4 ms·

Testing Tesla's Autopilot recall, I don't feel much safer-and neither should you

43 points by acdha 3y ago

acdha 3y ago
The part I found most interesting is that it still activates on roads that its mapping system knows aren’t suitable, and that the smiley face sticker is enough to fool their driver attention tracking system. Mercedes seems to have a much more mature engineering culture around safety.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  I bet there is a rule at tesla (which is not in writing) to keep workarounds and loopholes like these intentionally open. There is no other reasonable explanation for them to do the shit they do.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Yeah, this is what you do when you disagree with the policy and are doing the bare minimum to say you’re in compliance.
    - Grazester 3y ago
      I feel like this is absolutely what is happening. I wish they would be fined an absurd amount to teach them a lesson. The public roads aren't your proving grounds
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Won't someone please think of the poor $TSLA shareholders?
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    Move fast and break things.
    - qarl 3y ago
      Bones, lives, etc..
- ajhurliman 3y ago
  Yeah, they’ll even let you drive if you don’t have your seatbelt on, how dare they allow the owner to have any control at all /s
  - aplummer 3y ago
    I don’t think there is a single car manufacturer that doesn’t allow you to drive without your seatbelt on. What point are you making?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mikem69 3y ago
      That we should be allowed to drive our own cars without being annoyed by these terrible systems? I’ve avoided the new Lexus vehicles as their eye tracking is horrible - just glancing down to get a drink will set off alarms. Now they’ve made my Tesla just as bad - my drive yesterday had an alert every 10 seconds or so, from “pay attention to the road” to “autopilot speed limited”. Very dangerous and distracting.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      "allowed"... I mean, all it does is beep at you, and some manufacturers offer a way to turn that off by inputting a code.
    - ajhurliman 3y ago
      Yes, that’s the point, everyone has these expectations of Tesla to make it impossible to circumvent safety features, but the same standard isn’t applied to other car manufacturers; HN just loves to bash on anything related to Elon.
      - acdha 3y ago
        > the same standard isn’t applied to other car manufacturers This belief is hard to reconcile with the Cruise threads. What you’re actually seeing is that other companies aren’t hyping their technology so far in advance of its actual capabilities. If Toyota sold “full self driving” as an expensive add-on and failed to ship it over the time most people owned the vehicle, you’d see plenty of ragging on them, too. The contrast is especially noticeable when you look at what the market leaders are doing. Waymo owns their vehicles fully and isn’t claiming they’re suitable for general use everywhere, every time. Mercedes has an L3 system far in advance of Tesla but they only offer it in certain conditions and back it with insurance. If Tesla’s product was where their marketing claims it is, they’d do the same.
- mikem69 3y ago
  My experience post-recall has been different. The system is extremely annoying now, but will leave you alone if it sees your face and knows you’re watching the road. Covering up the camera just makes it nag more frequently. It’s frankly unusable now, as it’s constantly beeping at me…almost as bad as Lexus, which will beep if you as much as glance down to get a bottle of water.
  - theflyingelvis 3y ago
    This mirrors my experience with the update. I hate it. People like the author of the article and people who misuse autopilot are why we can’t have nice things.
    - qarl 3y ago
      > People like the author of the article and people who misuse autopilot are why we can’t have nice things. Well - yes - exactly. The software protects us from people who will misuse the technology and hurt others. Cars are extremely dangerous.
      - mikem69 3y ago
        The software makes the car more dangerous. Instead of watching the road, I’m now having to look and figure out why my car is beeping at me. Apparently, I need to “pay attention to the road”, which is what I was doing before the beeping. After 6 years and hundreds of thousands of miles using autopilot without any issues, I am now considering just getting an older luxury car that doesn’t have any of this “safety” software.
        qarl 3y ago
        > The software makes the car more dangerous. Ah yes, and seatbelts make cars more dangerous too - distracting the driving and impeding their movement. Motorcycle helmets impair vision. And gun safety switches make rapid use very difficult. Right?
dventimi 3y ago
https://archive.ph/2023.12.31-162322/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/31/tesla-autopilot-recall-test/ https://archive.ph/2023.12.31-162322/https://www.washingtonp...
kbos87 3y ago
Worth pointing out this is all about the autosteer feature, not the full self-driving feature. The screenshots in the article are of a system that is designed for much more limited use. I use FSD daily and I’ve never seen it come anywhere close to missing a stop sign. This almost makes Tesla look a lot worse - the technology is able to provide what I would say is a relatively safe driving experience off highway, but it’s not available at the lower price point.
grepfru_it 3y ago
Hold on the writer was testing “Autosteer”, described autosteer as a function that keeps the car within the travel lane markings and then proceeded to fault the system for not slowing and stopping? Then he literally talked about Full Self Driving which does exactly what he described? This is a bad article. I rented a current model year Audi A4 on my last trip which had the Audi equivalent of Autosteer. I could drive for minutes at a time without touching the steering wheel. And I literally just touched the steering wheel, and that was enough for the car to continue in its way. Where is Geoffrey’s outrage there? Methinks this journalist has no idea what Autosteer is supposed to do. Maybe this highlights the larger problem of “smart cars”. Most owners have their own notion of what a feature should do which ultimately makes them oblivious to what’s actually happening.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I didn't know and I've been following Telsa closely for years. I wonder if their point that this stuff is rather opaque is reinforced by this, rather than obviated by the specifics of "it didn't stop at 2 stop signs but did stop at others on auto-steer but auto-steer should stop at none" I'm curious what you and others make of the sticker thing -- why is it well-known that specifically a smiley face sticker will disable it? Is the idea that the recognition software just outputs "FACE 100%" because enough is visible on the back?
