patrick.net

What ill-informed prejudice of mine does this confirm?

HydroCabron says

What ill-informed prejudice of mine does this confirm?

I'm not sure, yet. Am I supposed to like them or hate them? I just don't know. On the one hand, I am a very good driver. Knock on wood, I haven't had an accident in 25 years. I haven't had a ticket in 15 years. I had to drive in Ireland, which means they moved me to the other side of the car and put me on the other side of the road AND forced me to use a manual transmission... I was like a duck in water. You'd have thought I had done it all my life.

But then I think about how much I would love to read while I'm driving... If the car were self-driving, it would be so much easier to beat the kids from the front seat when they get rowdy... I think about how much I would love to believe that my soon-to-be driving-age-kids are safer because the infallible car is driving them...

I just don't know. What do you think? You are a democrat. I should simply adopt the opposite position of yours and then all will be right with the world.

Ironman says

What happens when this famous image pops up on the screen while they are traveling down the road?

Or everything freezes intermittently because the anti-virus starts running in the background?

Electric cars kill people. Go dino!

He must have made a catty remark to the Tesla's female voice, like, "Your upholstery looks fat today".

What good is autopilot if you got to watch the road.
I could just drive around with a 5 year old on my lap and do the same thing.

Driver-piloted cars are still much less safe, and this accident, while tragic, will help the programmers write better code to avoid such situations in the future.
Moral of the story: don't be an early adopter, or a Tesla test pilot.

When autopilot is activated, “the car reminds the driver to ‘Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time.’”

That's a fundamental flaw in the approach to smart cars. Human nature does not allow for people to stay alert to perform an exceedingly rare task at a moment's notice. If people use smart cars, they won't stay alert to take over. It's just naive to expect that. Either the technology has to be fully automated or it won't work in emergencies. Humans are not dependable enough and they will get distracted. Hell, they will want distractions when the s/w is driving the car. They'll be talking on their phones or using Facebook or just talking to another person in the car and not even looking at the road because they don't have to.

It's a more sophisticated version of crash avoidance tech that's on many vehicles. A 5 year old is of no help. Car crash avoidance tech can save many lives. I'm about to go buy some.

Grumpy curmudgeons will grump as the world advances by. Nothing new here.

This sure feels like drivers are beta testing the vehicles for Tesla still. Probably better than GM in some ways, but not a tech I'd trust with my life.

Does this mean the RealDoll autodriving version of the Tesla is going to be delayed? Instead of seat belts, a pair of legs reaches around and clamps you and breasts pop out of the dash?

With all that battery power, the sky's the limit!

turtledove says

I'm not sure, yet. Am I supposed to like them or hate them? I just don't know. On the one hand, I am a very good driver. Knock on wood, I haven't had an accident in 25 years. I haven't had a ticket in 15 years. I had to drive in Ireland, which means they moved me to the other side of the car and put me on the other side of the road AND forced me to use a manual transmission... I was like a duck in water.

My wife's car is a 2014 Toyota Camry, really a nice car. However when her's is having maintenance done on it she has to drive/share my old 2002 Ford Ranger (with only 220,000 miles on it - barely broke in). Hey the heater works and the A/C blows cold, pretty much everything works ... BUT compared to the Camry it's a beast. She doesn't have a problem driving it, but certainly notices that the truck very much requires an active driver, while the Toyota ... much more forgiving. Self-driving cars don't impress me maybe when I'm 90 I'll change my mind.

mmmarvel says

She doesn't have a problem driving it, but certainly notices that the truck very much requires an active driver, while the Toyota ... much more forgiving.

