44 ms·
US moves closer to recalling Tesla’s self-driving software
- jonahbenton 4y agoHow many government agencies can Elon Musk piss off at once?
- jonahbenton 4y ago
- seydor 4y agoI wish the sector wasn't all about money and tried to solve real problems. Making a car for disabled people that is not autonomous but requires minimal intervention would make a lot of people Happy. Instead we make fail videos for YouTube
- cratermoon 4y ago"On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle."
- heavyset_go 4y ago> On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle. > CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision. > While anything that might indicate the system was designed to shut off when it sensed an imminent accident might damage Tesla’s image, legally the company would be a difficult target.
- lawn 4y agoSo what happens is 1. Speed straight towards your doom. 2. Give back control a moment before collision, when it realizes it fucked up. 3. "It was the driver's fault"
- heretogetout 4y agoExactly as predicted by many, many skeptics. Of course that's what his statement meant.
- epgui 4y agoIf you read the actual report, you will see that NHTSA actually acknowledges that autopilot makes things safer overall, and they agree that crashes are due to misuse of the software. They highlight that on average, when there was a crash, the driver should have been able to recognize the hazard ~8 seconds in advance.
- lazide 4y agoThe challenge of course is what level of misuse is to be expected (especially once it becomes more widely available), and if using the software with normal levels of misuse results in an overall safer level of driving than without it.
- epgui 4y agoIt appears to be so: misuse is included in the overall safety assessment. But this is exactly the position of NHTSA in the report. They say that if Tesla can reasonably do something to mitigate misuse, then they should. That’s what this is about.
- lazide 4y agoMy point is: 1) This is currently limited to a pretty restricted market (people who drive Teslas, which is a small subset of car drivers). When used more widely by a wider set of people, it may have a worse track record. 2) It isn't clear that such misuse has reasonable mitigations that will continue to make it attractive to use. But it's all speculation at this point.
- la64710 4y agoThis stuff is scary and certainly more important than twitter spam bots.
- djcannabiz 4y ago
- hyperbovine 4y agoThank God. I for one did not opt into this beta test every time I get on the road.
- epgui 4y agoThis is not about FSD.
- Vladimof 4y agoIt doesn't help that Musk tries to create confusion by naming things something they're not. Next thing he'll implement might be the Flying Car Update... which will turn lights green as you drive by using the 14hz infrared signal.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- robonerd 4y agoHyperbovine didn't mention FSD. Let me spell it out for you: Autopilot is beta grade software at best. It drives straight into parked trucks.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoIt routinely drives straight into parked emergency vehicles displaying a blaze of flashing lights.
- md2020 4y ago“Routinely” isn’t even close to the truth.
- epgui 4y agoThe company doesn’t consider autopilot to be in beta, but it does call FSD this.
- xaduha 4y agoLidar approach just has to be the winner in my opinion, simpler is better.
- Zigurd 4y agoLidar is lo-res, though it has other advantages. Sensor fusion is also not without complexity and problems. But camera-only systems seem like one of those bets that hangs out there for too long before it will have to be walked back, leaving a lot of customers with stranded technology and unmet expectations.
- keewee7 4y agoA future with high powered infrared lasers on top of every car will probably lead to a mysterious rise in people slowly losing their vision. Someone should do a study of the eyes and vision of people who work with LIDAR. Why not instead use multiple radars (we already put 1-2 radars in cars with adaptive cruise control) to augment Tesla's vision based approach?
- kibwen 4y agoAccording to this article, lidar using eye-safe lasers is standard: https://photonicsreport.com/blog/is-lidar-dangerous-for-our-eyes/ https://photonicsreport.com/blog/is-lidar-dangerous-for-our-... "If a lidar system ever uses a laser with a higher safety class, then it could pose a serious hazard for your eyes. However, as it stands, according to current information and practices, lidar manufacturers use class 1 eye-safe (near) infrared laser diodes."
- b112 4y agoAnd what if you are hit in the eyes with the outout of 20 of them at once? Like on a busy highway. What if you are hit all day long, for hours, every single day? History is replete with studies which were used to presume different exposures would be fine.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
- gnicholas 4y agoWould this mean that Tesla would have to provide refunds for customers who purchased FSD? If so, would they pro-rate the refund based, as is customary under lemon law refunds? On the flip side, could they be required to inflation-adjust the refunds, so that customers get back the same purchasing power that they spent? Separately, would this prevent Tesla from having a beta tester group that tries out FSD features at no cost?
- maybelsyrup 4y ago[flagged]
- epgui 4y agoTo other commenters: this is a technical audit of autopilot software, not Tesla FSD. And the actual context is much less of a big deal than it seems: the biggest plausible consequence would be forcing Tesla to push an over-the-air update with better driver attention monitoring or alerting. I encourage reading the actual report.
