Tesla driver killed after plowing into firetruck on freeway | Hacker News Reader

Tesla driver killed after plowing into firetruck on freeway

apnews.com

14 pointsmagic_man16 comments

I have a feeling these type of articles are never going to end. Anytime a Tesla is involved in a crash, it’s always going to be a question if Self driving mode was on. Whether it was on or not is a moot point in my opinion. As a driver, if you slam your car into into another vehicle or object, the responsibility is 100% on you. We have to stop blaming technology for wrecks. If you have a Tesla (or other vehicle with advanced cruise control) and wreck while it’s activated, it’s not the tech’s fault. The driver has to be paying attention to everything regardless, and if they don’t then get mad at them, not the car maker.

Would this be a rephrasing that matches your intent?

"When a Tesla slams into anything, the person in the driver's seat of a Tesla is at fault. If they thought FSB meant they didn't need to be driving, they were willfully ignoring the truth."

That’s probably a better phrasing, thanks :)

The problem is people are using that technology. What you're saying is akin to "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", and that's true. But it's also true that people who don't have guns don't kill people with guns and if no one had guns no one would be killed by them.

I think it's fair to "get mad" at those who produce and profit by making and selling guns and hold them responsible for murders committed with them. Same with Tesla.

In both of those cases the manufacturer knows they can be deadly, and that they cause deaths. I won't make any leaps to try and disconnect those facts.

I make and sell software. If my software was causing folks to die I would stop selling it. It wouldn't matter at all if the users misused it.

> What you're saying is akin to "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", and that's true.

And to extend that analogy, let's say Smith and Wesson made a gun that was marketed as having a safety, but in reality the safety didn't fully work and every now and then someone was killed because the gun unexpectedly went off.

I'm gonna guess we wouldn't have folks coming out defending Smith and Wesson and blaming the owner.

> I'm gonna guess we wouldn't have folks coming out defending Smith and Wesson and blaming the owner.

Oh, but you absolutely would. You should not be pointing a loaded gun in the direction of a human being, safety or not, unless you intend to kill them.

The self-driving is oversold. People who have driven with Autosteer and Autopilot will know that you should not let go of the wheel if there is any irregularity in the road, the traffic, or even the weather.

I just can’t understand how gullible people are if they let the car steer unattended in an adversarial environment. It makes several really bad choices per hour! But then again, maybe programmers are generally more pessimistic about the reliability of software systems

> ”Oh, but you absolutely would. You should not be pointing a loaded gun in the direction of a human being, safety or not, unless you intend to kill them.”

To extend the metaphor ever more haha, this is such a great way to put it. This applies directly to my point. If Autopilot is the ‘safety’ on the gun, and someone still points the ‘loaded gun’ (the Tesla) at another human, that’s 100% on them. We can’t abdicate their responsibility because the ‘safety’ was broken. The operator should have never pointed the gun at a person in the first place.

Your response feels like a logical fallacy to me. You can get mad at the manufacturer, and maybe there is an argument to be made, I'm willing to reconsider the way I phrased it before. But the fact is, the driver is responsible for what happens when they are behind the wheel, no matter what technology they happen to be using. Full Stop. These aren’t autonomous, driver-less vehicles. If there is an accident, because a technology was used improperly, then that individual is at fault. So I choose to get upset with them and their carelessness, I don't know how else to put it.

> The driver has to be paying attention to everything regardless, and if they don’t then get mad at them, not the car maker.

So we're just gonna ignore that Tesla literally calls the feature "Full Self Driving"?

I can't imagine how people are getting the impression they can let their attention waver...

I don’t know if I agree people get that impression? If they do, as someone said above, they are willfully ignoring the truth. If someone does have that impression, I have a hard time imagining how that would continue past the first use of the tech. If you take your hands of the wheel, or the system senses you aren’t watching the road, it visually and audibly warns you to put your hands back on the wheel. If you continue to disobey, Autopilot will disengage itself. So, yeah, I can’t abdicate any Tesla driver from responsibility in an accident.

At least 14 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles while using the system.

Seems like quite a lot?

It does seem like a lot. But it's also important to consider how many miles were driven by the fleet and how many hams crashed into emergency vehicles over the same amount driven.

I'm not a Tesla apologist, I just can't make sense of raw numbers where we would naturally try to make a comparison.

No, you see, there’s no problem here because people would’ve been crashing into things at an even higher rate without Tesla Telepathic Full Self Driving and Penile Embiggening All Natural Herbal Vision AI Sentient System (Beta).

Maybe the robot thinks: Heck, if I'm gonna crash, may as well crash into the safest place to do it. At least they can rescue me/put out the fire/solve it somehow. Or to take a leaf from the film I, Robot:

  SPOONER:

  The truck smashed our cars together...

  and pushed us into the river.

  I mean, metal gets pretty

  pliable at those speeds.

  She's pinned. I'm pinned.

  The water's coming in.

  I'm a cop, so I already

  know everybody's dead.

  Just a few more minutes

  before we figure it out.

  An NS-4 was passing by...

  saw the accident and

  jumped in the water.



  [flashback]

  NS-4 ROBOT:

  You are in danger.



  SPOONER: Save her!

  NS-4 ROBOT: You are in danger.



  SPOONER:

  Save her! Save the girl! Save her!



  [realtime]

  SPOONER: But it didn't.

  It saved me.



  CALVIN: The robot's brain is a difference engine.

  It reads vital signs. It must have calculated...



  SPOONER: --It did. I was the logical choice.

  It calculated that I had a 45

  percent chance of survival.

  Sarah only had an 11 percent chance.

  That was somebody's baby.

  Eleven percent is more than enough.

  A human being would have known that.

  Robots, nothing here.

  Just lights and clockwork.

  *Go ahead and you trust them if you want to.*

Cheap driver assistance technologies such as collision warning systems and emergency braking are nearly ubiquitous on new cars. It’s puzzling why Tesla hasn’t taken a layered approach to safety, with these supplementing the camera systems they have in place. I can’t imagine it’s a cost thing and the sensor fusion problem is likely tractable.

Tesla has the highest profit margin in the car business. They didn’t get there by putting in layered safety systems. That kind of redundancy wouldn’t be optimal for profit generation.

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