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New video of Tesla crash demonstrates the problem of semi-automated driving

• kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Hopefully Tesla will be paying out 7 digit settlements for their grossly negligent behavior in exposing the public to this broken technology.
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  • DesiLurker 4y ago
    whatever they pay they'll likely do out of court settlement and make people sign a NDA, they do this for simple repairs you can bet it would be the case for more serious offenses.
• tinus_hn 4y ago
  In other news, no car has ever seized up and stopped at an inconvenient moment before Tesla made this horrible mistake, and keeping a safe distance would not be necessary if it weren’t for those dang automated drivers. Now get off my lawn!
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  • pigtailgirl 4y ago
    -- had an engine seize up in college on the highway - doesn't just grind to a stop - still have a lot of control and speed - and - didn't change lanes into the left lane - i moved to the right slowly with my hazard lights on --
    • tinus_hn 4y ago
      It’s great that you were lucky, others are not. And it’s not a big deal, it’s a fact of life. Except when it’s a Tesla, of course.
• herodotus 4y ago
  I have a VW Golf and it has what it calls "adaptive cruise control". What makes it different from my older (simple) cruise control is that it will slow down and speed up again as necessary without my intervention. For example, if I set the speed to 70 mph and it gets close to a car ahead that is only going 65 mph, it will slow down and maintain what the software believes is a safe distance. Similarly, if a car in an adjacent lane changes lanes in front of me, it will slow down if necessary. I do use it, but less than I did the old system: I just do not find it relaxing because I cannot really grasp intuitively when I need to override it. On standard cruise control, it was obvious to me when I needed to take over. Therefore I am more rather than less vigilant than I was with the old system. I don't want to be too hard on the Golf: it has other safety features I really like, such as lane assist and automatic breaking. But I am not a fan of the adaptive control, and I think the article help me understand why: its a level 2 problem!
  • alar44 4y ago
    I would never want that though. It should change lanes and pass.
    • code_runner 4y ago
      It can if they want it to. It’s a car.
    • MBCook 4y ago
      It’s very useful on long drives since you don’t have to constantly adjust your speed by little bits (manually or adjusting the cruise control setting). Takes a moment to moment mental load off so you can focus on the other cars around you better. If the cars ahead of me are slowing down significantly I disengage and go manual until I have a better idea what’s going on. My car can supposedly stop completely that way. I’ve never tried that, as it gets very slow (relative to highway) it’s willing to get way closer to the vehicle in front me than I am. I trust it (in theory). But it’s not worth testing.
      • komali2 4y ago
• pessimist 4y ago
  A beta that we are all helping test . Simply unbelievable that the NHTSA allows this to happen. The Tesla safety report which the company boastfully released wouldn't have counted this incident since the Tesla itself wasn't harmed.
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  • jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Instead of finger pointing and blaming, the fact remains that several drivers crashed into an obstacle that they weren't prepared for, did not anticipate, and could not deal with. Maybe because they were driving too fast, weren't keeping their distance as they should have, or simply weren't paying enough attention. Stuff like this happens all the time. Pile ups on highways have been a regular thing for as long as highways have existed. The pattern is always the same: something unexpected happens in front of somebody and they fail to respond or they over react. The problem recurses behind them as more vehicles become part of the problem. It doesn't matter if the problem at the front is real or not. The actual problem is that drivers further back are not prepared for a thing that should be considered something that can happen at any time. The car in front of you might have all sorts of reasons to suddenly slam the brakes. You have no way of telling when they will do that because they are blocking your view to what's in front. There might be an unseen obstacle, engine failure, fog, a hole in the road, whatever. You have no way of telling until the brake lights in front of you come on. It doesn't actually matter why they slam their brakes or whether there even is a good reason for them to do that. You have to be ready for that eventuality and the appropriate response is going to be slamming your own brakes. And the car behind you had better be ready for that too. Obviously we had a cascading failure of multiple drivers not being ready for that here. And they are dodging their own responsibility by pointing to the problem in front of them instead of the idiot behind them, or themselves. The second car obviously wasn't the problem as they avoided crashing into the Tesla. Good job. The Tesla is fine. It was the driver behind them that was the real problem. The irony of human failures like this is that taking them out of the loop might make things safer. The Tesla stopped. It doesn't matter why. Human drivers behind it failed to act. Would that have happened if they all had FSD on or would we just have had a weird traffic jam occurring for no good reason at all? That too happens all the time.
• giantg2 4y ago
  I'm kind of surprised that the feds allow it since the vigilance issue is pretty much a given.
  • MBCook 4y ago
    I think, like much of technology’s history, this is one of those things where something got rolled out before anyone thought it was necessary to write legislation about it.
    • giantg2 4y ago
      There doesn't really need to be any legislation. It's handled via NHSA regulation (or whatever alphabet soup it is).
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• leot 4y ago
  Cars fail and need to pull over regularly. It's hard to understand why this particular incident is all that notable.
  • sidibe 4y ago
    IMO cars should be very very good at what they try to do, and not pretend to do anything more. Tesla has way too many flaky features (that customers have to pay for) for a product that can kill people. I'm fine with what Waymo and Cruise are trying to do where the car is expected to never make dangerous mistakes in the circumstances it will run (with consequences for the company), but Tesla's target of doing everything fine most of the time but still doing stupid stuff frequently is not OK.
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  • nixpulvis 4y ago
    If you're pulling over into the left lane, you're a moron and going to cause accident.
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  • threeseed 4y ago
    Because you get ample notification for when your car is about to fail. So you can switch on your hazard lights, gradually slow, let cars past and then pull over. No normal, competent driver would act like this incident.
  • jfoutz 4y ago
    hazard lights, or turn signal seem missing. You'd generally want to move over to the shoulder. Emergencies definitely do happen but parking, in the fast lane, in the tunnel is _incredibly_ dangerous.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    If you change into the left lane when there is insufficient room to do so, while standing on the brakes ... you are not pulling over, you are causing a wreck. Hope your insurance is paid up.