- dventimi 3y ago
  https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/02/security-principles-addressing-underlying-causes-risk-complex-systems https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/202... One of those lessons is that systems must be designed to be operated by real humans. It's remarkably common for organizations to look at an incident and declare the root cause to be "human error." ...They don't end their inquiry with blaming individuals.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    That's discussing security. In the context of driving, blame is almost always placed on individuals.
xyst 3y ago
Should just abandon the fully automated self driving venture, especially in crowded urban areas. Waymo cars have a shit ton of sensors, cameras, audio sensors, dedicated battery, cpu, cooling systems. Yet even that system is not perfect. Requires a human behind the wheel. Let’s not forget the Cruise debacle. Tesla system is just a straight up disaster. That system is not worth the price tag. Stop investing in cars. Let’s reinvest in the urban core, rollback the terrible car infrastructure that has invaded this country, and put significant federal/state/local dollars into public infrastructure and redesign of cities. I traveled to NYC recently and using the public transportation system was amazing. No need to rent a car. Every destination was accessible by train/subway, ferry, or can rent an e-bike or walk there. The only thing terrible about NYC was… the cars. Taxis and ride share drivers frequently running lights, blocking the intersections, or blocking the streets for emergency vehicles or commercial drivers. The noise pollution was mostly from drivers honking (whoever invented ANC, thanks bro). Cars contributed heavily to the poor air quality as well. Tail pipe pollution. Noise pollution. Tire wear pollutants. Brake dust pollution. It was worse than the human contributed aspects. End the trillions of dollars (indirectly and directly) given to building suburbs.
- 8note 3y ago
  None of the waymos I've been in had a human behind the wheel. There was still a wheel, I assume as a cheaper-than-a-tow-truck for if it runs into certain issues, and waymo wants to turn the self driving off til it gets to the shop
- bradfox2 3y ago
  This is just poor anti car attitude infecting actual judgement of the technology. Waymo doesn't require a human behind the wheel. They roam all over metro Phoenix without drivers and without issues. Tesla FSD works fine with appropriate monitoring on city streets and virtually autonomously on freeway driving. Comma and open pilot aren't far behind. The US is built for cars and thinking that is going to change is a pipedream.
  - cchance 3y ago
    This... People really do love to latch onto a few select loud voices in the media with alternative motives to bash things like waymo and tesla... I've had FSD for 3 years now and its infinitely better than it was and the issues i have with it oddly aren't FSD's fault theyre the manually calculated things like navigation... navigation is 100% non AI driven and its the main issue with path finding for the FSD currently. The actual driving day to day i'm in FSD almost 90% of the time, without issues 99.5% of the time, everywhere i go doing 400-800 miles a week, and the few issues i have when in AP tend to be nav telling the car its turn is earlier than it is, or it being a bit more cautious than i want it to be but thats preference not a fault of FSD.
prismatix 3y ago
The biggest mistake here is conflating Autosteer with Full Self Driving (FSD). This isn't necessarily the author's fault as Tesla uses the word Autopilot to mean Autosteer, but any Tesla owner should know this. Either way, Autopilot and Full Self Driving are not one in the same and it's made pretty clear to the end user that autosteer is not for obeying street signs, etc. It's a simple lane-assist, cruise-control assist, and lane switcher when the turn signal is pressed (if you pay for the lesser of the upgrades). That being said, Tesla's FSD is also not very reliable and in my own personal testing has aggressively "shot the gap" and flew over speed bumps. However, it at least is made to stop at stop signs and traffic signals and does so.
- dventimi 3y ago
  >The biggest mistake here is conflating Autosteer with Full Self Driving (FSD)...Any Tesla owner should know this Personally, I'm less interested in what Tesla owners should then I am in what policymakers should force Tesla to do.
  - cchance 3y ago
    I mean what they're forcing tesla to do is annoy their drivers more, not actually change anything, mostly because tesla is actually better than most cars when it actually comes to safety.
    - dventimi 3y ago
      Just as I'm less interested in what drivers should do versus what the government should do, I'm also less interested in what the current state of affairs is versus what it could be.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      No, Tesla declares in their manual that Autopilot can only be used safely if you "keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times". Tesla is only being required to follow their own legal requirements. Other vehicle manufacturers do not state you must keep your hands on the wheel to safely operate their ADAS features, instead relying on camera-based driver monitoring systems, and are thus not required to issue any "hands-on" warning. If Tesla wants to deploy a product as advanced as other manufacturers so they can get rid of the "annoying nag" they can just release a product that can, and legally indicates, it can be safely operated hands-free. But, then they would no longer be able to blame the driver for not keeping their hands on the wheel (as it says in the manual) in the event of a death as they have repeatedly.
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
Aside: I'm so tired of the "and neither should you" and "and so should you" thinly veiled opinion piece titles.

