11 ms·

Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

54 points by mindracer 4y ago

Manuel_D 4y ago
I wonder how many people turn on traditional cruise control and then crash due to neglectful driving. That's what we should be comparing Tesla Autopilot against, we should compare it against the status quo.
- kwatsonafter 4y ago
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Yikes, he's a White South African! Thanks, I unfollowed him on Twitter. Genuinely thought he was a Blue Martian.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      A white South African whose family came from apartheid South Africa...the problem is not his skin colour.
      - renewiltord 4y ago
        I don't do collective punishment. The NYT piece on him showed that he wasn't a racist.
        Sakos 4y ago
        Nobody mentioned racism? Also, Musk benefited from his father's wealth.
        renewiltord 4y ago
        We all benefited from our ancestors killing opposing tribes so I'm going to ignore that too. If everyone you know is pure, you're doing better than me. No one mentioned racism? Then what's apartheid, mate. Come off it.
        Sakos 4y ago
        Our ancestors, sure. But my dad wasn't a rich white guy from apartheid SA who invested in my first company and financed who knows what else. ... you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification? Are you okay? Are you on the right site?
        renewiltord 4y ago
        > you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification? What on Earth? Obviously I'm not saying that.
        PKop 4y ago
        >Our ancestors sure So your lineage won some and lost some yes? What is the point of saying at one time your people benefited from conquest but this other time you didn't? So what? Sounds like cope and sour grapes. He's a successful, wealthy, and accomplished man. That's a good thing. Why would anyone want to be on the losing side of the equation? Are you ok?
        Domenic_S 4y ago
        Maybe he was rich maybe not, but this is what Elon has to say: > “One thing he [Musk's father] claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company [Zip2, which provided online city guides to newspapers]. This is not true,” Musk says. “He was irrelevant. He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.” [0] Errol invested between 20-30k well after Zip2 was on it's way and they closed a huge round weeks after. His father took credit for helping him but the Musk brothers strongly deny it [0], and Elon literally slept in the office and showered in the local YMCA to get off the ground [1] Even Elon's wiki page misreports this, but the Zip2 wiki page has it right. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200817165150/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200817165150/https://www.rolli... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7#while-zip2-got-off-the-ground-musk-literally-lived-in-the-office-and-showered-at-a-local-ymca-the-hard-work-paid-off-when-compaq-bought-zip2-in-a-deal-worth-341-million-in-cash-and-stock-earningmusk-22-million-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7...
- MBCook 4y ago
  If this was happening as often on Volvos or GM vehicles don’t you think they would be looking into it too?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Other automaker AEB (automatic emergency braking) systems have the same stationary object detection deficiency and specifically indicate that the system can fail under these circumstances [1]. Tesla gets called out because their autosteer is so good at lane keeping, comparatively speaking. Their new high resolution radar [2] (Phoenix) they’ve registered with the FCC, as well as a retrofit campaign across the fleet, will likely resolve this gap. If so, I’m unsure what happens when other automakers continue to have this deficiency as their autosteer capability improves but they don’t have high res forward facing radar. Will NHTSA hold legacies to the same standard? [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-features-automatic-braking-system-tested-explained/ https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu... [2] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-backpedals-on-the-use-of-pure-vision-in-its-vehicles-files-to-use-a-new-radar-190789.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-backpedals-on-the-u...
    - ra7 4y ago
      > Their new high resolution radar [2] (Phoenix) they’ve registered with the FCC, as well as a retrofit campaign across the fleet, will likely resolve this gap. Is a retrofit confirmed or is it just your assumption? They even sold hundreds of thousands of "vision only" cars (including mine) with Musk and Karpathy claiming radar is useless for them. Funny how they've walked it back with this new radar news.
      - mike_d 4y ago
        I was always _shocked_ that Musk was such a genius that he figured out how to do self driving without RADAR or LIDAR. If only the hundreds of engineers at Google and Cruise could have made the same discovery. /s
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- throwaway320923 4y ago