• pvg 4y ago
  Discussed yesterday, 190 and 60ish comments per: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34327763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34327763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34333883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34333883
• calvinmorrison 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • code_runner 4y ago
    Yeah because other car companies aren’t selling “full self driving”
  • BoorishBears 4y ago
    If it wasn't a Tesla the driver would probably be sitting in jail right now for intentionally causing a wreck. But because Tesla's pretend attempt at self-driving engaged in the reckless driving, the driver is protected despite clearly not reacting in anything even slightly resembling a timely manner. Disclaimer: I work in the AV space... but no one in the space should consider Tesla a competitor.
    • calvinmorrison 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • BoorishBears 4y ago
        Wouldn't it be easier to stay quiet since you don't have a meaningful rebuttal?
    • MBCook 4y ago
      The best defense of Tesla I’ve seen for this accident was “maybe it wasn’t FSD, it was a cause-a-rear-end insurance scam gone wrong”. That’s a REALLY bad look if that’s the other plausible explanation.
  • projektfu 4y ago
    https://www.autoevolution.com/news/mercedes-benz-s-pre-safe-plus-emergency-braking-causes-cycling-pileup-123760.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/mercedes-benz-s-pre-safe-...
  • random314 4y ago
• sneak 4y ago
  Seems to me that the cars behind the Tesla are the omas at fault?
  • MBCook 4y ago
    Note that the Tesla changed lanes, into the passing lane no less, and then immediately slowed down significantly. So the first car to hit it may have had a very safe distance between it in the next car, but the Tesla cut that significantly with its sudden maneuver.
    • barbazoo 4y ago
      It's a popular opinion but I think it's wrong. If they weren't all so close together some of that could habe been avoided. The Tesla indicated for a very long time telling other what it's gonna do.
      • projektfu 4y ago
        The Tesla cut into the lane with 3 car-lengths or less behind it and rapidly decelerated. The two cars behind are going to collide because the first one, who was safely positioned before the Tesla changed lanes, didn't have time to react and the second car was probably not able to either, because the brake lights in front didn't come on until too late. Then, there was a couple cars that were probably tailgating, and finally the whole thing is a snafu. I can't tell if the people making these comments about the drivers behind the Tesla being responsible are such defensive drivers that they never leave less than 6 seconds in front of them, or they're tailgaters themselves, or just being mendacious.
        • m_mueller 4y ago
          It’s also just not realistic. If everyone was that defensive (5+ seconds distance) on such a busy road it would severely lower its capacity, leading to constant traffic jams. Leaving that gap will just mean others taking it.
• Sophistifunk 4y ago
  This is a bug in the meat, and is not going away. The problems are well understood, thanks to decades of examples in semi-automated trains, boats, airplanes, and industrial monitoring systems. Until "self driving" is good enough that you're legally allowed to ride it drunk, it should not be allowed to do anything more complicated than radar cruise and lane-keeping.
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  • threeseed 4y ago
    This is a bug in Tesla's specific meat. Other self driving implementations e.g. Cruise, Waymo have LiDAR which is an additional and in my opinion necessary sensor for detecting objects. Because in this case it sure looks like a phantom breaking issue.
    • borissk 4y ago
      Yeah, it looks like one of those cases where Elon is being stupid - self-driving cars with LiDAR are a lot safer. Anyone know how much a LiDAR system cost nowadays?
      • m_mueller 4y ago
        Heck, my $400 vacuum robot has lidar and its advantage when navigating are immediately obvious to anyone paying attention. Rather than cost it feels more like laziness - sensor fusion is hard, so let’s just delete the problem.
    • darknavi 4y ago
      Is it really a Tesla specific issue? Tesla's definitely phantom brake quite a bit, but it seems like many automated cruise control implementations do this today. https://www.motorsafety.org/us-government-investigates-1-7-million-honda-cars-over-phantom-braking/ https://www.motorsafety.org/us-government-investigates-1-7-m... https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/phantom-braking-experienced-in-the-mache-for-the-first-time-7-months-in.9376/ https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/phantom-braking-expe... https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/ok-lets-talk-phantom-braking.47782/ https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/ok-lets-talk-phantom-braki...
• kiratp 4y ago
  This looks like the vehicle tried and failed to get the driver to engage and pulled over best it could. There is no shoulder there so… Let’s wait to get more info as to what the driver was doing and if they were incapacitated. The FSD beta is pretty aggressive on making sure the driver is paying attention via both steering sensors, the in-cabin camera and the touch screen.
  • threeseed 4y ago
    > pulled over best it could If that is its best then FSD has no business being on the road. It was erratic and didn't give clear intent to other cars what it was trying to do.
    • ASalazarMX 4y ago
      IMO the car signaled, changed lane and stopped without slamming the brakes. It didn't collide with anything, the pileup was formed by human drivers driving too close and too fast for their reaction time. If it had been a human driver that saw a kitten or a rock in the road, it would probably slam the brakes. I'm not defending Tesla's FSD, which I think is inferior for Tesla's reluctance to use LIDAR in addition to cameras. Current car AIs are imperfect, they need as much info as they can if we expect them to drive safer than humans.
      • threeseed 4y ago
        > IMO the car signaled, changed lane and stopped without slamming the brakes Which is erratic and reckless. If it was an emergency situation it should have put on hazard lights, waited until all surrounding cars passed, then changed lanes and very slowly decelerated until it stopped. All while aggressively alerting the driver what is happening.
      • nkrisc 4y ago
        If it caused a crash it stopped too quickly. Unless there was an immediate, life-threatening need to stop it should simply not have stopped and continued until it was safe to stop. Any halfway competent driver could plainly see there is no safe place to stop there and you should never stop there unless your car is literally on fire or the road bed is missing.
