5 ms·

A "crash" in this case is any crash where the automated driving aids were in use less than 30 seconds prior to the crash. So for example, if the car realized i

by bradfa 4y ago

A "crash" in this case is any crash where the automated driving aids were in use less than 30 seconds prior to the crash. So for example, if the car realized it couldn't deal with something 29 seconds up the road, gives a 10 second warning to the human that the human needs to take over, and then the human drives into a crash, this would count as an Autopilot crash. I'm no Tesla fan, but that's a bit disingenuous.

IdEntities 4y ago
It does seem like there should be some happy medium between this and Tesla's policy of not counting it as an Autopilot crash if it disengages one second before impact.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I guess at the end of the day I mostly care about the overall accident rate, AP or not. Since the premise is that this kind of car will be safer, you would expect that rate to be lower.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Tesla uses a 5 second threshold, not 1 second.
userbinator 4y ago
How does it not count? 10 seconds doesn't seem like much time for a human not really paying attention to the road, as would probably be the case, to assess the situation and respond. Although the cutoff is at 30 seconds, I wonder what the distribution is actually like.
- mwint 4y ago
  10s is basically an eternity in car time. Pretty sure I could wake up from a nap and boot my brain enough to drive in 5s or less. A car going 80mph can stop in around 4s.
  - Someone 4y ago
    > Pretty sure I could wake up from a nap and boot my brain enough to drive in 5s or less. Citation needed, certainly for the case at hand, where you’re suddenly required to drive a car in an emergency situation. (Edited to add the claim I responded to, because it looks like a few replies didn’t look at that context)
    - mwint 4y ago
      On the contrary, I’d challenge anyone to find a non-contrived example of a crash that is unavoidable with 10 seconds of warning. Driving off a 1600 foot cliff does not count.
      - jepler 4y ago
        Your car has gone the wrong way down an express lane some distance, and deactivated when a semi trailer traveling 75mph in the opposite direction is detected. There is no shoulder, and it's stopping distance plus yours is greater than the remaining distance between you (.1 mile is way insufficient)
        mwint 4y ago
        ”Wrong way down an express lane” is super contrived. Those are the kinds of clear cut issues that self driving is guaranteed to be better at than humans.
        lostmsu 4y ago
        If semi can stop in 6 seconds sounding horn would do it.
      - vagrantJin 4y ago
        Every crash is avoidable by definition. Human error/poor decisions, mechanical/electronic failures, acts of god could all reasonably be labelled as reasons. Regardless of time.
        4y ago
- boringg 4y ago
  Are you talking from sleep or in the back seat of the car (both illegal)?! 10 seconds is long as hell - i have no clue what you are talking about.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Definitely sleeping in a cat is illegal.
- bradfa 4y ago
  With level 2 autonomous driving systems the human is required to always be watching and ready to take over. 10 seconds is a reasonable amount of time for this transition according to Mercedes Drive Pilot system: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-mercedes-drivepilot-causes-a-crash/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-...
  - andrewaylett 4y ago
    That 10s is for a L3 system -- L2 systems require the driver to maintain attention at all times. "FSD" is still a level two system. In level two, it's not about "handing back control" -- the driver is assumed to be in control at all times, with the car assisting. If the car assists too much then people will start treating it as if it were an L3 system, but it's really not.
programmer_dude 4y ago
Why? 10 seconds is not enough. It seems perfectly reasonable to assume Autopilot needs to do better here.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I disagree. How could a system look much further ahead in a dynamic environment?
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    If "as good as we can do" isn't good enough than it just isn't. If it can't offer enough time for a driver to reasonably take over then it can't meaningfully function in its intended role. I'm not informed enough about this to say whether it falls under that threshold or even what that threshold is. But the limits being clear technical ones does not change the degree to which they are limits.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      What I mean is, can you imagine any system that can see 20s (say) ahead in terms of other people's driving? It's an eternity.
  - deschutes 4y ago
    This is exactly why level 2 systems will never be safe. The constraints set the human up to fail.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      "Level 2" is just lane centering + adaptive cruise control. There's nothing about this combination that "sets the driver up to fail". Some drivers like to pretend that the system is way smarter than it really is, but that's a case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". You can't fix that with changes on the system side.
