Slashdot Mirror
NTSB Boots Tesla From Investigation Into Fatal Autopilot Crash (theverge.com)
The National Transportation Safety Board has removed Tesla from the investigation into a fatal Autopilot accident that occurred in March. The NTSB says it took the action because Tesla had released "investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by" the agency. "Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a crash, which does a disservice to the investigative process and the traveling public," the agency writes. The Verge reports: The NTSB's account contradicts Tesla's version of the story. In a statement, the automaker says it decided to remove itself from the investigation on Tuesday because of the NTSB was restricting it from sharing information before the probe ends. The company also accuses the NTSB of being duplicitous, arguing that the agency has released statements about the crash at the same time that it told Tesla not to. "It's been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they're more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety," a spokesperson for the company says. "Among other things, they repeatedly released partial bits of incomplete information to the media in violation of their own rules, at the same time that they were trying to prevent us from telling all the facts. We don't believe this is right and we will be making an official complaint to Congress." The company also said it will issue "a Freedom Of Information Act request to understand the reasoning behind their focus on the safest cars in America while they ignore the cars that are the least safe." The full letter send to Musk from the NTSB can be seen here.
The company also accuses the NTSB of being duplicitous, arguing that the agency has released statements about the crash at the same time that it told Tesla not to
That's how the NTSB operates - it releases preliminary information as it sees fits, but waits until their investigation is complete before making a final determination. It's their investigation - Tesla is only an invited guest, used as a technical resource, the same as Boeing for airplane crashes. You never hear Boeing releasing important accident details before the NTSB does.
People want to look away from the road for minutes at a time and Tesla sells drivers that ability. This is adding more to their bottom line than the fact their cars are electric. Break assist and lane wander warnings would accomplish the same safety features autopilot does, without crashing into firetrucks and lane dividers. If they actually get forced to make autopilot work that way, they will lose a ton of customers though. Not something they could survive, currently.
This is why Tesla is running scared.
You also don't see consumers purchasing Boeing airplanes...
"It's been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they're more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety," a spokesperson for the company says.
Tesla has a lot more at risk depending on what those headlines say. I'm not surprised that they wanted to be the first to put out favorable information. I'm a fan of Tesla but when I read things like this I lose respect for them.
They do it the old way
They don't release anything until a conclusion has been reached
I prefer realtime, incremental data
You also don't see consumers purchasing Boeing airplanes...
Yet hundreds of people can die in a single plane crash so I don't see what your point is. In both instances the purpose of the investigation is to find the cause and determine what can be done to prevent it from happening again, which can include recalls.
Musk tried to spin it in his favor, like he always does, but this time he got called on it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
..or a decision that the technology isn't mature enough to use on public roads yet.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I thought the headline meant they booted up the actual car from the crash to go through the computer.
Trolling is a art,
That's how the NTSB operates - it releases preliminary information as it sees fits
... and that is ok, because unlike Tesla, NTSB has no incentive to twist the facts to fit their corporate PR agenda.
I am a Tesla owner, and normally a Tesla fanboi, but they have recently been acting like jerks. One of their customers was killed. They should be focused on fixing the issues rather than shifting blame.
... safety under all possible circumstances
That is a totally unrealistic standard. SDCs just need to be safer than HDCs.
... more than hundreds will die, mark my fucking words. -hmm
Worldwide, 3500 people are killed everyday by HDCs.
They killed all the small private aircraft companies that made small planes with the active help of NTSB. Boeing liked small pesky competitors being killed off.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's not exactly open. The NTSB has to change that. If we don't demand transparency, we will always get the runaround. It's a law of nature.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Heaven forbid we actually hold drivers accountable for their actions behind the wheel. If the driver isn't paying attention when they're supposed to be, it is the driver's fault.
"The Tesla Autopilot! Keep your hands on the wheel, steer and watch the road. It does the rest!"
" SDCs just need to be safer than HDCs." No, that's ridiculous averages-law thinking. They need to AVERAGE BETTER than the BEST HUMAN. Not just compare favorably to the AVERAGE human.
AI is going to take over, so why not have high fucking standards? Are you high? There's no need to rush this. If anything, DENY BAD HUMANS LICENSES and save lives that way until the AI gets good enough.
Rushing AI security will lead to problems greater than bad human drivers, which will exist anyway also for the medium future. It's not either/or. Mandate good AI, and mandate good human drivers. Period.
Yes, we can have nice things. When they're ready, regulated, mature non-killing-machines that can't be trivially hacked for mass carnage.
So an IQ test before allowing a sale? If the problem is idiots, then they really can't fix it and not sorting the blame quickly leads to people decrying their product's safety.
Uh. A lot of people buy Boeing aircraft. Just because you can't buy one doesn't mean other peolple can't. They have a whol class of aircraft (business) meant just for that.
Once upon a time Tesla used to brag about how great their relationship was with the NTSB. That was when they were getting their "highest safety rating ever" awards. They used to claim they sent data to the NTSB before it was even asked for.
I guess those times have changed.
If Musk is correct in that the NTSB is releasing data in violation of their own rules then he has a right to bitch about it. Does anyone here know if he is correct?
At the same time I am sure that Musk/Tesla has caused the NTSB concern with their amped up PR efforts. Telsa has to respect that the NTSB can and should control the flow of information.
My guess is Musk is very sensitive to this due to the rampant bias the media has shown against Tesla at every opportunity. Sure they have fanbois but there is no question there is a significant demographic of keyboard warriors panting and slavering to get the goods on Tesla. You can see a number of them right here in this thread.
I wouldn't say it is the level of Hillary Clinton hatred but it is there. You still find people thinking Telsa's wheels are falling off all the time and fires every week. Just like you have people convinced Hillary is running a child sex slave ring. It is the nature of the beast.
AI is going to take over, so why not have high fucking standards?
Because Self Driving Vehicles are already safer than the AVERAGE human. That means the every day you delay replacing human drivers with SDCs, is a day in which somewhere between zero and 3500 extra people die that didn't have to.
I'm not sure if its basic math, or basic safety engineering you don't understand, but either way, I would personally appreciate it if you would keep your opinion to yourself until you are qualified to have one.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
They need to AVERAGE BETTER than the BEST HUMAN.
Says who?
AI is going to take over, so why not have high fucking standards?
Because delay means deaths. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
There's no need to rush this.
Go tell that to the 3500 families that lost a son, daughter, spouse, or parent, just TODAY.
SDCs should be on the road as soon as they are "good enough". Then they can get better with OTA software upgrades. And they will get better. How many HDC fatalities are investigated by the NTSB? Nearly zero, because we already know that a human caused almost all of them, and there is no way to "fix" humans.
So an IQ test before allowing a sale? .
Do you have a citation that IQ correlated with safe driving?
I have a high IQ, and I tend to daydream a lot. My hands may be on the wheel, and my eyes on the road, but my mind is busy elsewhere.
When SDCs are finally available, I will be first in line.
If I understand correctly, many recent cars come with automatic braking (Collision Avoidance) and lane keeping. They just don't call their systems "Autopilot" and don't encourage drivers to count on them working 100% of the time.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
People drive 3.22 trillion miles a year. People wouldn't use cars if they weren't extremely safe on average. Having the freedom to learn about and drive with defensive techniques, and owning a car with modern safety features tip the odds even more in your favor. I can't find any stats on how many miles Autopilot drives per year but I'm betting it is a great vast amount less than 3.22 trillion miles a year. Couple that with the fact that Autopilot *chooses* where it functions, and the car is physically safe in the first place, Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> Because Self Driving Vehicles are already safer than the AVERAGE human.
I am not sure how true that is, if you compare to cars with safety features like Automatic Emergency Braking, Lane assist, and similar features. IE Tesla claims their cars are safer in that mode, but only compared to the average person, in the average dumb car. Then compare only paved roads in a new car to all roads and cars.
I doubt the Tesla system is smart enough to take the lead from several other automakers systems. The Uber screw up also points out that more enforced standards are needed for some.
Two identical cars from the NUMI plant in Fremont that Tesla took over, the Toyota Corolla and the Chevy Nova (later Geo Prizm). The Corolla had a noticeably lower driver death rate per miles driven.
This indeed that "the nut behind the wheel" is perhaps a more critical safety component than seatbelts or stopping distance or crumple zones.
