[HN Gopher] Why didn't auto-braking stop these crashes?
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Why didn't auto-braking stop these crashes?
Author : heavyset_go
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-10-07 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| gleenn wrote:
| Trying not to be a Tesl fanboy, but they have a nice graph
| showing the number of auto pilot complaints but fail to mention
| if they normalized for the number of cars on the road (with
| autopilot) of that brand. Maybe there are a ton of Tesla
| complaints because they have way more cars on the road? What's
| the percentage? I guess we'll never know. Not great reporting.
| queuep wrote:
| Not sure about the US but I can't believe there's more Tesla's
| than Audi's on the road in the U.S?
|
| Edit: oh there is, that's quite cool honestly.
| https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2021-us-vehicle-sales-figures-...
| ahahahahah wrote:
| Are you somehow under the impression that everyone is driving
| at most a one year old car?
| lukyanovic wrote:
| As far as I know all new model luxury cars like Audi and
| Mercedes come with automatic braking for frontal impacts. So
| considering the number of Mercedes sold in the last few years,
| I think it's safe to say there are more of them than Teslas.
| nradov wrote:
| Automatic braking has been a common feature even in non-
| luxury vehicles since at least 2018.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, once the Toyota Corolla has something, you can pretty
| much assume it's just standard now.
| Someone wrote:
| FTA: "The rate of complaints about Tesla, relative to the
| number of its cars sold in the U.S. in 2020, was more than
| three times that of the other automakers."
|
| Still a bad comparison, but I would think that the number
| relative to the number of cars in use of each brand wouldn't be
| better for Tesla.
|
| The real question would be how this would be relative to the
| number of miles driven (which, I guess, is about as fair as we
| could get)
| [deleted]
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| The Tesla NTHSA complaints are kind of a mess and why we
| can't have nice things (data).
|
| Many are valid and from justifiably disgruntled owners, and I
| could see how Tesla would have the most driver assistance
| related complaints, but there are subset that are suspect
| and/or cranky.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2020/TESLA/MODEL%2525203/4%252.
| ..
|
| Several begin with "The contact ", which I guess is someone
| filing a complaint based on second hand info?
|
| There's also Keef, who is still filing complaints based off
| of insurance auction listings and has now started filing
| complaints based on FSD Beta videos.
|
| THIS IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE BETA RELEASE AUTOPILOT. A
| RANDOM MODEL 3 VIN HAS BEEN USED TO BE ABLE TO FILE A
| COMPLAINT. THIS COMPLAINT APPLIES TO ALL MODELS OF TESLA.
| HERE IS A VIDEO OF A PROUD BETA TESTER.
| HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=PQ-RGY1V8UG THIS OWNER HAS A
| MISPLACED TRUST IN THE SAFETY OF THE AUTOPILOT. HE IS USING
| IT IN HIGH RAFFIC AREAS WITH PEDESTRIANS AND CYCLISTS HE IS
| ALSO USING IT AT EXCESSIVE SPEED ON NARROW ROADS ONLY INCHES
| AWAY FROM ONCOMING TRAFFIC. RATHER THAN HAVING HIS HANDS
| HOLDING THE WHEEL IN THE CORRECT WAY HE ONLY HAS HIS FINGERS
| TOUCHING THE WHEEL WITH THE PALMS FACING THE WRONG WAY. IF
| ANYTHING GOES WRONG HE WILL NOT BE ABLE GRAB THE WHEEL
| PROPERLY IN TIME TO PREVENT A COLLISION. FINGERTIP DRIVING IS
| UNSAFE AT THE BEST OF TIMES. IF AUTOPILOT HAS A GLITCH OR A
| SPASM THE DRIVER WOULD BE UNABLE TO QUICKLY REGAIN CONTROL.
| DESPITE THE CLAIMS OF ELON MUSK SUCH DRIVER BEHAVIOR DOES NOT
| LEAD TO THE BEAT RELEASE AUTOPILOT BEING REVOKED. THIS
| EXPERIMENT IS DEADLY. PLEASE GET IT STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.
| THANK YOU KEEF.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Once again an article with NO context.
|
| TACC and ebreaking are in MANY auto's. We get no data on the
| number of accidents and fatalities for cars
|
| 1) Driven by humans
|
| 2) Other systems of ebreaking
|
| For all we know, despite these 17 accidents, teslas may be far
| safer.
