Driverless Tesla coasting along mall parking lot causes confusion | Hacker News Reader

Driverless Tesla coasting along mall parking lot causes confusion

cbc.ca

33 pointsmonsieurpng55 comments

Doesn't look like, from the admittedly short video, that there's too much confusion from the people around it, other than the lady near the stop sign at the end, and that seems only because she's trying to decide if the car is going to stop for her.

And that was likely the best short clip that would somehow fit the headline. The car is so slow and timid, it looks more confused than the people walking by.

Still, the car’s seeming confusion doesn’t inspire confidence in the readiness of this feature.

It seems the author, Karin, may be summoning his/her own car so they have something to write about. :)

I would assume, like in the USA, the person who hit the "summon" button would be liable for anything the car did.

What if the phone erroneously detected an action? AKA a pocket summon. Is the phone manufacturer liable in that case?

Would the car endlessly follow the person around the mall? Is there a timeout? Seems like after x minutes it should self park and update the app.

The time out is about 500 miles / speed of crawling ;-)

To get a sense of what would be required to "pocket summon" the car, you'd have to:

- pocket unlock phone

- pocket open tesla app

- pocket scroll down to Summon

- pocket click Summon

- pocket select "Smart Summon" from within the Summon screen

- pocket click the target button on the map

- pocket hold down the "come to me" button continuously

All this while being within 200ft of the car.

"pocket summon" probably isn't the most likely scenario. A more likely one is using pocket summon while in the rain, and water on the touchscreen causing the summon button to remain pressed even after the finger's lifted.

This can totally happen. You might have already had the summon view up and targeted already, ready to leave, when your friend mentions something to you and you just stick your phone in your pocket.

That's actually a good point. Even if the tesla app reverts to its default state when the phone is locked, one might pocket their unlocked phone while "come to me" is shown.

I was excited for this feature after playing Batman Arkham Knight game. Batman can summon is Batmobile while jumping over the rooftops and jump right into the drivers seat.

It's a one in a million chance. However there are now millions of Tesla/phone pairs on the market so one in a million translates to inevitability.

This is not possible. You have to hold down the summon button in order for this to work.

what if the summoned car gets hit by another car (in such a way the it is not the tesla's fault)?

what if somebody throws themselves into the tesla?

Or hops in...

i'm not a lawyer, but my guess for both questions, the driver's inability to provide an eyewitness account would probably heavily bias towards their fault. Kind of like if you were driving your car with your eyes closed.

I imagine that the footage from the car's built-in cameras could take the place of an eyewitness account

The new Tesla cars have 8 cameras. You can download the video to a USB drive.

What if I'm driving a car and get hit by another car (in such a way that it is not my fault)?

I imagine it would be the same.

except that you're nowhere near your car

Never mind the law, have the actuaries caught up with developments?

This actually happened and was on video as well. It was the first week smart summon came out. A Tesla was moving, already behind a car, then the car just backed out into it. A typical parking lot crash that happens all the time. Parking lots are terrible places for accidents.

Of course many in the media took the video and created a headline which was VERY misleading.. "Tesla smart summon gets into accident"... while yes, that is true, it was no fault of the Tesla doing smart summon.

It is not at all obvious that would the case in the US.

But as the article said, that liability may not be covered by that person's vehicle insurance in British Columbia

> In the recent incident in Richmond, thankfully, there was no accident. Had an accident occurred, the vehicle owner's insurance may not have provided coverage.

I don't think anyone disagrees that the vehicle's driver is liable (regardless of physically being in the vehicle or using summon). The issue here seems to be if that is legal at all and if it is legal if insurance would cover that liability.

Plus what happens if a third party activates summon, for example a toddler? Is the toddler now legal liable for any accidents? Is the owner of the car? Is the child's parent/guardian (even if they weren't physically there)? Lots of interesting legal edge cases to explore.

> regardless of physically being in the vehicle or using summon)

Imagine you're driving along the road, see a pedestrian crossing and see a pedestrian on it. You hit the brake but brake doesn't work, because of the manufacturing flaw (later one they will issue a recall but not just yet) so you hit someone. I think it is pretty obvious that manufacturer of the car is liable in this case. Although you still get into trouble, all the investigation, courts, etc.

> Plus what happens if a third party activates summon, for example a toddler.