Driving in Ireland really enhanced my driving skills. First, with a manual, you have to be much more engaged. But also, the roads are really narrow... Parallel parking skills are a must (I laugh when I see other moms parallel parking in front of the school; I'm a rock star parallel parker, and I have Dublin to thank for that). AND there are bikers, everywhere, so you really learn to utilize side mirrors. The driving test was much harder there than here. They have a really high fail rate. They don't allow cheating by throwing the car into neutral and breaking to a stop. They expect you always to be in gear, so down-shifting is required... and you have to use your parking break at each stop (So when you come to a red light, you have to down shift to your stop, engage the parking break, and wait for the light to turn green, then release the parking break and move forward).... I miss it sometimes. Driving my automatic is boring by comparison.

turtledove says

“Neither autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor-trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied,” Tesla said.

YUP. It's shit like this that will put off this technology for at least two decades.

DieBankOfAmericaPhukkingDie says

Of course, the driver may have been getting a blow job from a slave dwarf and eating a face sandwich and smoking a cigarette while talking on a cell phone like most of the ASSHOLE!s in Floriduh.

Hey, we're not assholes. It's Florida state law that requires drivers to be getting blow jobs from a slave dwarf and talking on a cell phone while driving. Cars that are used in Florida for any more than 4 months of the year are required to have devices that disable the engine in the event that either of the aforementioned requirements are not met.

Dan8267 says

Of course, the driver may have been getting a blow job from a slave dwarf and eating a face sandwich and smoking a cigarette while talking on a cell phone like most of the ASSHOLE!s in Floriduh.

Hey, we're not assholes. It's Florida state law that requires drivers to be getting blow jobs from a slave dwarf and talking on a cell phone while driving. Cars that are used in Florida for any more than 4 months of the year are required to have devices that disable the engine in the event that either of the aforementioned requirements are not met.

It's just the fallout from 90 percent of Floridans having real estate licenses.

turtledove says

Fatal crash of Tesla Model S in autopilot mode

I don't see why it's so hard to get a technology that's been around since the 1980s to work.

www.youtube.com/embed/_WQfZYacEAw

Dan8267 says

If the software was in error, what was the error?

The software was reportedly analyzing, as best it could, a white-on-white visual image - without enough assistance from its other sensors. If the reports are accurate, then the error was in design, relying excessively on the visible spectrum and tuning out the radar information. The discrepancy between visual and radar information should have set off an alarm, pausing the movie and replacing the sound with an alert, e.g. "possible obstruction ahead - hands on wheel - caution."

There is also a deficiency in infrastructure design. Decades ago, in the era of mainframe computers and dumb terminals, people talked about building "smart roads" that could control dumb cars. Now, we have tiny portable computers, and so we see development of smart cars to navigate dumb roads. Robust safety requires redundancy, so we should be deploying better signaling and sensor technology.

For example, an ordinary adhesive "cat eye" reflector, used to mark lane separations, costs around $5 installed. (Snowplow-resistant cat eyes cost $50.) A passive UHF RFID tag costs $0.20, with a range up to 10 meters, while active RFID costs $20 for a range of 100 meters. Satellite data messengers for hikers cost around $100, plus a subscription around $100/year.

The federal Department of Transportation budget is $100 billion/year, and America has a total of around 4,000,000km of paved roads. The federal government has authority to regulate interstate commerce, and many people opt into programs like OnStar that enable private vehicles to be tracked also. With a reasonable increase to DoT, we could eventually equip every street light and traffic light with active RFID, and each lane of every paved road with passive RFID tags every 10 meters. DoT could require every interstate commercial vehicle to have active RFID and satellite data messenger service to report its position and speed, and OnStar and similarly options could be bundled with active RFID also. The result would be a smart grid where cloud data could combine the positions and speeds of all commercial vehicles and a growing share of private vehicles.

That would alleviate several current problems. For example, driving in snow is difficult for autonomous cars relying on visual data. Also, vehicles could be warned of stopped traffic ahead, or crossing traffic, as was the case in this fatal crash. Also, traffic could be better managed and routed with more data. These benefits would combine to produce safer and more efficient road transportation.

Eventually, countries will start deploying more of that equipment, and America will either lead or follow. Meanwhile, the smart cars are doing what they can with what little information they have. They will eventually do a lot better, once the infrastructure upgrades to complement the car tech.