9 ms·

At this point it is very clear, to me, that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product.

by yumraj 5y ago

At this point it is very clear, to me, that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product. It has issues during the day, at night it is downright dangerous. I do agree that while watching the video the stopped truck is not visible till very late and based just on the video it is not clear if a human would have done any better. However, I'm not sure we can make that call since it's not clear what the quality/aperture of the video is and what the human eye was able to see. Still, even then, a human would have slammed the breaks or swerved to the right to a free lane and depending on how good the Tesla breaks are, I don't own one, it may have stopped/slowed down substantially. EDIT: I think some people are underestimating their reaction time. I have had a case, once in my life, where I was driving on a Freeway at ~65 mph, 87 N for those from the Bay Area, and due to the curving of the Freeway I did not see the traffic stopped in front of me in the left most lane. It was very similar to this, but while the freeway was curving. I did not slam the breaks, but swerved to the right lane, which very luckily for me was empty till I could slam the breaks. It was purely reflex action driven, no thinking was involved. In this case there are two things: - human eye can see farther at night than a camera as others have also noted. - swerving would/could have prevented a head on collision since there was no traffic in the middle lane (though the stopped truck is occupying a bit of it) and would have hit the Tesla on the left side. Much better than a full head on collision.

kybernetyk 5y ago
I know too much about computer and software to trust any driving auto pilot. Heck, even normal adaptive cruise control makes me very nervous.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > even normal adaptive cruise control makes me very nervous Thank you, it seems I'm not the only one. My foot hurts much more when I'm using adaptive cruise control since it's always hovering over the brake but not touching it - unless there is absolutely not traffic whatsoever. Due to this, I almost never use it.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    I used adaptive cruise in a Nissan Murano and it maintained assured safe distance perfectly. First time using adaptive cruise and I found it very confidence inspiring.
dragontamer 5y ago
> At this point it is very clear that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product. Somewhat. The product costs $10,000 and has been enabled since 2015 (originally $5000). Its reasonable for people to think that this thing works. Sure, perhaps those individuals should do better research, but there's a huge degree of misinformation coming in from the top here. The root-cause of the problem is Tesla. Its unreasonable for Tesla to pretend it works, charge significant sums of money for the "feature", and ignore the difficult questions when this thing crashes into stopped Firetrucks over-and-over again (https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/nhtsa-safety-defect-investigation-tesla-autopilot-crashes-a6996819019/ https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/nhtsa-saf...) At some point, we as a society need to accept and admit that Tesla is __lying__ about this feature. That it is dangerous, and always has been dangerous. There's a degree of blame we can assign to the Tesla-fanboys who accept this marketing without any level of critical thinking. But the root cause of the problem is Tesla's marketing.
- slg 5y ago
  It isn't just Tesla that is leading to confusion here. For example, both you and the comment you are responding to treat Autopilot and Full Self Driving as interchangeable when they are distinct features. Autopilot has been on cars for years, has driven multiple billion miles, and now comes free with every Tesla. In reality it is just lane and traffic aware cruise control which numerous cars come with today. Full Self Driving doesn't have near the track record, is still in beta (and maybe should still be in alpha), and has that 5 figure price tag you mentioned. When you blur the lines between the two, it also results in people thinking Autopilot is more capable than it is or that Full Self Driving is safer than it is.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Not crashing into Firetrucks is an emergency-brake assist problem. This isn't a "beta" part of Tesla's suite. I'd rather not use the crap marketing terms of Tesla. They're clearly misleading and just propaganda. You and I know that its emergency braking. It doesn't matter if its on an intelligent-cruise control / lane assist mode, or if its in the hands of a driver. Emergency braking is supposed to kick in and work in these cases
oceanplexian 5y ago
Assuming the driver was paying attention to the road, even taking ~2 seconds (About how long it took me to clearly recognize the truck in the video) and slowed down from 70MPH from 40MPH, it would reduce amount of kinetic energy in the collision by ~300%. It could be the difference between a survivable accident and a lethal one.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  A 100% energy reduction would leave zero energy. 300% doesn’t make sense.
  - zopa 5y ago
    7^2 is 49, 4^2 is 16, all the other factors cancel. Yes, of course the right way to say it is "reduces the energy by 67%," but it's not that hard to see what was meant.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
Cadillacs have had infrared night vision since the year 2000, how is it teslas cannot see in the dark?
briffle 5y ago
at 75mph, even with a very quick reaction time of 0.7 seconds to shift your foot from gas to brake, your already approching 80', and haven't even started slowing down. Yanking the wheel sideways on most vehicles that speed means you either roll-over, or side-swipe a vehicle in the next lane, since you didn't have time to check that lane before swerving. I think you are drastically overrating your driving abilities.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- dawnerd 5y ago
