Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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40k people a year in the US die in auto accidents already, and we collectively pay for that. Now Tesla pays for it when humans make poor risk choices.

If you're watching a movie on Autopilot and end up dead, how is that Tesla's fault? Yes, Tesla should not be able to lie about driver assist capabilities ("full self driving"), but there is no perfect safeguard against humans abusing assist systems (Tesla puts interior cameras in the cabin now to detect attentiveness and alertness, and people complain about that). Will we simply pay out to next of kin of those who abuse safety systems and end up dead? If so, I guess that is the cost of progress in a system with human participation. If you exceed the capabilities of systems where life safety is involved, you'll die, and we'll all move on.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...

https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/52/

> A Tesla Model S on autopilot crashed into an articulated tractor-trailer on Highway US 27A in Williston, Florida killing the driver, Joshua Brown. The trailer was turning left in front of the incoming Tesla, and the Tesla autopilot system was unable to detect the white trailer against the bright sky. Cruise control was set at 74mph and did not slow before collision. The driver had his hands on the wheel for 25 seconds of the 37 minute trip and was watching a Harry Potter movie when the collision occurred. Before the collision, the driver received 6 audible warnings that his hands had been off the wheel for too long.

Tesla autopilot should be outright illegal.

Tesla is well liked among geeks, so I expect downvotes.

However, Musk pitches FSD as actual full self driving which it isnt. He made comments that driver is there for legal reasons.

If a car makes an abrupt turn into a highway divider one may not have enough time to react.

Going back to the incident, why was the driver allowed to continue to drive? Shouldnt the car stop and disable FSD?

Plus, the vision system can’t even detect rain properly and phantom braking is still an issue in the right circumstances.

Regulators aren't going to make it illegal, but you are still entitled to your opinion. You can't stop a determined human ignoring or bypassing safety systems from getting themselves killed. It is an unfortunate reality. I am not without empathy, just pragmatic when you try to build systems to protect humans and they do what they do. "Make something idiot-proof, and they will build a better idiot."

Until regulators pull it from vehicles, we're going to carry on with it except for folks who get themselves killed (with some economic drag from these legal proceedings).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

> Tesla autopilot should be outright illegal.

Is the problem lane keeping, traffic adaptive cruise control, and automatic emergency braking? Or is it the marketing around it and how people use it? Maybe it's the lack of a controlled stop when the driver attention check fails?

Plenty of other cars have driver assistance features, but we don't hear about people not paying attention to their well equiped Pacifica and it crashing into things. Maybe because there's no videos from Chyrsler saying the car is driving itself, driver there for legal purposes only. Maybe because the driver assistance equipped unit sales are lower. Maybe the collisions are happening, but don't make the news.

Driver assistance features seem like a good idea if used properly. Drive normally, but the computer is always supervising and will help if it sees a problem you don't. They don't work well when the easily distractable human driver is supposed to be supervising the computer.

Honesty I don’t know what causes it. Driving assist stuff is great.

My Hyundai actually has great lane keep assist, emergency braking, cross traffic alert and braking, plus radar cruise. It will disengage lane keep and radar cruise if you don’t put your hands back on the wheel after alerts.

Maybe it’s because many buyers are younger? Or Tesla appears to be more techy and futuristic? Or maybe it is the weird approach to marketing musk is doing. It is a bit reckless imo.

I don’t really care if someone dies being an idiot and ignoring warnings. I do care if they slam into another driver that has no choice but to share the road with a Tesla.

Your Hyundai has the same features as Autopilot. Why should we have to share the road with it? Because regulators allow it.

Autopilot = radar cruise and lane keep?

Was radar and lane keep. Vision proved superior by regulatory tests. Dropping radar helped with phantom braking due to coarse forward facing radar.

https://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/media-releases/th...

https://electrek.co/2021/06/29/tesla-vision-active-safety-fe...

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-vision-model-y-highest-euro-...

https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-y-earns-5-star-safety-ratin...

> Model Y also received a leading score of 98 percent in Euro NCAP's Safety Assist category. This result was achieved with Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla Vision, our camera vision and neural net processing system that now comes standard in all Tesla vehicles delivered in North America and Europe. This score was a result that many did not believe was possible without using radar.

(own four Teslas of varying vintages, from 2018 to 2021, have driven over 120k miles on Autopilot)

The only Tesla scored on autonomous assist features by NCAP was a 2020 Model 3 and it scored pretty poorly.

You can look it up below just select Tesla as Make: https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/assisted-driving...

What you are referring to is safety rating, which nobody is disputing, however, it did not prove "vision" superior. The car is safe for sure but it wasn't because of vision but of structure.

Vision replaced front facing radar for AEB and TACC (traffic aware cruise control). The safety tests including automatic emergency braking, which Vision provides signal for with regards to forward travel. Automated lane changes were always Vision.

You can confirm the transition did not have a material impact on Autopilot safety using their data: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

> Autopilot = radar cruise and lake keep?

That and user driven lane change automation. (fully automatic lane changes for navigation or speed management is apparently in beta based on Tesla's online manual [1]).

IMHO, that's kind of the root of the problem. As individual features, it's not super exciting, but when you call it autopilot, people think it does more than it does (which is fairly true of airplane autopilot as well).

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-20F2262...

I mean the lane change and using navigation is a pretty big jump from the Hyundai system which is dumb.

Hyundai would not be able to attempt to drive me home. While, you can get into a Tesla, enter an address and hope for the best.

Calling it autopilot is for sure part of the problem. The average individual is dumb and won’t ever open a manual or read any prompts. But then again they are there for legal reasons.

> 40k people a year in the US die in auto accidents already, and we collectively pay for that. Now Tesla pays for it when humans make poor risk choices.

No, we individually pay for that. I pay an insurance premium every year to cover the cost if I do significant damage.

It's not about fault. It's about aligning free market incentives to allow self-driving cars, and to allow them to become safer. It's a model which works well across many industries. You set liability at actual cost, so companies can't externalize costs, but also don't have punitive liability. The market then works things out.

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