  It's a good question, and I'm dismayed to see the various knee-jerk reactions to it. Seems to get caught up in the pro/anti-Tesla/Musk/blah noise. No, thank you. Here's the thing - people get in accidents all the time when assistance features like ABS, lane keeping, traction control, TACC, good-old-fashioned dumb cruise control, etc. are actively altering the vehicle's performance and behavior. So when we consider Tesla's AP system, it's really just TACC + lane keeping. Something that is common on a wide variety of vehicles today. Why then is Tesla specifically being focused on? All these other systems have similar failure modes, including, but not limited to: Not stopping for a stopped vehicle far ahead, not slowing for or avoiding objects in or near the lane, etc. These are assistance features. Thus, in all of these scenarios, it is likely that chief responsibility for the accident lies with the human behind the wheel. We should be studying all OEM systems, not just Tesla's. And specifically, we should be looking at whether the system made the situation worse through its actions than if it had taken no action (akin to a distracted human driving on dumb cruise control). If it is the case that a Tesla on AP will ram right in to a firetruck flashing its lights while stopped in the lane directly ahead, it is quite likely that many other systems do the same. We just don't really talk about them, because it casually falls under the realm of "human wasn't paying attention". They're not special. We all sort of implicitly accept that. But when it's a Tesla, it's special. In any case, we'll get over it eventually. This technology is not unique to Tesla and will only become more commonplace. It will continue to get better at avoiding things despite the hoards of distracted drivers.
  - jdsully 4y ago
    Most of these other implementations have radar and LiDAR. Teslas is the inferior solution. That’s why if you order one you see a disclaimer that it is vision only.
    - jstream67 4y ago
      I think all the crashes involved in this investigation would have been radar. The vision only is really 2022+ year model cars (and possibly some late 2021).
    - ActorNightly 4y ago
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >I wonder how many people turn on traditional cruise control and then crash due to neglectful driving. That's what we should be comparing Tesla Autopilot against, we should compare it against the status quo. This is so disingenuous. Go on YouTube and search for people "self-driving" in their Teslas, then do the same for people doing anything remotely the same with standard cruise control. Tesla and its fanatics want it both ways: it's both the most sophisticated self-driving software on the planet, and only regulations are preventing it from being widely used and reducing traffic accidents, but when accidents happen it's just "cruise control". Pick one.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Is this actually a problem with tesla marketing? Or is it a problem with people being dumb? An aircraft autopilot will happily fly you straight into a mountain. It just holds altitude and bearing. Everyone I know with a Tesla exclusively uses autopilot on the highway in between exits. I'm pretty baffled as to how some people think it's fully autonomous driving, and I'm dubious as to how culpable Tesla is for that ignorance.
    - PKop 4y ago
      It's both, and unless you have a solution to eliminating stupid people, then the tech needs to be regulated out of the market so innocent people don't get killed on the roads due to this stupidity.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        There's only so much a company can do to protect against user error. People stick their fingers down a running drain garbage disposal. People will look down the barrel of a loaded gun and pull the trigger. The question is not "has anyone hurt themselves?", the question is "does the product have reasonable safety precautions?"
- concinds 4y ago
  The fundamental problem is that Tesla's Autopilot is defective. It has repeatedly steered people into highway barriers, and sometimes has no clue which lane it's in or where it's going. See the opening of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMvdI8nSAJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMvdI8nSAJE An Apple employee was killed by his Tesla, which always veered into a highway barrier after an OTA update (he was distracted one day and didn't prevent the crash, died as a result).[0] The video above also involves the results of an OTA update. There are more reports of dangerous Autopilot behavior than any other brand's cruise control that I'm aware of. The problem here isn't neglectful driving, it's that you may be driving in a straight line on a highway for half an hour, distracted and "lulled" by the monotony and predictability of the road, and in a split second your car veers off and tries to kill you because it no longer knows where the lane is. Now drivers need to not only pay attention to the road and over cars, but also be ready to react instantly with zero warning if the car does something unexpected and dangerous. [0]: https://www.kqed.org/news/11801138/apple-engineer-killed-in-tesla-crash-had-previously-complained-about-autopilot https://www.kqed.org/news/11801138/apple-engineer-killed-in-...
  - warning26 4y ago
    What is the benefit of an auto-drive function if you have to pay constant attention to it? Essentially, autopilot's main value proposition is that you don't need to pay attention to it -- and that's what makes it so dangerous.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      The wife got a new car - not a Tesla - that has several smart cruise control features. She actually ended up disabling some of them. She explained that they "made driving too easy" and it was too hard for her to keep her attention on the road while using them.
    - Domenic_S 4y ago
      As a bay-area commuter, the value prop is not having to micromanage the accelerator/brake/steering wheel in stop-and-go traffic. I did the commute for years in "regular" cars, and I've done it for years with autopilot, and autopilot is without a question a much easier commute. There is a continuum between actively driving the car and falling asleep in the back seat, and AP puts you somewhere on the left side of the middle. It's generally great stuff. All the point-to-point full-self-driving BS is meh, I don't really care about it, but give me world-class TACC and lane keeping (original autopilot) and I'm a happy commuter.