  Really if its that dark out and you can't see that far, on autopilot or otherwise, you shouldn't be going that fast. It's the same thing with people speeding in dense fog.
  - nradov 5y ago
    In most states a driver who runs into a stationary object is always considered at fault and can be cited for a moving violation. That rule applies even if the object is difficult to see. The driver is legally required to reduce speed based on the conditions.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Not to be pedantic but do you have a source? I actually want to know. It seems like such laws would have a reasonable exemption for unexpected objects in roadways. For example, I have a friend who successfully sued the LA City government after running into a downed light pole on a city street that was not visible due to low lighting.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Personally I consider it my responsibility, as a driver, to avoid any collisions with stationary objects. That means managing my speed and visibility accordingly. Isn't that just basic, competent driving?
mikhailt 5y ago
Based on my experience with drivers and driving at night, it is very unlikely that humans would do better in most circumstances. > till, even then, a human would have slammed the breaks or swerved to the right to a free lane Most humans unfortunately do not have the experience of knowing what to do at the right time; they may swerve to the left here in this video and crash into a more dangerous object (another high-speed car or truck) and cause a more dangerous pileup. There is no right or wrong answer in this situation, we don't do drills (at least in US) that at least tell people what to do in bad situations like this. This may be a practical question but in reality, no one has the training or experience to deal with this _instantly_ and worse, in dark environments. Also, most people is likely to be tired if they're driving at night such as coming home from work. What this proves is that we need emergency lighting systems in the event of a crash. Like if an airbag has been deployed, lights around need to be visible to avoid this kind of scenario. It would be awesome if we could provide VR training and use videos like this as examples to train folks.
- badRNG 5y ago
  > What this proves is that we need emergency lighting systems in the event of a crash. This is the first time I've been introduced to this idea, and it now feels immediately obvious that we should've been doing this for a long time.
  - encoderer 5y ago
    Mercedes does this, along with a lot of other cool things they call “pre safe”, like playing a loud noise on the speakers to prepare your ear drum for the sudden change in air pressure. I’m sure other cars are doing the flashing lights now but few companies have invested as much in safety as Mercedes.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I set off the hazard lights in the '94 BMW I fixed up in college when I turned up my subwoofer too loud once, so I think the accelerometer-triggered lights are, or should be, widespread already.
cdtwigg 5y ago
I also feel like the way Tesla drives is really aggressive, I basically can't use is adaptive cruise control in slow/stop-and-go traffic because it ZOOMs right up the the car in front and then slams on the brakes, rather than just going along at a reasonable pace. Similarly, in this scenario with this visibility I might choose not to drive 10mph over the speed limit.
soheil 5y ago
There are cases where a human driver is better, but there are significantly more cases where Autopilot is better. For example when you drive for 4 hours straight or driving through stop and go traffic. Think about about the lives being saved and be sure any conclusion we reach is based on rigorous analytics and not just gut feeling after having watched a horrific video, which also happens numerous times on daily basis to all types of cars.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  This sounds like shilling.
  - soheil 5y ago
    No it sounds like experience with actually owning a Tesla.
- josefx 5y ago
  > For example when you drive for 4 hours straight or driving through stop and go traffic. If I had a uninterrupted four hours of drive as part of my regular commute I wouldn't buy a Tesla, I would buy a gun and a single bullet with my name on it. Two hours one way every day were already enough to drive me almost insane.
IsThisYou 5y ago
> it is very clear I would really be interested in your source on this.
- yumraj 5y ago
  I’ve clarified in my comment that it is clear to me.
michaelt 5y ago
> watching the video [...] it is not clear if a human would have done any better. Anyone who's ever taken a photograph in low light conditions knows that in the dark, cameras fail to capture loads of detail that humans can make out just fine. I'd wager a human driving in such circumstances would have seen the truck much more easily than we can see it in some dark, blurry dashcam footage.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  And as bad as it looks like on that camera, its a way better camera than the 1.2MP 1/3" CMOS sensor that Tesla uses for its "self-driving" cameras. In any case, our human eyes are actually really, really good. Far better than typical CMOS technology at capturing dynamic range and whatnot. Our Iris opens/closes depending on a variety of conditions, and our retina itself is 22 mm, far larger than typical camera CMOS sensors (but smaller than the top-of-the-line 35mm cameras). Not only is our surface-area larger... our rods / cones seem to be superior in dynamic range than CMOS technology. ---------- That being said: I think a big problem for Tesla's system is that they use tiny and cheap 1/3" CMOS sensors at low resolutions, and then expect AI to magically fix all their problems. Other companies are willing to not only buy more expensive cameras, but also more-expensive sensors, such as RADAR or LIDAR, to assist the camera.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    > In any case, our human eyes are actually really, really good. A dark-adapted human eye may be able to detect light levels as low as a single photon: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172 (Not reliably, mind you. But the fact that this works at all is incredible.)
