
Tesla autopilot stops a collision [video] - MattBearman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X-5fKzmy38
======
pivo
Once self driving cars reach a certain penetration level I wonder how long
it'll take the remaining human drivers to start taking advantage of that fact
by assuming most cars will automatically stop for them when they try stupid
maneuvers like this one.

I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross streets
in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for example,
when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is moving slowly.
Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when they don't have to
worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and crowded, will pedestrians
just move to the streets?

Based on our geography, drivers and pedestrians I fully expect my city to
pioneer the field of taking advantage of self driving car's automated accident
avoidance systems.

~~~
warfangle
> I commute on foot in Boston and I regularly witness pedestrians cross
> streets in front of traffic when they know they can get away with it, for
> example, when they're part of a crowd of pedestrians or the traffic is
> moving slowly. Every time I see that I wonder how much worse it'll be when
> they don't have to worry about being hit. Our sidewalks are narrow and
> crowded, will pedestrians just move to the streets?

Once upon a time, streets were for people. And then the automotive industry
coined the term jaywalking...

~~~
hugh4
Once upon a time I never heard this silly idea that the idea that you
shouldn't blunder out into the street is a conspiracy by automakers. Then it
was an article on HN and now I hear it all the time.

Separating pedestrians from vehicles just makes sense.

Streets before 1900 still had sections for horses and sections for people. And
you didn't need to tell people not to stroll down the horsey sections, they
were covered in horseshit.

~~~
mjmahone17
Really?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE)

Doesn't look like Market Street in SF did (admittedly, 1906, not before 1900.
But pretty close).

~~~
hugh4
I'm not sure what you're looking at, but there's clearly kerbs with
pedestrians and trams/horses/cars in the middle.

Skip to 1:46 and you can see it easily on the right hand side of the frame
(too much darn traffic most of the time).

------
mladenkovacevic
The thing that strikes me in that video is that the Tesla is driving really
fast considering the right lane is completely stopped.

A human driver would never be driving that fast. Taking into account
familiarity with typical human behaviour, if you're in a lane that is moving
well, you will expect at least some drivers from a slow lane to try to squeeze
their way into the faster moving lane. Not to mention watching out for facial
expressions on drivers in the opposite moving lane, hoping to take advantage
of slow traffic to make left-turns into oncoming traffic. A focused human
driver will be taking all these things into consideration when operating the
vehicle.

I can easily imagine a scenario where a car turns into Tesla's lane and the
Tesla not having enough reaction time to avoid collision.

Bottom line is, what I'm seeing in this video is a Tesla autopilot not being
smart enough to regulate its speed according to conditions on the road and
having to resort to some emergency braking maneuver to avoid a potentially
catastrophic collision.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
> A human driver would never be driving that fast.

They totally would. I see it... not infrequently. Basically any scenario where
people in the right lane are there for a reason (e.g. taking an overburdened
exit on a highway, turning right waiting for crossing pedestrians off of a
main drag, HOV traffic vs non-HOV traffic etc.) I'll see traffic going by
completely stopped traffic as fast as 60mph in the adjacent lane, and be the
odd one out going by "slowly" at 40mph or so. Which looks to be about the same
ballpark as in the video (which the description suggests was <45mph) and many
surface streets (where you're passing parked cars.)

~~~
e40
Not only would humans totally do it, I see it all the damn time. Faster than
the Tesla is going, too. It always amazes me, their faith that no one will
pull out in front of them...

~~~
btilly
According to the testimony of the driver, he was in fact focused on the right
lane exactly in case someone tried to pull out.

He had no chance to see the car pulling a U-turn from the left.

------
ctz
This not the effect of Autopilot, Tesla calls it 'Automatic Emergency
Braking'.

