[HN Gopher] New video shows Tesla on autopilot almost hitting st...
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       New video shows Tesla on autopilot almost hitting state trooper
        
       Author : camjohnson26
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2021-09-23 19:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.clickorlando.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.clickorlando.com)
        
       | obilgic wrote:
       | Just got my Plaid 2 days ago. I already feel uncomfortable about
       | how it changes lanes and merges into lanes. Def making other
       | drivers notice something is up with the way it steers, especially
       | during traffic. Not even talking about city streets.
       | 
       | Also noticing that other drivers leave a lot more space
       | instantly, and let me pass as soon as the turn signal is on, not
       | sure if they are worried about it being on Autopilot.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | This thing needs to investigated given that lots of these drivers
       | are being too complacent with this auto-pilot beta software
       | functionality.
       | 
       | It has proven to be very unsafe to use on the roads and is
       | putting the lives of other drivers at risk.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | I didn't realize from the link title that it also collided with
       | the stopped vehicle. Wow.
       | 
       | It made me wonder, are the driving models trained at all to
       | recognize accidents or other road anomalies? A plane making an
       | emergency landing in front of them? Just curious.
       | 
       | Edit: Would also be interested to know if there's a way police
       | could work with Tesla or other autopilot carmakers to broadcast
       | special codes like don't-hit-us-here-is-our location, or just
       | send a signal blocking autopilot, or whatever. They already send
       | texts and radio alerts, and there are already local AM alert
       | stations in the US anyway.
       | 
       | If my kids would be driving, I'd rather buy from that kind of
       | manufacturer.
        
         | g_p wrote:
         | > Would also be interested to know if there's a way police
         | could work with Tesla or other autopilot carmakers to broadcast
         | special codes like don't-hit-us-here-is-our location, or just
         | send a signal blocking autopilot, or whatever. They already
         | send texts and radio alerts, and there are already local AM
         | alert stations in the US anyway.
         | 
         | I don't think this will be a good solution, since inherently
         | these incidents happen when there's an "exception". If every
         | stationary emergency vehicle had to send a notification each
         | time the lights were activated, this would maybe work, until
         | you're in an area without coverage.
         | 
         | To me, we need to raise the bar for what's acceptable - this
         | vehicle would presumably also have ploughed into an injured
         | motorist's car before the police had arrived... The root
         | problem isn't the lack of notice of the stopped emergency
         | vehicle, rather it's the apparent inability to avoid a
         | stationary vehicle on the roadway, which should be the very
         | first (and simplest) thing to detect, since the self driving
         | vehicle is closing in on it and can see its relative position
         | isn't moving. If it can't do that, IMO it shouldn't be on a
         | public road, as it isn't capable of basic speed management in
         | traffic without being able to gauge closing speed against a
         | vehicle ahead.
        
         | melling wrote:
         | How about a generic anti-collision with a large solid object?
         | Radar? LiDAR? Nice safety feature.
        
       | wil421 wrote:
       | How hard would it be given that Tesla uses cameras to just
       | disable Autopilot when it senses flashing lights? Or at least
       | give the driver a few seconds to react before disabling
       | Autopilot.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | Released two days ago:
         | 
         | New in #Tesla 2021.24.12 Owners Manual for #Model3 #ModelY "If
         | Model 3/Model Y detects lights from an emergency vehicle when
         | using Autosteer at night on a high speed road, the driving
         | speed is automatically reduced and the touchscreen displays a
         | message informing you of the slowdown. You will also hear a
         | chime and see a reminder to keep your hands on the steering
         | wheel. When the light detections pass by or cease to appear,
         | Autopilot resumes your cruising speed. Alternatively, you may
         | tap the accelerator to resume your cruising speed. Never depend
         | on Autopilot features to determine the presence of emergency
         | vehicles. Model 3/Model Y may not detect lights from emergency
         | vehicles in all situations. Keep your eyes on your driving path
         | and always be prepared to take immediate action."
         | 
         | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1440537502272536581.html
         | 
         | Vehicle firmware revision uptake stats for vehicles using
         | Teslascope [1] and TeslaFi [2].
         | 
         | [1] https://teslascope.com/teslapedia/software
         | 
         | [2] https://www.teslafi.com/firmware.php
        
       | thebruce87m wrote:
       | 100% Teslas fault here.
       | 
       | BUT:
       | 
       | Emergency vehicles should be hooked in to a crowd-sourced traffic
       | system now. The first thing they should do is hit a big button on
       | their dashboard that says "Road Closed", "lane blocked" etc which
       | should then update Google maps etc and also disable things like
       | autopilot for vehicles approaching the incident.
       | 
       | This goes for things like roadworks too.
       | 
       | A bit like Waze but the information comes from "official" sources
       | and is required by law to be logged.
        