azth 5y ago
Naming plays a big role. "Autopilot" implies something that people might not fully comprehend.
vanusa 5y ago
I think some people are underestimating their reaction time. Agreed; the human brain has special chemicals which significantly amplify our processing capabilities during moments of acute danger. I was once going up freeway, in the dead of night, and spotted a (darkly painted) car fully flipped over, about 2 seconds ahead of me. Managed to both decelerate (just enough) and bear gently to the right (not swerve), with room to spare. Granted I was going 60, not 75. But I'm not the one telling people to drive on AP at 75, in the dead of night, no less
theptip 5y ago
> At this point it is very clear, to me, that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product Are you using population-level accident statistics to make this assessment? I’ve seen analysis that suggests the overall safety numbers for self-driving mode are better than human drivers, though I’ve not dug deeply enough to be confident in them. I’d caution against extrapolating from individual incidents though. I think we should expect that at the point that self driving is safer than a human driver, it will be worse than humans in some cases - simply because it can pick up a lot of gains by never being tired, distracted, or drunk. If one just looks at the pathological cases and says “I could have avoided that accident, therefore self-driving is a worse driver than me”, I believe one would be making an error of reasoning. There’s an interesting philosophical/legal question at play here. Does self-driving have to be strictly superior - ie no edge-cases where it is worse than a human - to be acceptable? Or can it be worse at some tasks if it’s killing fewer people overall? Many people will die if we are too strict here. And yet, people need to trust the system as well. I suspect this will be optimized based on expected costs of lawsuits, which is a poor proxy for morality…
- taylodl 5y ago
  People expect self-driving cars to be better than human drivers and not just statistically better. Any accident a self-driving car gets into that most humans would have avoided should be considered a fault of the self-driving system. There shouldn't be wholly new ways to get killed on the highway and us just shrug it off as yeah but fewer people are dying overall. That's not gonna fly. We must demand better.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Of course it is going to fly. If we can, overall, save lives with these systems, then we are letting people die if we wait too long to deploy them. A lot of people think that way.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  > I’ve seen analysis that suggests the overall safety numbers for self-driving mode are better than human drivers, though I’ve not dug deeply enough to be confident in them. All similar analysis I've seen compared all-road all-vehicle driving stats against autopilot stats. Of course, the correct comparison would be against luxury cars (with similar safety features) and only on the same kinds of roads that autopilot gets used on (i.e. primarily easier highway driving). As far as I can tell we are extremely far away from the hypothetical you raise where self-driving is better than human.
barbazoo 5y ago
> I was driving on a Freeway at ~65 mph, 87 N for those from the Bay Area, and due to the curving of the Freeway I did not see the traffic stopped in front of me I always shudder when I hear that people drive too fast to be able to stop in time based on visibility. Same with the crash in the video. Way to high a speed for that visibility.
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
i think driving tech will get there but right now i wouldn't trust it with my life. Humans are basically short sighted, they basically rely on their short term sense of induction and gain a sense of over confidence. Oh it works once? ok i feel a little better, works twice? ohh even better, works for the 10th time? Hell yea, let me whip out my phone and watch videos while the car drives itself. I think for my i will trust this amazing thing in my head.
chrismcb 5y ago
While it might be the case that the human eye can see father than a camera at night, the car should have other sensors that should enable the car to see further. That is the whole point
manicdee 5y ago
I think the fact that the human didn’t intervene means that no, human eye can’t see further in these conditions. There’s more to eyesight than maximum possible sensitivity and no the driver’s night vision is not going to be particularly good thanks to oncoming headlights. What you see on the video is the result of transcoding the actual CCCR camera feed to RGGB, reducing resolution from image native to what YouTube wants, and then compression to minimise the file size of a video with lots of black and lots of blown out areas. Swerving could have prevented the collision, but braking is always the safer option. Swerving would still require the object to be detected, which neither the AP nor the human did in this instance. Regardless you are still correct that people trusting their lives to AP instead of monitoring it like they are nagged to do by Tesla software are being foolish. I would never have been in the inside lane in this scenario, most likely if using AP I would be happily cruising behind the coach, meaning in any collision with a stationary object the coach would absorb the bulk of the collision energy. Making this incident about AP is putting the cart well and truly before the horse.

