Page 1 of 2

And so it begins....

Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 6:46 pm
by jont-
http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/tesla-aut ... d=leftrail
Unfortunately because it's an RTC, not an aviation accident I suspect there won't be any proper investigations.

Looks like the vidoes have been removed.

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 7:46 pm
by hir
So, when I read this...

"The video, which was posted to YouTube on Wednesday and earlier reported on by Electrek, shows the Model S driving along a busy street and using Autopilot to track a black car in front of it. After the car in front swerved around the stopped van, the Model S neither reacted to avoid the obstacle nor stopped, leading to the collision.

According to Thomann, he was using Tesla’s Autopilot active cruise control at the time and said that it “did not brake as it normally does.” He added that the car’s “collision avoidance system did not make an emergency brake,” and that the “forward collision warning turned on way too late,” despite being turned on to its normal setting. What’s worse, he says, the car actually sped up before he hit the brakes."


... I thought to myself... WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DRIVE THE BLOODY THING YOURSELF!!!!!!! :gear:

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 8:00 pm
by gannet
* sigh *

such stupidity, education is key apparently accordinlgy to Tesla... how about not inventing the feature in the first place?

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 8:09 pm
by ChristianAB
next time, someone will be killed, and then the real fun will begin....


"the car did not slow down before hitting that elderly woman crossing the road..."

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 8:15 pm
by Mr Cholmondeley-Warner
You wonder what they are doing - playing with their phones, laptops, tablets, reading a book ... what exactly is the point of an autonomous system (certainly one which is described as "not fully autonomous")? How do you know when it's working?

People are getting conditioned to believe computers can do everything, which they probably can, provided the software has the same complexity as a human brain. They're brought up on computer games, and an autonomous car to them is just like another computer game - you can't die in a game, right? :roll:

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 7:50 pm
by fungus
We're back to taking responsibility for ones own safety again, only this time they expect a computer to look after them. :roll:

Nigel.

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 8:15 pm
by akirk
To be fair, if a punter buys a car which makes certain claims, it might be considered reasonable to expect it to meet those claims...

I think that what we are seeing is the reality v. the unsubstantiated hype from the manufacturers... There are lots of claims in the industry currently - main purpose being to jostle for position as leaders in the industry, an industry reckoned t be worth billions in the years ahead... Let's not forget this is all about money, not about safety or making life easier, and in the pursuit of money corporations have a track record in over-claiming and under delivering... So anyone who believes in or relies on those claims is perhaps a little bit stupid, however that doesn't mean that people will see through the hype, the majority of consumers believe what they are told, so we will see a lot more of this...

Alasdair

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 7:57 am
by Gareth
akirk wrote:I think that what we are seeing is the reality v. the unsubstantiated hype from the manufacturers...

I think it's more that a lot of early adopters very much want cars they don't need to drive, and are pushing beyond the guidance in the manufacturers' handbooks.

A colleague and I discuss every step and misstep - he doesn't like driving his i10, (he used to enjoy driving a previous more powerful Golf), and now feels that relying on human control for driving is on ethically shaky ground when computers will (before long) be able to do a much better job. He accepts that in the short term there will be accidents but reckons that manufacturers, especially Tesla, will make swift improvements and that the accident rate will fall quite rapidly.

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 10:20 am
by Pyrolol
I think the problem here is that Tesla have decided it's OK to create a self-driving car that requires continuous human oversight (the instructions are quite clear that you're still responsible). Unsurprisingly, people don't do this, and as a result things like this happen. I absolutely agree that at some point someone's going to get hurt, and the resulting outcry will probably set mainstream adoption of self-driving cars back a fair way.

My opinion here is that this is a somewhat cowboy attitude, and actually quite unfair to those who are trying to do it properly (say Google), and not release anything until it can actually drive itself...

Re: And so it begins....

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 10:33 am
by jont-
Pyrolol wrote:I think the problem here is that Tesla have decided it's OK to create a self-driving car that requires continuous human oversight (the instructions are quite clear that you're still responsible). Unsurprisingly, people don't do this, and as a result things like this happen. I absolutely agree that at some point someone's going to get hurt, and the resulting outcry will probably set mainstream adoption of self-driving cars back a fair way.

My opinion here is that this is a somewhat cowboy attitude, and actually quite unfair to those who are trying to do it properly (say Google), and not release anything until it can actually drive itself...

The problem for Tesla is that the google approach (human supervised, only run cars you own) is /really/ expensive, and relatively slow. Tesla I imagine are grabbing all the data from their owners use of the car and building that back into their models.

A tesla owner I know on another forum has moaned that autopilot doesn't cope well on roundabouts - presumably this is because the merkins don't have any, so they haven't got any data to build on. As Teslas become more common in the UK/Europe, that will improve (although building a model based on average driver behaviour on a roundabout may not be a good base :roll: )

The real question will be whether governments/voters expect autonomous cars to be "perfect" or just "better than the /average/ human".

If this is baseline [nearly] acceptable behaviour, then they're probably not far off.