Most modern cars come with similar collision avoidance systems. Volvo
introduced it first(?) in 2008.

~~~
Someone1234
I think it is an over-statement to claim that "Most modern cars come with
similar collision avoidance systems."

Many have collision WARNING systems (i.e. no auto-braking), and even then only
on the highest trims or with an expensive options package ($3K+).

However collision avoidance systems do exist, and manufacturers like Subaru
have made them so inexpensive that there's little excuse to not buy it (e.g.
Subaru Legacy Premium W/Eyesight is $25-26K, similar to a mid Camry or Accord,
and those lack CAS at that price point ($30K+ Limited trim to get CWS in other
cars, let alone CAS)).

Aside from the luxury market (which Tesla is in) a lot of cars lack CAS or
make it so expensive that they may have well. Subaru is the only manufacturer
that makes it within the realm of your average joe (e.g. sub-35K).

~~~
t2015_08_25
That's the thing that kills me - or almost did last month... [ 1 ]

People are delirious about self-driving cars, but even the simplest
automatable task of _stopping when something is in front of you_ is not only
an option, but an expensive one.

If CAS is a pricey option, how much more will full driverless cost? How
prevalent will it be? How likely is it that only the top 1% will have it? How
long until it trickles down into middle-class? How much longer will it take to
trickle down than CAS?

[ 1 ] Another driver and myself were rear-ended hard in a senseless accident
that would have been avoided if "car 3" had had CAS (or was driverless or if
the driver had been paying attention, not speeding, not following too close).
My last 6 weeks have been paperwork, doctor's appointments, painkillers, ice
packs, phone calls and soon physical therapy appointments. All cutting into my
productivity and good mood.

~~~
Someone1234
Well in Subaru's case the cost of CAS has dropped by 1/4th. From a 3K
"Eyesight only" package on the top trim few years ago, to a 1.3K package on
the mid trim this year that also gives you other features (e.g. winter driving
assists, like heated mirrors, and so on).

From rumours Subaru wants to make Eyesight (CAS) standard by the 2018 model
year (mid-2017 release).

------
mirzmaster
I'm not convinced that this is an instance of autopilot "saving the day", as
the title of the driver's video would suggest.

The driver states in his video description that he was "watching stopped
traffic to my right". Think how you would react were you in full control of a
car in that instance. You have a virtually stopped lane of traffic to your
right, you see cars braking about 100 ft ahead of you. Wouldn't you start
slowing down? I would, as clearly travelling as fast as the driver is where
all surrounding traffic is slowing or stopped doesn't make sense, however the
driver doesn't appear to slow down at all, by his own admission focused on the
cars to his right. Was he legitimately distracted by cars to his right, or was
he depending on the car's situational awareness? I'm leaning towards the
latter, what I believe is an affordance offered by autopilot systems.

I think we'll start hearing and seeing many such "success" stories of close
calls involving autopilot, but I'm not sure how many of these will be
incidents of autopilot truly saving an otherwise attentive driver by reacting
faster/better than the attentive driver. It seems to me that autopilot is
going to be both cause and saviour in far too many cases.

~~~
arprocter
I've always thought drivers of automatic transmissions seem less aware of what
is happening around them, because they don't have to pay as much attention.

Since joining the 3 pedal master race, going back to an auto definitely
doesn't engage me as much as manual.

~~~
tshannon
I think regardless of the car, you can't count on humans to always be paying
attention.

~~~
arprocter
This is true.

I guess it's a trade off - the more the car does for you the less you have to
think about what you're doing, but then again I see people driving in the dark
without their lights on all the time.

------
Animats
The NHTSA is talking about requiring at least radar-controlled braking on new
cars in a few years.[1] It's been working well in high-end cars, and it's not
that expensive. It can't prevent all collisions, but it will almost totally
prevent rear-ending the car in front in traffic. Most of the major automakers
are on board with this.[2]

Earlier thinking was only to apply the brakes automatically as a collision-
mitigation strategy, so that there would still be a collision, but a less
severe one, after which the air bags would probably fire. But the technology
got better, and now it looks reasonable to go to automatic braking sooner and
prevent many collisions entirely.

