Feds probe NY Tesla crash that killed man changing flat tire | Hacker News Reader

Feds probe NY Tesla crash that killed man changing flat tire

washingtonpost.com

22 pointscamjohnson2610 comments

It’s incredible how long a leash the NHTSA has given Tesla up to now. Uber had one fatality and their entire program was axed, according to this article Tesla has had 11. Compare that to Waymo whose cars have driven millions of miles and I believe only been in a few fender benders with no fatalities.

Tens of thousands of people die in car accidents per year, nationally, so a few dozen fatalities in exchange for faster self driving progress sounds like a good bargain.

Who says that these deaths are a necessary part of self driving progress?

Apples and oranges. Tesla AutoPilot is a driver assistance system not an autonomous vehicle. It doesn’t even claim to avoid these situations, hence the need for full attention by the driver.

AP has billions, not millions of miles driven FWIW.

My Model Y is generally unconcerned with out of place stuff on the road. Bicycles? Yes. People walking? Not really. “Yield in crosswalk” posts in the middle of the road? No.

Autopilot seems to have some issues if there are vehicles parked in the shoulder. I feel like any human driver would give a wide berth to parked vehicles.

> I feel like any human driver would give a wide berth to parked vehicles.

Plenty of human drivers have hit vehicles parked on the shoulder. It's not difficult to find news items about such accidents.

Random examples: https://www.kristv.com/news/local-news/two-killed-in-two-veh...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-16/man-woma...

https://www.ocala.com/story/news/2021/08/28/crash-involving-...

For sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if Teslas are less likely to hit parked cars than human drivers.

But you see the problem -- for the outrage journalism to stop, it has to be a lot better (~10X) than humans.

It's surprises me greatly that our 2011 Nissan Leaf didn't get to have LED taillights because "Federal rules" that hadn't caught up to current technology, but a car that smooshes people on the side of the road? "A-okay by us, we'll just do some investigations after it's too late and a person is killed", say the Feds.

Think of how much more focused the Autopilot team is by releasing completely unsafe software and trying to fix it before regulators get their act together. Death driven development.

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