[HN Gopher] Tesla hacker reveals what driver-facing camera is lo...
___________________________________________________________________
Tesla hacker reveals what driver-facing camera is looking for
Author : jennyyang
Score : 172 points
Date : 2020-10-05 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (electrek.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co)
| throwaway12757 wrote:
| Sadly, one of the reasons I will never buy a Tesla. The lack of
| privacy concerns me.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Privacy is already dead (or at least, on life support).
|
| I'm personally not giving in easily, and certainly wouldn't buy
| a car with a camera I don't control pointed at my face. That is
| absurd to me.
|
| However, most people just see this only as a safety issue.
| They're willing to compromise a lot of privacy for a little
| increase in safety.
|
| That's not objectively wrong, but I disagree with it.
|
| If I could audit my records, store everything locally, and be
| ensured there's no way to access this data without my consent,
| then I'd be more into the idea. But right now... I'm just going
| to keep my old Prius going for as long as I can.
| huid827 wrote:
| What do you people do in your cars that concerns you so much
| from a privacy standpoint, other than pick your nose?
| netsharc wrote:
| Do Teslas (or other cars) phone home and report where
| they've been? (DriveNow BMWs, which are technically
| rentals, do that, so they have that capability.) Have you
| driven anywhere where -- if you were to run for office --
| you wouldn't want the public to know? Or, how would you
| change your behavior and places you visited if you knew you
| were "being watched"?
| aeternum wrote:
| >If I could audit my records, store everything locally, and
| be ensured there's no way to access this data without my
| consent, then I'd be more into the idea. But right now... I'm
| just going to keep my old Prius going for as long as I can.
|
| This really seems like the right way to go about it. If all
| Tesla sees are those pre-defined flags (EYES_OPEN, HEAD_DOWN,
| etc.) then I would consider the tradeoff worthwhile.
|
| With an unrestricted video stream, car manufacturers can &
| will use that data to determine your insurance rate, whether
| your are using the car for personal vs. rideshare purposes,
| etc.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Per the article: This is opt in.
|
| It seems like they're working on an on-board system to detect
| distracted drivers.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Per history: Tesla releases driver data whenever it suits
| them. See: every autopilot crash.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| They do not. They release their analysis of the data in
| question.
| falcolas wrote:
| Like how they blamed the "gore" death on the driver for
| not having his hands on the wheel?
|
| The data showed that the "hands on the wheel" alert
| preceded the crash by 8 minutes.
|
| Tesla will absolutely use any data you send them to
| attack you, especially if you have the bad taste to die
| in their car with autopilot active.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| What data did they release from any accident? If you're
| going to keep spamming the comments of this thread with
| claims that Tesla releases the data it collects, you need
| to support those claims.
|
| Tesla has never released the data from an accident. They
| only release their assessment of the data to authorities
| and authorities have decided whether to communicate that
| to the public.
| falcolas wrote:
| Tesla's public statement as posted in their blog:
|
| > The driver had received several visual and one audible
| hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's
| hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds
| prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds
| and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete
| divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the
| vehicle logs show that no action was taken.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-
| week%E2%80%99s-accide...
|
| This is from March 30 2018 (the accident occurred on
| March 23). The NTSB and Tesla dissolved the commitment to
| investigate in parallel as a consequence of this
| premature release of data in an attempt to exonerate
| themselves.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/12/17229518/tesla-ntsb-
| autop...
|
| It's also quite telling that part of Tesla's statement to
| the press at that time included of the following:
|
| > Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect
| ... yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location
|
| The NTSB report didn't come out until Feb 11, 2020.
|
| https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-
| releases/Pages/NR20200211.as...
|
| _Tesla absolutely intentionally released log data on
| their own._
|
| EDIT: "If you're going to keep spamming the comments of
| this thread" This was both unnecessary and untrue. With
| this comment, I'm up to a grand total of two comments in
| this entire article's discussion thread.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Last I checked, releasing a summary of selective data
| points from a vehicle's recording device is...releasing
| data.
|
| Tesla may not release _all_ of the data (and it 's clear
| from their selection of data that they do not), but they
| definitely do release _some_ data.
|
| Indeed, Tesla's release of data is worse than nothing,
| because they only release data that slanders the deceased
| drivers when autopilot was the cause of the crashes in
| all cases.
| addflip wrote:
| Yep. You're right. This is why I put a piece black
| electrical tape over the rear-facing camera in my Model Y.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Does that mean you have no backup camera now?
| addflip wrote:
| No. They have a rear-facing camera that shows the
| interior of the car and then they have one that is
| located above the license plate.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| If you don't opt in, they shouldn't have the data to
| release. At least until they swap it to an opt out quietly.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Right. _Should._
|
| But given Tesla's history of skirting other legal rules,
| and their history of releasing driver data from autopilot
| accidents, I would expect the opt-out to operate more as
| "we record anyway and then delete it after the fact if
| you opt out and we don't need the data to protect Tesla."
