something it isn't. Elon claiming that your car will be a RoboTaxi in - 2 years also doesn't help and makes people think autopilot must be quite good. How is a regular Joe supposed to know?
- moduspol 5y ago
  The multiple warnings and the dialogue that explicitly requires confirmation might be a good hint. But I think we all know this problem hasn't materialized in crash data, because if it did, that's what we'd be talking about. Instead it's just more FUD about the names of features, some of which are explicitly not yet delivered.
  - romwell 5y ago
    The problem didn't materialize in crash data, eh? It absolutely did. Why we're not talking about it is another issue. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/02/25/ntsb-teslas-autopilot-steered-model-x-into-highway-median-causing-fatal-mountain-view-crash https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/02/25/ntsb-teslas-a...
    - moduspol 5y ago
      Are Tesla's cars with Autopilot involved in fatal crashes at a notably higher rate than comparable cars? If the answer were "yes," you wouldn't be pointing me to anecdotes. You'd be pointing me to that data. The lack of that data is why, despite years, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and millions upon millions of miles driven, people are still blaming the names of features. It's time to move on. Over 100 people die in the US per day in traffic accidents. How many years need to pass before a handful of anecdotes and speculation doesn't pass as valid criticism?
      - stefan_ 5y ago
        Yes, why do we care that Boeing withheld crucial information about the MCAS? Is two crashed planes a lot compared to other plane models? Why do we determine the root cause for every crashed plane, there aren't a lot of those anymore? There is statistics, and then there is addressing obvious design flaws. The latter is worth doing a lot more than the former.
falcolas 5y ago
> I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. Perhaps we shouldn't expect that of people? If you've taken the vast burden of driving off their minds, we should accept that human nature means they'll stop paying attention to driving. That, however, explicitly implies that automation needs to be much better before it can be used.
elif 5y ago
> I'm quite surprised that Tesla continues to lack such a system to monitor the drivers eyes on the road when they are behind the wheel especially when the user is using autopilot or not. You are surprised for no cause. Tesla uses exactly that system. https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/version/2021.4.15.11/release-notes https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/version/2021.4...
- elif 5y ago
  since i'm being downvoted for this?? here's a link describing it?? https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/565/tesla-rolling-out-driver-monitoring-system-to-vehicles-with-radar https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/565/tesla-rolling-out-driv...
  - rvz 5y ago
    Did you not realize that the driver in the image has just tricked the so-called 'Driver monitoring system' with a static image? Just like how lots of drivers have fooled the wheel sensors? I was expecting this to be more advanced than Comma.ai, but after seeing this, I'm even more disappointed with Tesla. What if the driver is using autopilot when they are driving at night? It appears that there is no night vision in the car cabin cameras of this system. [0] That means that it can't determine the driver's attentiveness when you are driving in the night; the most dangerous time to drive. Therefore, this system is unreliable and very dangerous and it already can be fooled. I'm afraid that this implementation is still not good or safe enough to use. [0] https://insideevs.com/news/529788/tesla-driver-monitoring-camera-test/ https://insideevs.com/news/529788/tesla-driver-monitoring-ca...
    - elif 5y ago
      you can "trick" a roller coaster into decapitating you as well... not sure what that has to do with me explaining that the system the commenter was requesting is in fact implemented.
      - rvz 5y ago

mehrdada 5y ago

It is not clear to me that the metrics of attention people traditionally use are optimally desirable when evaluating Autopilot-like systems. Anecdotally, I have found myself not staring forward anywhere as much, but in fact I am more attentive at what other drivers are doing and taking control where necessary--in effect delegating the lowly work to the machine. I do feel this is much safer than constantly forcing me to look at the road in front of me or touching something.

