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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't sound like what happened. "The driver didn't notice" well, that's why they're using autopilot.

No matter how many messages people throw at users, any autopilot that doesn't detect that the driver is awake and operating the vehicle is going to be used by sleeping or otherwise unattentive drivers. It's just human nature.

So what likely happened was the driver was screwing around and the autopilot completely failed to notice a giant white truck crossing the road and blocking their way until it was too late.

edit: reply is quite right, shouldn't speak ill of the dead that way. "Screwing around" is unfair. I just mean that "driver falls asleep/paying attention to other things" is the expected outcome of any autopilot system, and so it's unreasonable of autopilots to have any expectation of drivers for attentiveness.

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From the article, it seems that this autopilot checks that the driver is attentive.

> When drivers activate Autopilot, the acknowledgment box explains, among other things, that Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times," and that "you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle” while using it. Additionally, every time that Autopilot is engaged, the car reminds the driver to “Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time.” The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver's hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected. It then gradually slows down the car until hands-on is detected again.

It does but it's not terribly frequent and it's easy to bypass. When you give people a feature they're going to use it however they want regardless of what you tell them. Users are funny like that :)

What if you get into a collision while you are reading all the text in that acknowledgement box?

I don't think the setting can be changed unless the car is in Park.

Those "frequent checks" are pretty rare. I've gone 15-20 minutes without seeing one. For a while it was every 3-5 minutes, but they've dialed it back up in newer software updates.

From the information given, we don't know if the truck pulled out right in front of the car giving the driver no time to react, or if the truck pulled out a minute beforehand and the driver was just oblivious. In the absence of any information either way, it's nasty to just assume the driver was inattentive.

I don't think it's nasty, I think it's realistic. I also think that it aligns with the research that shows humans take a significant amount of time to adjust to taking back over control from autopilot. This is one of the primary design considerations behind the Google self driving car having absolutely no steering wheel or brake. The illusion of humans being able to be the fallback when they're not physically capable of it is a dangerous situation.

I don't think it's realistic to rampantly speculate about a situation where so little information is available. And I absolutely think it is nasty to talk ill of the dead when there is zero evidence for what's being said.

For all we know the driver had half a second to react before he died. Or maybe he had five minutes. The point is, we don't know. To start from that position and say it's "likely... the driver was screwing around" is pretty crappy.

Fair, I wasn't reading it as a knock on the driver. I read it as a mistake for Tesla to hide behind the driver having ultimate responsibility when the reality is no driver is going to actually be attentive or even capable of taking over.

I'll admit that the word "screwing around" was unfair and judgemental, but I'm gonna be honest: I would never want to own a car with this sort of "autopilot with driver fallback" feature because I'd totally fall asleep at the wheel. Completely. So I didn't mean any judgment by it. I could have made the same mistake.

In fact, I'm judging the software, if anything. Any autopilot software that doesn't force the driver to be attentive is effectively taking the responsibility for driving onto themselves, and so cannot blame the driver for being inattentive. You can't say "I got this" and then at the last second say "oh shit, I need you driver!" even if you put warnings that you don't really got this, because you're dealing with human beings who do normal human things.

Yes, I shouldn't have said the driver was screwing around, you're right. But if the driver fell asleep, and a conscious driver would have avoided this accident? I still think it's Tesla's fault, because he'd be awake and alive in a manual car.

And how many times do human drivers fall asleep in cars with no automatic driving features of any kind, and get themselves killed in a situation where Tesla's Autopilot would have saved them?

I'd recommend trying it before you knock it. I had similar reservations, but after using it for nearly a year, I find that I'm more attentive and more awake with it than without it. A couple of weeks ago the system refused to engage (broken sensor somewhere) and I had to drive 80 miles home manually. It was exhausting! The mental effort of staying between the lines and maintaining a safe distance from the next car is pretty significant. Getting rid of that frees up more of your attention for the bigger picture. Now, I'm sure for some people it just frees up more of your attention for texting or sleeping, I'm sure I'm not representative of everybody, but I think it can easily be a net win for many.

I always pay attention while Autopilot is engaged, but I'm able to look farther down the road and take more care when checking out traffic to the rear and sides than I can when I'm doing it all myself.

>>This is one of the primary design considerations behind the Google self driving car having absolutely no steering wheel or brake.

Didn't know about this. If they are truly testing their software in a car without break and steering wheel I have a whole new level of respect for them.

When you start to design a self-driving car the question of a human fallback shouldn't even exist. The car either drives itself, or humans do. Mixing responsibilities in situations of life and death doesn't end well.

A car traveling 60mph is traveling 88 feet per second - double this because the truck is likely traveling the opposite direction at the same speed. Average human reaction time in best case scenarios is ~215ms (see http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime).

A Tesla Model S P85D can brake from 60-0 in 102 ft. (see http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2015/road-test-specs/)

Assuming the driver is perfectly attentive, and hits the brake immediately upon noticing the truck, they would still need at least 139.84 feet to come to a stop.

This also assumes the truck is no longer moving. If it is you'd have even less distance to stop.

I don't care whether you're waking up from sleep, or completely alert and instantly react, it's a huge assumption to think that any possible reaction would have prevented an accident or fatality. It's just as likely that even had autopilot engaged the brake immediately, the truck still would have plowed into the Tesla and caused a fatality.

tl;dr - two way traffic involved in a head on collision is a dangerous game, made doubly dangerous because of the combined speed of both vehicles working against inertia.

I'd say most accidents are the result of the driver "not noticing", especially in the current majority of cars which lack autopilot, so even if this edge case exists in the future, having an autopilot is still an improvement.

>detect that the driver is awake and operating the vehicle

RTFA. It mentions explicitly that autopilot checks for hands on the wheel.

This is a very weak response.

And yet it really doesn't. Every so often it'll beep at you to make your presence known, but it can easily go many minutes with hands off the wheel and no checks.

  > That doesn't sound like what happened.

Everything is speculation at this point so I am not sure how you can assume that's not what happened.

  > "The driver didn't notice" well, that's why they're using autopilot.

If Tesla builds and designs a system to be used as an assistant, explicitly tells and warns the user of it's use case and potential danger of using it as anything other than an assistant, then the excuse that "it's human nature" is null, I don't think it's human nature to leave your safety and well being at the hands of something designed to be nothing more than an assistant.

Perhaps the name autopilot exerts to much confidence in its capabilities.

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