|
| For example, a quick google shows that there are 1.7 MILLION rear
| end collisions EACH YEAR in the US.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2015/06/0...
|
| Note that the 17 items discussed here with Tesla are over
| multiple years.
|
| So in the time teslas had these 17 crashes there were perhaps 3M+
| rear end collisions alone?
|
| The sad reality is that the clickbait headlines sell, and any
| effort to actually look at data does not (on the web and more
| recently on HN). Folks just do not want to engage with an idea or
| with numbers, but the outrage (or downvote) button is usually
| close by :)
| lacker wrote:
| Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems like
| something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to the
| "clearly better than human" level.
|
| This is purely anecdotal, but I find the automatic braking system
| on my Mazda CX-9 to be fairly annoying. Once every couple months
| or so, it has a false alarm and brakes while blaring out alerts,
| in an urban environment where I don't observe anything out of the
| ordinary at all. And it's never activated in a situation where I
| found it to be helpful.
|
| That said, it's possible that an annoyance every two months is
| just the cost of a system that really would help me if I got into
| bigger trouble. It's hard to say from purely my own anecdotes.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Just as another point of reference, my (2021) Mazda 3 AEB has
| only ever activated when another driver stopped short in front
| of me. I believe it's configurable in settings, though your
| experience may be worse due to environmental concerns (bugs,
| rain, dust), different model year, or simply being a bigger
| vehicle (with a different bumper height or more mass requiring
| more time to stop).
| ajross wrote:
| > Automatic braking doesn't get much attention, but it seems
| like something that could be incredibly valuable if it got to
| the "clearly better than human" level.
|
| It's important to point out here that a handful of back of the
| envelope analyses are out there that show that Tesla's
| autopilot is _already_ "clearly better than human" level at
| avoiding emergency vehicles.
|
| These are very common accidents. Emergency vehicles in travel
| lanes get hit all the time, crews are carefully trained to
| avoid that situation if at all practical, and taught how to
| reduce personal risk when that's not possible.
|
| In fact (and I don't have a link handy) if you extrapolate out
| from a few different data sources it looks like Tesla's on AP
| get in these crashes about half as much as vehicles in the
| general fleet.
|
| Now, that doesn't mean that these 13 events don't constitute a
| cluster worth investigating. And it doesn't mean that there
| can't be a bug worth fixing. It doesn't even mean that the
| media shouldn't write about it.
|
| It does mean that we should be very careful with pronouncements
| about safety from a sample set of this size, though.
| emn13 wrote:
| What's the source for this claim? Are you accounting for the
| fact different classes of vehicle have differing accident
| statistics (e.g. comparing teslas to similarly old and
| expensive alternatives), and that autopilot's miles are not a
| random sample of all driven miles?
| lacker wrote:
| I think the problem here is calling something "better than
| human" because it manages to avoid some accidents. If a car
| avoids one accident for every 100,000 times it intervenes,
| that isn't really a good thing. It just means that drivers
| start to ignore flashing lights and warnings because they are
| always meaningless. Maybe it even causes some accidents by
| distracting the driver, and they don't get categorized as
| "caused by the automatic braking system" because nothing
| really tracks that.
|
| Every time I start my car, about 15 seconds into the drive a
| popup appears on the screen, saying something like "Warning:
| automated driving assistance system can cause distraction.
| Select OK to dismiss". Thanks, you have reduced your own
| liability in exchange for further distracting the driver.
| syrrim wrote:
| >In fact (and I don't have a link handy) if you extrapolate
| out from a few different data sources it looks like Tesla's
| on AP get in these crashes about half as much as vehicles in
| the general fleet.
|
| Why use that as a comparison? The obvious confounder would be
| that people would disable autopilot in poor conditions,
| making such crashes a priori more likely. The relevant
| comparison would be Teslas (with and without AP) against a
| similar class of cars, maybe BMWs.
| ajross wrote:
| That's nitpicking. There's an initial contention: "Teslas
| hit emergency vehicles frequently", and a simple
| refutation: "No, they don't, here are some numbers[1]".
| Your response only makes it "not impossible" that the
| initial contention is correct, but you have to show numbers
| to prove that.