- dangrossman 4y agoThe worst case outcome would require Tesla to disable the autopilot suite entirely, for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps permanently on the existing fleet of vehicles. The NHTSA is tired of Tesla's hand-waving away their safety investigations into Autopilot by pushing stealth updates that fix specific scenarios in specific places being investigated. NHTSA wisened up to that and independently purchased their own Tesla vehicles, and disabled software updates, so that they can reproduce those scenarios themselves. If NHTSA asks Tesla to provide system validation tests showing that an updated version of their software meets the design intent of the system, Tesla would not be able to do so. If they can't prove the new Autopilot software corrects the safety-related defects identified in the current version, then it's not a valid recall remedy. All evidence from their own AI/AP team and presentations is that there is no real design and system validation going on over there. They're flying by the seat of their pants, introducing potentially lethal regressions in every update.
- AzzieElbab 4y agoIf disabling FSD makes teslas less safe then what is the point? Are they saying fsd can potentially go berserk? Are we into future crime prevention?
- hedora 4y agoYes, in the same way that taking down an active gunman with a loaded weapon is future crime prevention.
- AzzieElbab 4y ago
- mensetmanusman 4y agoConsidering the personalities involved, I wouldn’t be surprised if a recall is issued, and then the recall is canceled when a new administration gets voted in.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Beltiras 4y agoI bought FSD version of Model 3 in the spring of 2020. I'm still waiting for what I purchased to be turned on. Frankly, I'd be psyched if they would expand on the little things instead of the big things. "Park the car in that spot". "Exit the parking spot". These would be worth the price I paid.
- toast0 4y agoI don't see why you don't return the car? It doesn't have what you paid for.
- avalys 4y agoNo kidding! The ability to use the phone or remote to move the car forward or back in a straight line is super useful and a cool, novel feature by itself. It’s also a buggy piece of shit that a few engineers could probably greatly improve in a month. Doesn’t seem like Tesla cares, it’s been stagnant for years. Meanwhile Tesla is still charging people $10,000 for an FSD function that doesn’t exist.
- chrinic3839 4y agoIt’s a shame. I really wanted Tesla to succeed. But as time goes on, their products become less impressive and their CEO is not helping the brand.
- robonerd 4y agoThey could turn this around if they gave up on the futurologist software bullshit and strived to simply sell battery-powered cars. Stop selling dreams of robotaxis, just sell cars.
- extheat 4y agoYes become a boring company nobody cares about like the rest of the car industry. Nobody should try and innovate with futuristic products and become bureaucratic behemoths like the government, which has an excellent track record of success.
- freeflight 4y agoHaving your paying customers act as alpha testers, for software that can potentially injure and kill other people, is imho not exactly the kind of "innovation" we should strive for. Btw; Weird dig at "the governments success", considering a whole lot of Musk's ventures wouldn't be around without all kinds of government subsidies.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rurp 4y agoFor all of it's flaws the US govt does have a remarkable track record. It has presided over one of the most stable and productive societies in history. Sure it hasn't always been great, and the future outlook isn't looking so strong at the moment, but it has been wildly successful for the past few centuries.
- nawgz 4y ago
- muttantt 4y ago
- CamperBob2 4y agoWhat I'm afraid of is that the people in my society with large amounts of money, power, weapons, and influence are acting like a bunch of sixth-graders. I'm not asking for miracles. I just want the crazy to stop.
- faebi 4y agoI think too much focus at Tesla is on FSD beta while barely anything trickles down to standard cars. They need more developers who extract new features down and make them ready for a worldwide rollout. The best symptom of this is the horrible state of Auto Pilot in Europe. Or how their auto blinding lights are just outright bad even though they have all the tools to fix it with a nice update.
- ggreer 4y agoAutopilot is terrible in europe because of EU laws. Driver assist systems in the EU cannot impart more than 3 m/sec^2 of lateral acceleration[1], which means they're useless for many turns. Another restriction is that lane changes must be initiated by the driver and they must abort if the lane change has not succeeded after 5 seconds.[2] 1. See page 15 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:42018X1947&rid=2 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... 2. See page 18 of the same document.
- Bellend 4y ago[flagged]
- herpderperator 4y ago> Since Tesla vehicles can have their software overwritten via a wireless connection to the cloud [...] Tangential, and we all knew this happens already, but wow, it sounds crazy that we live in a world where a car can completely change its operation based on someone somewhere pressing a button on their computer.