This will increase freeway capacity. The biggest cause of freeway delay is
accidents, most of which are rear-end collisions.

[1]
[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/06/08/n...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/06/08/ntsb-
urges-us-mandate-advanced-braking/28702151/) [2]
[http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/11/autos/automatic-braking-
nhts...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/11/autos/automatic-braking-nhtsa-iihs/)

------
btilly
Here is what I want.

I want the car to avoid the collision, record the whole incident, and submit
it as evidence to penalize the other driver.

The penalties could take the form of a lawsuit. Or could take the form of
tagging the incident, and submitting the video where the other person's
insurance company can automatically pick it up, examine the evidence, and then
change rates.

That way we not only prevent accidents, but we start to address the minority
of reckless drivers that put all of us at risk.

~~~
jay-saint
When will insurance companies realize the risk reductions of self driving cars
and begin lowering their rates and raising the rates of manually driven cars.
I think that this will be the biggest market driver for this technology.
Eventually insurance rates will push people into self driving smart cars.

~~~
austin_y
You may well be right, but I think it's possible that as self driving cars
proliferate, insurance rates across the board may drop. It makes sense that
rates would be lower for self driving vehicles than human driven, but just as
each individual (no matter their vehicle) benefits from a lower incidence of
accidents, they might also share the lower cost.

------
jdiez17
This is where autopilot (and self-driving car technology in general) really
shines: faster-than-human reaction time. The driver didn't have enough time to
even honk, let alone stop the car.

~~~
wielebny
Maybe the driver should focus more on braking than honking?

~~~
oxplot
Actually, I've found that my first reaction in any traffic situation is to get
out of it, either by maneuvering or braking. I never seem to find time to honk
(or even think about it) and I'm puzzled as to how others reach for it the
first thing.

~~~
slayed0
I do both simultaneously. Both have saved me. There have been times where I
immediately hit the brakes and horn when I saw someone doing something stupid
(about to pull out into traffic, about to merge into me from another lane,
etc) In some of these situations, the horn causes the other person to stop
what they're doing and a collision that could not have been avoided solely by
me braking, is avoided.

------
ohitsdom
My car was totaled in a near identical situation last month. And this was
avoided with only automatic emergency braking... I long for the day when fully
self-driving cars are the norm on roadways.

------
roymurdock
What kind of Uber driver owns a Tesla? Is the guy just doing it for fun/to
meet people or is it actually feasible to make payments on a Tesla with an
Uber driver's salary?

~~~
Amorymeltzer
It's been done: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-uber-driver-picks-
you-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-uber-driver-picks-you-up-in-a-
tesla-model-s-2015-09-11)

Basic gist seems to be that the novelty factor of the Tesla helps, but making
money can still be tricky. Still, not paying for gas helps.

------
SovietDissident
Neat. Question: what happens if there's a car in back of the Tesla? Does does
the Tesla disregard him and whether or not he has time to stop as well?

Edit: Certainly the top priority is avoiding the car in front of you, and you
should slam on the brakes to do it. However, once you stop, the Tesla should
release the brakes (if there's an imminent collision from the rear) to
minimize the impact to the Tesla driver and the car slamming into the back of
him. Would be cool if the Tesla engineers added this (if feasible).

~~~
Retric
Fast breaking removes energy from the collision and if someone is not paying
attention there going to hit you anyway.

If your going to respond the the car behind you then it's much better to
simply slow down if your being tailgated. Doing anything else is counter
productive.

PS: Even a long line of tailgating cars can stop because you can only use the
space between you and the obstacle, but the car behind you get's that same
distance plus the distance between you at them. This space keeps stacking as
you go further back so by 10 cars or so it's a long slow break.

~~~
zo1
Though the "buffer" gets eaten-away with every added car that has to wait for
the one in front of them before they can "react". Assuming they don't see past
the car in front of them.

~~~
Retric
Your model suggests we should get thousands of car pileups if anyone does
heavy breaking in bumper to bumper traffic. Clearly that does not happen.

The reason is the buffer between you and the car in front of you is eaten by
the difference in your speeds. Going from 80MPH to 70 MPH takes ~0.7 seconds,
where starting to break takes ~0.2 seconds. Even if there is just 5 feet
between cars the signal propagates plenty fast.

