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> This is really bad, if their software can't even avoid hitting a stationary object then it isn't ready to test on public roads. Almost as bad as a Tesla cras

> This is really bad, if their software can't even avoid hitting a stationary object then it isn't ready to test on public roads. Almost as bad as a Tesla crashing into a stopped fire truck. Why is Tesla “autopilot” still allowed on Californian roads? https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/

jeremyjh 5y ago
Well, it wasn't driverless. The driver was arrested for DUI. Its not even known in that article that autopilot was turned on.
- randmeerkat 5y ago
  The article goes on to say that two other drivers who said they had autopilot on also crashed into fire trucks… How many fire trucks do Teslas need to crash into for it to be considered a problem?
  - dawnerd 5y ago
    One could argue that normal cruise control on normal cars would also crash into fire trucks. Ultimately drivers are responsible in both cases, it's their fault 100% end of story. PS Tesla rolled a software update to detect emergency vehicles and slow down.
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
      The cruise control on my Subaru probably wouldn't hit a fire truck since it has pre-collision braking.. but in any case, it's not sold as "Autopilot" or "Full Self Driving" so the limitations are pretty clear. There's a reason several countries stopped Tesla from marketing their nonsense like they do in the US - it turns out when you say things are self driving, consumers believe you and don't read the fine print. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot-germany/german-court-bans-tesla-ads-claiming-its-cars-are-capable-of-autonomous-driving-idUSKCN24F1T5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot-germany/g...
      - sowbug 5y ago
        Airplanes on autopilot don't brake, either, when objects appear in their path. They especially don't in the case of fire trucks, or your Subaru. Tesla's Full Self Driving has been released only to a tiny number of beta testers.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        1) Most consumers have absolutely no idea how airplane autopilot works. Pulling a “well actually” on this does not remove the issue of misleading marketing. 2) Yes, and the videos I’ve seen from those beta testers are terrifying.
        horseRad 5y ago
        I actually think most people believe a pilot is needed to fly a plane with autopilot. Don't you? Who would want both of their pilots to be asleep?
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        No, I don’t think people believe that at all. A certain meme entered pop culture years ago that either the pilot is there for takeoff and landing, or the pilot is there in order to make the passengers feel safer. I certainly recall a lot of “planes these days basically fly themselves” articles. Neither of these are strictly correct about how autopilot works, but we are arguing about cultural understanding here. Even taking the lesser of these two scenarios, this would imply that Tesla autopilot should be capable of doing most of the driving, with the driver just there for whatever bits you might argue are equivalent to a takeoff and landing. Given the stories of Teslas accelerating into stationary objects or totally losing track of the road lane, I don’t think even this limited understanding of what “autopilot” means is correct.
        5y ago
    - teraflop 5y ago
      By the same line of reasoning, you could say that my car doesn't have an emergency oxygen mask, therefore airliners don't need them either. If the airplane goes too high for passengers to breathe comfortably, it's 100% the pilot's fault, end of story.
    - spike021 5y ago
      Cruise control is literally just for (at least in a traditional sense) keeping your speed constant. You're still responsible for watching traffic and using the brake or gas as needed, especially if there is some issue up ahead that requires a safety maneuver of any kind. i.e. an emergency vehicle, like a California Highway Patrol vehicle, begins a traffic break 15 car lengths ahead of you. As long as you're observant, you'll notice that in time and either cancel the cruise control or make the right adjustment so you slow down enough to the break speed.
  - taneq 5y ago
    “Tesla AI detects imminent collision, optimises response time from fire department.”