nojito 5y ago
Given that there really is scant proof that backup cameras work in keeping people safe, the hypothesis that autopilot makes people safe is shaky at best.
- romwell 5y ago
  We can test this hypothesis by looking at fatalities per mile driven, aaaaaaaand humans are still better drivers at this point.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Source?
    - romwell 5y ago
      Source of what? Parent comment's purely unsubstantiated hypothesizing? Ask them, or find out yourself. The search engine is that way. I will respond with sources to claims made with sources.
      - belltaco 5y ago
        Source of what you claimed, I'll copy paste your entire comment for your convenience and memory >We can test this hypothesis by looking at fatalities per mile driven, aaaaaaaand humans are still better drivers at this point. What makes you think humans are better based on fatalities per mile driven? Is that just a guess or do you have any sources?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

slownews45 5y ago

Did MIT study whether the "inattentive" drivers had higher accident rates and fatality rates than other drivers? That should be the question. "MIT study shows folks drive 5MPH faster with seatbelts on" - doesn't mean we should get rid of seatbelts if overall damage and accidents / injury rates are reduced. Im serious - do the study. Put someone in a 6 hour drive or simulator for an SF to LA drive or something, one in a car with tesla's drivers aids one without. Then have something happen (sudden braking / someone cutting in front of you etc) on drive in half of the trips. Who crashes? The "inattentive" tesla driver? Or the other driver. Based on my own observation, there are drivers in regular cars texting, looking up directions, playing with their phone maybe for music? I've seen people putting on makeup, sitting at a light for 5 minutes on their phone (when it is green) etc. I've seen people drift out of their lanes crazily. These are folks in normal cars. I've seen folks speeding and swerving in and out of traffic, some without using blinkers etc.

Kydlaw 5y ago
The study doesn't say if it's bad or good. They just say that attention decreases with Autopilot is on. The question you ask is completely different and thus, not brought into the article.
mwint 5y ago
I’ve only driven a Tesla with Autopilot once, for ten minutes or so. By the end of it, I was struck by how much more time I was spending looking far ahead, or looking in the mirrors for longer. It felt like I switched to farther-field situational awareness once I was confident the car wouldn’t rear end the dude in front of me. So if attentiveness is measured as “staring at the license plate in front of me”, my attentiveness went down. But I felt safer since I was looking hundreds of yards down the road for situations I might have to handle or avoid, at a longer timescale.
- sjburt 5y ago
  This is how I feel as well (having driven many miles with a Comma), but I have no idea if I represent an average driver or if my perceived attentiveness matches what is really happening. I do think that it is very easy for me to spend longer looking at a screen or button when the autopilot is driving for me, since there is no immediate penalty (lane line, rumble strips, etc) for looking away.

bertil 5y ago

What was the control for that observation? Before and after engagement or arriving on a highway with and without Auto-pilot?

sklargh 5y ago

MIT finds water is wet.

romwell 5y ago
"MIT finds water is wet; HackerNews disagrees"
- stevage 5y ago
  HackerNews points out that ice is not wet.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    in a freezer
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    Also would a single water molecule be wet? Or is it group of water molecules that are wet? "Water is wet" folks should clarify as it definitely doesn't seem water would always be wet.

xyzzy21 5y ago

No! Really? LOL. Of course they are!

dmix 5y ago

This is why a Comma.ai style system putting a camera facing the driver to make sure they are paying attention and awake is essential. Even ignoring self-driving a big number of accidents happen when people fall asleep at the wheel. I’m not sure whats stopping them. It can be done locally to avoid privacy concerns. It also has better UX than the weird wheel touch sensors on some vehicles where you have to be touching the wheel at all times when activated (I haven’t decided if that make sense as a requirement, leaning towards no).

elisharobinson 5y ago
the goal is no wheel , just set a destination and put your seatbelt . From that perspective it would make sense to put least amount of effort on driver monitoring.
- cma 5y ago
  That's like saying if the eventual goal is realistic telepresence through BCI, we should just go ahead and remove the seatbelts to quit wasting effort on things that won't be in the final vision.
- after_care 5y ago
  If that’s the goal we should invest in buses, because you essentially described buses.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    Buses don't take me from my home to where I want to go, they carry me between fixed stops. The parent commenter has described a taxi.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    You can't set destination with buses, also they usually don't have seatbelts. I have no idea where you are finding any similarity here. If anything it would be similar to an Uber.
5y ago

yawboakye 5y ago

When academic studies are dedicated to trivial stuff that is either obvious to an unscientific mind (saying this to calm you down) or would be easily debunked in another study, and worse, from an institution inextricably linked to science, is there any wonder that when they come out and say "masks are safe" many unscientific minds (doubling down to still make you feel good) don't give a hoot? But I guess the days when academic study (time, funds, energies, raw intellect) was spent on more pressing issues are behind us and we'd have to deal with these types of studies going forward. I'm so looking forward to the MIT study that finds that most of HN comments are not read.