~~~
zo1
What do you mean by difference in speeds? The assumption I made, simplifying
the thought experiment, was that the cars had a fixed-length between them, and
they were all going at the same speed.

------
SlashmanX
That turn the other car attempted is just insane

~~~
maxerickson
You sort of hope they didn't even see the Tesla.

Which is still bad, but it's not a terrible decision.

~~~
mindslight
People often let their attention be corrupted by focusing on the wrong thing.
The stopped line of cars looks pretty safe to turn through, right? I wouldn't
even be surprised if the stopped driver was waving the turning driver on to
"be nice".

Despite having set cruise control below the numeric speed limit, the Tesla is
still (almost) speeding by driving too fast for the conditions (passing a line
of stopped cars). I'm not a big fan of this reasoning, but there's
justification for it. In this situation the turning driver should have
obviously seen the oncoming car and yielded, but someone taking the same turn
in the opposite direction would never have been able to see the Tesla.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> I wouldn't even be surprised if the stopped driver was waving the turning
> driver on to "be nice".

When I got my license (12 years ago, UK) my instructor very strongly warned
against waving / signalling other drivers through for this very reason. I know
others around the same time were warned against it too and I believe it's also
part of the Highway Code over here (don't judge me, it was a while ago!).

I still do it, though - it seems rude to be deliberately unhelpful or even
obstructive even if it isn't 100% safe / legal for the other driver to go. Not
to mention the fact that I'd still expect them to use their own judgement even
if a stranger was waving them on.

~~~
thesimon
>my instructor very strongly warned against waving / signalling other drivers
through for this very reason

Over here in Germany, too.

My instructor told the the people in my class to never wave. If we were 100%
sure and really think it's necessary we should make a movement with our head.
That way we would be able to claim we had convulsions in front of a court,
greeting the judge with a similar movement :)

~~~
mindslight
Other places are different. In California specifically, I saw many people with
the obvious right of way actually _stopping_ to wave someone else on. When
that person still cannot go for whatever reason, they wave harder and make a
big production. The few times I was able to simply walk behind a car after it
passed, they invariably had some out-of-state paraphernalia on the back.

I'm surprised there aren't more rear-end accidents from such unexpected
behavior, but I guess everyone is used to the culture of hurting oneself to
show piety.

~~~
syncsynchalt
As a cyclist I see this daily, and it creates some deadly situations.

People will often stop at 4-ways before you yet insist you (the cyclist) go
first. This is annoying but only results in a little wasted time.

The more dangerous situation is traffic in a two lane road, one lane comes to
a halt thinking that you want to cross and then frantically waves you in front
of them (frantic as they're literally stopped in traffic for no reason).
Meanwhile in the other lane traffic continues at high speed, blind to your
crossing the road due to the stopped car.

It feels extremely rude but you have to ignore the waving person or try to
signal them to move on and stop wasting everyone's time.

~~~
reagency
My uncle died from this. Walked past a stopped car, got hit in the next lane.

------
simonswords82
It mentions in the video that the weather was dry. Is weather a variable that
the autopilot system takes in to account? For example, if it was raining would
the car have slowed down to a speed where it knows it can avoid obstacles
taking in to account the extra stoppage distance required?

------
thinkcontext
I wonder what the effect on the insurance market will be. That could be a huge
driver of adoption.

------
GigabyteCoin
I wonder if all of this tesla-autopilot hype might increase their chances of
being in a collision? At least initially.

I (regrettably) found myself leering over into a tesla driver's console the
other day as he drove past to see if he was using autopilot or not and started
to think of how dangerous it probably is to have everybody around you looking
at you and not the road.

I guess at the very least tesla's autopilot will have some good practice early
on.

