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US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

(www.reuters.com)
410 points jjulius | 25 comments | 18 Oct 24 16:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.488s | source | bottom
1. ivewonyoung ◴[19 Oct 24 01:34 UTC] No.41884954[source]▶
> NHTSA said it was opening the inquiry after four reports of crashes where FSD was engaged during reduced roadway visibility like sun glare, fog, or airborne dust. A pedestrian was killed in Rimrock, Arizona, in November 2023 after being struck by a 2021 Tesla Model Y, NHTSA said. Another crash under investigation involved a reported injury

> The probe covers 2016-2024 Model S and X vehicles with the optional system as well as 2017-2024 Model 3, 2020-2024 Model Y, and 2023-2024 Cybertruck vehicles.

This is good, but also for context 45 thousand people are killed in auto accidents in just the US every year, making 4 report crashes and 1 reported fatality for 2.4 million vehicles over 8 years look miniscule by comparison, or even better than many human drivers.

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2. whiplash451 ◴[19 Oct 24 01:45 UTC] No.41885003[source]▶
Did you scale your numbers in proportion of miles driven autonomously vs manually?
replies(1): >>41885021 #
3. dekhn ◴[19 Oct 24 01:46 UTC] No.41885005[source]▶
Those numbers aren't all the fatalities associated with tesla cars; IE, you can't compare the 45K/year (roughly 1 per 100M miles driven) to the limited number of reports.

What they are looking for is whether there are systematic issues with the design and implementation that make it unsafe.

replies(1): >>41885037 #
4. throwup238 ◴[19 Oct 24 01:47 UTC] No.41885011[source]▶
> The agency is asking if other similar FSD crashes have occurred in reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if Tesla has updated or modified the FSD system in a way that may affect it in such conditions.

Those four crashes are just the ones that sparked the investigation.

5. tapoxi ◴[19 Oct 24 01:47 UTC] No.41885014[source]▶
I don't agree with this comparison. The drivers are licensed, they have met a specific set of criteria to drive on public roads. The software is not.

We are not sure when FSD is engaged with all of these miles driven, and if FSD is making mistakes a licensed human driver would not. I would at the very least expect radical transparency.

replies(1): >>41885269 #
6. josephg ◴[19 Oct 24 01:49 UTC] No.41885021[source]▶
Yeah, that’d be the interesting figure: How many deaths per million miles driven? How does Tesla’s full self driving stack up against human drivers?
replies(1): >>41885055 #
7. moduspol ◴[19 Oct 24 01:53 UTC] No.41885037[source]▶
Unsafe relative to what?

Certainly not to normal human drivers in normal cars. Those are killing people left and right.

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8. gostsamo ◴[19 Oct 24 01:57 UTC] No.41885055{3}[source]▶
Even that is not good enough, because the "autopilot" usually is not engaged in challenging conditions making any direct comparisons not really reliable. You need similar roads in simila weather and similar time of the day for approximating good comparison.
replies(1): >>41885182 #
9. dekhn ◴[19 Oct 24 01:57 UTC] No.41885058{3}[source]▶
I don't think the intent is to compare it to normal human drivers, although having some level of estimate of accident/injury/death rates (to both the driver, passenger, and people outside the car) with FSD enabled/disabled would be very interesting.
replies(1): >>41885086 #
10. llamaimperative ◴[19 Oct 24 01:57 UTC] No.41885059{3}[source]▶
Those are good questions. We should investigate to find out. (It'd be different from this one but it raises a good question. What is FSD safe compared to?)
11. insane_dreamer ◴[19 Oct 24 02:05 UTC] No.41885082[source]▶
> making 4 report crashes and 1 reported fatality for 2.4 million vehicles over 8 years look miniscule by comparison,

that's the wrong comparison

the correct comparison is the number of report crashes and fatalities for __unsupervised FSD__ miles driven (not counting Tesla pilot tests, but actual customers)

replies(1): >>41885250 #
12. moduspol ◴[19 Oct 24 02:06 UTC] No.41885086{4}[source]▶
> I don't think the intent is to compare it to normal human drivers

I think our intent should be focused on where the fatalities are happening. To keep things comparable, we could maybe do 40,000 studies on distracted driving in normal cars for every one or two caused by Autopilot / FSD.

Alas, that's not where our priorities are.

