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> This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. And the fa

> This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-driving feature. And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on."

BoorishBears 4y ago
Tesla is damaging the idea of self-driving cars in spite of the media, not because of it. Self driving cars were billed as the cool new thing. Then Tesla started charging people for "Full Self Driving" with a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety by using public roads for beta testing an intentionally hamstrung* L2-billed-as-L5 driving stack. It's frustrating to watch as someone working in the AV space, and it's silly to act like this one case was isolated enough that the fact it was wrong changes any of that reality. We know Tesla's stack has killed people: it became normalized once the first few times it happened they were able to get away with victim blaming. By 2021 it was already accepted, this incident was already business as usual. *humans just need eyes so self driving cars just need cameras
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The thing is, I would have thought that Tesla's stance on repairability alone would have made their brand radioactive to the average Hacker News commenter, way before the Pedo Guy accusations or Elon Musk burning a bunch of money to make Twitter worse. Tesla is everything we claim to hate about Apple.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    If Apple owned Tesla, there wouldn't be enough room in this comment to list all the reasons HN would hate it: 1. What do you mean, the OS and all its software is proprietary? Why can't I sideload my own fart app? 2. Highest margins in the industry? No we won't praise their business genius, we'll complain that they're charging a Tesla Fanboi Tax. 3. Like you said, RIGHT TO REPAIR, this is John Deere stuff, only it's a car and not a tractor. 4. Shit build quality would have us raving about butterfly keyboards 2.0. And so on, and so forth. Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." So does Elon Musk, and it's aimed squarely at a certain very obvious demographic.
    - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
      From a business perspective, a demographic bigger than the HN readership.
- ajross 4y ago
  > a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety Cite? Everyone likes to throw around the word "safety" as a qualitative thing, but the only data we have points to the system being extremely safe.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Mid 2000s LKA was passive systems in the US market: they were backups that vibrated the seat or steering wheel, or provided mild outputs. That meant they couldn't actively put the driver into danger, making them inherently safer than a system that will gladly drive onto a sidewalk Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on. You need to watch the driver to ensure they're full attentive: https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-ls-600hls-driver-monitoring-system/ https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-l... In markets with LKA, that same module was used to ensure that drivers were actively watching the road while it was activated. In other words a 2007 Lexus did a better job on the one thing that Tesla is still getting dinged on (https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-monitoring-fails-to-keep-driver-focus-on-road-a3964813328/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-moni...) Tesla blamed a man for playing Candy Crush when his Tesla drove into a barrier and killed him. Lexus had solved the problem that killed this man over a decade prior. A 2007 Lexus would have used its Driver Awareness Module to recognize the man was not paying attention and stopped lane centering. The solution was not complex, not expensive, iirc Tesla even had interior facing cameras by then but was still resisting turning them on until much more recently. Tesla put their not-marketing ahead of human life, because if they had enabled more aggressive awareness monitoring than capacitance sensing or silly steering wheel jiggles, Elon wouldn't get to tweet about how "you're just there for regulatory reasons" - Also slightly off topic, but I think my biggest internet pet peeve is when people ask for a citation on a complex problem that requires critical thinking. I can't chew and pour the conclusion for you, but you're free to research before making low effort commentary like "Cite"
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      >Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on Lexus/Toyota doesn't "learn lessons". The are simply ultra-conservative about adopting anything so when anything is a dud or the V1 version sucks they wind up looking smart.
tablespoon 4y ago
> And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident. > "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on." It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer, even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.
bena 4y ago
It wasn't "media disinformation", it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-fire/285-c28a4993-5b5f-43f4-a924-e39638390647 https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-f... And even in that article, there's an addendum a couple of months later stating that a person was seen getting in the driver's seat and that the NTSB reenactment wasn't able to engage the autosteering when trying to replicate the crash. I don't know what more you want from the press. They reported what they were told by the authorities. And then when new information came in, they reported that as well.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  What most people actually want is better attention from the public, not better reporting from the media.
- dboreham 4y ago
  > it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong Possibly it's the media's job to question when law enforcement comments seem implausible?
  - bigmattystyles 4y ago
    True, but are you questioning the NTSB as well?
  - prawn 4y ago
    What general reporter would have the experience and evidence to override an authority speaking with that confidence? They're reporting news. They report the law enforcement side and then the Tesla side. They updated (at the top of the article) twice as more information came to hand.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Smoosh 4y ago
Conspiracy theory: Autonomous driving is being undermined by traditional car companies who see that if it is successful, it would hugely change personal transportation and greatly reduce total sales of vehicles.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Alternate conspiracy theory: Tesla does not market its cars, while traditional automakers spend billions advertising dollars per year. Reporters work for organizations that rely on advertising.
  - Moto7451 4y ago
    This isn’t really a conspiracy theory. Any time you see a positive puff piece listed as being written by “staff” or similarly vague term… that’s a marketing piece that is a paid placement.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > greatly reduce total sales of vehicles. This is one of those things that always struck me as a weird, poor argument... how is autonomous driving supposed to suddenly make everyone want to stop owning their cars and use taxis instead?
  - epgui 4y ago
    When you own a car, you typically only use it a small percentage of the day (it certainly is true of the average owner). When you're offering a ride service, that one car is being utilized a much higher proportion of the day. Ignoring the driver, taxi/ride-hail/autonomous-ride services are much more efficient uses of a vehicle over time. (And this is just a side note, but obviously if you don't have to pay for a human driver, you make the cost of operating the vehicle much lower per kilometre, and then it becomes much more attractive, from a purely financial POV, for most people than owning their own vehicle.)
    - palata 4y ago

