Comment by studentrob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by studentrob | Hacker News Reader

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> In comparison, when a Google self-driving car bumped a bus at 2mph, Google admitted fault, took the blame, and Urmson gave a talk at SXSW showing the data from the sensors and discussing how the self-driving car misjudged the likely behavior of the bus.

This is what we should be trumpeting. Responsibility, honesty, and transparency. Google's self driving car project reports [1] should be the standard. They're published monthly and they detail every crash *per requirement by CA state law (thanks schiffern).

Note: These reports are currently only required in California, and only for fully autonomous vehicles. So, Tesla and other driver-assist-capable car companies do not need to publicize accident reports in the same way. Tesla may be unlikely to start filing such reports until everyone is required to do so. We should demand this of all cars that are driver-assist during this "beta" phase.

Tesla owners and investors ought to be interested in a little more transparency at this point. It's a bit concerning that Tesla/Musk did not file an 8-k on the Florida accident. We learned about it from NHTSA almost two months after it happened.

[1] https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/

>Google's self driving car project reports [1] should be the standard. They're published monthly and they detail every crash

Copying a reply from earlier...

Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They have always been required by law to send autonomous vehicle accident reports to the DMV, which are made available to the public on the DMV's website.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/testi...

So the transparency itself is mandatory. Google merely chose to control the message and get free PR by publishing an abbreviated summary on their website too. Judging by this comment, it's working!

For example, here's the full report on Google's accident in February, the first one where the autonomous car was the vehicle at fault: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52...

(see also studentrob's excellent reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084444)

> So the transparency itself is mandatory

Then why on earth is Tesla being opaque and seemingly passing the buck with their PR?! I don't get it.

The requirement does not seem to be there for driver-assist vehicles. Also, it's a state-level requirement. Looks like it's just in CA for now. The accidents detailed in the Google reports are all from California.

And, Tesla may be unwilling to start reporting driver-assist accident rates to the public unless the other driver-assist car companies are forced to do it too.

I'll make an addendum to my above comment.

> The accidents detailed in the Google reports are all from California.

You could have opened the first report[1] on that page and notice this is wrong.

> June 6, 2016: A Google prototype autonomous vehicle (Google AV) was traveling southbound on Berkman Dr. in Austin, TX in autonomous mode and was involved in a minor collision north of E 51st St. The other vehicle was approaching the Google AV from behind in an adjacent right turn-only lane. The other vehicle then crossed into the lane occupied by the Google AV and made slight contact with the side of our vehicle. The Google AV sustained a small scrape to the front right fender and the other vehicle had a scrape on its left rear quarter panel. There were no injuries reported at the scene.

[1] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...

Blast! I can't get anything right. It's too late to edit my original comment.

Well, that's awesome that Google reports on accidents outside of California too.

Thank you for correcting me, delroth.

Musk used to be calmer and more open before. Now he seems bratty. Maybe stress or overconfidence.

I don't envy his position, or any other CEO or leader of a large group. It's a huge responsibility. You can face jail time for not sharing information. Usually only the most egregious violators see a cell, but it's still a scary prospect if you somehow got caught up in some other executive's scheme. At the end of the day, the CEO signs everything.

Edit: I see the downvote. Am I wrong? Is being a CEO all rainbows and sunshine? Maybe I got some detail wrong. Feel free to correct me.

It sounds like it's some predicament he's in by some accident that wasn't his fault.

As outsiders, we can only know what the company, regulatory agencies, and reporters tell us.

> we can only know what the company ... [tells] us.

Tesla tells us "it's the driver's fault that he died while using our Autopilot".

Either Musk approved this message, or he didn't bother to read it before it went out, and didn't bother to apologize afterwards.

I think we can draw some conclusions from that.

There are pending investigations by the NHTSA and NTSB. We'll know more when they are ready.

the guy comes forward and says "I'm going to make an autopilot for the masses". He/We know it's tough to do. The guy release its autopilot. It's not quite ready for prime time. Double problem : the guy goes into a tough business alone, the guy makes stuff that's not 100% ready.

I like it when people try to do hard stuff, that's fine and maybe heroic. But they have to be prepared : if testing the whole thing must take 10 years to be safe and a gazillion dollars, then so be it. If it's too much to shoulder, then they should not enter the business.

> if testing the whole thing must take 10 years to be safe and a gazillion dollars, then so be it. If it's too much to shoulder, then they should not enter the business

That sounds like a succinct explanation for why we've been stuck in LEO since December 19, 1972.

We've got 7 billion+ humans on the surface of our planet. We lose about 1.8/s to various tragedies.

Most of which are of less import than helping automate something that's responsible for around 32,000 deaths in the US every year. Move fast, break people for a just cause, escape risk-averse sociotechnological local minima, and build a future where fewer people die.

I don't think the issue is that Tesla's cars are dangerous. The issue people are raising is that they pretend, at least through implications, that their cars can safely drive for you.

Tesla is also not doing any kind of super special research into self driving cars. The system their cars use is (afaik) an OEM component (provided by MobileEye) that powers the driver assist features of many other brands, too.

Instead of actually improving the technology they have chosen to lower the safety parameters in order to make it seem like the system is more capable than it actually is.

Safe is like 'secure'. It's a relative concept, and the level of safety we are willing to accept from products is something that should be communally decided and required by law.

We shouldn't go off expecting that someone elses ideas of safety will jive 100% with our own, and then blame them when someone else buys a product and is injured.

Should Telsa drive-assist deactivate and slow the car after 10 seconds without touching the wheel? Probably, but I won't blame them for not doing so if there is no regulatory framework to help them make a decision. It's certainly not obvious that 10 seconds is the limit and not 11, or 15 or 2 seconds.

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