• epivosism 4y ago
  The question that is never answered in this kind of story is: 1. How many fatalities per mile does tesla FSD have, compared to its best alternative if we ban it? 2. Focusing on specific failure cases is not relevant since the political decision to allow it is all or nothing. 3. It'd be perfectly logical to accept road testing FSD, even if it's significantly worse in some areas, as long as this is not exploitable, AND the net gain from allowing it is still overall positive. I'd like to hear reasonable disagreements like "Tesla isn't actually all-in net positive" or "Here's why we should judge policy by something more than just net lives lost/saved". Edit: the discussion fragments into two versions depending on the state of facts, which isn't clear: A) Tesla FSD is not actually safer per-mile. If this is the case, I and most people would probably agree not to allow FSD on public roads. That's not really what this is about. B) Tesla FSD is actually, on net safer per mile, but we should not allow it anyway. I'm welcome to hear other options, too, but while replying I'd like to hear which one you think.
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  • remarkEon 4y ago
    Other people have said it before, but the issue is that the Tesla crashes we are seeing are ones that a human would trivially avoid. Most people, especially non technical people, aren’t going to care about numbers that say it’s safer or better on net when the car still occasionally does things that humans view as crazy or stupid.
    • epivosism 4y ago
      I'm interested in understanding why you would want every subdivision of "type of crash" to strictly improve, rather than being content that the combined crash rate goes down? i.e. if Tesla causes 100 new crashes of type A but saves 200 of type B, isn't that a gain? Even if type A crashes are one which humans don't normally make. A way in which I agree with you is if type B crashes are more avoidable by conscientious drivers, and you feel that your personal base rate of B is therefore already low, and that introducing new type A risk is actually NOT an all-in improvement for you.
• Animats 4y ago
  Is there enough info yet to know if the lane change was initiated automatically? That's apparently possible. Tesla support site: Auto Lane Change To initiate an automated lane change, you must first enable Auto Lane Changes through the Autopilot Controls menu within the Settings tab. Then when the car is in Autosteer, a driver must engage the turn signal in the direction that they would like to move. In some markets depending on local regulations, lane change confirmation can be turned off by accessing Controls > Autopilot > Customize Navigate on Autopilot and toggle ‘Lane Change Confirmation’ off.
  • gundmc 4y ago
    I believe the car was in "Full Self Driving" and not "Autopilot"?
    • gfodor 4y ago
      It’s unclear because FSD is supposed to switch to autopilot on highways. The driver said it was in FSD mode but they may just not realize that switchover occurs.
      • nanidin 4y ago
        In any case, navigate on autopilot can change lanes on the highway without user intervention so it seems like an insignificant detail.
        • gfodor 4y ago
          Not sure what you mean. If autopilot has a bug then there is a good chance a lot of other cars do too, since (afaik) autopilot is not at its core Tesla proprietary tech like FSD.
          • MBCook 4y ago
            I think it is proprietary. Other cars have similar features, but I don’t think they run the same system.
• jmac01 4y ago
  Tesla: we have an experimental self driving system that we need to test. Person: lol how are you gonna pay people enough to test something that might endanger them? Tesla: no they will pay us for the privilege
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• malkia 4y ago
  Seems like the driver is litigation lawyer (from the full police report, link in the article), with some notable portfolio (IANAL, so don't know but what it looks like). Wonder what's gonna happen...
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• somethoughts 4y ago
  I think what's interesting here is it's likely the first instance where Tesla FSD has been involved in an accident which affected other drivers. [Edit] From the video the Tesla is making a lane change and stopping simultaneously which means there could be a case of the Tesla FSD/driver doing a unsafe lane change.[1] Most of the time FSD just wrecks the Tesla itself or injures the driver of the Tesla (i.e. running into trees/dividers, running into much heavier freight trucks). It will be interesting if Tesla comes in to provide monetary support for proving the legal case that Tesla FSD is not at fault or the Tesla driver (and his insurance) will be left to fend for themselves. In the short term I could see Tesla not supporting the driver and absolving themselves via fine line/TOS, etc. But the long term effects of not legally supporting any driver with Tesla FSD accidents will be that new customers won't trust this $10000 upsell product offering that's highly profitable for Tesla. I could also see 3rd party (non-Tesla) insurance companies refusing to sell coverage to Tesla FSD drivers. It could also make Tesla 1st party insurance also untrustworthy to customers and could become a huge liability for Tesla. It seems like it will be a great litmus test to see if Tesla has the guts to step up for its own product. [1] First video shows a potential unsafe lane change https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-autopilot/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-auto...
  • Alex3917 4y ago
    > I think what's interesting here is it's likely the first instance where Tesla FSD has been involved in an accident which affected other drivers. In a pileup like this it's basically never the fault of the front car, unless maybe if they are purposely causing the accident for insurance fraud or something. Maybe the driver will get cited for failing to maintain the minimum speed, but legally this isn't much different than if someone backed into the Tesla while it was parked in a parking garage.
    • somethoughts 4y ago
      From what I can tell from the video - there seems to be a grey area because the Tesla FSD is changing lanes and stopping simultaneously. If that's the case, its not a tailgating issue but an unsafe lane change - for which the Tesla FSD (or Tesla driver) could be at least partially at fault. The grey area will require some defense and it will be interesting to see if the Tesla driver is left high and dry by Tesla.
• jayd16 4y ago
  This is an honest question here but why is the pile up so bad if driving conditions were ideal? The next 6 drivers were not keeping a safe distance or paying attention?
  • MBCook 4y ago
    Have you watched the video? Its freeway speeds, a decently busy freeway, at a tunnel entrance that’s curving. Plus the car switched to the passing lane and abruptly stopped. This wasn’t going straight on a highway stopping in the same lane the driver was already in. I can understand how the conditions probably made it worse.