|
| All we have is a cluster of 13 accidents over 3-4 years,
| and there are something like thousands of such accidents in
| the US every year. That's not proof that this is noise and
| not signal, but the obvious hypothesis is that it's
| probably noise[2]
|
| [1] Which I don't have, though I suppose I could track it
| down.
|
| [2] For the record: I believe it's probably a real bug, but
| in a product that on the whole is clearly better, so it's
| well hidden in the noise.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The one on my 2016 C-class Mercedes was so bad that it almost
| _caused_ two accidents. If not for years of pingpong... I got
| rid of it after having it checked out and declared healthy, if
| that system wasn 't broken it might as well be. Worse than
| useless. Don't get a MB with automatic emergency braking unless
| you want to covertly commit suicide.
| dazbradbury wrote:
| "The one on my 2016 C-class Mercedes was so bad that it
| almost caused two accidents. If not for years of pingpong..."
|
| Care to elaborate? Both how it nearly caused an accident, and
| how you avoided one seem interesting!
| brokenmachine wrote:
| What happens when the auto braking engages? Does it just slam
| the brakes on and stop dead? Wouldn't that be a big risk of you
| getting rear ended by someone behind you (especially if it's a
| false alarm)?
| tidbits wrote:
| Toyota's safety sense system has saved me from minor accidents
| a few times. It has never auto applied the brakes, but the
| alarms and brake assist have been really helpful on freeways
| during abrupt stops. My girlfriend, on the other hand, hates
| her Honda's auto braking system, as it triggers too easily,
| even on the lowest setting. I've seen it regularly trigger when
| pulling up to sensor controlled gates.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I have a Toyota and my auto-braking alarm thing has only gone
| off a few times... all very clearly my fault for losing
| attention for a brief moment. To be honest, I have no idea if
| it's gone into applying-brake-mode. I'm guessing yes, but...
| it hasn't been often nor can I even remember really what
| happened. I do know that it prevented crashes, whether it
| applied the brakes or alerted/scared me into doing so.
|
| There has never, ever been a false alarm though. Not even
| once.
| seoaeu wrote:
| How would you define "clearly better than human" for a driver
| assist technology? Like if 'driver + automatic breaking' gets
| into fewer crashes than 'driver', is that a success? What if
| the assist is constantly doing phantom breaking, but never hits
| anything?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I'd much prefer a system that stopped my vehicle as smoothly as
| possible to one that I would rely on to autonomously brake for
| me.
|
| I suspect that if all cars were fully autonomous, that we would
| have fewer collisions and fewer high-speed collisions simply
| because we wouldn't need to use traffic signals to push traffic
| along (and we'd have fewer traffic-stopping accidents).
|
| A few months back, an older gentleman collided with my car on US
| 75 in Dallas while I was at a full stop. Would automatic braking
| have slowed him? Probably. Would he have collided with me at all
| if his car were driving autonomously? Probably not. He was
| distracted and took his eyes off the road, never seeing that the
| traffic ahead of him was at a complete stop. It took nearly 10
| minutes for us to get off the road for a fender bender because
| nobody would allow us to get over. Traffic simply flowed around
| us despite the issue.
|
| I suspect that within the next 50 years, driving at all in most
| major cities will require a special license, and it will become a
| civil rights issue for both those who don't know how to behave
| like adults but want the freedom to move about anyway, and those
| who simply do not want to be tracked by any entity.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Somebody said it is a hard problem to solve.
| peatmoss wrote:
| OT: I wonder why sites like the LA Times don't offer a redirect
| to Apple News when the content is hosted there. I do subscribe to
| Apple News+ along with additional iCloud storage, Music, etc. I
| assume Apple gives LA Times something when I read the article vs.
| when I click away because I'm not willing to subscribe to more
| news sites than I already am.
|
| Apple News link for those in a similar boat:
| https://apple.news/A9PXJ2JwHRouQSYO9lQh9tA
| tzs wrote:
| It is not as convenient as a redirect, but on iPhone and iPad
| you can use the "Share" function when on the page in Safari and
| select "News" as what to share with and that usually works.
|
| I don't know how to do that on a Mac.
| gorkish wrote:
| My hypothesis on this is that all automaker's automatic emergency
| braking systems likely function at approximately the same level,
| but Tesla drivers are disproportionately likely to rely on it due
| to the use of Autopilot being so incredibly common.