aledalgrande 5y ago

we did not need an MIT study to know this haha

zarkov99 5y ago

Of course they do, that is the point of AP. The question that matters is if the drivers are safer, to themselves and others, than they would be without AP. From what I have read this is undoubtedly true.

mtreis86 5y ago

How does it compare to cruise control? I can't turn that on without feeling less attentive.

saltmeister 5y ago

what a surprise

elisharobinson 5y ago

i went through the article .. read the paper it was based on ... saw the data they sited .... saw the conclusion they reached ... was severely worried of the state of academia and what qualifies as "research" >> the only significant conclusion this paper had was a driver was more than 22% likely to look at the "down and center stack" when on AP >> the paper was based on data found on this https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751968 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751968 paper author by none other than my favourite podcaster D Lex Friedman . the study is conducted on 25 cars all either model S/X from 2016-2019 AKA pre fsd hardware and driver monitoring. >> now tesla has a big screen on the center console and i would find it natural to see the navigation when im not driving. BUT all other aspects of driving were not that far from normal ... turns out people do all sorts of dumb stuff with or without AP >> this took me less than 15 mins of googling and i was baffled by how something so stupid could go past even the most bare bone peer review . and then i found about "The Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium (AVT)"https://agelab.mit.edu/avt https://agelab.mit.edu/avt the sponsor of some of the co-authors . Which curiously has major car companies and suppliers listed as partners except for tesla . i dont have the inside info on how money changes hands in academia ... but the whole thing looks pretty bad personally i am biased towards Tesla (aka tesla fanboy) . But i feel there is enough wrong here to justify my case that this was a academia sponsored hit piece not to different from climate change deniers or tobacco companies.

FireBeyond 5y ago
Your comment on the AVT... I have no idea, or no horse in the race, but Tesla is also famously averse to avoiding or pushing back against industry bodies, up to and including the NTSB (I know that's not an "industry body"), but I think there's more to be confirmed there before we think "legacy auto trying to beat down upstart". Was Tesla invited to the Consortium?
- elisharobinson 5y ago
  So you have no issue with the sample size being so small and exclusively comming from older models of Tesla's s and X lineup . Making a claim about Tesla as a whole today.

teawrecks 5y ago

It's either that or they have to be hyper-attentive, constantly on the ready to catch a dumb mistake that the autopilot might make, which would be more stressful than just driving it yourself.

WalterBright 5y ago

"Researchers studying glance data from 290 human-initiated Autopilot disengagement epochs found drivers may become inattentive when using partially automated driving systems." Next up, researchers discover that people like ice cream.

sjg007 5y ago

I think your brain just turns off since it doesn't have to manage the task anymore. I mean keeping your brain engaged, for example when your spouse or someone says don't be a backseat driver is stressful and you really have no control over it. So I imagine if autopilot is good enough I would definitely relax. The issue with that is you have to be quick enough intervene if the car goes off the rails.

crackercrews 5y ago

I saw a friend 'drive' with autopilot, and it was scary. He was basically dozing at 80 MPH. Made me rethink my aspiration to have such a vehicle.

antattack 5y ago

The study did not measure attentiveness but rather it was recording driver glances 20s before disengagement and compared it to 10s of glances after.