- kybernetikos 4y ago
  It'll be a few years before we have definite data, but back in 2018 there was reason to think that the number of driver fatalities per million vehicle years was significantly worse in teslas than in comparable cars. https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r... Some luxury car models have incredibly low driver fatality rates regardless of cruise control activation. Just the fatal stories I've seen reported on hackernews take tesla out of the top bracket for safety.
- dekhn 4y ago
  My most recent car has adaptive cruise control (tries to keep a speed, and break/resume if it can't). And it also has some lane detector that pushes the car gently back into the lane if you don't apply pressure. I used it for about 10 minutes before I had to prevent it from making a very serious accident. I would never compare that to Autopilot, which can go many hours before making a very serious accident.
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    > Autopilot, which can go many hours before making a very serious accident. Does it concern you that it might provide a false sense of security?
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Yes- that's my point. It took me ten minutes to realize my car's technology is unsafe, but from what I can tell, lots of people used FSD Beta enough to consider it reliable enough after a few hours of watching it work more or less OK on a freeway to completely disengage from driving.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        It is easy to be “reliable” on a motorway in clear conditions. Yet they manage to hit a goddamn concrete block head on, or steer into the wrong lane. Let’s say that people are not good at determining a black-box system’s reliability (as it is hard enough to do so with even statistics and hard data)
jstream67 4y ago
Sometimes this stuff just seems like a government shakedown. The NHTSA and the Biden administration in general is bitterly anti Tesla https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-fsd-bias-nhtsa-safety-adviser/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-fsd-bias-nhtsa-saf... (obviously a biased source -but worth a read)
- nitwit005 4y ago
  If I go looking about articles related to the Biden administration and Tesla, I mostly see articles about Musk complaining the Biden administration was ignoring them. That's not what I'd expect if they were "bitterly anti Tesla".
- fckgw 4y ago
  And what's the bias of the website with "Tesla" in it's name?
  - jstream67 4y ago
    I think we are all fortunate that teslarati.com is not a government agency :D
- mupuff1234 4y ago
  So they appointed a person who cares about safety to be a safety advisor? How dare they.
  - jstream67 4y ago
    Here are some quotes from the article for you. The concern is not that she cares about safety, but that she is very strongly biased against Tesla and has a financial interest in promoting other companies. "The same goes for her stance regarding CEO Elon Musk. In March 2020, for example, Dr. Cummings seemingly joked about needing someone to stop her from punching Elon Musk in the face. " "It should be noted that Dr. Cummings’ seat at Veoneer was not disclosed when she published a paper (which was later updated to remove inaccurate details about a fatal Tesla crash) criticizing systems such as Autopilot for their possible dangers. And so far, the incoming NHTSA senior safety adviser has not shared if she would be leaving her post at the Swedish LIDAR company, especially since she would soon be advising a US safety agency on driver-assist systems that adopt both LIDAR and non-LIDAR solutions. " "Missy Cummings receives around $400,000 worth of stock in Swedish LIDAR company Veoneer per year as compensation for her role as a non-employee member of the board."
vjust 4y ago
Driver behavior on the road can be totally unpredictable. Intent versus observed motion can have divergence.. I wonder if its the algorithms or the sensors.
- cameldrv 4y ago
  In the incidents I've seen it's been sensors/interpretation, things like simply not detecting a vehicle.
malcolmgreaves 4y ago
UX and interfaces are important. If it's marketed and described as "autopilot" or "full self driving," then a reasonable person expects it to automatically pilot the vehicle I'm normal driving situations. Tesla is unfortunately trapped in a all too common story of AI development: over-hype and under-deliver.
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  There are plenty of warnings about "keeping hands on the wheel" and "full attentiveness". Of course people are going to ignore this, just like many people chose to ignore the effects of alcohol and drive.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Imagine if Mary Barra was on TV telling everyone that you could "pretty much drive our cars drunk", and then put in fine print that drunk driving is bad and illegal.
    - ActorNightly 4y ago
      There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Don't let your hate for Musk as a person cloud your judgement. These things are not comparable.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Musk has said about autopilot “the car drives itself”. And their latest level 2 driving assistance feature is called “full self driving” I don’t dislike the guy, but this is irresponsible.
      - rimunroe 4y ago
        > There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Do you think that the average consumer knows this much about how plane autopilots work? If not, how is it relevant?