    • Winsaucerer 4y ago
      > Have you watched the video? Its freeway speeds, a decently busy freeway, at a tunnel entrench that’s curving. Plus the car switched to the passing lane and abruptly stopped. The Tesla car switching and abruptly stopping was a big problem, and I can understand that first car having trouble, but for cars behind the first one they should ideally all be keeping a distance ready for suddenly hitting the brakes in an emergency. I find at least in Australia a decent number of drivers do not keep an adequate distance from the car in front for emergency braking.
      • macintux 4y ago
        Even the recommended 2 second following distance is insufficient when the vehicle in front of you comes to an immediate halt and there’s no room to switch lanes.
        • Mawr 4y ago
          The recommended following distance is "Never get closer than the overall stopping distance." [1], so even if the car in front somehow went from 70mph to 0 instantly, you should be able to stop. [1]: https://assets.highwaysengland.co.uk/stay+safe+stay+back/HE_tailgating_leaflet_v2.4__single+page_2020.pdf https://assets.highwaysengland.co.uk/stay+safe+stay+back/HE_...
• pengaru 4y ago
  You know what else is "semi-automated driving"? A six year old behind the wheel sitting in your lap. That's also known plainly as "illegal". I have no fucking idea why this is being tolerated on our public roads, nor why SAE has even classified these child-equivalent levels of autonomy as if they're acceptable.
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• leaving 4y ago
  This mirrors my experience of driving in America. People do not adjust their speed or following distance to the conditions. They drive like they have some sort of right to a road free of obstructions and to drive at the speed limit or above, no matter the circumstances. It's as if they expect the speed limit sign to adapt to the circumstances. They have the attitude, "Well if I need to slow down, why does the sign say I can go 70mph?" It could be freezing rain with black ice or a fog with zero visibilty, and the overwhelming majority of American drivers would not change their driving one bit. I have seen this in every corner of the country and it is noticeably different from other countries. There will always be unexpected obstructions in the roadbed of major highways. Stuff falls off. People lose control and roll and end up obstructing the lanes. So while the Tesla and its self-driving mode were the proximate cause of the obstruction that led to the collision in this particular instance, they were absolutely unrelated to the actual cause of this entire category of accidents. This attitude affects many other aspects of American life. Notably, gun violence. Exactly the same feeling of entitlement to go full speed ahead and damn the consequences dictates the occasional outcome of both highway driving and eating your lunch quietly in the school cafeteria. There is little difference between an American in a pickup truck barreling down out of the Alleghenies at 80mph in fog and freezing rain and and American with a not-meaningfully-regulated gun barreling into a classroom and opening fire. Both are the direct result of a sense of entitlement, and both regularly lead to mayhem and death. You can't blame the Tesla for this.
  • happytoexplain 4y ago
    >You can't blame the Tesla for this. It's so frustrating how mind-bogglingly polar everything has to be. Nothing in your entire post precludes the Tesla from being partially at fault. No matter how long you go on about how reckless American drivers are (and they are), none of it serves as one iota of evidence as to whether or not the Tesla behaved reasonably or whether its features were advertised properly. Why is absolutely everything either an admit-nothing attack on our "enemies" or an allow-nothing defense of our "allies"?
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• roguecoder 4y ago
  Video understanding engineer here. Tunnels and underpasses are the worst. They are a pain in the ass, because shadows mess with all the edge detection and motion models and anything else visual. Humans compensate by thinking "I'm in a tunnel: things are weird." But without a reasoning model that can take context into account, the computer is stuck. In the video from behind, you can see the shadow ahead of the car on the floor of the tunnel that it carefully stops just before it would hit. A person would notice that EVERY OTHER car had driven straight through the thing it thought was an obstacle, but that is also context this car isn't going to take into account.
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  • sokoloff 4y ago
    Interesting observation. I worked on autonomous vehicles (in vision) at Daimler in 1991. During one of our test sessions, on drying pavement, the vehicle abruptly slammed on the brakes and refused to proceed past a point where the vision system could see a symmetric about a centerline set of horizontal edges on the pavement. It tightly fit our (hand-coded, being 1991) model for a car ahead. We had to revert to manual control and drive back to our staging area and wait for the track (set of runways and taxiways at a disused airbase) to finish drying. Obviously, the state of the art has significantly improved since then, but some fundamental risk of misinterpretations could easily remain.
  • somedude895 4y ago
    There are so many tunnels in Switzerland, that using AP is a huge pain. But at least it keeps me attentive and ready to take over at all times.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    Is this sort of problem an argument for lidar or similar? I'm assuming you're describing a camera only system.
• pensatoio 4y ago
  If autopilot starts braking even slightly and it shouldn't, I immediately take control. For this to happen, the driver clearly was not prepared to take control in any way. It's like driving on cruise control with your legs crossed. The automated cruise control and lane-keep on my previous car, an Audi, would occasionally do crazy things too. The hyper-focus on this being Tesla's fault continues to baffle.
  • whatever1 4y ago
    Well it’s the only company that charges 20k for “full self driving capability”
    • pensatoio 4y ago
      Since it's a highway, the car would have been operating on autopilot, not FSD. The two stacks had not, and I think still have not been merged.
      • darknavi 4y ago
        In fact all Tesla's sold today come with basic lane keeping (but not auto change lane).
  • wyldfire 4y ago
    > autopilot starts braking even slightly and it shouldn't, I immediately take control I think this is the thing that makes the most sense. But if I were to bend over backwards giving the benefit of the doubt - is it possible the driver feared resuming the previous speed because they were worried the car saw an obstacle that they couldn't? Like the article suggests - if you're not fully engaged, it's as if you're driving impaired. And there's so much automated that it's difficult to be so vigilant. Once the car starts braking, how much latency can I afford just assessing what caused it to slow down? How hard is it braking and how closely is traffic following me?