- musesum 4y agoMy use case was autopilot steering me off the left hand side of the road at 80 MPH during a sunset [1] My (WAG) guess is that the ML corpus was based on a model 3, while the model Y, I was driving, had placed the sensors slightly higher? I dunno; again, tis a WAG. I am a huge fan of Tesla's permise. My Dad sold Vanguard Citicars [2], and I worked on GM's interactive ad for the EV-1. I put a down payment on Aptera's original EV and again on the resurrected version [3]. But, I backed out of buying a Tesla. Even though I disabled Autopilot and ran purely cruise control, the Model Y would brake for phantom obstacles. Such as: low rises in the road. Or: passing a 18-wheeler on the left. Driving from AZ to CA, the phantom braking was occuring every 5 miles or so. So, I had to drive 800 miles with a manual accelerator. Bummer! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31504583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31504583 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar [3] https://aptera.us https://aptera.us [edit]
- chrisseaton 4y ago> My (WAG) guess Wives-and-girlfriends?
- matheist 4y agoWild-ass guess
- chrisseaton 4y agoWild-ass guess guess?
- fragmede 4y agoYes, like when people say PIN number or ATM machine. Or HIV virus or LCD display. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome
- seanhunter 4y ago
- sva_ 4y agoWhat a shitty website, hacking the back button to confirm if I want to leave.
- t_mann 4y ago> CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision. > NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle. Ouch.
- chromejs10 4y agoOne thing I don't quite understand is that many cars have autopilot-like software. Unlike tesla's which constantly requires putting pressure on the wheel to show you're there and paying attention, Ford's lets you drive indefinitely without any hands on the wheel. Wouldn't this same investigation be put onto other manufactures as a giant audit? Hitting emergency vehicles is obviously bad but 1) it happens in cars without autopilot and 2) if you're hitting one you're clearly no paying attention. it's not like they just appear out of no where
- donw 4y ago[flagged]
- bigbluedots 4y agoSeriously? If money is power, Musk _is_ the ruling class.
- etchalon 4y ago"The billionaire is being oppressed!"
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
- porknubbins 4y agoYour premise is not necessarily always true though. There are other kinds of power such as political power that can only be partially interchanged for economic power. Its pretty clear the mainline political parties dislike Musk as he’s a wild card.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y agoIf we are in a capitalist economy, Musk, as a member of the haut bourgeousie, is the ruling class.
- yalogin 4y agoCrap, this is going to be turned into a political issue now because of Musk. Irrespective of the legitimacy of the investigation, it is now going to be branded as a witch hunt. Musk is shrewd, he explicitly went to the party that fully condones sexual misconduct with their leaders just before his own issue came out and the whole party is fully behind him and without questions. A lot of my friends blindly support him even those that never paid attention to him before. That party affiliation has served him well with Twitter too, where the Texas AG did him a solid by launching an investigation into bots. This is a mess all the way down. Musk has become a huge distraction at this point for his companies, at the least Tesla. He is too powerful for the board to replace him though
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- logicalmonster 4y ago
- buffington 4y agoI think one of Tesla's biggest problems with any of their autonomous systems is the names they give those systems. They confuse regulators, reporters, and consumers. Most reporters seem to confuse "autopilot" with "full self driving" or vice versa. It's not uncommon to see sentences like "Autopilot, a feature that costs $10k, is still in beta." Autopilot is cruise control that keeps you within a lane when it can. That's it. Other cars have it, and they're equally effective or ineffective. Full self driving, aside from being terrifying, does it all, and I suspect it's usually what regulators and reporters mean when they say "Autopilot." I think if Tesla had used "lane aware cruise control" as the name for "Autopilot", it'd have helped reduce the number of times people confuse the two. Frankly, as an owner of a Tesla that has both features, I wouldn't mind at all if both were pulled from the software. FSD is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather let my teenage son drive me than have FSD do it. Autopilot feels like a novelty. Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel, it's hardly better than simple cruise control.
- lenkite 4y agoThey need to rename Autopilot to Deadpilot now. More accurate.
- mbushey 4y agoOr Livepilot as my Model Y saved my wife's life.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 4y agoI agree with what you say, but part of the reason Tesla is even around to have these problems is Musk's dubious talents as a relentless hype man. Musk himself says they were at the brink of bankruptcy at least twice: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-bankruptcy-model-3-electric-vehicle-ev-production-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-bankruptcy-m... Personally, I think if we had better laws Musk would be looking at charges of criminal negligence for encouraging people to think they have things like actual "autopilot" and "full self driving". But as it is, he lied his way to the top of the world's richest list. So Tesla's problems here are just the consequences of his actions.
- pengaru 4y agoI don't know about you guys, but I'd personally feel less anxiety around Teslas if all this Autopilot and FSD bullshit were recalled and I could be relatively confident those vehicles are simply dumb EVs with conventional distracted primates controlling them.
- revscat 4y agoHas there been any studies done on the number of accidents prevented by Autopilot?
- dymk 4y agoWell, you can do some rough math by using Tesla's own numbers. With autopilot: 1 crash in 4.31 million miles driven Without autopilot: 1 crash in 1.59 million miles driven
- pottertheotter 4y agoCan those numbers be directly compared? For instance, I’d assume the proportion of highway miles driven is much higher for autopilot miles. And highway driving is much safer than city driving.
