Tesla Autopilot, fatal crash into side of truck 6

[SnTMan]

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[LionelHutz]

Well, of course it pisses you off when a machine is supposed to make your life safer but it kills you instead.

Engaging the AP is self-defeating if the road conditions make the AP incapable of automatically piloting the car. If you wanted assistance driving then the system could provide visual clues to the hazards or nudges in the right direction or assisted braking. But to allow a driver to engage a system that is supposed to completely take over driving when it's incapable of safely taking over the driving duties is rather dumb.

Of course, the AP has the same problem deciding if it's capable of driving as it does not recognizing hazards. Basically, it's still too "dumb" to know it can't safely drive the car in the present conditions.

Sorry, but providing a safety feature even though it can be defeated isn't the same as deciding to not bother with a safety feature because it could be defeated. And not bothering is based on comparing to other self driving cars that are common in the marketplace now?

 

[JNieman]

a system that is supposed to completely take over drivingBut to allow a driver to engage a system that is supposed to completely take over driving when it's incapable of safely taking over the driving duties is rather dumb.

1) The system is not supposed to completely take over driving.
2) Yes, it would be stupid to let "Jesus take the wheel" and engage a feature that can't operate in poor conditions and expect it to work flawlessly and beyond all advertised capabilities. It's also stupid to turn off your headlights on a rural country road at night while driving 60mph but there's no interlock to prevent it.

There ain't no power in the 'verse that can keep people from making dumb (or to put it politely: uninformed) decisions, and in the end, you are the driver and still responsible for the vehicle. Yes, one day we will hopefully have automatic conveyance but it is not today, nor tomorrow, next year. It's unreasonable to expect more than that.

I heavily agree with IRStuff "I think the main issue is still with the name "AutoPilot," which connotes way more than it really is. Thus, expectation and reality are not aligned, and that is clearly the fault of Tesla." Marketing screws the pooch again, imo.


EDIT: Fixed errant 'spoiler tag'

 

[GregLocock]

True, but the experience of the aircraft industry is that having an automatic system that can do the boring stuff but flicks control back to the pilot at a moment's notice is an invitation to chaos,and unfortunately on the road you don't have the luxury of 30000ft to sort things out.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[MacGyverS2000]

Evidently you don't have the height of a typical trailer (billboard?) to figure it out, either...

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[IRstuff]

There's an inherent risk in using automation for commuter tasks. How often have we come home with no recollection of how we got there from work? What we repeatedly do without injury fades into the background and is a form of inattention blindness. It takes great discipline and training, neither of which are common to drivers, to even begin to keep such things at the top of the risk watchlist. Even trained pilots still manage to land at the wrong landing strip, as happened a week or so ago, and even with a 3-person cockpit crew, very often, they're so engrossed in the mechanics of the landing that they fail to notice the orange gorilla walking across the stage, or worse, are afraid to contradict the pilot about his landing choice.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
faq731-376 forum1529

 

[LionelHutz]

1) The system is not supposed to completely take over driving.

Say what? The system drives the car all on it's own. The system doesn't rely on the human driver to provide any gas pedal, brake pedal or steering input to drive the car down the road avoiding obstacles and staying in it's lane. It completely takes over the driving duties with the human driver of the car ONLY monitoring it by being prepared to take control back.

"Road center marking not detected, disengaging in 5 seconds unless center markings are re-acquired."

I thought found this rather comical in how useless it would be. You could be dead long before that 5 seconds expires if the car can't figure out where the lane is.

It's also stupid to turn off your headlights on a rural country road at night while driving 60mph but there's no interlock to prevent it.

I can not turn off the headlights when driving at night on the 2011 vehicle I drove to work today.

 

[cranky108]

Interesting note about the owners manual, however many used cars don't come with the owners manual.

 

[NormPeterson]

I saw recently (forget where) that it could take as long as 11 seconds for a driver to fully re-engage himself in the business of driving.

On interlocks . . . when a logical system has the potential for doing something incredibly wrong, while still thinking that it's doing everything exactly right and better than a human driver could, you need some means of determining that the human is paying at least a modicum of attention to the road ahead. Maybe more than one method, so that there's some redundancy.

A human driver choosing to drive at speed down a country road at night without headlights . . . serious questions exist whether he should be driving at all. It's not something he'd be unaware of, like he would a logical oversight or mis-step in some programming.