moralestapia 4y ago
It's not disingenuous, The whole point is "my new system reduces crashes", if it doesn't, in the bottom line, then it doesn't.
- qeternity 4y ago
  I think OP is saying something slightly different: the Tesla numbers could be substantially worse if Autopilot simply disengages 1 millisecond before impact, it would not count as an Autopilot crash.
  - bradfa 4y ago
    And there's recent articles where almost exactly this has been found. Autopilot deactivating 1 second before impact. In these kinds of cases, then yes, Autopilot is definitely partly at fault, but also the human is because Autopilot is only a level 2 system, the human is still responsible.
    - vagrantJin 4y ago
      > Autopilot is only a level 2 system, the human is still responsible. True. > In these kinds of cases, then yes, Autopilot is definitely partly at fault, Partly? Now that's called shilling.
  - moralestapia 4y ago
    1 ms < 30 seconds, so that data is there as well. Also, >I'm no Tesla fan, but ... Sounds like he's vouching for them. Anyway, the argument is not against @bradfa, it is about whether AP makes driving safer or not.
  - bitexploder 4y ago
    The WaPo article addresses that and counts them as AutoPilot engaged crashes. It seems to disengage 1 second before many of the crashes. It is nearly impossible to draw any conclusions about anything from this article. Other than, people use AutoPilot and sometimes they crash using it. The one interesting bit is where the damage happened on the cars and the hitting of stationary objects. Those seem like unforced autopilot errors.
ra7 4y ago
> A "crash" in this case is any crash where the automated driving aids were in use less than 30 seconds prior to the crash. It's 5 seconds, not 30 seconds. From Tesla safety report [1]: > To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact, and we count all crashes in which the incident alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed. [1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
- bradfa 4y ago
  The article states: "The NHTSA order required manufacturers to disclose crashes where the software was in use within 30 seconds of the crash, in part to mitigate the concern that manufacturers would hide crashes by claiming the software wasn’t in use at the time of the impact."
  - ra7 4y ago
    Ah, thanks for clarifying. I thought you referred to Tesla's counting methodology.
hendrikrassmann 4y ago
I'm just going to interpret "[autopilot] couldn't deal with something" as "autopilot would also have crashed the car in that situation". To me a situation in which autopilot would have crashed, gave control to the driver, who couldn't "save" the bad situation, is just an autopilot crash.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Autopilot is a SAE level 2 driver assist system; it should never be trusted to keep you safe. Whether or not the system bails out completely prior to a crash is immaterial.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  That's a definition that no other car company would accept either, as their systems would score very poorly.
d_watt 4y ago
1. While that’s true there’s no reason to think that extreme case is normal for these. 2. Even if it was, it’s sort of irrelevant. When considering the safety of the feature, the whole process, including allowing the driver to become distracted, must be considered. This isn’t a clean room where you can just focus on the performance of the models, this is a real life car interacting with other unpredictable cars, being driven by an imperfect human. If the nature of these systems is that it makes the drivers complacent, that’s absolutely something that needs to be taken into account when thinking about the overall experience of a self driving system.
aqme28 4y ago
What's your alternative? Tesla has also faced criticism for turning off autopilot less than a second before the crash, and then claiming that because the car was not on autopilot it was driver error. "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. " * https://fortune.com/2022/06/10/elon-musk-tesla-nhtsa-investigation-traffic-safety-autonomous-fsd-fatal-probe/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/10/elon-musk-tesla-nhtsa-investi...
- bradfa 4y ago
  My alternative is to present the data including how long before the crash the system deactivated and not just report all of the incidents into one category. This requires nuance and judgement in reporting. I'm not blaming Tesla or the NHTSA for this, I'm blaming the WP as their reporting on this lacks any information and seems rather to just paint the data in such a way to make Tesla look bad. There's no room for interpretation by the reader because no actual useful data is presented. Edited to correct my naming of the article source.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Even Tesla uses 5 seconds and not 1 second. The Fortune article was misleading.

