
There's no clear evidence Autopilot saves lives - Judgmentality
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/05/sorry-elon-musk-theres-no-clear-evidence-autopilot-saves-lives/
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feedmeseymour
Something that works really well but is pretty uncommon:

My 2016 Honda Accord coupe has a wide-angle camera on right mirror whose feed
displays in a center display on when I turn the right blinker on (or manually
turn the camera on).

Rather than actively do anything (like stear for me) or abstract anything
(like warn me when there is a vehicle in my blindspot), it just gives me a
plain view of the road to the right of me extending back hundreds of feet,
with only the small augmentation of 2 added virtual lines on the road, one at
a single car length back and the other at two car lengths back, to help me
guage distance.

Simple features like this, which increases situational awareness without
abstracting important dicisions away from the driver, are terrific and,
despite only having anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness, I would bet my
last dollar that improvements like this reduce accidents drastically. I don’t
cut anybody off anymore ever, not that I ever did it intentionally in the
past, but I am always extremely confident now in knowing whether or not I’m
going to be pulling into a lane that has a speeding car approaching from
behind or whether a car is in my blind spot, or somebody is about to change
into the lane next to me from two lanes over, etc.

Unfortunately, the market seems to be rewarding features that attempt to
replace, rather than augment, situational awareness.

~~~
acranox
I guess that's good, but I've always found properly positioned mirrors, and
turning my head to give me a good ability to assess if there is anything that
I need to be aware of when changing lanes. It's a little unclear what value
add the camera gives you. Blind spots can be very small if the mirrors are
well adjusted, and then turning your head allows you to fill in the blind
spot.

~~~
OrwellianChild
You answer your own question here, but since you might not realize you did...
You said:

"Blind spots can be very small _if the mirrors are well adjusted_ , and then
_turning your head_ allows you to fill in the blind spot."

Nevermind what a driver _should_ do, features like Honda's system can save the
lives of people who do not use best-practice driving techniques. _This
describes most people._

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ebikelaw
Watch the last two minutes of this test from Edmunds and tell me why Tesla is
even allowed to sell this junk.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeK0F-D3gg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeK0F-D3gg)

~~~
djsumdog
I've heard that lane assist and blind spot sensor features could make things
worse because people will start to pay less attention to the road.

This video is pretty frightening and seems like it could be closely related to
the most recent Tesla crash into the exit barrier.

The biggest problem is Tesla marketing this shit as "auto-pilot" where as
Honda and others tell you what it is: lane assistance. It's obviously far from
perfect and I really don't think anyone should rely on it at all.

The article separates out auto-breaking and adaptive cruise control and I'm
glad it does. Those are present on a lot of other vehicles and it makes sense
that those have prevented accidents. Side/blind-spot cameras connected to turn
signals are also incredibly helpful.

Going back to actual self-driving tech, I think this helps prove it's a long
way away. I'd say at least 10+ more years of prototypes and I'm honestly sick
of tax credits going into it. States should work on fixing our god damn public
transport infrastructure first. It will cost less, transport orders of
magnitudes of more people and self driving trains are real tech that exists
now, verses some sci-fi fiction that may or may not be viable in a decade.

~~~
ebikelaw
I don't think this proves anything about the state of self-driving tech
generally. It just proves that Tesla doesn't have any, and that camera vision
alone can't do much. Waymo's car doesn't drive like this.

------
WhompingWindows
If Tesla's autopilot is clearly 3 times better, put out the data. I know me
and many other data scientists would be happy to analyze the data and see how
Tesla autopilot is doing. Surely if Tesla's data proves out their point, why
not release it?

In general, I think autopilot is a controversy magnet. From its name to its
seemingly speedy initial rollout, to the highly publicized Harry Potter death,
to the recent crash. Not to mention, anything to do with Musk and his
futuristic ideas gets huge play in the press, though the actual reality is the
features are quite slowly rolling out and are fairly underwhelming given the
hype.

Also, the hype about this being self-driving: this is basically only a highway
assist system, there are numerous challenges around the ~30 MPH,
suburban/urban driving challenge to overcome. At that speed range in
particular, I think lidar could be useful to Tesla, since it'd provide even
further data in a variety of conditions, thus redundancy and more potential
for completely safe driving in this most tricky and unsafe speed range where
one must interact with pedestrians, bikes, and various things entering the
roadway.

~~~
Maybestring
>to the highly publicized Harry Potter death

I must be living under a rock. What happened? Did Dumbledore die in a Tesla?

~~~
fouc
> [2016] Tesla owner killed in crash was watching 'Harry Potter' while using
> car's autopilot

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forapurpose
> "They should be writing a story about how autonomous cars are really safe,"
> Musk said in his Wednesday earnings call. "But that's not a story that
> people want to click on. They write inflammatory headlines that are
> fundamentally misleading to readers. It's really outrageous."

I'm so very tired of the attack-the-messenger (i.e., attack-the-media)
strategy. Musk provides no support for his claim that autopilots are safer,
but he does try to change the subject from autopilots to the reporters. What a
cheap strategy, even if trendy, for such a smart person.