Norm

 

[IRstuff]

"You could be dead long before that 5 seconds expires if the car can't figure out where the lane is."

That was not intended for an autonomous system, but for a driver's aid, which has radically different constraints.


"A human driver choosing to drive at speed down a country road at night without headlights"

There are certainly lots of drivers driving without lights in the city; making them massively hazardous to other drivers.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
faq731-376 forum1529

 

[drawoh]

NormPeterson,

Ontario driver charged after using headlamp instead of headlights: police

They are out there.

The problem with aircraft autopilots is that the pilot stays in the seat and pays attention. If the pilot engaged the autopilot and then headed back to the passenger area to see if he could score a stewardess, then dis-engagement of the autopilot would be very much more dangerous.

--
JHG

 

[cranky108]

The railroads use a method that if you don't move a control, or press something every so often the engine will shut off and the breaks will be activated. That would be enough to make someone pay a little attention.

But another question: How does a Tesla handle school zones?

 

[BrianPetersen]

The railroads use an external traffic control system that will stop other traffic from using the track that a stopped train is on well before that stopped train gets hit, and there's no cross traffic.

An "autopilot" equipped vehicle that decides it doesn't want to drive any further but which doesn't get a response from its human driver when it requests the human to take over control ... should do what? Stop in the middle of a live traffic lane so that traffic coming from behind can plow into it? (illegal to stop in a live traffic lane in many places - and rightly so) Pull over to the side of the road (what if there's no breakdown lane)?

Circumstances that an "autopilot" can not deal with don't necessarily come with many seconds or minutes of warning before they happen.

 

[waross]

My daughter is driving my old 1993 Oldsmobile. You can't turn the headlights off at night.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[VEBill]

Cars in Canada generally have Daytime Running Lights.

Far too many cars have a 'User Interface' design / regulatory flaw in that the unwary will be driving on a dark and stormy night, with their DRLs dimly illuminating their forward path, but the rear of their car blacked out like WWII London.

The better designed cars simply refuse to allow this condition. Irrespective of the minimum regulations or headlight control settings, the rear of the car is illuminated when appropriate.

 

[jayrod12]

My 1992 Buick always has the headlights on at night. My 2011 Tacoma I need to turn them on. Seems backwards. My Tacoma doesn't even have daytime running lights.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Virtually all GM products have 'daytime running lights' as standard equipment. And while there were ways to disable this in some older models, I don't think that's an option anymore with the newer cars (I never saw where that was possible with my 2013 GMC Terrain but it was with my previous car, a 2001 Chevy Blazer). I know when I was in Denmark a few years ago, we were told that 'daytime running lights' was required by law, and I was told that that was one reason why GM decided to make it standard since several countries were starting to require it anyway. Along those same lines, here in California, you're now required to turn on your headlights when you wipers are on. With my 2013 Terrain, while the 'running lights' are on all the time, when I turn the wipers on the full headlight/taillight system comes on. Of course, it rains so infrequently in California that I suspect a lot of people, with cars that do not offer this automatic feature, are technically breaking state law when it actually does perchance rain.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
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The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[itsmoked]

Far too many cars have a 'User Interface' design / regulatory flaw in that the unwary will be driving on a dark and stormy night, with their DRLs dimly illuminating their forward path, but the rear of their car blacked out like WWII London.

That is my pet driver peeve at the moment. These poor idiots drive around thinking their "lights" are on and the back is dark. You can flash them, yell at them that their tail lights are off, and nothing works because their dim little minds see some head light.

I stopped next to a car and tried to explain it to two guys and they never got it.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[VEBill]

KC "...tried to explain..."

The internationally-accepted hand gesture sequence is to first represent the two ends of their vehicle, by holding up two fingers in a repeated upward thrusting movement; followed by an indication that only one end of their vehicle is actually illuminated, by waving the same hand with just one finger extended.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I suspect that most car owners don't look at the owner manual that came with their car for much more than finding out how to operate the infotainment system, whatever other comfort & convenience features, and maybe the HVAC.

My lovely wife doesn't read _any_ of the owner manuals for _anything_.

Instead, she demands that I explain the operation of the whatever it is, even if I have never operated it, even if I have never seen it, while she is operating it, and has already forced it into undocumented modes of operation that no one understands or can reproduce.

I have become her PDA and her IT guy, and have failed to meet her expectations, yet again.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA