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Isn't this the exact behavior we are taught as human drivers?

• iab 5y ago
  For sure; alternative headline: "Tesla swerves into tree to avoid deer".
  • dogorman 5y ago
    Cars have this handy peddle on the floor that lets you slow down the car without power-sliding it. You should give that a try.
    • iab 5y ago
      Great answer - thankfully that’s always possible right?
      • dogorman 5y ago
        Yes, if you are driving responsibly then using the brakes is always an option. All cars have brakes; they're required to by law. If using the brakes is not an option then you already fucked up (e.g. you were going too fast on a slippery road.)
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          I've lived in deer country for five years. It's quite literally impossible to brake every time a deer hits the road in front of you because they have the ability to teleport into and out of the space in front of you with a speed that is frankly unbelievable until you have it happen to you. I managed to avoid all but one of these encounters and I chalk it up to luck rather than reaction speed or driving skill and that was at fairly low (< 40 mph) speeds. Deer standing safely by the road side will happily panic and jump in front of your car at the last possible moment. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
          • klyrs 5y ago
            Agreed. The deer I hit lept out of a ditch that I couldn't see into, on an unfamiliar highway, and landed less than a car-length in front of my car. About 10 miles later, I drove my blood/hair/shit-encrusted car past a "deer area" sign. Thanks...
        • iab 5y ago
          This shows me that you have little real-world experience driving in challenging conditions
    • klyrs 5y ago
      It doesn't rain or snow where you live, then? I guess you've never had a deer jump out in front of your car, either.
      • dogorman 5y ago
        Of course it does, and that's why I was taught that if the condition of the road would make slowing your vehicle unsafe at the speed you are moving, then you were going too fast. The speed limit is not a "safe in all conditions" speed; you are expected to drive substantially slower than the speed limit if road conditions are poor. Didn't they teach you that? Do you even have a drivers license? I grew up in rural PA, learned to drive there and lived there for several years afterwards. I've seen rain and snow. I've seen more deer than you can shake a stick at. I've never driven into one, though once one slammed into the side of my car. It isn't rocket science; if the road or visibility conditions are poor, slow the fuck down. Poor visibility includes brush or tall grass by the side of the road, because deer hide in that shit. If you see it, particularly at night, slow the fuck down. Edit: Did you even watch the video Jacques? The deer did not jump into the side of the vehicle, the deer jumped well in front of the car, with plenty of time to stop. I swear people on this site will pretend to be complete retards to defend Tesla. "Use your brakes to avoid a collision? I had no idea that was considered a best practice!" No. Fuck off.
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          > I've never driven into one, though once one slammed into the side of my car. Clearly you weren't using your brakes timely. Seriously, I don't get the 'holier than thou' attitude here and in other comments when it's clear that even you did not manage to avoid all close encounters with deer. The deer that hit your car in the side could have just as easily ended up in front and you'd have been unable to avoid it. This stuff simply happens and it is obvious that in some cases the driver isn't at fault but the deer is, unfortunately they aren't quite smart enough to understand the situation enough to keep themselves safe. So we humans will do what we can, but accidents can and will happen.
• yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure humans are supposed to at least slow down if they can possibly do so, which in this case appears to have not happened
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Brake hard, swerve if possible, that is if no oncoming traffic. Pretty much standard training in driving school here, were we expect deers and moose to be on road.
• dogorman 5y ago
  No!? You're supposed to not swerve, but you sure as shit are supposed to brake! If you can't safetly slam on the brakes because somebody was tailgating you or because the road surface is too slippery, then you already fucked up before the deer appeared!
  • dzhiurgis 5y ago
    The purpose of ABS is its ability to safely brake AND swerve. Saved my ass many times, especially on icy conditions. ESC is also magical.
    • dogorman 5y ago
      As I understand it, the purpose of ABS is to let you slam on your brakes and NOT swerve. If your wheels lock up then you lose all steering authority. ABS lets you slam your brake to the floor and still be able to keep your car on the road using the steering wheel. If your car doesn't have ABS, then you should know that and know to "pump your brakes" instead, to maintain control of the car. If a child jumped in front of my car, I'd swerve even if that meant risking a tree. If I ran over a child I don't know that I'd be able to live with myself anyway, so the choice is clear: I risk myself to improve the odds of the child making it away unscathed. But a deer? No way in hell. I'll slam on the brakes, since my car has ABS, but I would not take my chances with swerving.
    • InTheArena 5y ago
      Thats only part of the problem. If you swerve and don't hit it straight on, you are likely to hit someplace where the engine block doesn't give you as much padding. You car will be totaled and have a bad day if you hit a large buck head on. You and/or your passenger will be dead if it comes through the windshield or side window glass.
• farmerstan 5y ago
  Lol you were taught to drive right into deer? I wonder what the Yelp reviews are for that driving school.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, you don't swerve to avoid an animal, that can turn a major problem into a fatal one, for you and the other occupants of the vehicle.
    • farmerstan 5y ago
      What about slowing down? The car in the video wasnt going that fast. I live in an area with a lot of deer and the first thing you do is slow down.