Do you suppose high IQ people were purchasing the Corolla and driving safer? Or do you suppose high IQ people were in the Nova because it was hundreds of dollars cheaper and it is not smart to pay more money for the same car apart from the badge on the trunk lid, and high IQ people daydream and get in more accidents?
Or do wealthier people purchase the Corolla because they have the money and a Toyota has better social status than a Chevy, and wealthier people engage in less high-risk behavior because they feel better off? And is wealth correlated with higher IQ, so even a high IQ person does a stupid thing like pay hundreds more for the same car so as to not being seen in a Chevy?
The fact of the matter is is that if this were a fire started by an electrical short and the fire marshal learned that the person who died in the fire had complained multiple times to his bosses about the light switch that tossed sparks and smoked every time he flipped it and had him on video flipping the switch a bunch of times, the fire marshal would assume arson and not accident.
Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.
That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".
Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.
Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.
Shouldn't be the first and foremost use case of an 'autopilot' not to crash into any unmoving object on the road in front of the vehicle?
If an 'autopilot' cannot do that, it is useless.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
That might be true for Waymo's self-driving tech (I don't know, because I've never been in one), but it sure as heck isn't true for Tesla's. It's a nice convenience to relieve us of some of the tedium of having to pay continuous attention to traffic when it is moving bumper-to-bumper at 10 MPH. It is halfway decent at most straight or nearly straight roadways. BUT:
In short, there are plenty of spots where it drives significantly worse than someone who has never been behind the wheel of a car before. The only way that's better than an average driver is if you're limiting the discussion to people who are out driving after 11:00 P.M. on New Year's Eve.
It is, however, usually better than a driver who is drunk or asleep or not paying attention to the road, which means it is better than the average driver at his or her worst times. That makes it useful, but only as a backup.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The times when the car is most likely to be in danger of getting into a wreck, a human has to be in control. AP is reluctant to change lanes, cannot turn or exit at all, cannot handle stop signs or traffic lights, etc. Given those limitations, if it didn't cause an order of magnitude fewer deaths, I'd be terrified.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Tesla set themselves way back by ditching their partnership with MobileEye and trying to use a much cheaper sensor suite. Most SDCs use lidar and more expensive sensors, with the goal of reducing the cost. Tesla decided to start with cheap sensors (cameras and front facing radar) and build up the software.
Tesla's idea kinda makes sense, in that a human driver only has cameras (eyes). But humans have stereoscopic vision and a highly advanced image processing subsystem that uses the data to build a 3D model of the world, which it turns out is pretty difficult to replicate with current AI.
Meanwhile cheap, compact lidar systems are becoming available for mass production.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nice comparison there between apples and sausages.
What's the human driven death rate per billion miles driven on highways in 0-4 year old $70k cars? I'm guessing it's significantly lower than 15/billion.
The times when the car is most likely to be in danger of getting into a wreck, a human has to be in control. AP is reluctant to change lanes, cannot turn or exit at all, cannot handle stop signs or traffic lights, etc. Given those limitations, if it didn't cause an order of magnitude fewer deaths, I'd be terrified.
This is a somewhat of a misconception, especially when we are talking about fatalities, not merely accidents.
Most fatalities occur on A-roads and motorways (I think the equivalents are interstates & freeways in the US) because of vehicle velocity, and these are exactly the times that 'autopilot' (as in cruise control / automatic braking and lane assist) is engaged and useful. Crashes on minor roads (barring the occasional car wrapped around a tree on windy, back country, lanes), i.e. those at lower speeds, do not generally result in fatalities these days; just bumps, bruises, repair bills and lawsuits.
"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation."
And Tesla is a company. That sells cars. Which have crashed.
One of those is qualified, able, permitted, the people who helped form the legislation, and trusted to give out limited early information that won't be contradicted by later findings and has no political, financial or other interest in anything other than the truth of how the accidents occur.
The other isn't. It's a company selling cars.
STFU and keep your head down, Tesla, or it might hurt badly when it's discovered that it WAS the fault of the car, and that you've just been trying to cover it up.
Be open but be co-operative. "We believe..." not "well, obviously, it can't have been us" before anyone's even had a chance to look.