by yumraj 5y ago

kybernetyk 5y ago

I know too much about computer and software to trust any driving auto pilot. Heck, even normal adaptive cruise control makes me very nervous.

yumraj 5y ago
> even normal adaptive cruise control makes me very nervous Thank you, it seems I'm not the only one. My foot hurts much more when I'm using adaptive cruise control since it's always hovering over the brake but not touching it - unless there is absolutely not traffic whatsoever. Due to this, I almost never use it.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I used adaptive cruise in a Nissan Murano and it maintained assured safe distance perfectly. First time using adaptive cruise and I found it very confidence inspiring.

dragontamer 5y ago

> At this point it is very clear that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product. Somewhat. The product costs $10,000 and has been enabled since 2015 (originally $5000). Its reasonable for people to think that this thing works. Sure, perhaps those individuals should do better research, but there's a huge degree of misinformation coming in from the top here. The root-cause of the problem is Tesla. Its unreasonable for Tesla to pretend it works, charge significant sums of money for the "feature", and ignore the difficult questions when this thing crashes into stopped Firetrucks over-and-over again (https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/nhtsa-safety-defect-investigation-tesla-autopilot-crashes-a6996819019/ https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/nhtsa-saf...) At some point, we as a society need to accept and admit that Tesla is __lying__ about this feature. That it is dangerous, and always has been dangerous. There's a degree of blame we can assign to the Tesla-fanboys who accept this marketing without any level of critical thinking. But the root cause of the problem is Tesla's marketing.

slg 5y ago
It isn't just Tesla that is leading to confusion here. For example, both you and the comment you are responding to treat Autopilot and Full Self Driving as interchangeable when they are distinct features. Autopilot has been on cars for years, has driven multiple billion miles, and now comes free with every Tesla. In reality it is just lane and traffic aware cruise control which numerous cars come with today. Full Self Driving doesn't have near the track record, is still in beta (and maybe should still be in alpha), and has that 5 figure price tag you mentioned. When you blur the lines between the two, it also results in people thinking Autopilot is more capable than it is or that Full Self Driving is safer than it is.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Not crashing into Firetrucks is an emergency-brake assist problem. This isn't a "beta" part of Tesla's suite. I'd rather not use the crap marketing terms of Tesla. They're clearly misleading and just propaganda. You and I know that its emergency braking. It doesn't matter if its on an intelligent-cruise control / lane assist mode, or if its in the hands of a driver. Emergency braking is supposed to kick in and work in these cases

oceanplexian 5y ago

Assuming the driver was paying attention to the road, even taking ~2 seconds (About how long it took me to clearly recognize the truck in the video) and slowed down from 70MPH from 40MPH, it would reduce amount of kinetic energy in the collision by ~300%. It could be the difference between a survivable accident and a lethal one.

robotresearcher 5y ago
A 100% energy reduction would leave zero energy. 300% doesn’t make sense.
- zopa 5y ago
  7^2 is 49, 4^2 is 16, all the other factors cancel. Yes, of course the right way to say it is "reduces the energy by 67%," but it's not that hard to see what was meant.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

Cadillacs have had infrared night vision since the year 2000, how is it teslas cannot see in the dark?

briffle 5y ago

at 75mph, even with a very quick reaction time of 0.7 seconds to shift your foot from gas to brake, your already approching 80', and haven't even started slowing down. Yanking the wheel sideways on most vehicles that speed means you either roll-over, or side-swipe a vehicle in the next lane, since you didn't have time to check that lane before swerving. I think you are drastically overrating your driving abilities.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dawnerd 5y ago
Really if its that dark out and you can't see that far, on autopilot or otherwise, you shouldn't be going that fast. It's the same thing with people speeding in dense fog.
- nradov 5y ago
  In most states a driver who runs into a stationary object is always considered at fault and can be cited for a moving violation. That rule applies even if the object is difficult to see. The driver is legally required to reduce speed based on the conditions.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Not to be pedantic but do you have a source? I actually want to know. It seems like such laws would have a reasonable exemption for unexpected objects in roadways. For example, I have a friend who successfully sued the LA City government after running into a downed light pole on a city street that was not visible due to low lighting.
michaelt 5y ago
Personally I consider it my responsibility, as a driver, to avoid any collisions with stationary objects. That means managing my speed and visibility accordingly. Isn't that just basic, competent driving?