    • pensatoio 4y ago
• bdcravens 4y ago
  Perhaps "Semi-Automated Driving" is a more accurate term than "Full Self Driving", but I'm guessing FSD is a better acronym to use than SAD.
  • superfrank 4y ago
    It's also probably a lot easier to convince people to drop 15k on "Full Self Driving" as opposed to "Semi-Automated Driving"
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• lucaslee 4y ago
  Doesn't look like phantom break, which is usually very sudden and no lane change. Most likely the driver was hands off the wheel and was warned multiple times before the car pulled itself over.
  • watwut 4y ago
    The car pulling itself over too close to following vehicle and then stopping would still be car caused crash in this situation.
  • 7e 4y ago
    The police report claims “Full Self Driving Mode Beta Version.”
    • blamazon 4y ago
      The Bay Bridge is a freeway and so FSD Beta stack should not be active - instead Autopilot stack, which does the hands off warning then slow down thing, but I think it puts hazards on too which isn't seen.
    • lucaslee 4y ago
      Not sure if police got this right. Currently only Autopilot is available on highway. FSD is for local road.
  • jcarrano 4y ago
    Why would it pull itself to the leftmost lane?
• throwaway892238 4y ago
  I'm still waiting for autonomous-only lanes. For extremely long and boring highways (usually full of trucks), this just seems like the logical conclusion of all self-driving tech to me. Dedicate one lane to self-driving, have the vehicles all on autonomous mode, and have them keep enough distance so their braking performance prevents them from crashing in an unexpected stop. You should be able to literally just sleep until your exit comes up in 250 miles. For any unexpected problems, have the vehicle turn off onto the shoulder of the highway and stop.
  • axelfontaine 4y ago
    We have this technology today. It's called trains.
    • Gustomaximus 4y ago
      It doesn't as trains don't have the convenience of your own car where the stops are. If you had a train you could drive your car onto it would be more equivalent. Also train lines have far less coverage than highways.
      • robflynn 4y ago
        Not to mention, with a car you get to decide your own schedule. If I want to take the train where I am, I have to be there at 4:30am or... well, that's it. That's the only time.
        • doctorwho42 4y ago
          Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Train good, car bad.
          • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
            > Poor argument for underfunded and purposefully stymied train development in the early to mid 20th century. If I had a working time machine, plus a magic want to make people do what I want, that might be a good argument. I don't have either, though. The world (or at least country) we live in didn't do that, and the mid-20th century was quite a while ago. Now what? Even if funding for rail magically cranked up today, we won't have ride-able lines for a decade, at best. Meanwhile, I've got places to go tomorrow, and rail isn't a realistic option. > Just look to Europe for what a large swath of the US could have if it invested in train infrastructure. Out in my part of the country, we don't have anything like Europe's population density. Your "could have had" would be very uneconomical out here. > Train good, car bad. Spare us the thought-terminating cliches, especially when they're wrong. Your post isn't convincing, but this parting shot doesn't make it any better. It just makes you sound like you're a propagandist.
• osigurdson 4y ago
  I think the insistence on having data for every possible situation for training purposes is indicative of the problem. Humans only require a small amount of training and can extrapolate this to many situations.
  • ajross 4y ago
    This is really very wrong. Human beings create exactly this kind of accident every day. There is absolutely nothing remotely"non-human" about cutting someone off and stopping in traffic.[1] Just go check /r/idiotsincars for an hour to see much, much worse. [1] In fact, this is so unlike FSD's behavior that I still think it's more likely that it will turn out not to have been in use at all. The only evidence at hand is one sentence in a police report that the police themselves state was unvalidated. How easy would it be to blame the car as an excuse?
    • osigurdson 4y ago
      The bar for FSD should not be /r/idiotsincars. What doesn't add up to me however, is the need to have training data for every possible situation that a vehicle could encounter (FSD should reason based on more fundamental axioms). Also, the "cameras only" argument makes sense only to a point. Yes, we drive largely by 400-800 THz photons. However, the eye has incredibly good anti-occluding abilities where a stationary camera can be occluded by a spec of dust. In any case, I am not taking an anti-self-driving stance by any means - we'll get there eventually. Tesla is leading the way and taking all of the negative press.
    • 93po 4y ago
      People lie about having FSD enabled all the time. And the internet loves shitting on Tesla so they'll treat unverified claims as fact and then perpetuate it forever as long as it fits their narrative.
      • osigurdson 4y ago
        I don’t disagree. I think what is happening is we all thought FSD would be available by now. Since it is not, we are now collectively dismissing it. The world will be much better with FSD however so let’s give it a chance.
• aseerdbnarng 4y ago
  I’m always curious how different insurers cover the use of hands-free driving. Would anyone still buy the FSD feature if people thought insurers would reject accidental damage claims? It feels like its sitting on sketchy ground
• sieabahlpark 4y ago
  [dead]
• bambax 4y ago
  > You can’t program your way out of the problem with Level 2; in fact, the better the Level 2 system seems to be, the worse the problem gets. That problem is that human beings are simply no good at monitoring systems that do most of the work of a task and remaining ready to take over that task with minimal to no warning. This is incredibly true and obvious. It's likely people monitoring their car aren't doing anything at all: sleeping, reading a book, whatever. But if anything, actual monitoring is harder than doing: it means actively watching what the machine does, understanding it, thinking about what one would have done, doing a diff and analyzing it, all in real time, all the time. It's exhausting. That a situation like this is even legal is amazing.
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• DesiLurker 4y ago
  Just ignore the name Tesla and think for a minute how would you feel if this were any Japanese or Korean automaker's car. would NHTSA be still as forgiving? we should feel exactly the same as in that case.