| Statistically, drivers of other brands that include similar
| lanekeeping abilities are far less likely to use them compared to
| Tesla owners' use of Autopilot.
|
| Should it be happening? Well the NHTSA doesn't seem to mind it.
| Maybe we should be asking them why their automatic emergency
| braking tests are so stupidly out of agreement with what drivers
| expect and automakers promise that the systems are able to do.
| The freight industry has a high speed test and their systems are
| top notch.
| Zhenya wrote:
| Sorry, your hypothesis makes no sense. There are WAY more cars
| sold by other brands, so more Tesla incidents is even more
| galling. Using autopilot should only HELP the auto braking not
| make it worse.
|
| Other systems use radar and camera. They are thoroughly tested
| by the OEMs and suppliers to strict tolerances.
|
| Meanwhile Tesla is shipping beta software and having people
| test it. Including removing radar because of "phantom" braking.
| sharkmerry wrote:
| OPs point was tesla drivers are more likely to use the
| features. More cars being sold by other brands, could refute
| that but it doesnt necessarily. Its about the rate of usage
| of the software X total sales X avg. miles driven
| sparker72678 wrote:
| This article addresses automatic emergency breaking, which is
| ON by default in the vehicles discussed.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if this is their radar whitelist blinding
| it to sensor input.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Musk is very adamant that cameras are enough even going so far
| as to stop including radar in Model 3 and Y units shipped to
| the US. So even if it were the radar being confused according
| to the Tesla line it shouldn't matter the cameras should be
| enough.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/25/tesla-is-no-longer-using-r...
| plebianRube wrote:
| Quite possible. They've physically removed the radar hardware
| on the newer models.
| andrewtbham wrote:
| > Tesla does not have a media relations department and Chief
| Executive Elon Musk did not respond to attempts to seek comment.
|
| Tesla has ongoing response to this.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Because Tesla effectively doesn't have AEB while AutoPilot is
| enabled.
|
| In a Tesla AEB should be an entirely self-contained ("dumber")
| system. Its only job should be to look for any ground-level
| object ahead and brake. It should do this using simpler but more
| reliable ("dumber") techniques like forward bumper-level radar or
| camera parallax, not NN/deep learning/object recognition/AI.
|
| To use an analogy, AEB should be like two-factor authentication.
| If your "second" factor is the same as your first, then it isn't
| two-factor. In this case AutoPilot is the "first" and "second"
| factor i.e. it is AEB and in control of the vehicle.
|
| So Tesla's vehicles absolutely have AEB, when AutoPilot is
| disabled, because it is offering a "second opinion" relative to
| the driver. So IIHS's ratings are correct in that instance. But
| as soon as AutoPilot is enabled it is no longer a "second"
| opinion and therefore may as well not exist.
|
| Unfortunately Tesla aren't alone in making this mistake. We're
| seeing other vehicle manufacturers stepping into the vehicle
| automation space double-dipping their auto-drive systems into
| AEB. It is a bad practice regardless of who, AEB should be its
| own system with its own simpler/dumber logic that protects people
| from auto-drive mistakes, not compounds them.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Does Tesla even have a radar?
| beamatronic wrote:
| Yes, at least some do, and they recently disabled it in a
| recent software update
| namrog84 wrote:
| I dont think so. I thought their whole gimmick or goal was to
| drive entirely by cameras and nothing else. Because humans
| only have eyes.
|
| Though just speculation and no source.
| taylortbb wrote:
| Due to the current chip shortage they've moved to a vision-
| only system, as they had difficulty getting radar units in
| the quantity required. Until recently however, all Teslas
| had radar since ~2014. The high profile crashes are
| mostly/all radar-enabled vehicles.
|
| The thing about automotive radar, and this isn't just
| Tesla, is that stationary objects are normally excluded.
| Otherwise the system brakes for things like overhead signs
| that have high radar reflectivity. Stopped cars, concrete
| barriers, etc are all basically invisible to most
| automotive radar.
|
| Tesla also isn't the only manufacturer taking the vision
| approach. Subaru, for example, was doing vision-only
| emergency braking in 2016.
| analog31 wrote:
| I read in another HN thread, that some Tesla owners have
| experienced "ghost braking," and have adopted the technique of
| holding their foot just above the accelerator, in order to
| counteract it.