54 points by mindracer 4y ago

I wonder how many people turn on traditional cruise control and then crash due to neglectful driving. That's what we should be comparing Tesla Autopilot against, we should compare it against the status quo.

kwatsonafter 4y ago
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Yikes, he's a White South African! Thanks, I unfollowed him on Twitter. Genuinely thought he was a Blue Martian.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    A white South African whose family came from apartheid South Africa...the problem is not his skin colour.
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      I don't do collective punishment. The NYT piece on him showed that he wasn't a racist.
      - Sakos 4y ago
        Nobody mentioned racism? Also, Musk benefited from his father's wealth.
        renewiltord 4y ago
        We all benefited from our ancestors killing opposing tribes so I'm going to ignore that too. If everyone you know is pure, you're doing better than me. No one mentioned racism? Then what's apartheid, mate. Come off it.
        Sakos 4y ago
        Our ancestors, sure. But my dad wasn't a rich white guy from apartheid SA who invested in my first company and financed who knows what else. ... you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification? Are you okay? Are you on the right site?
        renewiltord 4y ago
        > you're saying it's racist of me to mention he's from an extremely racist system that reserved land and particular careers for members of a particular racial classification? What on Earth? Obviously I'm not saying that.
        PKop 4y ago
        >Our ancestors sure So your lineage won some and lost some yes? What is the point of saying at one time your people benefited from conquest but this other time you didn't? So what? Sounds like cope and sour grapes. He's a successful, wealthy, and accomplished man. That's a good thing. Why would anyone want to be on the losing side of the equation? Are you ok?
        Domenic_S 4y ago
        Maybe he was rich maybe not, but this is what Elon has to say: > “One thing he [Musk's father] claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company [Zip2, which provided online city guides to newspapers]. This is not true,” Musk says. “He was irrelevant. He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.” [0] Errol invested between 20-30k well after Zip2 was on it's way and they closed a huge round weeks after. His father took credit for helping him but the Musk brothers strongly deny it [0], and Elon literally slept in the office and showered in the local YMCA to get off the ground [1] Even Elon's wiki page misreports this, but the Zip2 wiki page has it right. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200817165150/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200817165150/https://www.rolli... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7#while-zip2-got-off-the-ground-musk-literally-lived-in-the-office-and-showered-at-a-local-ymca-the-hard-work-paid-off-when-compaq-bought-zip2-in-a-deal-worth-341-million-in-cash-and-stock-earningmusk-22-million-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7...
MBCook 4y ago
If this was happening as often on Volvos or GM vehicles don’t you think they would be looking into it too?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Other automaker AEB (automatic emergency braking) systems have the same stationary object detection deficiency and specifically indicate that the system can fail under these circumstances [1]. Tesla gets called out because their autosteer is so good at lane keeping, comparatively speaking. Their new high resolution radar [2] (Phoenix) they’ve registered with the FCC, as well as a retrofit campaign across the fleet, will likely resolve this gap. If so, I’m unsure what happens when other automakers continue to have this deficiency as their autosteer capability improves but they don’t have high res forward facing radar. Will NHTSA hold legacies to the same standard? [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-features-automatic-braking-system-tested-explained/ https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu... [2] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-backpedals-on-the-use-of-pure-vision-in-its-vehicles-files-to-use-a-new-radar-190789.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-backpedals-on-the-u...
  - ra7 4y ago