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• dusted 4y ago
  Now, as much as I wanna take the piss on Tesla, I'm more interested in this American tradition of simply ramming into anything in front of you that's not moving at your current speed or faster.. Like, how do people reason about this? It seems uniquely American to me.. These videos of people simply driving into stuff that's in plain sight right in their lane? What do they do if there's a fallen tree, tire, shopping cart? Simply pile into it instead of braking? I'm wondering because, in my country, when you drive a car, you're supposed to pay attention to the road, and always be ready to break if something gets in your way ? But in USA, the thinking seems to be "I'm not driving too fast, I have the freedom of way here" ? As for the article, all points are entirely valid! Systems need to either be fully autonomous, or require some level of constant engagement.. This is kind of analogous to the previous stuff written about the deskilling of labor and automation.. It's an impossible position to put someone in "this works in every easy case, almost never fails, and when it fail, it might get arbitrarily complex and require the exact skills that the operator has very rarely any opportunity to practice"
  • scoofy 4y ago
    Nearly everyone else in America (and probably Italy) is going to think this sentiment is insane, but you're right on here. The way this comes about has to do with the suburban model. When you're in an environment where traffic is commonplace, you can drive defensively or aggressively. During traffic crunches, defensive drivers are completely walked all over by aggressive drivers, and will easily double their time sitting in traffic. Leaving a safe distance means leaving room for people to dangerously merge. This leads to a nash equilibrium of aggressive driving, and now you literally have Americans criticizing the idea of "brake-checking" tailgater as a way of signaling their displeasure at being tailgated (literally just tapping the brakes to slow down). It's a completely messed up system, and it terrifies me that it seems to be spreading to other countries.
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  • lgeorget 4y ago
    Your take very exaggerated to say the least. Note that the Tesla was not part of the pile-up, the car behind it braked in time. But it takes only one driver to be a little too close to the car in front of them or to react a little too slowly and this is what happens, everywhere in the world.
• choeger 4y ago
  Everyone claiming that the autopilot is at fault for stopping suddenly get something very important very wrong: Stopping a car must be possible at all times. Any automation in a car should always be able to stop the car as the safe default. The same holds for human drivers, of course: Consider the possibility that the vehicle in front of the Tesla just lost some of its load. Of course the Tesla then has to stop suddenly. Considering this behaviour a safety problem is a lazy excuse. At worst, it is a nuisance. As for the safety distance: This is a valid point. If the Tesla has not kept a safe distance to the following car when changing lanes, there is a problem with the automation. It should always be as defensive as possible. I don't see that from the police report, but the video shows the distance to be rather short, maybe two car lengths. Call it 10m. The second car doesn't really seem to brake very hard (no emergency braking assistant?) and that crash is definitely on the Tesla as it cut the distance, unless the speed limit in that tunnel would be around 20kph or so. But now it gets interesting: The third car does stop successfully. The big pileup happens afterwards. In conclusion: The big pileup happens because the third car suddenly stops - and rightfully so but the following cars don't keep their distance to that third car. The Tesla getting rear ended is just a lazy excuse for these drivers that simply drive recklessly.
  • watwut 4y ago
    Tesla changed lanes quite close to to the first care in pile up and then abruptly stopped. When you are changing the lanes, you are supposed to do it in a way that gives the other driver space. Abolutely nothing was in front of Tesla, nothing could have loose the load.
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  • userbinator 4y ago
    The same holds for human drivers, of course: Consider the possibility that the vehicle in front of the Tesla just lost some of its load. The difference is that the humans in the cars behind will be able to see that too and anticipate the reason for the braking. In this case, the Tesla just changes into the leftmost lane and then brakes very quickly to a stop for no apparent reason. A human doing the same thing would almost certainly be at fault too. You can see on the video that it's not just suddenly stopping, it's changing lanes (with what appears to be very little room from the car behind) and then suddenly stoppping.
• mschuster91 4y ago
  There is one additional part in play: the drivers following the Tesla clearly didn't keep their distance. Normally, at least here in Germany, drivers are supposed to keep enough distance from those driving in front of them that, even in the situation that something like a brake defect forcing the car in front to a complete stop or a truck blowing a tire, they do not crash into it.
  • witheld 4y ago
    They weren’t following the tesla, it moved into their lane.
    • abigail95 4y ago
      There are 6 other cars that crashed, each into the one infront of it, it looks like nobody was paying attention. If the Tesla was at the back or the middle I think it's highly likely it would have outperformed the other drivers and stopped faster or kept a safe distance. A series of problems lead to this accident, FSD Beta gets 5% of the blame here for stopping on the highway, which isn't an exclusive feature to Tesla - cars stop on roads all the time. What this demonstrates is 7/8 or 8/8 drivers here were driving unsafely.
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• cm2187 4y ago
  From what I can tell, the car behind the tesla didn't crash into the tesla but stopped before. And so did the car behind that one. It is the cars after that that crashed into each others. While automatic cars doing random things is certainly problematic, clearly the cause of the crash here isn't the tesla, it is other cars not respecting minimum safety distances and not able to stop when there is a traffic jam ahead.
  • amelius 4y ago
    This is a case of phantom braking, which is illegal. People often forget about the most important traffic rule: it is not allowed to cause an unsafe situation.
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    • randyrand 4y ago
      Illegal? Intentional bad driving is illegal, yes. But you would need to prove that incorrect automatic breaking is intentional, which has not been proven in any court I know of.
    • cm2187 4y ago
      If you crash into the car in front of you in your lane, the responsibility is yours both morally and legally. The only car which has a valid excuse is the car immediately following the tesla since the tesla inserted itself into its lane then immediately stopped, not allowing it to build a safety distance.
      • foepys 4y ago
        This is not the case in Germany. Unnecessary emergency breaking will have you be at least 50% at fault. You are putting other people into an emergency situation which is endangering everyone around you.