|
| When I read that, I made a mental note to slow down a bit if a
| Tesla gets behind me, so they will pass me. Usually that's not a
| problem, as I don't drive particularly fast.
|
| I don't know if this is an issue with other brands of cars. My
| fancy new Subaru has never ghost-braked.
| [deleted]
| dv_dt wrote:
| There are also issues with other makers more simple automatic
| emergency braking systems. But overall it seems like the systems
| are a net improvement in avoiding at least some accidents.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/10/29/iihs-au...
| comeonseriously wrote:
| After several officers where nearly injured/injured/killed
| because drivers ran into them as they were stopped on the side of
| the road, some states instituted laws that say you either slow
| down to 45 or you move over a lane.
|
| Is that built into AutoPilot and whatever it's called on other
| brands? Humans have to do it, so cars should have to as well.
| ape4 wrote:
| Every lane change is a possible collision. I wonder if that was
| taken into account.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Considering how far away flashing lights can be sensed (in
| both humans and cars), that shouldn't be a problem.
| asdff wrote:
| Can autopilot even change lanes? It seems like that would be
| impossible to code for freeways in cities in California. You
| have to muscle your way into the lane and force people to
| back down or get hit or else they aren't ever letting you in.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Except it's not. Every lane change _in semi-dense and dense
| traffic_ is a possible collision; I 'd say if you have a car
| moving in the same direction as you are, and it's closer than
| ~50 feet, then it's a non-negligible possibility, other than
| that you just have nobody to collide with during lane change
| . We're talking highway speeds, of course, not racetrack
| pugworthy wrote:
| Yes, that's why slowing down is the other action you can
| take.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| It always bugs me they trot out the Mountain View crash as an
| example where a Model X struck an unmarked and unprotected jersey
| barrier end in what visually looks like a traffic lane. Further
| that multiple human drivers had hit the divider in the same spot
| and a near fatal accident occurred literally the next day into
| the same barrier.
|
| If I put a brick wall on the freeway and paint it to look like a
| tunnel ala wil-e-coyote am I responsible for building the wall or
| is the driver responsible for hitting it?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Is this the one you are talking about?
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/30/tesla-autopilot-was-o...
|
| I'd blame a human driver for hitting it in this case.
| pmcollins wrote:
| yet another tesla hit piece from russ mitchell and the la times.
|
| is it just me or does the la times drag tesla at every
| opportunity? could it be because the owner of the la times,
| patrick soon shiong, has a company called nantenergy that seeks
| to compete with tesla? at a minimum, there's a conflict of
| interest.
|
| and, kind of a tangent, but where are the articles about the
| thousands of lives lost due to the incompatibility of trucks/suvs
| and sedans in crashes actually causing thousands of lives lost
| per year?
| carabiner wrote:
| I'm pretty neutral on Tesla/Musk, but I looked at this guy's
| (Russ Mitchell) writing history and it appears to be an
| unhealthy fixation on Tesla. His Twitter, and almost every
| article he writes, is about bashing Tesla. It's like he has
| real personal beef with Musk, a person he's probably never met.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| He's a journalist, they typically get assigned to cover
| certain topics. Not surprising that he focuses on the EV
| space, that's probably in his job description for LA times.
| pmcollins wrote:
| focusing on the ev space != relentlessly bashing one ev
| company
| asdff wrote:
| They are kind of the big cheese of the EV space and you
| could argue people relentlessly bash Tesla here too.
| Maybe there is something to these critiques of the
| company, rather than everyone and anyone just having an
| axe to grind.
| kazinator wrote:
| If a human driver hits a pulled-over police car, or any other
| stationary object that can be seen well in advance, the problem
| isn't simply lack of braking.
|
| Why would that be the talking point if an autopilot does that?
| Because we expect it not to be aware of the obstruction until
| within emergency braking distance?
| S_A_P wrote:
| Ive a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It has the front sensing collision
| detector and auto braking. It may have hit the brakes 1 time that
| I wasnt paying attention and 9,999,999 times when there was
| nothing in front of me. I disable it and thus far have avoided
| crashing. The point is that driver assist systems are only assist
| and you _have to pay attention_ when you drive. Ive said this
| here before, Autopilot is a terrible misnomer. It seems to sit
| squarely in the valley of being good enough to 'trust' but not
| good enough for real world use. If I were in charge of the world,
| it would be rebranded immediately.