by bradfa 4y ago

IdEntities 4y ago

It does seem like there should be some happy medium between this and Tesla's policy of not counting it as an Autopilot crash if it disengages one second before impact.

foobarian 4y ago
I guess at the end of the day I mostly care about the overall accident rate, AP or not. Since the premise is that this kind of car will be safer, you would expect that rate to be lower.
_ea1k 4y ago
Tesla uses a 5 second threshold, not 1 second.

userbinator 4y ago

How does it not count? 10 seconds doesn't seem like much time for a human not really paying attention to the road, as would probably be the case, to assess the situation and respond. Although the cutoff is at 30 seconds, I wonder what the distribution is actually like.

mwint 4y ago
10s is basically an eternity in car time. Pretty sure I could wake up from a nap and boot my brain enough to drive in 5s or less. A car going 80mph can stop in around 4s.
- Someone 4y ago
  > Pretty sure I could wake up from a nap and boot my brain enough to drive in 5s or less. Citation needed, certainly for the case at hand, where you’re suddenly required to drive a car in an emergency situation. (Edited to add the claim I responded to, because it looks like a few replies didn’t look at that context)
  - mwint 4y ago
    On the contrary, I’d challenge anyone to find a non-contrived example of a crash that is unavoidable with 10 seconds of warning. Driving off a 1600 foot cliff does not count.
    - jepler 4y ago
      Your car has gone the wrong way down an express lane some distance, and deactivated when a semi trailer traveling 75mph in the opposite direction is detected. There is no shoulder, and it's stopping distance plus yours is greater than the remaining distance between you (.1 mile is way insufficient)
      - mwint 4y ago
        ”Wrong way down an express lane” is super contrived. Those are the kinds of clear cut issues that self driving is guaranteed to be better at than humans.
      - lostmsu 4y ago
        If semi can stop in 6 seconds sounding horn would do it.
    - vagrantJin 4y ago
      Every crash is avoidable by definition. Human error/poor decisions, mechanical/electronic failures, acts of god could all reasonably be labelled as reasons. Regardless of time.
      - 4y ago
boringg 4y ago
Are you talking from sleep or in the back seat of the car (both illegal)?! 10 seconds is long as hell - i have no clue what you are talking about.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Definitely sleeping in a cat is illegal.
bradfa 4y ago
With level 2 autonomous driving systems the human is required to always be watching and ready to take over. 10 seconds is a reasonable amount of time for this transition according to Mercedes Drive Pilot system: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-mercedes-drivepilot-causes-a-crash/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-...
- andrewaylett 4y ago
  That 10s is for a L3 system -- L2 systems require the driver to maintain attention at all times. "FSD" is still a level two system. In level two, it's not about "handing back control" -- the driver is assumed to be in control at all times, with the car assisting. If the car assists too much then people will start treating it as if it were an L3 system, but it's really not.

programmer_dude 4y ago

Why? 10 seconds is not enough. It seems perfectly reasonable to assume Autopilot needs to do better here.

robertlagrant 4y ago
I disagree. How could a system look much further ahead in a dynamic environment?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  If "as good as we can do" isn't good enough than it just isn't. If it can't offer enough time for a driver to reasonably take over then it can't meaningfully function in its intended role. I'm not informed enough about this to say whether it falls under that threshold or even what that threshold is. But the limits being clear technical ones does not change the degree to which they are limits.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    What I mean is, can you imagine any system that can see 20s (say) ahead in terms of other people's driving? It's an eternity.
- deschutes 4y ago
  This is exactly why level 2 systems will never be safe. The constraints set the human up to fail.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    "Level 2" is just lane centering + adaptive cruise control. There's nothing about this combination that "sets the driver up to fail". Some drivers like to pretend that the system is way smarter than it really is, but that's a case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". You can't fix that with changes on the system side.