    > Their new high resolution radar [2] (Phoenix) they’ve registered with the FCC, as well as a retrofit campaign across the fleet, will likely resolve this gap. Is a retrofit confirmed or is it just your assumption? They even sold hundreds of thousands of "vision only" cars (including mine) with Musk and Karpathy claiming radar is useless for them. Funny how they've walked it back with this new radar news.
    - mike_d 4y ago
      I was always _shocked_ that Musk was such a genius that he figured out how to do self driving without RADAR or LIDAR. If only the hundreds of engineers at Google and Cruise could have made the same discovery. /s
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
throwaway320923 4y ago
It's a good question, and I'm dismayed to see the various knee-jerk reactions to it. Seems to get caught up in the pro/anti-Tesla/Musk/blah noise. No, thank you. Here's the thing - people get in accidents all the time when assistance features like ABS, lane keeping, traction control, TACC, good-old-fashioned dumb cruise control, etc. are actively altering the vehicle's performance and behavior. So when we consider Tesla's AP system, it's really just TACC + lane keeping. Something that is common on a wide variety of vehicles today. Why then is Tesla specifically being focused on? All these other systems have similar failure modes, including, but not limited to: Not stopping for a stopped vehicle far ahead, not slowing for or avoiding objects in or near the lane, etc. These are assistance features. Thus, in all of these scenarios, it is likely that chief responsibility for the accident lies with the human behind the wheel. We should be studying all OEM systems, not just Tesla's. And specifically, we should be looking at whether the system made the situation worse through its actions than if it had taken no action (akin to a distracted human driving on dumb cruise control). If it is the case that a Tesla on AP will ram right in to a firetruck flashing its lights while stopped in the lane directly ahead, it is quite likely that many other systems do the same. We just don't really talk about them, because it casually falls under the realm of "human wasn't paying attention". They're not special. We all sort of implicitly accept that. But when it's a Tesla, it's special. In any case, we'll get over it eventually. This technology is not unique to Tesla and will only become more commonplace. It will continue to get better at avoiding things despite the hoards of distracted drivers.
- jdsully 4y ago
  Most of these other implementations have radar and LiDAR. Teslas is the inferior solution. That’s why if you order one you see a disclaimer that it is vision only.
  - jstream67 4y ago
    I think all the crashes involved in this investigation would have been radar. The vision only is really 2022+ year model cars (and possibly some late 2021).
  - ActorNightly 4y ago
itsoktocry 4y ago
>I wonder how many people turn on traditional cruise control and then crash due to neglectful driving. That's what we should be comparing Tesla Autopilot against, we should compare it against the status quo. This is so disingenuous. Go on YouTube and search for people "self-driving" in their Teslas, then do the same for people doing anything remotely the same with standard cruise control. Tesla and its fanatics want it both ways: it's both the most sophisticated self-driving software on the planet, and only regulations are preventing it from being widely used and reducing traffic accidents, but when accidents happen it's just "cruise control". Pick one.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Is this actually a problem with tesla marketing? Or is it a problem with people being dumb? An aircraft autopilot will happily fly you straight into a mountain. It just holds altitude and bearing. Everyone I know with a Tesla exclusively uses autopilot on the highway in between exits. I'm pretty baffled as to how some people think it's fully autonomous driving, and I'm dubious as to how culpable Tesla is for that ignorance.
  - PKop 4y ago
    It's both, and unless you have a solution to eliminating stupid people, then the tech needs to be regulated out of the market so innocent people don't get killed on the roads due to this stupidity.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      There's only so much a company can do to protect against user error. People stick their fingers down a running drain garbage disposal. People will look down the barrel of a loaded gun and pull the trigger. The question is not "has anyone hurt themselves?", the question is "does the product have reasonable safety precautions?"