43 points by acdha 3y ago

The part I found most interesting is that it still activates on roads that its mapping system knows aren’t suitable, and that the smiley face sticker is enough to fool their driver attention tracking system. Mercedes seems to have a much more mature engineering culture around safety.

Zetobal 3y ago
I bet there is a rule at tesla (which is not in writing) to keep workarounds and loopholes like these intentionally open. There is no other reasonable explanation for them to do the shit they do.
- acdha 3y ago
  Yeah, this is what you do when you disagree with the policy and are doing the bare minimum to say you’re in compliance.
  - Grazester 3y ago
    I feel like this is absolutely what is happening. I wish they would be fined an absurd amount to teach them a lesson. The public roads aren't your proving grounds
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Won't someone please think of the poor $TSLA shareholders?
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago
  Move fast and break things.
  - qarl 3y ago
    Bones, lives, etc..
ajhurliman 3y ago
Yeah, they’ll even let you drive if you don’t have your seatbelt on, how dare they allow the owner to have any control at all /s
- aplummer 3y ago
  I don’t think there is a single car manufacturer that doesn’t allow you to drive without your seatbelt on. What point are you making?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikem69 3y ago
    That we should be allowed to drive our own cars without being annoyed by these terrible systems? I’ve avoided the new Lexus vehicles as their eye tracking is horrible - just glancing down to get a drink will set off alarms. Now they’ve made my Tesla just as bad - my drive yesterday had an alert every 10 seconds or so, from “pay attention to the road” to “autopilot speed limited”. Very dangerous and distracting.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    "allowed"... I mean, all it does is beep at you, and some manufacturers offer a way to turn that off by inputting a code.
  - ajhurliman 3y ago
    Yes, that’s the point, everyone has these expectations of Tesla to make it impossible to circumvent safety features, but the same standard isn’t applied to other car manufacturers; HN just loves to bash on anything related to Elon.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > the same standard isn’t applied to other car manufacturers This belief is hard to reconcile with the Cruise threads. What you’re actually seeing is that other companies aren’t hyping their technology so far in advance of its actual capabilities. If Toyota sold “full self driving” as an expensive add-on and failed to ship it over the time most people owned the vehicle, you’d see plenty of ragging on them, too. The contrast is especially noticeable when you look at what the market leaders are doing. Waymo owns their vehicles fully and isn’t claiming they’re suitable for general use everywhere, every time. Mercedes has an L3 system far in advance of Tesla but they only offer it in certain conditions and back it with insurance. If Tesla’s product was where their marketing claims it is, they’d do the same.
mikem69 3y ago
My experience post-recall has been different. The system is extremely annoying now, but will leave you alone if it sees your face and knows you’re watching the road. Covering up the camera just makes it nag more frequently. It’s frankly unusable now, as it’s constantly beeping at me…almost as bad as Lexus, which will beep if you as much as glance down to get a bottle of water.
- theflyingelvis 3y ago
  This mirrors my experience with the update. I hate it. People like the author of the article and people who misuse autopilot are why we can’t have nice things.
  - qarl 3y ago
    > People like the author of the article and people who misuse autopilot are why we can’t have nice things. Well - yes - exactly. The software protects us from people who will misuse the technology and hurt others. Cars are extremely dangerous.
    - mikem69 3y ago
      The software makes the car more dangerous. Instead of watching the road, I’m now having to look and figure out why my car is beeping at me. Apparently, I need to “pay attention to the road”, which is what I was doing before the beeping. After 6 years and hundreds of thousands of miles using autopilot without any issues, I am now considering just getting an older luxury car that doesn’t have any of this “safety” software.
      - qarl 3y ago
        > The software makes the car more dangerous. Ah yes, and seatbelts make cars more dangerous too - distracting the driving and impeding their movement. Motorcycle helmets impair vision. And gun safety switches make rapid use very difficult. Right?