In Australia, in NSW, you're responsible if you didn't take the precautions necessary and someone, who's not supposed to drive your car, gains access to it.

Like if you left your windows/doors open and/or car keys in the car or engine running and someone without licenses got inside and drove it, there is a fine.

During the "Autonomy Day" announcements, I believe Elon Musk said he assumed the company would be liable for any damage caused by driverless vehicles. When the cause of an accident is a manufacturing flaw, the manufacturer is liable. Tesla has been sued several times regarding autopilot, but in all those cases they argued that the product wasn't flawed, it was just missing features that a human driver was expected to provide. I'm not sure what Tesla's expectations of their customers are for this feature. Maybe the owner had to agree to use it only when in line of site and stop it if it was not operating safely.

I think all of the autonomy features Tesla have shipped have requested that the driver monitors them. There's a distinction to be made between this and the eventual autonomy whereby they don't intend on the driver being able to override the car (aka. Robotaxis) when the responsibility would shift from driver to company.

This feature is a little different though. You have no way of immediately gaining control of the vehicle. Your only possible action is top summoning, which may not stop the chain of events that lead to an accident. They have argued that people sitting in a vehicle should be required to anticipate and prevent accidents, but it seems like a stretch to expect the same of someone standing at a curb with nothing but an off switch.

The biggest problem and confusion just is that there isn't a driver. Noone challenges a human for going on a joyride.

The fact that there is no driver visible might be a bigger challenge for self driving vehicles and its acceptance.

Tinted windows will solve that.

They need an inflatable autopilot.

Here comes Johnny Cab:

https://talkingpointz.com/johnny-cab/

> Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko said there are no laws against what he saw in the video

I am absolutely positive that it is illegal to drive on the wrong side of the road in Canada.

Was this really the only legal expert they could find?

Is that still illegal on private property/land, which I assume a mall car park is?

Ok, I bet you are right and that was his argument. On private property you can drive however you like.

I retract my claim. Thanks.

I have a Tesla, and summon has always scared me. I've never used it. I never plan to use this "smart summon" either.

The only thing that has made me think about enabling summon is that in order to be able to remotely open your garage door via the Tesla app, using the transceiver in the car, you must have Summon enabled. Being able to open the garage door from thousands of miles away would be quite handy in case a family member was locked out. But I still haven't done it.

It’s a great feature for those of us with older houses and narrow driveways. If anything it is too cautious.

Direct link of the confusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnioHfg1xbQ

There is absolutely zero confusion in this video.

Are you joking? The car is driving down the wrong side of the road.

There’s no incoming cars.

The video was shot in the Richmond Center parking lot [1]. That Tesla is (unfortunately) displaying above-average driving skill for that location.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@49.1646475,-123.1373743,18z

The car stopped for a pedestrian who was hesitating to cross. I have seen human drivers in my area do much worse than this on average.

My question is, we already have remote control vehicles. Do we not have any laws for full sized RC cars? Would it apply in this case?

95% Leaf 97% Beachball 98% Bird 99% Stork 99.5% 3-year old human, cue braking action in 20 seconds

“Driverless” is going to see a fast and final end when a small child gets killed by one of these robots and the owner, manufacturer, and every insurance company within throwing distance gets a billion dollar lawsuit judgement.

There is much hubris going around about AI and machine vision with business people and grad students taking lives into their hands and not seriously handling the responsibility.

Move fast and kill people?

Kill people ..learn from their deaths...deploy ..kill more people and learn from their deaths..deploy the latest...rinse and repeat until maybe decades later these robots are safer then human drivers.

Progress is going to be a killer!

I'm pretty sure they're already safer than human drivers.

What makes you sure?

No one is going to get a billion dollar judgement over a death from a self-driving car. If you think every tech company working on a driverless system doesn't have an entire legal team behind them waiving away liabilities then I have a bridge to sell you.

Having a great legal team doesn't mean you can't lose billions of dollars in court; as Monsanto/Bayer recently found out. The jury may not look favorably upon tech companies.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jury-awards-couple-2billion-mon...

That's not an equal comparison unless you know of some internal leaked Tesla documents that show criminal negligence like in the RoundUp cases. Considering that every self-driving feature of a Tesla requires you to affirm that you accept responsibility for the car's actions, there would need to be intent shown on Tesla's part in order for something like that to be paid out. Even in the RoundUp cases, Monsanto is appealing.

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