IME, usually the reporters turn out to have raised important questions, and
perhaps the more the subjects of the report complain, the closer to home the
news report has struck. (I'm excepting editorials, columns, blogs, etc. - I
mean real journalism in serious publications.)

------
sorenjan
I don't understand why Tesla bet on Autopilot. They're a small car company
that's just getting started, why not concentrate on selling electric cars?
That in itself is unique enough, the Autopilot feature is mostly a gimmick
which adds complexity and liability. Even if they think self driving cars are
the future they could wait until it can be bought from suppliers, or at least
develop it in house without releasing it to the public until it's done.

To a lesser extent I think the same about Falcon wing doors on the model X,
although that isn't a safety issue and they seem to work ok now. But the car
would have been done sooner and cheaper if they had released it with regular
doors, and I doubt the customers would have minded.

~~~
forapurpose
> the car would have been done sooner and cheaper if they had released it with
> regular doors, and I doubt the customers would have minded

IME, and speaking very generally, when businesses take the approach that
'customers won't mind', their products revert to the mean, to commodities.

If you want to have a special brand, to charge a premium, you need to thrill
customers, not do things in a way that the customers 'won't mind'. Consider
Apple and their 'obsessive' focus on small details. Consider the Beatles -
they didn't say, 'lets just do it the easy way; our listeners won't mind'.

Also, I think customers do notice these things, even if unconsciously. It
applies to any craftsmanship. Most people can distinguish a cheap men's suit
from an expensive one, even if they can't consciously name many reasons. The
cheap suit is made to the standard of customers 'not minding'; it's a
commodity and nobody cares about the brand.

~~~
sorenjan
I get that special features can be important to stand out from the crowd, but
my point is that Tesla is the only available well designed electric car at the
moment, have been for years, and will be for a while longer. That's why people
buy them, not because of new kinds of doors or overhyped Autopilot. You could
call the interior screen a bit of a gimmick too, but I think it's mainly a way
to save on interior design cost, and then made out to be a futuristic feature.

I think it's more of an ego thing, they want to show that they're more high
tech than the old "dinosaurs" that still use fossil fuel and requires you to
drive your own car. Focusing on the car part and less on gizmos in the start
might have been better.

------
lsh123
I think that Tesla (Musk) are putting a lot of marketing into Autopilot. Other
automakers have comparable technologies but they are not marketing them as
aggressively and definitely not position them as an autonomous driving
platform as Tesla does.

If we just look at the set of technologies (ACC, line assist, emergency
braking, etc.), it is actually quite impressive how far we jumped in only a
few years. However, it is also clear that true autonomous driving is
definitely not available in consumer cars today (I don't count Waymo and a
couple other companies as consumer car company). We are closer to it today
than we were even 5 years ago. But not there yet.

Disclaimer: I mentioned it on HN before that I had an overnight test-drive of
Tesla X and I didn't like the autopilot at all (among other things). I do like
the set of similar technologies (adaptive cruise control, keep lane assist,
etc.) in my Q7.

------
xutopia
They should renamed it to "Super Cruise"

~~~
ktta
That's what Cadillac calls it

[http://www.cadillac.com/world-of-
cadillac/innovation/super-c...](http://www.cadillac.com/world-of-
cadillac/innovation/super-cruise)

~~~
djsumdog
Huh. I still don't like that it doesn't require hands on the wheel (I fell
like a creative person could trick the eye tracking). But unlike the Tesla, it
does have LIDAR.

~~~
amclennon
> a creative person could trick the eye tracking

People have already started to bypass hand requirements by placing a weight on
the steering wheel . At a certain point, you can't really blame the
manufacturer when the driver is actively trying to defeat safety features put
in place for their own good.

~~~
tptacek
Sure you can, because those features aren't just there for the driver's own
good: they protect _all the other people on the road_.

~~~
ktta
Don't forget, a big part is absolving the car manufacturer of liability.

------
msla
Well, we're going to need _something_ as the Boomers continue to age,
eventually aging out of being able to drive themselves _en masse_ but being...
let's say _disinclined_ to give up their car keys and rely on someone else to
drive them around.

Meeting them halfway with self-driving cars is going to save a lot of lives,
compared to having octogenarians with horrible reaction times and the idea
that having their own car makes them an adult filling the roads.

~~~
djsumdog
We could do what every other country does and build a really good public
transport infrastructure so they can take trains and buses everywhere. That
will also greatly reduce drunk driving and help people who are very poor whose
lives can literally fall apart if something on their car breaks and they can't
afford to fix it right away (and then can't get to work, and then lose their
job -- or they fix it and forego insurance, and then get in a wreck and then
own more money and legal fees).

Cars should be an optional luxury, unless you intentionally chose to live in a
suburban area.

~~~
msla
You're ignoring the massive rural areas of the country, which are neither
urban nor suburban and will never be served by a mass-transit system.

~~~
djsumdog
Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a
principal way of getting to big city airports (although more expensive than a
drive, AmTrak is way cheaper than using a rural airport to connect to a
flight).

