4 ms·

So just keep on trucking along at full speed with your eyes closed, you reckon. Spoken like a true Tesla engineer.

mindslight 5y ago
I specifically laid out what I do, and what I believe most other people do, as humans having to cope with increased danger. I'm in no way trying to defend Tesla, but rather pointing out a general road hazard that needlessly exists and that perhaps isn't being handled gracefully by automation. This idea that a vehicle can always fall back to stopping comes from the same mistaken place as asserting that a human driver can take over at a moment's notice.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Well there's really only two options for a self driving car that has lost situational awareness - (1) keep going at the same speed, or (2) slow down and alert the driver (and possibly stop if the driver doesn't respond). Choeger was suggesting that (2) was the prudent option. You replied and appeared to be suggesting the first option because slowing down was dangerous. But I contend that (1) is the more dangerous option if situational awareness has been lost.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Like handing control back to the human, it depends on the timescale. Over longer periods, yes, obviously the only sane option is to stop. But if confidence in sensors or analysis suddenly drops, especially when the system is still under development and unknowns are expected, the response needs to be graceful rather than sudden. This is reflected in their comment generally, but talks past the context of my comment. In the scenario I'm envisioning, most of the view is fine right up until say the last ten seconds, where the dynamic range of the camera is suddenly overloaded. That's not enough time to talk about stopping or handing off control, and slowing down isn't going to help with the automation having lost the lane. A human gets through the situation by making a plan ahead of time, including taking note of how a road curves and guessing that the lane will remain clear. Whereas I can imagine automation responding in a horribly wrong way.

I specifically laid out what I do, and what I believe most other people do, as humans having to cope with increased danger. I'm in no way trying to defend Tesla, but rather pointing out a general road hazard that needlessly exists and that perhaps isn't being handled gracefully by automation. This idea that a vehicle can always fall back to stopping comes from the same mistaken place as asserting that a human driver can take over at a moment's notice.

brokenmachine 5y ago
Well there's really only two options for a self driving car that has lost situational awareness - (1) keep going at the same speed, or (2) slow down and alert the driver (and possibly stop if the driver doesn't respond). Choeger was suggesting that (2) was the prudent option. You replied and appeared to be suggesting the first option because slowing down was dangerous. But I contend that (1) is the more dangerous option if situational awareness has been lost.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Like handing control back to the human, it depends on the timescale. Over longer periods, yes, obviously the only sane option is to stop. But if confidence in sensors or analysis suddenly drops, especially when the system is still under development and unknowns are expected, the response needs to be graceful rather than sudden. This is reflected in their comment generally, but talks past the context of my comment. In the scenario I'm envisioning, most of the view is fine right up until say the last ten seconds, where the dynamic range of the camera is suddenly overloaded. That's not enough time to talk about stopping or handing off control, and slowing down isn't going to help with the automation having lost the lane. A human gets through the situation by making a plan ahead of time, including taking note of how a road curves and guessing that the lane will remain clear. Whereas I can imagine automation responding in a horribly wrong way.