mikhailt 5y ago

Based on my experience with drivers and driving at night, it is very unlikely that humans would do better in most circumstances. > till, even then, a human would have slammed the breaks or swerved to the right to a free lane Most humans unfortunately do not have the experience of knowing what to do at the right time; they may swerve to the left here in this video and crash into a more dangerous object (another high-speed car or truck) and cause a more dangerous pileup. There is no right or wrong answer in this situation, we don't do drills (at least in US) that at least tell people what to do in bad situations like this. This may be a practical question but in reality, no one has the training or experience to deal with this _instantly_ and worse, in dark environments. Also, most people is likely to be tired if they're driving at night such as coming home from work. What this proves is that we need emergency lighting systems in the event of a crash. Like if an airbag has been deployed, lights around need to be visible to avoid this kind of scenario. It would be awesome if we could provide VR training and use videos like this as examples to train folks.

badRNG 5y ago
> What this proves is that we need emergency lighting systems in the event of a crash. This is the first time I've been introduced to this idea, and it now feels immediately obvious that we should've been doing this for a long time.
- encoderer 5y ago
  Mercedes does this, along with a lot of other cool things they call “pre safe”, like playing a loud noise on the speakers to prepare your ear drum for the sudden change in air pressure. I’m sure other cars are doing the flashing lights now but few companies have invested as much in safety as Mercedes.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    I set off the hazard lights in the '94 BMW I fixed up in college when I turned up my subwoofer too loud once, so I think the accelerometer-triggered lights are, or should be, widespread already.

cdtwigg 5y ago

I also feel like the way Tesla drives is really aggressive, I basically can't use is adaptive cruise control in slow/stop-and-go traffic because it ZOOMs right up the the car in front and then slams on the brakes, rather than just going along at a reasonable pace. Similarly, in this scenario with this visibility I might choose not to drive 10mph over the speed limit.

soheil 5y ago

There are cases where a human driver is better, but there are significantly more cases where Autopilot is better. For example when you drive for 4 hours straight or driving through stop and go traffic. Think about about the lives being saved and be sure any conclusion we reach is based on rigorous analytics and not just gut feeling after having watched a horrific video, which also happens numerous times on daily basis to all types of cars.

datavirtue 5y ago
This sounds like shilling.
- soheil 5y ago
  No it sounds like experience with actually owning a Tesla.
josefx 5y ago
> For example when you drive for 4 hours straight or driving through stop and go traffic. If I had a uninterrupted four hours of drive as part of my regular commute I wouldn't buy a Tesla, I would buy a gun and a single bullet with my name on it. Two hours one way every day were already enough to drive me almost insane.

IsThisYou 5y ago

> it is very clear I would really be interested in your source on this.

yumraj 5y ago
I’ve clarified in my comment that it is clear to me.

michaelt 5y ago

> watching the video [...] it is not clear if a human would have done any better. Anyone who's ever taken a photograph in low light conditions knows that in the dark, cameras fail to capture loads of detail that humans can make out just fine. I'd wager a human driving in such circumstances would have seen the truck much more easily than we can see it in some dark, blurry dashcam footage.

dragontamer 5y ago
And as bad as it looks like on that camera, its a way better camera than the 1.2MP 1/3" CMOS sensor that Tesla uses for its "self-driving" cameras. In any case, our human eyes are actually really, really good. Far better than typical CMOS technology at capturing dynamic range and whatnot. Our Iris opens/closes depending on a variety of conditions, and our retina itself is 22 mm, far larger than typical camera CMOS sensors (but smaller than the top-of-the-line 35mm cameras). Not only is our surface-area larger... our rods / cones seem to be superior in dynamic range than CMOS technology. ---------- That being said: I think a big problem for Tesla's system is that they use tiny and cheap 1/3" CMOS sensors at low resolutions, and then expect AI to magically fix all their problems. Other companies are willing to not only buy more expensive cameras, but also more-expensive sensors, such as RADAR or LIDAR, to assist the camera.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > In any case, our human eyes are actually really, really good. A dark-adapted human eye may be able to detect light levels as low as a single photon: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172 (Not reliably, mind you. But the fact that this works at all is incredible.)