concinds 4y ago
The fundamental problem is that Tesla's Autopilot is defective. It has repeatedly steered people into highway barriers, and sometimes has no clue which lane it's in or where it's going. See the opening of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMvdI8nSAJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMvdI8nSAJE An Apple employee was killed by his Tesla, which always veered into a highway barrier after an OTA update (he was distracted one day and didn't prevent the crash, died as a result).[0] The video above also involves the results of an OTA update. There are more reports of dangerous Autopilot behavior than any other brand's cruise control that I'm aware of. The problem here isn't neglectful driving, it's that you may be driving in a straight line on a highway for half an hour, distracted and "lulled" by the monotony and predictability of the road, and in a split second your car veers off and tries to kill you because it no longer knows where the lane is. Now drivers need to not only pay attention to the road and over cars, but also be ready to react instantly with zero warning if the car does something unexpected and dangerous. [0]: https://www.kqed.org/news/11801138/apple-engineer-killed-in-tesla-crash-had-previously-complained-about-autopilot https://www.kqed.org/news/11801138/apple-engineer-killed-in-...
- warning26 4y ago
  What is the benefit of an auto-drive function if you have to pay constant attention to it? Essentially, autopilot's main value proposition is that you don't need to pay attention to it -- and that's what makes it so dangerous.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    The wife got a new car - not a Tesla - that has several smart cruise control features. She actually ended up disabling some of them. She explained that they "made driving too easy" and it was too hard for her to keep her attention on the road while using them.
  - Domenic_S 4y ago
    As a bay-area commuter, the value prop is not having to micromanage the accelerator/brake/steering wheel in stop-and-go traffic. I did the commute for years in "regular" cars, and I've done it for years with autopilot, and autopilot is without a question a much easier commute. There is a continuum between actively driving the car and falling asleep in the back seat, and AP puts you somewhere on the left side of the middle. It's generally great stuff. All the point-to-point full-self-driving BS is meh, I don't really care about it, but give me world-class TACC and lane keeping (original autopilot) and I'm a happy commuter.
kybernetikos 4y ago
It'll be a few years before we have definite data, but back in 2018 there was reason to think that the number of driver fatalities per million vehicle years was significantly worse in teslas than in comparable cars. https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r... Some luxury car models have incredibly low driver fatality rates regardless of cruise control activation. Just the fatal stories I've seen reported on hackernews take tesla out of the top bracket for safety.
dekhn 4y ago
My most recent car has adaptive cruise control (tries to keep a speed, and break/resume if it can't). And it also has some lane detector that pushes the car gently back into the lane if you don't apply pressure. I used it for about 10 minutes before I had to prevent it from making a very serious accident. I would never compare that to Autopilot, which can go many hours before making a very serious accident.
- alphabettsy 4y ago
  > Autopilot, which can go many hours before making a very serious accident. Does it concern you that it might provide a false sense of security?
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Yes- that's my point. It took me ten minutes to realize my car's technology is unsafe, but from what I can tell, lots of people used FSD Beta enough to consider it reliable enough after a few hours of watching it work more or less OK on a freeway to completely disengage from driving.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      It is easy to be “reliable” on a motorway in clear conditions. Yet they manage to hit a goddamn concrete block head on, or steer into the wrong lane. Let’s say that people are not good at determining a black-box system’s reliability (as it is hard enough to do so with even statistics and hard data)