------
shin_lao
I know I would definitely have been unable to prevent the accident. I didn't
see the car until it was on the road.

Reminds me of the couple of close ones I had either in my car on motorcycle.
On the moment you don't think, you just do but after it's a very chilly
feeling of realizing that your life was just being played over a couple of
seconds.

------
eddd
I know it's not in HN nature, but I absolutely loved the fact one of the top
comments on youtube is: "FU __YEA TECHNOLOGY! ". It actually means that people
outside tech environment appreciate course of events that is happening in the
tech industry.

------
chinathrow
Isn't the autopilot feature ment for highways only at this time?

Edit: It's the emergency break feature - not the autopilot.

------
jksmith
That just took business away from the police, court system, insurance
industry, auto body repair, ...

------
noipv4
:sarcasm: Nothing to see here just some sensors, actuators and few lines of
embedded code in action. Thousands of kids do it with Lego mindstorm every
days.

------
dschiptsov
Indian roads, especially in towns, are where all self-driving cars will fail.)

Push the horn constantly and go to opposite lane is very common strategy, for
example.

~~~
hussong
I wonder how self-driving cars would perform in such a more dynamic
environment and how long it would take to adapt the parameters.

~~~
dschiptsov
This is the basis of irony - to find the way out of Indian traffic deadlock
one has to have something more than a a* search algorithm.)

------
reagency
Title is false. This is not autopilot.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://fortune.com/2015/10/29/tesla-autopilot-uber-
crash/](http://fortune.com/2015/10/29/tesla-autopilot-uber-crash/), which
points to this.

------
pcunite
Wow, very cool.

------
pcunite
It takes two people to drive a car, you and the guy coming toward you. That is
one two many.

~~~
dangerlibrary
one too many _

------
simfoo
Watch Tesla's autopilot almost causing a head-on collision:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwxEX8qOxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwxEX8qOxA)

~~~
bryondowd
Except that's not the autopilot almost causing anything, it's the autopilot
disengaging that almost causes a collision. The autopilot is disengaging
because this is, in fact, not a completely autonomous vehicle, and the
autopilot feature is mean to be used on a highway, which that road is not, and
similarly to cruise control with the human remaining alert and ready to take
over, which the guy recording obviously was not.

So, good evidence that we can't go halfway with these things, and need to take
humans out of the equation.

~~~
Too
This is why all other car brands with this feature automatically disengages a
few seconds after you let go of the steering wheel. And no - this does _not_
make the whole feature useless, it's both a great convenience and works as an
extra safety net to keep you on the center of the road if you put your focus
on adjusting the aircon temperature for a second. The disengage in the video
also comes very suddenly, the steering wheel starts steering very quickly to
the left before there is even any warning sound.

Tesla should recall this feature as is, first of all calling it "auto pilot"
invites people to trust it too much, plus not enforcing the by law required
hand on the wheel is just asking for abuse. People are stupid and the scenario
on the video could have killed both the negligent driver of the tesla and the
innocent driver in the other vehicle.

~~~
bryondowd
You make good points. Although, disengaging when you release the wheel sounds
like it could do as much harm as good. If anything, I'd rather it discourage
this behavior using a nag alarm, possibly followed by automatically
slowing/stopping the vehicle somewhat safely. As you say, people are stupid,
and I can see some idiot trying to grab a beer out of a cooler in the back
seat within the grace period (or deal with a dropped cell phone, pebble in a
shoe, spider on the window, etc) and ending up careening off the road or into
oncoming traffic.

I agree that this feature isn't useless. I'd love to have it, myself. As you
say, it does need work to idiot-proof it, and possibly a re-branding.

But still, I would much much rather see full autonomy, as soon as possible.
Wouldn't want to see us stay bogged down in the halfway stage. And I'm a
little concerned that the first fatal accident caused by inappropriate use of
driver assistance systems like this will unrightfully poison minds against
fully autonomous systems, and take us a huge step back.