azth 5y ago

Naming plays a big role. "Autopilot" implies something that people might not fully comprehend.

vanusa 5y ago

I think some people are underestimating their reaction time. Agreed; the human brain has special chemicals which significantly amplify our processing capabilities during moments of acute danger. I was once going up freeway, in the dead of night, and spotted a (darkly painted) car fully flipped over, about 2 seconds ahead of me. Managed to both decelerate (just enough) and bear gently to the right (not swerve), with room to spare. Granted I was going 60, not 75. But I'm not the one telling people to drive on AP at 75, in the dead of night, no less

theptip 5y ago

> At this point it is very clear, to me, that anyone using FSD/Autopilot is risking their lives by trusting their lives on a beta, or perhaps even alpha product Are you using population-level accident statistics to make this assessment? I’ve seen analysis that suggests the overall safety numbers for self-driving mode are better than human drivers, though I’ve not dug deeply enough to be confident in them. I’d caution against extrapolating from individual incidents though. I think we should expect that at the point that self driving is safer than a human driver, it will be worse than humans in some cases - simply because it can pick up a lot of gains by never being tired, distracted, or drunk. If one just looks at the pathological cases and says “I could have avoided that accident, therefore self-driving is a worse driver than me”, I believe one would be making an error of reasoning. There’s an interesting philosophical/legal question at play here. Does self-driving have to be strictly superior - ie no edge-cases where it is worse than a human - to be acceptable? Or can it be worse at some tasks if it’s killing fewer people overall? Many people will die if we are too strict here. And yet, people need to trust the system as well. I suspect this will be optimized based on expected costs of lawsuits, which is a poor proxy for morality…

taylodl 5y ago
People expect self-driving cars to be better than human drivers and not just statistically better. Any accident a self-driving car gets into that most humans would have avoided should be considered a fault of the self-driving system. There shouldn't be wholly new ways to get killed on the highway and us just shrug it off as yeah but fewer people are dying overall. That's not gonna fly. We must demand better.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Of course it is going to fly. If we can, overall, save lives with these systems, then we are letting people die if we wait too long to deploy them. A lot of people think that way.
kybernetikos 5y ago
> I’ve seen analysis that suggests the overall safety numbers for self-driving mode are better than human drivers, though I’ve not dug deeply enough to be confident in them. All similar analysis I've seen compared all-road all-vehicle driving stats against autopilot stats. Of course, the correct comparison would be against luxury cars (with similar safety features) and only on the same kinds of roads that autopilot gets used on (i.e. primarily easier highway driving). As far as I can tell we are extremely far away from the hypothetical you raise where self-driving is better than human.

barbazoo 5y ago

> I was driving on a Freeway at ~65 mph, 87 N for those from the Bay Area, and due to the curving of the Freeway I did not see the traffic stopped in front of me I always shudder when I hear that people drive too fast to be able to stop in time based on visibility. Same with the crash in the video. Way to high a speed for that visibility.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago

i think driving tech will get there but right now i wouldn't trust it with my life. Humans are basically short sighted, they basically rely on their short term sense of induction and gain a sense of over confidence. Oh it works once? ok i feel a little better, works twice? ohh even better, works for the 10th time? Hell yea, let me whip out my phone and watch videos while the car drives itself. I think for my i will trust this amazing thing in my head.

chrismcb 5y ago

While it might be the case that the human eye can see father than a camera at night, the car should have other sensors that should enable the car to see further. That is the whole point

manicdee 5y ago

I think the fact that the human didn’t intervene means that no, human eye can’t see further in these conditions. There’s more to eyesight than maximum possible sensitivity and no the driver’s night vision is not going to be particularly good thanks to oncoming headlights. What you see on the video is the result of transcoding the actual CCCR camera feed to RGGB, reducing resolution from image native to what YouTube wants, and then compression to minimise the file size of a video with lots of black and lots of blown out areas. Swerving could have prevented the collision, but braking is always the safer option. Swerving would still require the object to be detected, which neither the AP nor the human did in this instance. Regardless you are still correct that people trusting their lives to AP instead of monitoring it like they are nagged to do by Tesla software are being foolish. I would never have been in the inside lane in this scenario, most likely if using AP I would be happily cruising behind the coach, meaning in any collision with a stationary object the coach would absorb the bulk of the collision energy. Making this incident about AP is putting the cart well and truly before the horse.