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The pre-collision avoidance should have kicked in either way. My Subaru has saved me once or twice when a car in front of me braked harder than I realized, and they’re not even claiming anything close to full self driving.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    The Subaru wouldn't stop for a stationary vehicle though. Most of those systems either don't work at all for stationary vehicles, or work far less reliably. They're mostly designed for the case you described - car ahead slows suddenly and the driver isn't paying attention.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      > Most of those systems either don't work at all for stationary vehicle Citation needed. Subaru claims their eye sight system will detect and attempt to brake for a stationary vehicle. Whether or not they’ll managed to halt the vehicle is obviously speed dependent, but obviously slowing down before the crash is vastly superior to maintaining speed.
    - anu7df 5y ago
      Care to clarify what you mean here? Had a subaru outback with eyesight a few years ago and I tested it with stationary objects in path multiple times (cardboard boxes and such). The subaru braked and stopped short of the objects 100% of the time.
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        When the vehicle you're about to collide with is moving slowly, there are good radar returns, so you can use both vision and radar to make the decison. When the vehicle is stationary, the radar data has to be heavily filtered because radar has poor angular resolution and there are a lot of other stationary objects, many that you don't want to stop for at similar angles, like overhead road signs. That means you're relying purely on vision, which alone has a lot of false positives and negatives, so detection thresholds need to be set much lower. Doesn't mean it won't work. Just means it's less likely to work, especially in the dark and the rain, where radar would normally be a big part of the signal.
yumraj 5y ago
A Tesla driver was killed a few years ago in 101 south in Mountain View by hitting the central part of the fork. https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-24-tesla-model-x-driver-dies-in-mountain-view-crash.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-24-tesla-model-x-driver-die...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Fatnino 5y ago
  That particular spot had been crashed into before and the crash buffers hadn't been properly replaced. This led to a normal crash turning into a fatality. The driver of the tesla had complained in the past of the tesla swerving into the wall when passing that spot, yet still had his guard down on the day he died. That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. The stripe along the right side of the left fork was brand new and very sharp, while the stripe along the left side of the right fork was extremely dim to non existant due to excessive wear sustained during construction of the left fork and the bridge it leads to (connection from the fast lane of 101s to the fast lane of 85s). The crash barrier has since been properly replaced and the striping redone with diagonal lines hashing off the gore so it's abundantly clear even to a camera not to drive there. That said, the tesla self driving made a very dumb error no human driver would make.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. No, it's down to defective self driving.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    If a self-driving mode depends on road markings being perfect to not kill me then I'd rather not have self-driving at all.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. Certainly not. It's not appropriate for a self driving car to make any assumptions about striping or any road markings being correct. It crashed because it wasn't capable of self-driving after all.
slg 5y ago
>Why is Tesla “autopilot” still allowed on Californian roads? Because Pony.ai is level 4 autonomy while Autopilot is level 2. The human driver is ultimately responsible for any accidents in a level 2 system. There is no driver to intercede or to blame in the case of a level 4 system. This crash is the sole responsibility of Pony.ai.
avereveard 5y ago
well they do have a "safety driver", they only removing pony.ai permit to drive without one.
simion314 5y ago
>Why is Tesla “autopilot” still allowed on Californian roads? Because Tesla suckered some idiots to take the blame if for example the car will instantly change direction and throw you of a bridge or in from of a truck, Tesla is saying that their customers are supposed to be ready for this cases . For now only some Tesla alpha testers suckers got killed and no innocent person, but when an innocent will be killed I am waiting to see if the driver and hist lawyer will accept the blame or will fight the ToS claims.