dventimi 3y ago

https://archive.ph/2023.12.31-162322/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/31/tesla-autopilot-recall-test/ https://archive.ph/2023.12.31-162322/https://www.washingtonp...

kbos87 3y ago

Worth pointing out this is all about the autosteer feature, not the full self-driving feature. The screenshots in the article are of a system that is designed for much more limited use. I use FSD daily and I’ve never seen it come anywhere close to missing a stop sign. This almost makes Tesla look a lot worse - the technology is able to provide what I would say is a relatively safe driving experience off highway, but it’s not available at the lower price point.

grepfru_it 3y ago

Hold on the writer was testing “Autosteer”, described autosteer as a function that keeps the car within the travel lane markings and then proceeded to fault the system for not slowing and stopping? Then he literally talked about Full Self Driving which does exactly what he described? This is a bad article. I rented a current model year Audi A4 on my last trip which had the Audi equivalent of Autosteer. I could drive for minutes at a time without touching the steering wheel. And I literally just touched the steering wheel, and that was enough for the car to continue in its way. Where is Geoffrey’s outrage there? Methinks this journalist has no idea what Autosteer is supposed to do. Maybe this highlights the larger problem of “smart cars”. Most owners have their own notion of what a feature should do which ultimately makes them oblivious to what’s actually happening.

refulgentis 3y ago
I didn't know and I've been following Telsa closely for years. I wonder if their point that this stuff is rather opaque is reinforced by this, rather than obviated by the specifics of "it didn't stop at 2 stop signs but did stop at others on auto-steer but auto-steer should stop at none" I'm curious what you and others make of the sticker thing -- why is it well-known that specifically a smiley face sticker will disable it? Is the idea that the recognition software just outputs "FACE 100%" because enough is visible on the back?
dventimi 3y ago
https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/02/security-principles-addressing-underlying-causes-risk-complex-systems https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/202... One of those lessons is that systems must be designed to be operated by real humans. It's remarkably common for organizations to look at an incident and declare the root cause to be "human error." ...They don't end their inquiry with blaming individuals.
- leereeves 3y ago
  That's discussing security. In the context of driving, blame is almost always placed on individuals.