13. enragedcacti ◴[19 Oct 24 02:15 UTC] No.41885133[source]▶
> making 4 report crashes and 1 reported fatality for 2.4 million vehicles over 8 years look miniscule by comparison, or even better than many human drivers.

This is exactly what people were saying about the NHTSA Autopilot investigation when it started back in 2021 with 11 reported incidents. When that investigation wrapped earlier this year it had identified 956 Autopilot related crashes between early 2018 and August 2023, 467 of which were confirmed the fault of autopilot and an inattentive driver.

replies(1): >>41885287 #
14. ivewonyoung ◴[19 Oct 24 02:26 UTC] No.41885182{4}[source]▶
How many of the 45,000 deaths on US roads( and an order of magnitude more injuries) occur due to 'challenging conditions' ?
15. jandrese ◴[19 Oct 24 02:44 UTC] No.41885250[source]▶
That seems like a bit of a chicken and egg problem where the software is not allowed to go unsupervised until it racks up a few million miles of successful unsupervised driving.
replies(2): >>41885493 #>>41888637 #
16. fallingknife ◴[19 Oct 24 02:50 UTC] No.41885269[source]▶
I too care more about bureaucratic compliance than what the actual chances of something killing me are. When I am on that ambulance I will be thinking "at least that guy met the specific set of criteria to be licensed to drive on public roads."
replies(1): >>41885436 #
17. fallingknife ◴[19 Oct 24 02:53 UTC] No.41885287[source]▶
So what? How many miles were driven and what is the record vs human drivers? Also Autopilot is a standard feature that is much less sophisticated than and has nothing to do with FSD.
18. AlexandrB ◴[19 Oct 24 03:23 UTC] No.41885414{3}[source]▶
No they're not. And if you do look at human drivers you're likely to see a Pareto distribution where 20% of drivers cause most of the accidents. This is completely unlike something like FSD where accidents would be more evenly distributed. It's entirely possible that FSD would make 20% of the drivers safer and ~80% less safe even if the overall accident rate was lower.
19. tapoxi ◴[19 Oct 24 03:28 UTC] No.41885436{3}[source]▶
Are we really relegating drivers licenses to "bureaucratic compliance"?

If FSD is being used in a public road, it impacts everyone on that road, not just the person who opted-in to using FSD. I absolutely want an independent agency to ensure it's safe and armed with the data that proves it.

replies(1): >>41887797 #
20. Veserv ◴[19 Oct 24 03:31 UTC] No.41885449{3}[source]▶
What? Humans are excellent drivers. Humans go ~70 years between injury-causing accidents and ~5,000 years between fatal accidents even if we count the drunk drivers. If you started driving when the Pyramids were still new, you would still have half a millennium until you reach the expected value between fatalities.

The only people pumping the line that human drivers are bad are the people trying to sell a dream that they can make a self-driving car in a weekend, or "next year", if you just give them a pile of money and ignore all the red flags and warning signs that they are clueless. The problem is shockingly hard and underestimating it is the first step to failure. Reckless development will not get you there safely with known technology.

21. AlotOfReading ◴[19 Oct 24 03:44 UTC] No.41885493{3}[source]▶
There's a number of state programs to solve this problem with testing permits. The manufacturer puts up a bond and does testing in a limited area, sending reports on any incidents to the state regulator. The largest of these, California's, has several dozen companies with testing permits.

Tesla currently does not participate in any of these programs.

22. fallingknife ◴[19 Oct 24 13:56 UTC] No.41887797{4}[source]▶
What else are they? You jump through hoops to get a piece of plastic from the government that declares you "safe." And then holders of those licenses go out and kill 40,000 people every year just in the US.
replies(1): >>41892367 #
23. insane_dreamer ◴[19 Oct 24 16:10 UTC] No.41888637{3}[source]▶
Similar to a Phase 3 clinical trial (and for similar reasons).
24. tapoxi ◴[20 Oct 24 02:08 UTC] No.41892367{5}[source]▶
And you're comparing that against what? That's 40,000 with regulation in place. Imagine if we let anyone drive without training.
replies(1): >>41897319 #
25. fallingknife ◴[20 Oct 24 18:14 UTC] No.41897319{6}[source]▶
We do. Nobody crazy enough to drive without knowing how is going to not be crazy enough to drive without a piece of plastic from the government.