        • 4y ago
• dvh 4y ago
  There is no video!
  • lifeinthevoid 4y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-autopilot/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-auto... This is the video link from the article.
• nextstep 4y ago
  This story also highlights just how little Elon Musk actually supports free speech. Since fighting for release of this video and publishing the story, Ken Klippenstein has been censored on Twitter through shadow bans and inability to find his profile through search. https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1613295292283236358 https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1613295292283236358
  • 93po 4y ago
    Ken was deprioritized from search weeks ago. Also he wasn't shadow banned - just deprioritized (you have to type his full name to see his result). Can we please stop with the unfounded hyperbole?
    • nextstep 4y ago
      Why was Klippenstein deprioritized? Elon Musk is disingenuous in his support for “free speech” if Twitter is limiting the reach of a prominent Musk critic.
      • 93po 4y ago
        I don't work at Twitter - only someone who does would know the reason why. Being a Musk critic shouldn't give you a free pass to never be rate or search or visibility limited like anyone else when your account gets flagged for suspect behavior. His own colleague claimed it was likely due to bot-like behavior. Any speculation that it's Musk related is completely unfounded unless there's literally any evidence other than circumstantial speculation.
• beeforpork 4y ago
  A good analysis. The stated vigilance problem is well known, actually, but it is ignored, supposedly in the hope that humankind is on a progressive path to fully autonomous self-driving, and that we need this phase of experimentation to advance technology. Completely autonomous self-driving cars (without any steering wheel, so even incapacitated or clueless people may 'drive' (like drunk or in labour or children)) indeed seem like a good solution. (Except we need less individual traffic for env reasons.) Unfortunately, the problem is very hard, technologically, and the current interim solutions will stay for a while.
  • threatofrain 4y ago
    Vigilance would be hard in this scenario because the Tesla changed lanes and then suddenly braked. My vigilance would be focused on whether I'm about to hit something or make an inappropriate merge, but I wouldn't have expected a sudden brake.
• 0xAFFFF 4y ago
  > You can’t program your way out of the problem with Level 2; in fact, the better the Level 2 system seems to be, the worse the problem gets. That problem is that human beings are simply no good at monitoring systems that do most of the work of a task and remaining ready to take over that task with minimal to no warning. Well, you could have extremely visible/audible signals for the driver to take over when the driving system is failing (internal lighting becoming red and blaring alarms), but that wouldn't be very popular I guess, especially with half-assed self-driving systems.
  • pigtailgirl 4y ago
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1609313412131037193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1609313412131037193?ref_... -- diff feature - still - eeek --
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• maury91 4y ago
  I'm trying to reason "why the Tesla did stop?", in the second video on TheIntercept website, I can notice a left exit before the point where the Tesla stopped. Something I noticed with Google maps ( I don't have a Tesla, and maybe the navigation system of the Tesla is similar ), is that sometimes thinks tunnels can access the road above them ( in a tunnel near my home Google maps always tells me "turn right" in the middle of the tunnel without understanding that I need to get out of the tunnel first and take the ramp ). With this information I think the navigation system of the Tesla could have been similarly stupid and tried to turn left on a ghost road just to discover there's no road and so decided to stop. This is just a possible reason, and I'm definitely not suggesting that this is what did happen. This is Google maps saying "go right" in the middle of a tunnel: https://goo.gl/maps/G89cyQT2APUQuu6g6 https://goo.gl/maps/G89cyQT2APUQuu6g6 ( the two roundabouts are connected by a tunnel ) PS: If you use street view you will see how it was 3 years ago, before the construction of the tunnel
  • Geee 4y ago
    Yeah, seems plausible. Tesla should implement a confidence-based system: if it detects an area with high chance of errors (e.g. tunnels), it should put the driver on high alert or disable the system. They probably already have a heatmap of driver interventions, which could be a starting point. The data might be usable for training a generalized confidence map.
    • w0m 4y ago
      > it should put the driver on high alert or disable the system. The precedent is there, prior EAP did this. One interstate I frequent; it would do the interstate merge on ramp/junction fine going north; but heading south (with a 270 degree right turn) it would beep loudly and force a driver takeover.
  • jackmott 4y ago
    I have a Tesla, when using just cruise control it has slammed the brakes: because of shadows that confused it because of concern about cars crossing the intersection ahead where there is only the need to gently slow because of a car crossing an intersection ahead that has already crossed! because of a steep bridge that confused it we can’t use cruise control in the car basically, we decided it is too dangerous at worst and jarring at least because there is so much hype around Tesla people get the impression their software is “hardcore” but a lot of it is absolute garbage.
• twizod 4y ago
  Can someone please explain to me why the system cannot tell you why it stopped? What prevents the program from explaining why it performs certain actions?
  • aliswe 4y ago
    Very common in machine learning.
  • redox99 4y ago
    I'm sure Tesla has logs. Also in the visualization when it's slowing for something it shows such object in blue or red.
• trabant00 4y ago
  > if the Level 2 paradigm was flipped, where the driver was always in control, but the semi-automated driving system was doing the monitoring, and was ready to take over [...] but would be less sexy in that the act of driving wouldn’t feel any different I think this is the the most important point of the article and largely ignored here in the comments who seem to focus mostly on who was to blame for this specific accident. We know the strengths and weaknesses of both humans and tech at this point in time. Humans are overall better decision makers but aren't 100% focused 100% of the time. Tech gets confused a lot but is never tired or inattentive. So if your goal is safety you let the humans drive but take over in emergency situations when the human is not reacting. Which is what most car manufacturers do right now. Letting the tech drive and expecting the human to provide perfect reaction time every time the tech fails is playing on the weaknesses of both. This is focusing on cool marketing at the expense of safety.
