Tesla's Autopilot driving on Silicon Valley’s most dangerous road | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's Autopilot driving on Silicon Valley’s most dangerous road

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9 pointsamrrs23 comments

I've got to ask- what is dangerous about this road? More generally, the roads with fatalities aren't necessarily "dangerous" per se, they're places where drivers make bad decisions. For example, wide roads are fast roads - if you make residential roads narrow it reduces the average speed due to perception[1] - if you want someone to drive slowly, artificially narrow the road. What it looks like here is that this is a wide fast road that allows drivers to make bad decisions. Which is sort of the best case scenario for Tesla. It's more interesting to see how a Tesla handles a roundabout or a turn across traffic- which I would guess simply results in the autopilot disinengaging, refusing to engage or crashing.

[1]https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/narrow_residential_streets_daisa...

I like how this guy's post is "Here's a video of a Tesla steering itself on the highway. It's a better driver than you." Like this one video and this one experience on this road is proof that the car is flawless and has no issues. I don't see any other cars in the video crashing either, so they must all be better drivers. If this guy is so bad, he shouldn't have a license.

"SR 17's combination of narrow shoulders, dense traffic, sharp turns, blind curves, wandering fauna such as deer and mountain lions, and sudden changes in traffic speeds have led to a number of collisions and fatalities, leading to the reputation of SR 17 as one of the most dangerous highways in the state. In the winter months, because SR 17 crosses a high precipitation area in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the roadway can become slippery from rain, snow or ice, especially at the summit." [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_17

40 years ago I used to live off Summit Road, and a few years later off Laurel Road, so I rode my Honda 750 over SR17 every day into Silicon Valley, or Santa Cruz on the weekends for shopping.

And it's not that it's a dangerous highway per se, it's a combination of steep grades, decreasing radius corners, sharp blind downhill corners, steeply banked corners, narrow lanes with an accident causing concrete center divider.

But also, people who are in a hurry, and/or intimidated by Mtn Roads who then drive erratically (flatlanders).

At least once or twice a month I'd come across a recent accident, stop, run up the road and put out flares to warn oncoming traffic, even more in the busy summertime beach traffic.

Hate to thread jump--but I just Posted this vid in a thread I started. Titled: Does your self-driving car understand Walter's footwork

https://youtu.be/wqREtbLe4sY

Extremely High speed precision driving is possible Only because of footwork. Walter is just UnFrickenBelievable: Left foot braking. Heel and Toeing. And playing the Throttle to both catch slides And create them to--rotate the car into the corners.

PS: In the silicon valley vid the Tesla is in the middle of its lane most of the time. That makes zero sense.

Also it passed by that U-haul truck which was at a 45 degree angle pointing right at it. The smart move would have been to get into the left lane and thereby making it impossible to be hit by either the U-haul Or another vehicle in front of the U-haul which would have been hidden from view.

As a counterpoint, a reminder of how poorly Autopilot functions even in calm urban environments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs

Since when did drive to Santa Cruz became "dangerous" let alone "one of the dangerous" ?

However I agree that if you find that drive "dangerous" you are probably a far below average driver and hence Tesla might do better.

Also would like to point out that if you think the road is dangerous please keep you hands on the wheel. It is irresponsible and you might get charged with reckless driving even if it is was otherwise a genuine accident.

Remember that driver education standards vary across the world - I don't know what the average driver is like in Silicon Valley, this could be a challenging road for them.

Agreed but I am pointing this out because the claim here is that Tesla's autopilot managed to keep lane on a relatively simple mountain road. Different drivers might get very different impression from the title.

Road is dangerous - so it has some bends ???. He should see some of the roads I had to drive this morning - all downhill/potholes/uneven road camber in heavy rain.

Tesla still can't reliably do simple left turn from busy major road when there are no traffic lights.

Tesla simply chokes up if there is lots of incoming traffic.

True, pretty bad that Tesla is even letting autopilot attempt left turns given the current state. To be fair though, humans are terrible at left turns also, it's one of the most dangerous driving maneuvers.

"Silicon Valley’s most dangerous road" is a little bit hyperbolic. That was the most normal-looking drive I have seen.

I recently drove to Yosemite in a friend's Tesla and whenever he tried autopilot it would beep and turn itself off in like 10 seconds.

Look at Meeeee!!!!

Yup, it's another Teslafool behind the wheel.

Tesla's are fine, it's just a small subset of the drivers are not right in the head, as my redneck cousin would say.

Did he just went throught a 35 sign doing 40 and speeding up to almost 50?

Timestamp 00:50

That's how every road in California works.

Pretty sure that white sign says "Truck, Speed Limit 35, Radar Enforced".

Also later in the video those yellow signs are Advisory only in California.

And notice the partially overturning truck on some of those yellow signs, I've watched it happen on that highway twice, those decreasing radius corners will get you if carrying too much downhill speed.

>Pretty sure that white sign says "Truck, Speed Limit 35, Radar Enforced".

If I squint really hard I can make something out like that from the potato video quality. Very well, thank you for your correction.

Combining "This road is most dangerous" with "I will take my hands off the steering wheel" is a weird way to get mailed a ticket for reckless driving.

On the facebook post he say "this was hand held", which sounds like a man who is on a fast track to a conviction for using a mobile phone while driving.

A shoe laying between his legs doesn't really help it too.

That was just the idiot-icing on top of the cake-of-recklessness.

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