• wongarsu 5y ago
  The car would have had time to come to a stop if it had started breaking when the deer became visible. That said the collision only became inevitable when the deer dashed forward in the last second (literally the last second of its life). The car could have reacted better and likely prevented the hit, but if a human had been the only driver nobody would have even suggested that the driver was at fault.
  • crooked-v 5y ago
    The difference here between the human and the car is that it's completely acceptable to require perfect attention and focus at all times from the car.
  • smoyer 5y ago
    I've hit several deer but only killed one animal precisely because I slow down when I see them walking. I've NOT hit dozens that have wandered into my lane so I'd say I have a pretty good track record.
  • jeroenhd 5y ago
    Honestly, I disagree. A human could've spotted the deer from far away and could've made the decision to slow down or stop so that the deer could cross safely. When there are other cars around or when the animal would've jumped in front of the car before you could react, I'd say the driver can't be blamed for hitting the animal because there was no reasonably alternative. In this case, breaking and turning on the hazards would've been a perfectly fine solution. This deer didn't have to die and a human driver could've (should've) avoided a collision. The deer is just an example of the system failing, though. It shows that Tesla's wannabe-self driving is incapable of dealing with animals near the road. A small deer like this could be hit safely, but when a car doesn't try to break for something bigger and heavier, people could easily die. You run over birds and bunnies, but don't even try to drive through a horse. That thing is going straight through your windshield when you hit it, so you'd better risk getting rear-ended when a runaway horse walks onto the road. You're going to need one of those death mobiles like a Cybertruck that doesn't do those fancy "crumple zones" or "safety glass" to make it through anything larger than an adult boar without risking a crash, so any full self-driving system should be able to anticipate large animals near the road (or shut down in areas where large animals are known to cross roads).
• poniko 5y ago
  Small animals you drive through, bigger animals you try to avoid by breaking, elk/moose you actively try to aim right and behind the path if you have time to react, mainly because those things will kill you when they slam through the window.
  • mkr-hn 5y ago
    Leaving a dead small animal will draw out larger animals who see an easy meal and do real damage when they connect. It's bad advice.
• tialaramex 5y ago
  "Smash into a large animal, dying is good" ? No. You should brake. The intended and authorised safety regime for automobiles assumes you will maintain a situation where you can reasonably brake before foreseeable impacts. This is quite different from say, an airliner or a railway train which couldn't possibly brake, and so those need completely different safety environments. "Absolute block" is an example for railways, there is intended to be no possible way for two trains to be in the same section of track, so, you always have at least an entire section (it will often be more on fast trains) to brake even if you can't see far at all. In a car you don't have that environment, you should always be prepared to stop in the distance you can see. If you're thinking, "But nobody drives like that" then you're part way to understanding why so remarkably many people die on roads.
  • smoyer 5y ago
    In fact, the law requires those behind you to be able to brake to avoid you regardless of what you do in front of them. If the car in front of you skids to avoid a family of ducklings, you're going to be the responsible individual if you rear-end them. With large farm animals such as horses and cows, or with larger wildlife like moose and elk, your life is at stake - there are plenty of drivers killed just hitting moose (look at the size of the mother in the embedded video and you can easily imagine her sliding up the hood and through the windshield: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=livewith.drivingmoosecountry https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=livewith.drivingm.... This video also shows something that's true of elk and deer as well - they have very little traction on pavement.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Small correction: you should brake until just before impact if it is going to happen because you want your car's nose to be up as high as you can in this case because otherwise you might get a double helping of windshield+deer into your car.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      1) Deer can and do jump. 2) The difference between the nose of a car while braking and while coasting is an inch or two. Won’t make a lick of difference. Source for 1) Having a deer jump over my car, leaving only fur in the windshield wiper blades. 2) Mythbusters, measuring for a “Wanted” car jump myth.
• InTheArena 5y ago
  I was taught that unless you are really really sure that there is no impediments and/or cliffs to either side of you, to hit it straight on, and only to dodge if you were sure you could make it. Of course, they also said to break as much as possible but hit it straight on. You would total the car, but cars are designed for that, versus your body not being able to take a deer going through the windshield if you clip it on the side. The engine block is padding, use it. Looking at the video, it looks exactly like the videos of horrible car crashes I saw in school (less blood). As usual with Tesla, the headlines are sensational, the hacker news comments breathless, but it's a fairly straight forward physics and recognition problem. 300+ people die a year, and billions of dollars in cars are destroyed each year. A neural network mimics the way human brains work. If a animal goes in a unexpected direction (or if it wasn't recognized at all), its going to be a problem.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    > As usual with Tesla, the headlines are sensational The headline is "Tesla Autopilot Hits a Deer" which is as bland and unsensational as you can get while being true. > A neural network mimics the way human brains work. This is like saying a drawing of a circle mimics the way the sun works. NNs are vaguely inspired by a high-level neuron topology, but the similarities pretty much end there. Gradient descent and backpropogation don't take place in the brain at all, and we don't know enough about the brain to mimic the way it works.