  • yoden 4y ago
    > doing the monitoring, and was ready to take over This isn't even uncommon. Almost every Honda sold for a while has been a L2 system that will take over in certain ways if the car believes a crash is imminent, such as a car suddenly breaking. > but would be less sexy It's so less sexy people don't know that millions of vehicles are sold this way...
  • 93po 4y ago
    If there are fewer accidents per X miles with FSD, then I don't see how you can claim anything is at the expense of safety.
• elcomet 4y ago
  Articles like this are really annoying, it's just based on some feelings and don't really prove anything. I'm not saying this accident is terrible and shouldn't be investigated of course. And of course Tesla should do better and fix those issues. > then I’ll see a crash like this, [...] and I realize that, no, people still don’t get it. That's just an example. You can't make conclusions based on a single example, you need lots of data. Your feelings that this is less safe than regular drivings are not enough to justify your conclusions that L2 is less safe than regular driving. I have the feelings of the opposite (I think it reduces the number of accidents), but I don't know wether this is true. Accidents that were avoided by L2 don't make it in the news, there's a huge selection bias here. I think this kind of article might be very dangerous, because it makes people more afraid, and if L2 is actually safer on average, then reducing its usage will just increase the number of accidents.
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• MadQ 4y ago
  Obviously, the Tesla FSD Autopilot made a big mistake, but didn't the driver react? If my car slows from 40 to 0 MPH in 5 Seconds, and there is no obstacle in front of me, I must assuredly would step on the accelerator. Not that FSD Autopilot is what it's marketed as, but this is the responsibility of the driver and not the car.
• sebastianconcpt 4y ago
  This blind trust in technologies is very very wrong. We are part of the system and things should always be designed to keep us as powerful fallbacks/system-degradation resource.
  • JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    I'd agree, yet I proceed from green lights with little regard; I drink the water from the tap; I use Paypal; I take aspirin from a bottle from heaven-knows-where. We've entered the age of 'blind trust in technology'. We can hardly get out of bed without it.
    • gregoriol 4y ago
      We can't verify everything ourselves, that's why there is a framework (green lights, laws, ...) and society (others do things you can't do). In Tesla's case, the failure is that they are testing a new way of doing things without properly saying it, Muskito is pushing for "it works" while it actually is only being in the early stages. This is a failure to society, like the 737 Max and should be judged accordingly.
    • sebastianconcpt 4y ago
      There is a "pass the test of time" factor involved. If natural selection approves, then you surely can be more confident and even pay less attention because time guaranteed that plenty of diverse cases didn't compromised the survivability of the system and the system needs you less to achieve its success rate as designed. Then it comes innovation. Which necessarily starts with limited cases. And we use to launch business and products as soon as we can. Hence, with the minimum acceptable cases. This is fine as long as failures cause minor reparable degradations instead of catastrophic unsurvivable cases. And still, we need systems designed with every layer having the feature of graceful degradations. That enables us to perform as Woody and Buzz Lightyear said: "Falling with style"
      • JoeAltmaier 4y ago
        Disagree. We used coal to heat for generations, even though it killed thousands. We drive in traffic but 100 people die each day on the road in the US. It's all about social acceptance, and hardly about safety at all.
• nailer 4y ago
  FTA: > the system is called Full Self-Driving Also FTA quoting Tesla (https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/repo https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/repo...): > It does not turn a Tesla into a self-driving car Is it self driving or not?
  • capableweb 4y ago
    Systems where we try to "outsource" the piloting of a vehicle seems to have a big problem with naming. "Auto Pilot" in planes does not mean that the plane pilot itself automatically, it just means you can pilot "less" than if you have 100% manual control. Seemingly Tesla is copying this, with "Self-driving" doesn't actually mean the car will drive by itself, but that the driver can drive "less" compared to before. Deceptive marketing at best, fatal at worst.
    • nailer 4y ago
      The thing that really bothers me is the 'full' part. Full self driving. There's nowhere to go, this is self driving to the maximum extent. Oh and it's not self driving.
• capableweb 4y ago
  Besides the fact that you shouldn't just flat out stop on the highway, how are 8 drivers stupid enough to be close enough to not be able to stop in time? Is there no limit on how close people drive to the car in front of them in the US? Defensive driving was one of the first thing I learned, before even getting my drivers license, how come others seem to flat out ignore things like that, even for their own safety?
  • tyingq 4y ago
    It is maddening, and puts the burden on people who do try to maintain a reasonable following distance. If you leave sufficient room, there's an endless line of cars that will pop into that space, and now you're adjusting again...in a loop.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      So what? If you happen to go faster than the cars that go into the space between you and the one in front, change one lane to the left to pass them. If there is someone in front of you even in that lane, continue at the speed they are driving, leave space in front. Someone goes into the space? Adjust again. Are you seriously avoiding to leave any sort of space in front of you just because other cars might go into that space? Seems like a dangerous game to play not just for yourself, but for others too.
      • tyingq 4y ago
        Just making an observation about the group dynamics in play. I was not trying to rationalize anything about me personally.
  • MadQ 4y ago
    This. And additionally, the tesla driver didn't seem to be aware what was going on with his car, if he is unable to react in the 5 - 6 Seconds it took his car to completely stop.
  • sixbrx 4y ago
    It's a real problem. If you leave a gap for safety (I like a 2 sec gap at least), the cars behind will take that as evidence that you don't care about keeping up with the car in front of you. Then they'll often tailgate extremely (communicating "get out of my way") for a bit, and then sometimes try to quickly maneuver around you and in the process getting dangerously close to you and/or the car in front of you.
• KETpXDDzR 4y ago
  Is it legal to print out a "stop" sign, attach it to the back of my car, and watch all the Teslas doing full stops on highways?
• zestyping 4y ago
  Tesla is primarily at fault for deceptively naming the function "Full Self Driving". It is indefensible mendacity. I do not understand why the company has not already been sued into oblivion for an obvious lie that has killed people.