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Or worse, "can't use this feature without allowing data
| collection".
| messe wrote:
| > This is opt in.
|
| It's opt-in until an insurance company mandates it (or
| heavily encourages it).
| umvi wrote:
| I think detecting when a driver is falling asleep could be an
| amazing safety feature. You would need privacy guarantees about
| where camera data is going, but I think it would be worth the
| tradeoff.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I think detecting when a driver is falling asleep could be
| an amazing safety feature.
|
| Welcome to 14 years ago, which is when Toyota first
| introduced their DMS/DAM:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_Monitoring_System
|
| More generally,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection
| me_me_me wrote:
| If history is a teacher, Musk is going to invent it in few
| years.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| An actual few years, or a "fully self driving cars are a
| few years away" few years?
| xedeon wrote:
| Not even close in terms of complexity. I used many of the
| "Driver Drowsiness" detection from Toyota, BMW and MBenz on
| my previous cars. They always had false positives,
| inconsistent and pretty rudimentary. What you're implying
| is akin to saying Nokia/Ericsson/Palm had smartphones
| before the iPhone 1 came along. Therefore the iPhone is a
| non-event. [?]
|
| The "hacker" mentioned in this article discovered these
| detection labels on the Model 3/Y "selfie" camera:
|
| BLINDED
|
| DARK
|
| EYES_CLOSED
|
| EYES_DOWN
|
| EYES_NOMINAL
|
| EYES_UP
|
| HEAD_DOWN
|
| HEAD_TRUNC
|
| LOOKING_LEFT
|
| LOOKING_RIGHT
|
| PHONE_USE
|
| SUNGLASSES_EYES_LIKELY_NOMINAL
|
| SUNGLASSES_LIKELY_EYES_DOWN
|
| Maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like an apples to
| oranges in comparison to me. Correct me if I am wrong, but
| Comma.ai's driving monitoring feature is currently the only
| one in production that is comparable.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| Super Cruise also has a DM system which from what I hear
| is pretty good
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Hmm, "HEAD_TRUNC" presumably means out of the frame, but
| given we're talking about hurtling pieces of metal, it
| conjures up nastier images for me somehow.
| chris11 wrote:
| Open Pilot's driver monitoring could be improved. After
| the last update I got a ton of false positives when
| driving at night. Nighttime would make driver monitoring
| more difficult, but it's also when people are more likely
| to be distracted.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| should be fixed in 0.7.9
| https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/2139
| xedeon wrote:
| I agree. The great thing about software is you can always
| iteratively improve it over time. As long as you're not
| reaching the hardware limits.
| dosshell wrote:
| Correction: atleast both seeing machines and smart eye
| has system in cars today that are more advanced. (GM, BMW
| etc)
| xedeon wrote:
| I have actually tried BMW Smart Eye and GM super cruise.
| Comma.ai's Open Pilot driver monitoring is far superior
| to both of those.
|
| What OP was implying, is that the Tesla system mentioned
| on the article is on par with offerings from other OEMs
| from 14 years ago.
| jononor wrote:
| False positives are a minor annoyance. False negatives
| are potentially catastrophic. So for this kinds of
| systems it makes sense to skew towards false positives.
| It is always a tradeoff.
| xedeon wrote:
| They were definitely annoying alright. Even the collision
| detection on our previous MBenz SUV would go off at
| certain roads that were perfectly clear of obstacles.
|
| Since OTA is not a thing on most cars. This becomes a
| permanent problem that a dealership cannot fix. Even if
| they wanted too.
|
| With a Tesla (only one in the industry AFAIK), you can
| submit a bug report at the exact location via voice and a
| future software update might address it.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Not even close in terms of complexity.
|
| You are asserting with no idea whatsoever, or relevance
| really given you're apparently ignoring that I was
| answering a very specific comment.
|
| > What you're implying is akin to saying
| Nokia/Ericsson/Palm had smartphones before the iPhone 1
| came along. Therefore the iPhone is a non-event. [?]
|
| One, it really is not, there's nothing impressive-looking
| so far. Two, tesla's record of "game changing" is mostly
| "game changing marketing", and while you should
| absolutely feel free to give them all the benefit of
| every doubt, I really don't feel so inclined.
|
| > The "hacker" mentioned in this article discovered these
| detection labels on the Model 3/Y "selfie" camera:
|
| These are just events it might be able to generate, it
| tells you nothing about how well the events are detected
| and how the consumer of those events integrates them.
|
| What do you think exactly, that other manufacturers just
| get a magical yes/no blob?
| xedeon wrote:
| > You are asserting with no idea whatsoever, or relevance
| really given you're apparently ignoring that I was
| answering a very specific comment.
|
| I am directly addressing your comment about "DMS/DAM".
| How is that not relevant?
|
| > One, it really is not, there's nothing impressive-
| looking so far.
|
| What is impressive to you? That's what the critics said
| when the iPhone 1 was announced. That's what many also
| said about electric cars. Funny how the metrics
| (sales/safety) played out on that one.
|
| > These are just events it might be able to generate, it
| tells you nothing about how well the events are detected
| and how the consumer of those events integrates them.