But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's
fine. But in cities, are transport is shit in the US.

Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of
Scottland. It could easily utilize a decent intercity rail system. The US use
to have more passenger track at one time than Western Europe has today!

We had rail once. It went away and we spread out, but if we rebuild it, people
will start living closer to it and everyone can benefit.

I think once the US hits a really hard economic collapse (not that piddly one
in 2008 the banks just used to buy other banks) is the only time when US
politicians will be forced to fix infrastructure (because the poor literally
won't be able to go to work, and politicians really only care about the poor
once they're no longer generating taxable revenue they can feed to their
supporters). Once that happens you will see things change very fast, but
things do have to get considerably worse before politicians invest in people.

~~~
msla
> Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a
> principal way of getting to big city airports

This alone tells me you've never lived in a rural area in the US _or_ relied
on Amtrak.

> But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's
> fine.

It proves my point, to the extent that people who live in rural areas (by
choice or not) need individual vehicles, and that given that the number of
people who are too old to drive will be increasing in the medium term, we'll
need something to provide people who are too old to drive with individual
vehicles.

> Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of
> Scottland.

I'm sure it does. Now shift your gaze westwards, to North Dakota, Wyoming,
eastern Montana, and, really, most of the rest of what used to be called the
Great American Desert and is now referred to as the high plains or, more
simply, flyover country.

You're doing something I see software developers do for their programs: Take a
hard problem, solve the easy part of it, and consider their job done because
they don't/won't/flat-out refuse to see the really hard bits their "solution"
leaves unsolved. It's like their vision... slides over the hard parts, their
minds automatically move away, as if you were trying to make two bar magnets
touch at the wrong ends.

~~~
djsumdog
> This alone tells me you've never lived in a rural area in the US or relied
> on Amtrak.

ad hominem

You know absolutely nothing about me. I have lived in rural areas. I've never
relied on Amtrak, but I've used it quite a bit. Most of what I was saying
comes from facts out of people like Wenover Productions:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ)

This video doesn't go into the rural -> plane connection; can't find that one
at the moment. But he has another video on it. But yes, people do use Amtrak
for connecting to major airports from rural areas.

> I'm sure it does. Now shift your gaze westwards, to North Dakota, Wyoming,
> eastern Montana ....

I was not addressing any of those areas. At all. You built some argument I
wasn't making. I never said trains would be good for those regions. I think if
we did build good rails, those areas would get some service eventually.

Australia has a similar situation (a region I have lived in btw). They only
over 30M ~ 40M people. I have taken trains intercity and they are very
touristy and not meant for general transport. But each capital city: Adelaide,
Perth, Melbourne, Sydney ... they have train systems that would make any US
capital be ashamed of itself. The only capitals without any rail are Hobart,
ACT and Darwin.

Australia has the infrastructure to accommodate high-speed intercity if they
ever got around to implementing it. The United States does not and it has a
much higher population density and much larger cities.

American cities, CITIES (which I've been saying a lot) need real
transportation. If we built that, the rest would start to naturally follow
into place. We'd see rural rail as a byproduct. We use to have it in the US
and it's gone now thanks to GM/Ford/big auto buying rail and bus lines and
then killing them.

I'm looking back over my comment just to make sure I'm talking about cities. I
really feel like your anti-rail stance goes to the hart of the problem.
American hate rail and public transport for some fucked up nonsensical reason
and it doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I lived without a car for five years in three different countries and I simply
think American cities shouldn't require cars to be livable. I don't think
that's unreasonable.

~~~
msla
I'm talking about the whole country, not just the cities. Why are you only
talking about the cities?

What I'm really talking about is _all old Americans, all across the country._
I'm not focusing on any subset.

> American hate rail and public transport for some fucked up nonsensical
> reason

Nonsense. This is simply wrong, as talking to an American would tell you.

------
ghostbrainalpha
This argument seems so pedantic to me.

Human driving has basically capped out at its potential to improve. It may
even be starting to get worse...

Automated driving, has barely begun and even if it is less safe today, it will
clearly be much safer than human driving soon. And will only continue to get
safer and safer as the technology improves.

Do you we need to be so micro-focused as to have an exact day/model/release
where autopilot is safer than human drivers?

I for one have been hit by a drunk driver. My wife was in an accident where
the other driver was ACTIVELY playing candy crush. We can all see that
automated driving will make the roads a safer, better place even if that takes
20 years.

~~~
binarybits
That's the point: I'm pretty sure that somebody will create automated driving
technology that's better than humans within the next decade or so. But it
won't necessarily be Tesla. If I had to guess I'd say Waymo is likely to get
there first. And as I say in the piece, there's good reason to think that
Tesla's incremental approach—start with ADAS, evolve into full self-
driving—may be an evolutionary dead end because humans are really bad at
supervising a driving technology that works 99.99 percent of the time but gets
in a fatal crash the other 0.01 percent.

~~~
Judgmentality
> And as I say in the piece

Are you the author of the article?

~~~
binarybits
Yes.