| sliken wrote:
| Dunno, autopilot (at least originally) was just a stupid switch
| on a plane that would try to hold altitude and speed. It
| wouldn't try to avoid objects, couldn't take off, couldn't
| land.
|
| Very similar to Tesla's auto pilot, that can't manage your
| driveway, random surface streets, but can mostly (but not
| completely) handle highways.
| Diederich wrote:
| Good perspective.
|
| I think, as you noted, that 'autopilot' is probably fine, but
| 'full self driving' is actively misleading.
|
| Note that I use FSD for 90+% of all of my driving, and I
| think I'm safer because of it, but it has to be used with
| understanding and care. The very name 'full self driving' is
| something it might be some day, but it's nowhere close to
| that now.
| ancode wrote:
| giving new meaning to 'move fast and break things'
| choeger wrote:
| It's kind of interesting that this appears to happen with police
| cars and emergency vehicles mostly. Is there a particular way of
| parking such vehicles that makes it hard(er) for a Tesla to
| detect it?
|
| It might also indeed be about phantom braking. My relatively old
| (probably designed around 10 to 20 years ago) system gets
| confused sometimes when I pass a truck or a bus and once even
| when I passed a bicycle. It happened at least 5 times in less
| than 10,000km. So I suspect there is some merit to the Autopilot
| disabling the feature.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I wonder if the cameras or ML are thrown off by flashing
| emergency lights or emergency vehicles' livery (most cars on
| the road use just 1 paint color)
| ajross wrote:
| Yeah. I'm as big a Tesla booster as you'll find but I'm in
| the "this is probably a bug in recognition" camp. They can
| presumably fix this via properly parametrized modelling. It's
| not a rare edge case at all.
| myself248 wrote:
| I have a hunch that at some point, there'll be an
| investigation and a discovery process, and we'll learn that
| the training dataset deliberately _excluded_ emergency
| vehicles because they didn't represent "normal driving" or
| something.
|
| That's purely uninformed speculation, but I could see it
| happening like this: Early on, someone says "The totality
| of situations encountered on the road is too complex. We're
| not building a system to do everything, we're building it
| to take over during the boring parts of a drive. Only teach
| it the boring stuff." Then a few years later, someone else,
| forgetting those initial assumptions, says "Hey this thing
| has done like a billion miles of boring stuff, why wouldn't
| you trust it for more?"
| andrewia wrote:
| I think the flashing lights and appearance might degrade
| autopilot. Other cars also have issues because they use radar
| (except for some new models with camera-based systems like the
| 2022 Honda Civic) and ignore stationary targets when they see a
| moving vehicle as a more likely "target". Some systems use a
| combination of radar and camera (with camera providing low-
| speed, parked car, bike, and pedestrian detection). Then it's
| up to the quality of the algorithms and tests have shown that
| some cars are pretty poor at detection.
| mindslight wrote:
| The human visual system is amazing at normalizing across many
| orders of magnitudes (cf HDR imaging), but yet with the
| evolution of LED lights and a lack of accountability, the
| lights on police cars have gotten way too bright for even
| human drivers at night. I wouldn't be surprised if the
| ultimate cause is a complete swamping of the cameras for
| everything that isn't immediately in front of the car, and
| even the lane lines disappearing when close enough to the
| blinding lights. What _is_ a computer supposed to do when
| confronted with complete loss of visual input? A human will
| squint, slow down by 10-20mph, extrapolate the lane lines,
| and play the odds. But there is no surefire way to proceed
| safely, and thus no straightforward action to program a
| computer with.
| choeger wrote:
| Well, if the computer can recognize the situation it can
| always slow down, alert the driver, and eventually stop.
| That's the nice thing about cars: There's always a safe
| default mode. I suspect that the computer cannot recognize
| this problem reliably, though.
| mindslight wrote:
| Slowing down to under 40mph is not a safe thing to do on
| a highway and is illegal in many places. And suddenly
| slowing down is extra unsafe when there's a car right
| behind you that's also being blinded.
| myself248 wrote:
| Slowing down on a highway is required by law in many
| areas, in the presence of emergency vehicles.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| So just keep on trucking along at full speed with your
| eyes closed, you reckon.
|
| Spoken like a true Tesla engineer.
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