Because if there's one organisation that can take every vehicle you make off the road, and thus bankrupt you overnight for failing to comply with its own regulations, it's the NTSB.
It's like Boeing being belligerent to the FAA etc. and interfering with a plane crash investigation.
If the problem is idiots
That's the problem, we don't know that. Tesla said so.
I'm not sure I totally trust the NTSB either, so I'm happy to have two points of view.
Lawyers did not kill the private small plane industry. Less people are getting pilot certificates and there is a glut of older planes on the market---and many of those older planes will outlive their new owners.
I am going to assume that you are in the UK from the language used. You are flat out wrong, a motorway is the safest type of road to drive on in the UK. That is there are fewer fatalities per passenger mile than any other type of public road.
The issues is that when it goes wrong it can go horribly wrong much more so than elsewhere, which changes peoples perceptions of where the real risks are. Accidents only tend to make the news if they are multicar pile ups on a motorway these days.
Large Corporations do.
So fucking what? We've all seen that the "average driver" shouldn't even have a driver's license; that's a different problem.
This AC comment covers what I wanted to say very nicely, so I'll just quote it and say "What he/she/it said."
I'd be interested to see those stats normalized for ownership levels and time of use.
It happens
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/66...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
SDCs just need to be safer than HDCs.
For what? To improve crash stats? I guess. But to be a viable product in a competitive marketplace? Safer than the average human is not going to cut it. No one is going to buy one unless their perception is that the car is a better driver than themselves. And most people think they are better than the average driver, so these cars have to be perceived to be much better than average if they're going to be anything more than a niche product.
Maybe in the UK, but not in the US. Two lane rural highways are the deadliest here by far. They lack controlled access and medians between opposite directions of travel, have narrower lanes, and are typically less well maintained. Our freeways are our safest roads.
It would have been better for me to say:
Cars are dangerous whether they have autopilot or not. The only way to guarantee safety is to keep all cars off public roads. They kill more people than guns.
Saying that cars are "more dangerous" than guns misrepresents the situation.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.
That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".
Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.
Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.
How many of that 1.3 billion miles is on populous roads though? Are they counting test track miles or only public roads? Is this self driving in the manner of a smart cruise control or truly self driving? I don't know the numbers but I find it hard to believe they truly have 1.3 billion miles of legit fully self driving miles on populated roads.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
True, but those statistics show it being safer while monitored by a human driver who takes over when it goes bonkers. If you had to rely solely on their self-driving tech (i.e. if the driver stops paying attention), it can go wrong in a hurry on some roads. It is nowhere near as good as even an average driver by itself, or at least not with AP2 and later. (I have no experience with AP1, so I can't comment on that.)
For example, until 2018.10.4, CA-17 was downright terrifying with AP2 under autosteer from about The Cats restaurant to Vine Hill Rd, and there were even a couple of curves through Scotts Valley where it did really stupid things. I pretty much had to drive that stretch by hand, because it would get dangerously close to barriers, cross the center line into the adjacent traffic lane, etc. with such regularity that it was almost like it was trying to kill me intentionally.
In the two most recent firmware updates, it can *usually* make it most of the way without me wresting control more than a couple of times, and I can usually put it right back into autosteer after a few seconds without having to take control back three seconds later, so it has gotten a lot better. That said, it still has a long way to go before I would say that it is better than an average driver when it is driving without adult supervision.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And just to be clear, I love the tech. I'm glad I have it; driving home late at night, there's no question about whether it is safer with that feature than without. If I fell asleep at the wheel, I would have a decent chance of surviving the experience with autosteer active, which is far better than the likely result without that feature. As I said, it is better than even the best drivers at their worst. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I have a high IQ, and I don't think I'm a particularly good driver. I got my latest car with all the safety features I could get, and I leave them on.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The other reason is that the driver was not paying attention when on a stretch of road he knew the autopilot didn't handle properly. Keeping the car from crashing is the driver's responsibility, no matter how much automation is involved.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The best human drivers don't have injury or death causing accidents in their entire driving careers . I've been driving for 35 years and have never been in an accident with another car , and have bent a few panels and scratched paint when hitting stationary objects. I'm not actually a good driver, just cautious. So AVs cannot better the best human safety record.