- lesgobrandon 4y ago
- mrjin 4y agoI have always been skeptically on those on road auto-driving and I double whether can get to the ready-to-deploy ever. The logic is simple: our road environment is so volatile and even best trained drivers make deadly mistakes. Such environment is obviously cannot be handled by a bunch of if-else. To allow those techs to mature, we'll need some AI can UNDERSTAND the situation and make near optimal or optimal decisions accordingly. Unfortunately we are nowhere close to that.
- thepasswordis 4y agoOh shocking. The administration which has been openly hostile towards tesla is now going to start actively kneecapping their vehicles. What the hell is wrong with us? Why do we do this to ourselves? Tesla is an insanely innovative company, and we have a government who now wants to fight them? WHY? If you turn on FSD, and then just turn your brain off: YOU are the problem. Inattentive drivers are not a new problem created by tesla.
- threeseed 4y ago> The administration which has been openly hostile towards tesla No. They just haven't gone out of their way to publicly promote the company. Which is understandable given that Biden is pro-worker/pro-union and Musk from events to date isn't.
- NiloCK 4y ago> Inattentive drivers are not a new problem created by tesla. Obviously not a new category of problem, but what sort of ballpark figure could we put on the number of inattentive drivers created by tesla? As a percentage of sales?
- pottertheotter 4y agoBased on your comment, I’m assuming you only read the title of this post and not this article. I’m all for technological progression but from what I’ve been reading, it appears that Elon and Tesla have had pretty shady safety practices. I’d change your questions to, “Why does Tesla do this to itself?” I’d hope our government would step up in times like this regardless of who is on the other side. I’d also recommend you watch “Elon Musk’s Crash Course” on Hulu. https://www.hulu.com/series/f22278d1-ef56-40e8-9227-af3a029ca6f4 https://www.hulu.com/series/f22278d1-ef56-40e8-9227-af3a029c...
- thepasswordis 4y ago"Elon Musk's Crash Course" oh gee I wonder what non biased reporting this documentary is going to be providing!? I did read the article. The Biden administration is particularly hostile to Tesla.
- elforce002 4y agoI don't want to be that guy, but with all the things Elon is saying and doing, why does it feel like this is a coordinated attack against Elon?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoProbably, because it kinda is. What is more upsetting is that this treatment of cars like software was ok until now. It only now that he is on the 'wrong side' that there is a threat of him getting slapped. It is annoying, because it ( misrepresentation of what autopilot is to the customers ) has been going on for years now..
- pottertheotter 4y agoI don’t think it’s anything new, it’s just that his negligence is finally catching up to him. There have been serious issues that folks in side and outside of the government have been concerned about for a while. I think the bigger issue is people only being able to see things in black and white. For instance, either Tesla is awesome because of what they have done to push forward electric vehicles, or they have problems they need to be held accountable for. Why not both?
- xbmcuser 4y agoThe biggest problem with is the way Tesla, Musk and Tesla Fans have marketed the AI capabilities. It gives people a false sense of security. Another thing is I feel Elon is being idiotic by trying to mimic human driving so not using Lidar wanting to just use cameras. Like wtf you should want the Ai cars to be better than humans and having more information than a human is a good way to do that.
- jc__denton 4y agoThe problem with Tesla's "self-driving" is people assume they have to provide no oversight or inputs beyond engaging the system. It's a recipe for disaster. Couple it with the rapid acceleration and speeds the Tesla is capable of and you exponentially increase that risk. I have seen people shave / apply makeup, be on laptops, and even sleep while these cars were "driving." Conversely, I have seen people accelerate rapidly and unsafe, taking their previously gas-driven aggressive behaviors to a whole new level. The cars need governors to keep other motorists safe and I hesitate to say "other motorists," since I think most find their driver's license as the toy in a Happy Meal.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago> On Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency under the guidance of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, said it would be expanding a probe and look into 830,000 Tesla cars across all four current model lines, 11% more vehicles than they were previously examining. It's pretty obvious what's happening. Musk becomes a Republican, says he'll buy Twitter, so now the establishment liberals will punish him. Politics as a weapon, as usual.
- coffeeblack 4y agoThis is a political move. Just like the “electric car summit” in the White House where Tesla wasn’t invited.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timwaagh 4y agoTesla moved too fast imo. Basically exploiting loopholes to get self driving cars on the road when there was no approval from government. I like waymos approach a lot better.
- havblue 4y agoOne thing that still confuses be is the idea of pedestrian avoidance. Sure, a sensor can identify a person in the road quickly and brake. I just don't see how cars are ever going to be good at the question of when you aren't sure whether a pedestrian will dart into the road or not. The car could detect that there's limited visibility on the side of the road but it's very situational to realize you're in a city or a neighborhood with kids so you need to drive especially slow.