Tesla Autopilot failed to notice a tractor trailer

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by JD001

I suppose the old adage 'turn it off and turn it back on again' won't work driving down the highway at high-speed.

lol it absolutely worked in the F150 I learned to drive in when the coilpacks were going out, truck would shut off on the freeway, coast to the side of the road, give it five minutes, start it up and keep going.

It's also the solution to overheating if you're brave and poor, turn it off, let it cool, turn it on go a few more miles, turn it off...

[Stang70Fastback]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

It's also the solution to overheating if you're brave and poor, turn it off, let it cool, turn it on go a few more miles, turn it off...

Ahh, that brings back so many memories with my old Outback. Like the time I kept turning the ignition on at midnight to see if the temp had dropped enough, and a cop just saw a suspicious wagon parked in a dark parking lot of a closed bank at 1 AM with the lights turning on and off. He went to pull up behind me with no lights on, just when I happened to determine that my engine had cooled enough, so I started the car and went to drive away right as he got behind me. Scary as fuck when suddenly a bunch of flashing lights and a siren come on RIGHT behind you in the middle of fucking nowhere.

[darthpnoy1984]

No technology is perfect or should I say nothing in life is perfect.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by JD001

I suppose the old adage 'turn it off and turn it back on again' won't work driving down the highway at high-speed.

Actually, I have done this, in the FR-S.

The original 2013 Pioneer base stock radio had a habit of dropping its pairing with my phone. The only way to resolve it was to power down the radio (turning it off with the switch did not suffice). Put the car in neutral, turn the key off, but not locked, restart the car. The act of engaging the starter temporarily cuts off all the accessories, essentially rebooting the radio.

I didn't say it was a wise thing, just that I did it.

[NemesisPrime909]

i never trust driver-less cars, there are just too many variables on the road for a computer to detect I don't care how advanced you claim the cars are, a computer can't drive a free space without a physical guidance system.

I bring up the notion of the Automated Warehouse. There is a guidance system build into the floor which keeps all the moving units in place and the units have sensors that make them "aware" of each other.

Currently driverless cars use a combination of sensors and satellites to guide the car where it needs to go. In theory, this should work fine. However, because driver-less cars share the road with human operated cars the margin for error gets wider.

[NemesisPrime909]

Originally Posted by krayzie

I feel like this video sums up Tesla Motors perfectly.

Tesla drivers take the douchbagery of Prius drivers to a whole other level.

Teslas are hideous and overpriced. Most of the time, the drivers who buy them seem to have nothing but contempt for the other non-electric cars on the road.

We're all taught to keep our eyes on the road
and to stay awake and alert. If we get tired while driving the pull over and rest. This guy is throwing all of that out of the window.

[strat61caster]

Having shared the road with hundreds of driverless cars at this point, I trust them more than the average driver.

Although Google's little pods are annoying as shit because they cap out at 25 mph and some of my primary routes home that they love to test on are 35 mph.

[Stang70Fastback]

Originally Posted by NemesisPrime909

We're all taught to keep our eyes on the road and to stay awake and alert. If we get tired while driving the pull over and rest. This guy is throwing all of that out of the window.

Ha! HA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Do you even drive on public roads? 90% of people are looking 10 feet in front of them, and have no clue what is going on beyond that distance, or around/behind them, and practically NOBODY pulls over when they are tired. Defensive driving is a lost art practiced only by a select few, and the situational awareness of the average driver is about on par with that of a blind, dead dog with a paper bag over its head.

Hate on Autopilot all you want (I'm not being a fanboy here) but quite frankly I would feel more comfortable driving alongside a car on Autopilot than a car driven by some clueless moron (which is most people, seemingly, these days.) At least I can be pretty sure that the car on Autopilot knows I'm next to it.

EDIT: And to add, I work in transit. You would be amazed and how cars will slam into our buses at speed. A giant bus. When asked what happened, it's not uncommon for them to say, "I just didn't see it." You just didn't see a 60-foot bus in front of you?! And yet people discussing this accident will inevitably take the position of, "A human-driven car would definitely have seen the truck."