BoorishBears 4y ago

Tesla is damaging the idea of self-driving cars in spite of the media, not because of it. Self driving cars were billed as the cool new thing. Then Tesla started charging people for "Full Self Driving" with a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety by using public roads for beta testing an intentionally hamstrung* L2-billed-as-L5 driving stack. It's frustrating to watch as someone working in the AV space, and it's silly to act like this one case was isolated enough that the fact it was wrong changes any of that reality. We know Tesla's stack has killed people: it became normalized once the first few times it happened they were able to get away with victim blaming. By 2021 it was already accepted, this incident was already business as usual. *humans just need eyes so self driving cars just need cameras

kmeisthax 4y ago
The thing is, I would have thought that Tesla's stance on repairability alone would have made their brand radioactive to the average Hacker News commenter, way before the Pedo Guy accusations or Elon Musk burning a bunch of money to make Twitter worse. Tesla is everything we claim to hate about Apple.
- a4isms 4y ago
  If Apple owned Tesla, there wouldn't be enough room in this comment to list all the reasons HN would hate it: 1. What do you mean, the OS and all its software is proprietary? Why can't I sideload my own fart app? 2. Highest margins in the industry? No we won't praise their business genius, we'll complain that they're charging a Tesla Fanboi Tax. 3. Like you said, RIGHT TO REPAIR, this is John Deere stuff, only it's a car and not a tractor. 4. Shit build quality would have us raving about butterfly keyboards 2.0. And so on, and so forth. Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." So does Elon Musk, and it's aimed squarely at a certain very obvious demographic.
  - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
    From a business perspective, a demographic bigger than the HN readership.
ajross 4y ago
> a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the mid 2000s in terms of safety Cite? Everyone likes to throw around the word "safety" as a qualitative thing, but the only data we have points to the system being extremely safe.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Mid 2000s LKA was passive systems in the US market: they were backups that vibrated the seat or steering wheel, or provided mild outputs. That meant they couldn't actively put the driver into danger, making them inherently safer than a system that will gladly drive onto a sidewalk Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on. You need to watch the driver to ensure they're full attentive: https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-ls-600hls-driver-monitoring-system/ https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-lexus-l... In markets with LKA, that same module was used to ensure that drivers were actively watching the road while it was activated. In other words a 2007 Lexus did a better job on the one thing that Tesla is still getting dinged on (https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-monitoring-fails-to-keep-driver-focus-on-road-a3964813328/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-moni...) Tesla blamed a man for playing Candy Crush when his Tesla drove into a barrier and killed him. Lexus had solved the problem that killed this man over a decade prior. A 2007 Lexus would have used its Driver Awareness Module to recognize the man was not paying attention and stopped lane centering. The solution was not complex, not expensive, iirc Tesla even had interior facing cameras by then but was still resisting turning them on until much more recently. Tesla put their not-marketing ahead of human life, because if they had enabled more aggressive awareness monitoring than capacitance sensing or silly steering wheel jiggles, Elon wouldn't get to tweet about how "you're just there for regulatory reasons" - Also slightly off topic, but I think my biggest internet pet peeve is when people ask for a citation on a complex problem that requires critical thinking. I can't chew and pour the conclusion for you, but you're free to research before making low effort commentary like "Cite"
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >Now what about active systems from back then? Almost 20 years ago Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on Lexus/Toyota doesn't "learn lessons". The are simply ultra-conservative about adopting anything so when anything is a dud or the V1 version sucks they wind up looking smart.

tablespoon 4y ago

> And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts. The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident. > "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on." It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer, even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.

bena 4y ago

It wasn't "media disinformation", it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-fire/285-c28a4993-5b5f-43f4-a924-e39638390647 https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-crash-f... And even in that article, there's an addendum a couple of months later stating that a person was seen getting in the driver's seat and that the NTSB reenactment wasn't able to engage the autosteering when trying to replicate the crash. I don't know what more you want from the press. They reported what they were told by the authorities. And then when new information came in, they reported that as well.

shadowgovt 4y ago
What most people actually want is better attention from the public, not better reporting from the media.
dboreham 4y ago
> it was the local constable and his accident investigators being wrong Possibly it's the media's job to question when law enforcement comments seem implausible?
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  True, but are you questioning the NTSB as well?
- prawn 4y ago
  What general reporter would have the experience and evidence to override an authority speaking with that confidence? They're reporting news. They report the law enforcement side and then the Tesla side. They updated (at the top of the article) twice as more information came to hand.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Smoosh 4y ago

Conspiracy theory: Autonomous driving is being undermined by traditional car companies who see that if it is successful, it would hugely change personal transportation and greatly reduce total sales of vehicles.

hnburnsy 4y ago
Alternate conspiracy theory: Tesla does not market its cars, while traditional automakers spend billions advertising dollars per year. Reporters work for organizations that rely on advertising.
- Moto7451 4y ago
  This isn’t really a conspiracy theory. Any time you see a positive puff piece listed as being written by “staff” or similarly vague term… that’s a marketing piece that is a paid placement.
jcranmer 4y ago
> greatly reduce total sales of vehicles. This is one of those things that always struck me as a weird, poor argument... how is autonomous driving supposed to suddenly make everyone want to stop owning their cars and use taxis instead?
- epgui 4y ago
  When you own a car, you typically only use it a small percentage of the day (it certainly is true of the average owner). When you're offering a ride service, that one car is being utilized a much higher proportion of the day. Ignoring the driver, taxi/ride-hail/autonomous-ride services are much more efficient uses of a vehicle over time. (And this is just a side note, but obviously if you don't have to pay for a human driver, you make the cost of operating the vehicle much lower per kilometre, and then it becomes much more attractive, from a purely financial POV, for most people than owning their own vehicle.)
  - palata 4y ago