moralestapia 4y ago

It's not disingenuous, The whole point is "my new system reduces crashes", if it doesn't, in the bottom line, then it doesn't.

qeternity 4y ago
I think OP is saying something slightly different: the Tesla numbers could be substantially worse if Autopilot simply disengages 1 millisecond before impact, it would not count as an Autopilot crash.
- bradfa 4y ago
  And there's recent articles where almost exactly this has been found. Autopilot deactivating 1 second before impact. In these kinds of cases, then yes, Autopilot is definitely partly at fault, but also the human is because Autopilot is only a level 2 system, the human is still responsible.
  - vagrantJin 4y ago
    > Autopilot is only a level 2 system, the human is still responsible. True. > In these kinds of cases, then yes, Autopilot is definitely partly at fault, Partly? Now that's called shilling.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  1 ms < 30 seconds, so that data is there as well. Also, >I'm no Tesla fan, but ... Sounds like he's vouching for them. Anyway, the argument is not against @bradfa, it is about whether AP makes driving safer or not.
- bitexploder 4y ago
  The WaPo article addresses that and counts them as AutoPilot engaged crashes. It seems to disengage 1 second before many of the crashes. It is nearly impossible to draw any conclusions about anything from this article. Other than, people use AutoPilot and sometimes they crash using it. The one interesting bit is where the damage happened on the cars and the hitting of stationary objects. Those seem like unforced autopilot errors.

ra7 4y ago

> A "crash" in this case is any crash where the automated driving aids were in use less than 30 seconds prior to the crash. It's 5 seconds, not 30 seconds. From Tesla safety report [1]: > To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact, and we count all crashes in which the incident alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed. [1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

bradfa 4y ago
The article states: "The NHTSA order required manufacturers to disclose crashes where the software was in use within 30 seconds of the crash, in part to mitigate the concern that manufacturers would hide crashes by claiming the software wasn’t in use at the time of the impact."
- ra7 4y ago
  Ah, thanks for clarifying. I thought you referred to Tesla's counting methodology.

hendrikrassmann 4y ago

I'm just going to interpret "[autopilot] couldn't deal with something" as "autopilot would also have crashed the car in that situation". To me a situation in which autopilot would have crashed, gave control to the driver, who couldn't "save" the bad situation, is just an autopilot crash.

zozbot234 4y ago
Autopilot is a SAE level 2 driver assist system; it should never be trusted to keep you safe. Whether or not the system bails out completely prior to a crash is immaterial.
_ea1k 4y ago
That's a definition that no other car company would accept either, as their systems would score very poorly.

d_watt 4y ago

1. While that’s true there’s no reason to think that extreme case is normal for these. 2. Even if it was, it’s sort of irrelevant. When considering the safety of the feature, the whole process, including allowing the driver to become distracted, must be considered. This isn’t a clean room where you can just focus on the performance of the models, this is a real life car interacting with other unpredictable cars, being driven by an imperfect human. If the nature of these systems is that it makes the drivers complacent, that’s absolutely something that needs to be taken into account when thinking about the overall experience of a self driving system.

aqme28 4y ago

What's your alternative? Tesla has also faced criticism for turning off autopilot less than a second before the crash, and then claiming that because the car was not on autopilot it was driver error. "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. " * https://fortune.com/2022/06/10/elon-musk-tesla-nhtsa-investigation-traffic-safety-autonomous-fsd-fatal-probe/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/10/elon-musk-tesla-nhtsa-investi...

bradfa 4y ago
My alternative is to present the data including how long before the crash the system deactivated and not just report all of the incidents into one category. This requires nuance and judgement in reporting. I'm not blaming Tesla or the NHTSA for this, I'm blaming the WP as their reporting on this lacks any information and seems rather to just paint the data in such a way to make Tesla look bad. There's no room for interpretation by the reader because no actual useful data is presented. Edited to correct my naming of the article source.
_ea1k 4y ago
Even Tesla uses 5 seconds and not 1 second. The Fortune article was misleading.