         | dragontamer wrote:
         | We can't even get police departments to agree to keep their
         | body cameras on. Any such requirement you'd pass to officers
         | like that would get wrecked by the police unions / F.O.P.
         | 
         | Our police aren't organized at a national level in the USA: its
         | a collection of 10,000+ departments, some of which are
         | incredibly shallow (say 1 sheriff elected by the locals and 5
         | deputies).
         | 
         | ------
         | 
         | To practically start something like that, you find police
         | departments that are likely to agree with each other (ex: NYPD
         | + Boston PD), and then maybe get an agreement between their
         | Commissioners. You grow the alliance one step at a time. You're
         | gonna have to figure out "why would the police want a system
         | like this in their procedures?", such as arguing for a
         | mitigation of accidents or whatever. Or maybe giving the police
         | some kind of power (ex: official announcement to close a road
         | and redirect traffic)
        
         | cmsj wrote:
         | That's not a bad sounding idea, but it makes a lot of
         | assumptions about the infrastructure available in the region
         | the self-driving car is being deployed.
         | 
         | If the goal is really to make cars that can drive as well as
         | humans, they need to be able to do that based only on on-board
         | sensors.
        
       | g_p wrote:
       | I wonder if Tesla FSD is properly considering a windowed sample
       | of images at a high enough sample rate to see modern high
       | intensity strobe lights used on emergency vehicles.
       | 
       | Clearly the dash cam used is sampling at a high enough rate to
       | see them, but perhaps the Tesla isn't considering the a view of
       | the road ahead across a wide enough period of time to see the
       | hazard lights and understand the vehicle is potentially
       | stationary and alerting drivers about a hazard.
       | 
       | A very naive FSD algorithm working only from the current frame
       | (without looking at past frames) could certainly mess this up,
       | but at what point do we accept this simply isn't fit for purpose
       | - it can't avoid hitting a stationary vehicle, so what hope does
       | it have with slowly moving and other edge cases?
        
         | rpmisms wrote:
         | They just released an Emergency Vehicle Detection feature on
         | basic autopilot, and so far it works.
         | 
         | This is a big part of the rewrite of autopilot, the ML they use
         | can now persist data through time, so it can reasonably predict
         | if occluded objects will remain in place.
        
           | snypher wrote:
           | Emergency Vehicle Detection?! This was a stopped vehicle in
           | the middle of the highway, maybe we could start by detecting
           | those?
        
         | dont__panic wrote:
         | I'm curious how Tesla FSD works with obstacles that aren't cars
         | or people on roads. Where I drive, I often have to slam on my
         | brakes to avoid hitting deer, turkeys, small rodents, running
         | over squashed skunks, etc. I assume that Tesla FSD would notice
         | some of these obstacles, but it wouldn't be able to notice a
         | deer on the edge of the road and identify it as slowdown-
         | worthy... would it?
         | 
         | Curious if any rural Tesla owners can chime in on this -- it's
         | not exactly a documented feature.
        
           | g_p wrote:
           | Similarly curious - my understanding is that Tesla w/ FSD
           | effectively drives as a relatively selfish and "reactive"
           | driver, theoretically dealing with anything entering its
           | driving path.
           | 
           | I'd also be interested to know if the Tesla FSD can react to
           | "foreseeable second order" issues that an experienced driver
           | is expected to respond to. For example, a pedestrian crossing
           | (giving priority to pedestrians) where visibility of the
           | waiting pedestrian is obscured by a parked vehicle. A human
           | driver can recognise they lack visibility of the footpath
           | around the crossing (and recognise the crossing by road
           | markings and street furniture), and therefore slow on
           | approach, since there is a risk they may need to stop
           | rapidly.
        
             | cmsj wrote:
             | that principle of "slow on approach, since there is a risk"
             | is something I don't feel like I've seen in any of Tesla's
             | videos.
             | 
             | Even the ones where they are proudly showing a Tesla
             | avoiding a collision with a person, the car seems to leave
             | it to the very last second and then slams on the brakes,
             | where my mind is already screaming "BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE" a
             | couple of seconds after I would have started a
             | precautionary slowing.
        
           | lostlogin wrote:
           | Your question is interesting, as weird things happen even in
           | cities, and not infrequently.
           | 
           | > I'm curious how Tesla FSD works with obstacles that aren't
           | cars or people on roads.
           | 
           | This video would appear to show it the Tesla plowing into a
           | lit up, stationary car. It looks to be dark, but that's
           | abysmal.
        
         | cmsj wrote:
         | You make a very good point. I've seen videos from Tesla's AI
         | days where they show debug bounding boxes around identified
         | objects, and the boxes always seem to disappear when objects
         | are occluded. Perhaps that's just a visualisation choice, but
         | I'm taking the precautionary approach of assuming it means that
         | the car has no object permanence because it's not considering a
         | wide enough time window.
        
         | t0mas88 wrote:
         | Slowly moving is much easier to a lot of systems than
         | stationary. An easy way to distinguish a car from the guard
         | rails or other fixed objects is to look at movement, most radar
         | systems do this.
        
           | g_p wrote:
           | Very true, but I guess from a probabilities perspective,
           | you're highly likely to encounter a stationary car in the
           | driving lane (i.e. a badly parked car). I can't think of a
           | time I've driven and not encountered this, and it's easy to
           | react in advance before it was even a priority (see parked
           | cars ahead, move out a lane, no inconvenience experienced...)
           | 
           | I wonder how it would cope with other items that don't
           | "belong" in the roadway sitting stationary - skips, bins,
           | shipping containers, large piles of bricks or rubble etc.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-23 23:02 UTC)