sddat 5y ago

Mercedes and other added such functions from beginning , because the risk is obvious. Tesla deliberately didn’t use them, to deliver a false freedom during driving . This is not a technical glitch , it’s marketing and cost saving vs. safety

abdel_nasser 5y ago

people complain about, for example, people looking at the road slightly less often when using FSD. but people are out to lunch when i point out that i see every other driver on the road craning their neck over a smartphone. people point out that FSD crashed into things. but they are out to lunch when i point out that people crash into a hundred things every day because they are looking at their smart phones, doing their makeup or drinking alcohol. its just a flaccid argument that people are being endangered because they might misinterpret the unmistakable warnings and reminders in teslas self driving system, thinking it could do more than it does. when i can go to an average american bar at last call and not see a swarm of people stumbling into their cars -- or when i can look at other drivers and see 1/4 of them staring at their phones rather than 1/3 -- then i might worry about it. if you have a shred of intellectual honesty, you will campaign against things that actually endanger drivers rather than something that not only is relatively safe but gets safer with every year and stands to save countless lives if it works.

FireBeyond 5y ago
People using smartphones while driving are absolutely distracted. Whether they think they are capable of managing that distraction (and how well that perception actually maps to reality), the distraction is understood and explicit. In contrast, one of the challenges with FSD is that the driver often acts as though there's no distraction at all, and that their inattention to the road (apropos of detecting 'attentiveness') is a non-issue "because the car is driving and paying attention". That's what this study is about - that markers that Tesla and other manufacturers are using to measure attentiveness may not be particularly accurate.
- abdel_nasser 5y ago
  there is no study, including this one, that supports what you are saying. one of the challenges is that the driver often, "often" where is this often coming from? do you sit in with drivers and watch them? they often do this. you are completely making that up.

abdel_nasser 5y ago

lex fridman, who is directly involved in this study, has said that people using FSD are actually more attentive when the car is driving itself. he said it on one of his recent podcasts. this is why "water is wet" is so unbelievably annoying. the truth gets stamped out because people want to believe their own rhetoric rather than meticulously confirm their beliefs with science. this study is shoddy as hell but it aligns with what tesla detractors want to believe so it goes totally unchallenged.

User23 5y ago

This sounds like risk compensation[1]. Improved driver assist makes people feel safer, and thus they pay less attention. I don't know if that research is actually sound, but it sounds plausible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

Isn't the end goal of autopilot is the option to "become inattentive"?

sidibe 5y ago
That's the goal of autonomous vehicles. Not autopilot. Surprisingly, not "full self driving" either. In both of those you have to be fully alert because the car can do something very dumb any moment. FSD and autopilot on highways are still bad enough that sober people are mostly going to be paying attention. I think this approach is doomed though, there is going to be a dangerous time where it's too good to pay sustained attention but not good enough that you don't have to pay attention. the way Cruise and Waymo are doing it seems much much safer.

taf2 5y ago

When I change glasses I always engage autopilot first. My eye site is pretty bad and so while I’m fumbling with my sun glasses case I have autopilot engaged. Maybe it helps I do keep my eye on the road and one hand on the ready… I don’t know seems like a safer way to do things…

gentle 5y ago

I'm shocked.

gentle 5y ago

The number of Tesla apologists on this site blows my mind.

rastafang 5y ago

I'm more attentive when I drive over the speed limit...

rkagerer 5y ago

"...drivers become inattentive when Autopilot is activated" Isn't that kind of the ultimate point of an "autopilot"? It's a misnomer and I'm still unclear just how useful one is which isn't developed enough to let you achieve that.

shapefrog 5y ago

MIT really put the yards into this unexpected headline finding. Just what will they think of next? There is less sunshine at night?

gdubs 5y ago

One thing I don’t see mentioned is the fact that there’s a limited capacity of attentiveness in our brains. We get tired. So, while the implication here is that the inattentive drivers are at greater risk — something best measures with overall crash statistics — it’s also a valid hypothesis that over enough miles, the hyperattentive are at greater risk due to fatigue. If Tesla is indeed reporting lower crashes per mile with autopilot engaged, it suggests to me that the fatigue from paying constant attention is a bigger overall risk?

sidibe 5y ago
It's been covered a million times, but Tesla's reporting is useless. It's apples to oranges comparison for marketing purposes. I wish we had more third party data.

binarytaco 5y ago

Okay, and? That's the point of autopilot.