xyst 3y ago

Should just abandon the fully automated self driving venture, especially in crowded urban areas. Waymo cars have a shit ton of sensors, cameras, audio sensors, dedicated battery, cpu, cooling systems. Yet even that system is not perfect. Requires a human behind the wheel. Let’s not forget the Cruise debacle. Tesla system is just a straight up disaster. That system is not worth the price tag. Stop investing in cars. Let’s reinvest in the urban core, rollback the terrible car infrastructure that has invaded this country, and put significant federal/state/local dollars into public infrastructure and redesign of cities. I traveled to NYC recently and using the public transportation system was amazing. No need to rent a car. Every destination was accessible by train/subway, ferry, or can rent an e-bike or walk there. The only thing terrible about NYC was… the cars. Taxis and ride share drivers frequently running lights, blocking the intersections, or blocking the streets for emergency vehicles or commercial drivers. The noise pollution was mostly from drivers honking (whoever invented ANC, thanks bro). Cars contributed heavily to the poor air quality as well. Tail pipe pollution. Noise pollution. Tire wear pollutants. Brake dust pollution. It was worse than the human contributed aspects. End the trillions of dollars (indirectly and directly) given to building suburbs.

8note 3y ago
None of the waymos I've been in had a human behind the wheel. There was still a wheel, I assume as a cheaper-than-a-tow-truck for if it runs into certain issues, and waymo wants to turn the self driving off til it gets to the shop
bradfox2 3y ago
This is just poor anti car attitude infecting actual judgement of the technology. Waymo doesn't require a human behind the wheel. They roam all over metro Phoenix without drivers and without issues. Tesla FSD works fine with appropriate monitoring on city streets and virtually autonomously on freeway driving. Comma and open pilot aren't far behind. The US is built for cars and thinking that is going to change is a pipedream.
- cchance 3y ago
  This... People really do love to latch onto a few select loud voices in the media with alternative motives to bash things like waymo and tesla... I've had FSD for 3 years now and its infinitely better than it was and the issues i have with it oddly aren't FSD's fault theyre the manually calculated things like navigation... navigation is 100% non AI driven and its the main issue with path finding for the FSD currently. The actual driving day to day i'm in FSD almost 90% of the time, without issues 99.5% of the time, everywhere i go doing 400-800 miles a week, and the few issues i have when in AP tend to be nav telling the car its turn is earlier than it is, or it being a bit more cautious than i want it to be but thats preference not a fault of FSD.

prismatix 3y ago

The biggest mistake here is conflating Autosteer with Full Self Driving (FSD). This isn't necessarily the author's fault as Tesla uses the word Autopilot to mean Autosteer, but any Tesla owner should know this. Either way, Autopilot and Full Self Driving are not one in the same and it's made pretty clear to the end user that autosteer is not for obeying street signs, etc. It's a simple lane-assist, cruise-control assist, and lane switcher when the turn signal is pressed (if you pay for the lesser of the upgrades). That being said, Tesla's FSD is also not very reliable and in my own personal testing has aggressively "shot the gap" and flew over speed bumps. However, it at least is made to stop at stop signs and traffic signals and does so.

dventimi 3y ago
>The biggest mistake here is conflating Autosteer with Full Self Driving (FSD)...Any Tesla owner should know this Personally, I'm less interested in what Tesla owners should then I am in what policymakers should force Tesla to do.
- cchance 3y ago
  I mean what they're forcing tesla to do is annoy their drivers more, not actually change anything, mostly because tesla is actually better than most cars when it actually comes to safety.
  - dventimi 3y ago
    Just as I'm less interested in what drivers should do versus what the government should do, I'm also less interested in what the current state of affairs is versus what it could be.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    No, Tesla declares in their manual that Autopilot can only be used safely if you "keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times". Tesla is only being required to follow their own legal requirements. Other vehicle manufacturers do not state you must keep your hands on the wheel to safely operate their ADAS features, instead relying on camera-based driver monitoring systems, and are thus not required to issue any "hands-on" warning. If Tesla wants to deploy a product as advanced as other manufacturers so they can get rid of the "annoying nag" they can just release a product that can, and legally indicates, it can be safely operated hands-free. But, then they would no longer be able to blame the driver for not keeping their hands on the wheel (as it says in the manual) in the event of a death as they have repeatedly.

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

Aside: I'm so tired of the "and neither should you" and "and so should you" thinly veiled opinion piece titles.