Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Funny enough, it happens with human drivers too. Perhaps the fix is to block the entire lane instead of partially blocking it. At least the Tesla will stop for such a scenario, where a human still might not. Can't be that expensive to roll an additional rescue vehicle to sit in the lane with their lights on (I see it quite often in Florida, unsure about other states).

> According to recent data taken from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, approximately 12 percent of all interstate highway deaths result from shoulder accidents. This means that an estimated 600 people a year are killed—and thousands more are injured—while making emergency stops off the highway.

https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Pedestr...

It's unfortunately fairly difficult to find stats on accidents scoped solely to vehicles rear ending emergency vehicles partially obstructing a travel lane. The stat I present is a proxy.

View on HN

Yeah, we aren't going to rearchitect the highway system and teach every driver the new rules so Tesla can move a couple more units with it's false autonomous driving promises. They simply need to stop hitting parked cars with bright lights flashing.

Tesla is going to keep selling Autopilot, and average drivers will continue to drive poorly. I suggest a low cost change to emergency procedures that improves outcomes regardless of who has command of the vehicle. Autonomous driving will continue to improve, human drivers will not.

> Tesla is going to keep selling Autopilot

Not if they keep hitting parked cars they won't, the law will catch up to them.

Let's be realistic, the law isn't going to catch up. Uber killed a person with a safety driver not paying attention and all safety systems turned off. Did the law change? It did not.

How many deaths in total have occurred related to Autopilot use? 6 [1]. About 100 people per day die in auto-related incidents. If you want to take it to the extreme, Tesla has killed far fewer people than Boeing's 737MAX autopilot (which has killed 346 people in a six month span).

[1] https://www.tesladeaths.com/

>>> Tesla is going to keep selling Autopilot

>> Not if they keep hitting parked cars they won't, the law will catch up to them.

> Uber killed a person with a safety driver not paying attention and all safety systems turned off. Did the law change? It did not.

Hmmm. You seem to have glossed over the verb aspect. How many people did Uber kill like that?

If Tesla Autopilot is going to keep putting lives at risk then they really shouldn’t be allowed to keep selling it. I’m a bit baffled as to suggestions otherwise. If some lettuce gets contaminated with E. coli, we don’t say “oh well, caveat emptor, maybe start cooking your lettuce instead of eating it in salads,” we recall the lettuce.

We don't stop selling lettuce because you can get E. coli. To your point, we recall what we think we can, and billions of lbs continue to get sold. We have accepted that some people will get sick or die (even when recalled) because we value the availability and other benefits of lettuce over outright banning it.

There is always risk. You can de-risk, but it's usually impossible de-risk entirely in regards to life safety. You are at risk of death on the road with human drivers, and that risk is well quantified (NHSTA, NTSB, private auto insurance industry). Arguably, there is data to demonstrate that safety systems and lane keeping are safer when edge cases don't occur [1]. The question is: are those edge cases acceptable if the risk is reduced overall? Planes crash, but people still fly commercial. Again, we don't ban commercial air travel, but regulators and industry work together to ensure there are robust systems in place to remove as much risk as possible.

Should we ban the production and sale of lettuce too because a few people get sick or die [2]? Because it sure does sound like we say, “oh well, caveat emptor, maybe start cooking your lettuce instead of eating it in salads." (The same number of people have died from lettuce as from Tesla's Autopilot in roughly the same window of time [a decade, lumping together AP1, AP2, AP2.5, and FSD beta])

[1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/the-decade-... ("2010s total: More than 1,010 people sickened, including 6 deaths.")

We get it, you own a Tesla and/or stock. The constant mental gymnastics from otherwise smart people on HN to try and defend them are quite tiring.

I own no Tesla securities. Can't smart people simply argue that progress has a cost and what realistic risk expectations are? Being pragmatic doesn’t make one a shill.

Running into the back of a police cruiser that's partly in the lane with lights on is something humans generally only do before blowing a .1x on the breathalyzer.

The link you posted shows a clear correlation between low light conditions and hitting people on the shoulder. A police cruiser has blue lights and presumable the federally mandated reflective surfaces that all vehicles sold in the US have (usually in the tail lights).

This is a typical case of software making stupid mistakes a human would never make.

It's a fairly common problem even without being under the influence.

> Distracted driving is dangerous, claiming 3,142 lives in 2019.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

> The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving. 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving.

https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/distracted-dri...

Your statistics are for human drivers hitting cars and people. Not objects with blue lights (intentionally designed to be highly visible) that can be seen for miles at night being hit by vehicles that are augmented with computers that don't get distracted. Stop being intentionally misleading. An always-on computer hitting a police cruiser (the rear end of which conforms to known standards regarding number, position and size of reflective surfaces) is nowhere near equivalent to someone hitting something because they were looking at their phone.

Is it too much to expect technology to at least avoid the kind of accidents only incapacitated humans have?

Running into the back of a police cruiser that's partly in the lane with lights on is something humans generally only do before blowing a .1x on the breathalyzer. ... This is a typical case of software making stupid mistakes a human would never make.

Humans making this mistake do tend to brake at some point, just too late. There's still an accident, but damage is mitigated and survival odds, with seat belts and airbags, are good. Teslas are notorious for plowing into unrecognized stationary obstacles at full speed.

Many drivers don't get that limitation of Tesla's system. Which is why Level 2 systems that get it right most of the time are dangerous. Tesla has a really good lane keeping system, which creates the illusion that it can drive well. Until it can't.

That statistic is pedestrian deaths, not "hit stopped car on the shoulder" accidents.

"Pedestrians may enter the Interstate intentionally, often despite restrictions and controls, while drivers and motor vehicle occupants may become “unintended” pedestrians when their vehicle is disabled by a crash or other incident(Johnson, 1997)."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com