jeremyjh 5y ago

Well, it wasn't driverless. The driver was arrested for DUI. Its not even known in that article that autopilot was turned on.

randmeerkat 5y ago
The article goes on to say that two other drivers who said they had autopilot on also crashed into fire trucks… How many fire trucks do Teslas need to crash into for it to be considered a problem?
- dawnerd 5y ago
  One could argue that normal cruise control on normal cars would also crash into fire trucks. Ultimately drivers are responsible in both cases, it's their fault 100% end of story. PS Tesla rolled a software update to detect emergency vehicles and slow down.
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    The cruise control on my Subaru probably wouldn't hit a fire truck since it has pre-collision braking.. but in any case, it's not sold as "Autopilot" or "Full Self Driving" so the limitations are pretty clear. There's a reason several countries stopped Tesla from marketing their nonsense like they do in the US - it turns out when you say things are self driving, consumers believe you and don't read the fine print. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot-germany/german-court-bans-tesla-ads-claiming-its-cars-are-capable-of-autonomous-driving-idUSKCN24F1T5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot-germany/g...
    - sowbug 5y ago
      Airplanes on autopilot don't brake, either, when objects appear in their path. They especially don't in the case of fire trucks, or your Subaru. Tesla's Full Self Driving has been released only to a tiny number of beta testers.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        1) Most consumers have absolutely no idea how airplane autopilot works. Pulling a “well actually” on this does not remove the issue of misleading marketing. 2) Yes, and the videos I’ve seen from those beta testers are terrifying.
        horseRad 5y ago
        I actually think most people believe a pilot is needed to fly a plane with autopilot. Don't you? Who would want both of their pilots to be asleep?
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        No, I don’t think people believe that at all. A certain meme entered pop culture years ago that either the pilot is there for takeoff and landing, or the pilot is there in order to make the passengers feel safer. I certainly recall a lot of “planes these days basically fly themselves” articles. Neither of these are strictly correct about how autopilot works, but we are arguing about cultural understanding here. Even taking the lesser of these two scenarios, this would imply that Tesla autopilot should be capable of doing most of the driving, with the driver just there for whatever bits you might argue are equivalent to a takeoff and landing. Given the stories of Teslas accelerating into stationary objects or totally losing track of the road lane, I don’t think even this limited understanding of what “autopilot” means is correct.
        5y ago
  - teraflop 5y ago
    By the same line of reasoning, you could say that my car doesn't have an emergency oxygen mask, therefore airliners don't need them either. If the airplane goes too high for passengers to breathe comfortably, it's 100% the pilot's fault, end of story.
  - spike021 5y ago
    Cruise control is literally just for (at least in a traditional sense) keeping your speed constant. You're still responsible for watching traffic and using the brake or gas as needed, especially if there is some issue up ahead that requires a safety maneuver of any kind. i.e. an emergency vehicle, like a California Highway Patrol vehicle, begins a traffic break 15 car lengths ahead of you. As long as you're observant, you'll notice that in time and either cancel the cruise control or make the right adjustment so you slow down enough to the break speed.
- taneq 5y ago
  “Tesla AI detects imminent collision, optimises response time from fire department.”
ashtonkem 5y ago
The pre-collision avoidance should have kicked in either way. My Subaru has saved me once or twice when a car in front of me braked harder than I realized, and they’re not even claiming anything close to full self driving.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  The Subaru wouldn't stop for a stationary vehicle though. Most of those systems either don't work at all for stationary vehicles, or work far less reliably. They're mostly designed for the case you described - car ahead slows suddenly and the driver isn't paying attention.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > Most of those systems either don't work at all for stationary vehicle Citation needed. Subaru claims their eye sight system will detect and attempt to brake for a stationary vehicle. Whether or not they’ll managed to halt the vehicle is obviously speed dependent, but obviously slowing down before the crash is vastly superior to maintaining speed.
  - anu7df 5y ago
    Care to clarify what you mean here? Had a subaru outback with eyesight a few years ago and I tested it with stationary objects in path multiple times (cardboard boxes and such). The subaru braked and stopped short of the objects 100% of the time.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      When the vehicle you're about to collide with is moving slowly, there are good radar returns, so you can use both vision and radar to make the decison. When the vehicle is stationary, the radar data has to be heavily filtered because radar has poor angular resolution and there are a lot of other stationary objects, many that you don't want to stop for at similar angles, like overhead road signs. That means you're relying purely on vision, which alone has a lot of false positives and negatives, so detection thresholds need to be set much lower. Doesn't mean it won't work. Just means it's less likely to work, especially in the dark and the rain, where radar would normally be a big part of the signal.

yumraj 5y ago

A Tesla driver was killed a few years ago in 101 south in Mountain View by hitting the central part of the fork. https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-24-tesla-model-x-driver-dies-in-mountain-view-crash.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-24-tesla-model-x-driver-die...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Fatnino 5y ago
That particular spot had been crashed into before and the crash buffers hadn't been properly replaced. This led to a normal crash turning into a fatality. The driver of the tesla had complained in the past of the tesla swerving into the wall when passing that spot, yet still had his guard down on the day he died. That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. The stripe along the right side of the left fork was brand new and very sharp, while the stripe along the left side of the right fork was extremely dim to non existant due to excessive wear sustained during construction of the left fork and the bridge it leads to (connection from the fast lane of 101s to the fast lane of 85s). The crash barrier has since been properly replaced and the striping redone with diagonal lines hashing off the gore so it's abundantly clear even to a camera not to drive there. That said, the tesla self driving made a very dumb error no human driver would make.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. No, it's down to defective self driving.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  If a self-driving mode depends on road markings being perfect to not kill me then I'd rather not have self-driving at all.
- jjav 5y ago
  > That the tesla swerved is down to the poor striping on the road. Certainly not. It's not appropriate for a self driving car to make any assumptions about striping or any road markings being correct. It crashed because it wasn't capable of self-driving after all.

slg 5y ago

>Why is Tesla “autopilot” still allowed on Californian roads? Because Pony.ai is level 4 autonomy while Autopilot is level 2. The human driver is ultimately responsible for any accidents in a level 2 system. There is no driver to intercede or to blame in the case of a level 4 system. This crash is the sole responsibility of Pony.ai.

avereveard 5y ago

well they do have a "safety driver", they only removing pony.ai permit to drive without one.

simion314 5y ago

>Why is Tesla “autopilot” still allowed on Californian roads? Because Tesla suckered some idiots to take the blame if for example the car will instantly change direction and throw you of a bridge or in from of a truck, Tesla is saying that their customers are supposed to be ready for this cases . For now only some Tesla alpha testers suckers got killed and no innocent person, but when an innocent will be killed I am waiting to see if the driver and hist lawyer will accept the blame or will fight the ToS claims.