jstream67 4y ago

Sometimes this stuff just seems like a government shakedown. The NHTSA and the Biden administration in general is bitterly anti Tesla https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-fsd-bias-nhtsa-safety-adviser/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-fsd-bias-nhtsa-saf... (obviously a biased source -but worth a read)

nitwit005 4y ago
If I go looking about articles related to the Biden administration and Tesla, I mostly see articles about Musk complaining the Biden administration was ignoring them. That's not what I'd expect if they were "bitterly anti Tesla".
fckgw 4y ago
And what's the bias of the website with "Tesla" in it's name?
- jstream67 4y ago
  I think we are all fortunate that teslarati.com is not a government agency :D
mupuff1234 4y ago
So they appointed a person who cares about safety to be a safety advisor? How dare they.
- jstream67 4y ago
  Here are some quotes from the article for you. The concern is not that she cares about safety, but that she is very strongly biased against Tesla and has a financial interest in promoting other companies. "The same goes for her stance regarding CEO Elon Musk. In March 2020, for example, Dr. Cummings seemingly joked about needing someone to stop her from punching Elon Musk in the face. " "It should be noted that Dr. Cummings’ seat at Veoneer was not disclosed when she published a paper (which was later updated to remove inaccurate details about a fatal Tesla crash) criticizing systems such as Autopilot for their possible dangers. And so far, the incoming NHTSA senior safety adviser has not shared if she would be leaving her post at the Swedish LIDAR company, especially since she would soon be advising a US safety agency on driver-assist systems that adopt both LIDAR and non-LIDAR solutions. " "Missy Cummings receives around $400,000 worth of stock in Swedish LIDAR company Veoneer per year as compensation for her role as a non-employee member of the board."

vjust 4y ago

Driver behavior on the road can be totally unpredictable. Intent versus observed motion can have divergence.. I wonder if its the algorithms or the sensors.

cameldrv 4y ago
In the incidents I've seen it's been sensors/interpretation, things like simply not detecting a vehicle.

malcolmgreaves 4y ago

UX and interfaces are important. If it's marketed and described as "autopilot" or "full self driving," then a reasonable person expects it to automatically pilot the vehicle I'm normal driving situations. Tesla is unfortunately trapped in a all too common story of AI development: over-hype and under-deliver.

ActorNightly 4y ago
There are plenty of warnings about "keeping hands on the wheel" and "full attentiveness". Of course people are going to ignore this, just like many people chose to ignore the effects of alcohol and drive.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Imagine if Mary Barra was on TV telling everyone that you could "pretty much drive our cars drunk", and then put in fine print that drunk driving is bad and illegal.
  - ActorNightly 4y ago
    There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Don't let your hate for Musk as a person cloud your judgement. These things are not comparable.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Musk has said about autopilot “the car drives itself”. And their latest level 2 driving assistance feature is called “full self driving” I don’t dislike the guy, but this is irresponsible.
    - rimunroe 4y ago
      > There is a big difference between claiming that "you could just go in the backseat while the car drives itself", and calling your system Autopilot, considering collision avoidance isn't anywhere in the traditional definition of autopilot as it pertains to planes. Do you think that the average consumer knows this much about how plane autopilots work? If not, how is it relevant?