As I've said before, I'm not necessarily saying Autopilot is ready for use by the general public. I'm just saying that self-driving cars don't need to be perfect. They just need to be less likely to crash than a human-driven car to be a net benefit for everyone on the road. We shouldn't expect perfection.

[ScoobsMcGee]

Originally Posted by mdm

I think it's going to be much harder than most people think. I suspect it's not about a literal blind stop, but about the ability of the computer to interpret complex visual scenes. Possibly, the computer was still able to see the road ahead underneath the trailer and interpreted it as if there was no obstacle.


We are still far from understanding how the brain does it, and much further from being able to apply it in a machine that operates using very different computational principles.

That's part of my point, though. Tesla rushed the product to a public beta while other companies are spending years to make sure it is fully developed, and now someone is dead. They trivialized the complexity.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by ScoobsMcGee

That's part of my point, though. Tesla rushed the product to a public beta while other companies are spending years to make sure it is fully developed, and now someone is dead. They trivialized the complexity.

How did they rush? There was no preliminary date hyped, no crazy buildup. Even in '14 Musk was downplaying the capabilities just claiming intelligent cruise control and automatic lane change, two features already available by other auto manufacturers at that time.

If they thought it was unsafe they would have sat on it longer with no ill effects. The numbers are still positive for them with a better batting average than human piloted cars according to the press release claims.

Someone was always going to die in a self-driving car, and many more will in the future, whether it's a sensor failure, an oversight in the system, or an act of god with a tree falling on top of someone. Sitting still out of fear of an inevitability is a death sentence in itself, if mankind didn't take risks we'd still be in caves.

[krayzie]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZuQ6v-05GM"]Tesla Car 'Autopilot' Feature Linked to Driver Death - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5rraWJq6E"]Autopilot Saves Model S - YouTube[/ame]


Wow WTF it can actually drive itself up the highway ramp? I always thought this Autopilot thing is just for cruising use.

I think the flaw is that the computer doesn't actually slow down to let other motorists merge. This is why the car narrowly miss that truck the first time around.

[ScoobsMcGee]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

How did they rush? There was no preliminary date hyped, no crazy buildup. Even in '14 Musk was downplaying the capabilities just claiming intelligent cruise control and automatic lane change, two features already available by other auto manufacturers at that time.

If they thought it was unsafe they would have sat on it longer with no ill effects. The numbers are still positive for them with a better batting average than human piloted cars according to the press release claims.

Someone was always going to die in a self-driving car, and many more will in the future, whether it's a sensor failure, an oversight in the system, or an act of god with a tree falling on top of someone. Sitting still out of fear of an inevitability is a death sentence in itself, if mankind didn't take risks we'd still be in caves.

It was rushed in the sense that it was released as a software update on existing cars as a beta option with (what appears to be) inadequate testing to ensure the existing sensors could handle it. If they thought it was finished there wouldn't be beta disclaimers that need agreed to prior to engaging it. Mercedes and BMW don't have that as far as I can find. I don't suspect it was a deliberate oversight, and maybe they even felt as through they did test enough; but when cars started crashing into things with the summon feature, and the autopilot uses the same sensors and similar programming with more speed, the latter should have been disabled.

To be clear, I do not place blame only on Tesla. While some media might mislabel it as so, it isn't a fully autonomous car and I am pretty sure Tesla doesn't say that it is. Additionally, the driver did agree to the beta disclaimers and should have been prepared to take over. Rigs do not accelerate quickly. This wasn't a car already at speed going through an intersection, it was a rig turning from a stop. It had enough time to get past the cab to the trailer as well. I am curious to see more details on whether the car slowed at all, how long the rig was obstructing the road, and if there were any actual failures of the system.

ETA: http://jalopnik.com/does-teslas-semi...rom-1782935594

[Stang70Fastback]

Originally Posted by krayzie

I think the flaw is that the computer doesn't actually slow down to let other motorists merge. This is why the car narrowly miss that truck the first time around.

No, the car did nothing wrong in this case. The truck cut across two lanes at once.

[mav1178]

Originally Posted by krayzie

I think the flaw is that the computer doesn't actually slow down to let other motorists merge. This is why the car narrowly miss that truck the first time around.

Merge? Or lane change like an asshole? Because all I see is a truck driver making a lane change without a signal.

-alex