|
| The fact that it can detect those events using a
| specialized redundant NPU hardware is a far cry from
| "Driver drowsiness detection" and "DMS/DAM" from "14
| years ago". Hence, an apple to oranges comparison.
|
| > What do you think exactly, that other manufacturers
| just get a magical yes/no blob?
|
| It's interesting you ask that, because they mostly are
| binary logic if you look at the ECU firmware. Some
| "Driver drowsiness detection" (MBenz) systems will also
| just beep at random intervals after driving non-stop for
| 1 hour. But they still market them as being able to
| "detect" drowsiness.
|
| George Hotz talked about this many times. They also don't
| have any firmware code signing whatsoever (esp Toyota)
| which presents a security risk.
|
| Out of curiosity, which of the DMS/DAM systems do you
| have experience with?
| ryandrake wrote:
| There are a lot of features that are, in and of themselves,
| really great, but I would not use until the privacy and data
| sharing issues are resolved. This is unfortunately a growing
| problem that many device manufacturers and software makers
| are making worse.
| shekade wrote:
| I see this as a safety measure just to ensure driver isn't
| distracted or sleeping for the car to alert.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| Operating a motor vehicle on public roads is just about the
| most compelling reason one should have to sacrifice privacy
| like this.
|
| People have, on the whole, emphatically demonstrated their
| complete inability to drive responsibly. ~40k deaths, hundreds
| of thousands of serious injuries, and nearly a trillion dollars
| in costs every year. Overwhelmingly due to driver error and
| negligence.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| You have to opt-in to send any of that to Tesla.
| mrfusion wrote:
| For now...
| dkonofalski wrote:
| They legally can't change that unless the law changes.
| gpvos wrote:
| I value technical impossibility much higher than legal
| prohibition.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Then don't buy it?
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| The don't buy it argument has never held up. Look at
| phones, the options for a removable battery, sd card
| slot, 3.5mm jack are all gone on all but the most
| primitive/weird models of phones.
|
| If the general public goes against your preference then
| your preference will no longer be an option. For cars
| this likely means that the only way to get a car that
| isn't spyware/ad tech will be buying an old car before
| this happened.
| awinter-py wrote:
| 'graybox' AI products (mostly automatic but periodically return
| emergency control to pesky human) are going to need to model
| driver alertness
|
| the car certainly should warn you at lower danger threshold if it
| thinks you'll need more time to return to full attention
|
| (even in a zero-shame case, like for example you're checking your
| mirror but the car thinks there's a hazard in front)
|
| separate question of 4th / 5th amendment consequences of using
| this for crash liability
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The human attentiveness model is very easy: `is_attentive _ =
| False`.
|
| Those grayboxes probably already take more lives than they save
| on airplanes, and will be orders of magnitude worse on cars.
| nickik wrote:
| > Those grayboxes probably already take more lives than they
| save on airplanes, and will be orders of magnitude worse on
| cars.
|
| All evidence so far point in the opposite direction.
| Airplanes are different, you have a highly trained pilot that
| has strict requirements for flight. Outperforming your avg
| human is far easier.
|
| What your evidence that these system cause more harm then
| good?
| ChrisClark wrote:
| This will be very useful. I'm always watching the road anyway, it
| would be nice not to have to put the right tension on the wheel
| the whole time.
|
| This is what I envied about other lane keeping cars, I think
| Cruise uses eye tracking, or maybe it was something else.
| hartator wrote:
| > better driver monitoring because it's currently one of the
| biggest weaknesses of Tesla's Autopilot
|
| Isn't the biggest weakest all the edge cases that the AI has
| troubles making decisions on?
| nickik wrote:
| This should have been done much earlier. Its a great thing for
| safety. I do have concerns with privacy, but not much you I can
| do about that.
|
| Elon was to bullish on self-driving and believed this
| 'transition' technology was not necessary. I hope they role this
| out soon.
|
| And its not just safety, it just makes sense to not having to
| torque the wheel.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Hah, if the main barrier to autopilot for cars is liability and
| insurance, passive biometric monitoring of the driver is
| certainly one way to shift liability around.
|
| The real feature should just be a button that shifts insurance
| liability to Tesla for the period of the autopilot engagement and
| charges you a floating premium for it based on traffic conditions
| per mile/km while the autopilot is on.
|
| The real problem is "free" auto pilot means people will use it
| often enough to make a catastrophe an actuarial inevitability,
| whereas if they have to pay to text while driving on autopilot,
| they're going to do it less, and live long enough to be killed by
| something else.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Hm... are you suggesting that Tesla's motivation here might be
| to develop a logging system to defend itself against liability
| claims by demonstrating that the driver was not paying
| attention, as opposed to a system to take measures at the time
| to prevent the crash?
|
| I would regard doing the former, while not the latter, to be
| deeply unethical, as, at least in my book, motive matters.
|
| I am not saying thet I expect Tesla to do so, but it is
| possible that the incentives could be to do just that: for
| example, if it turns out to be impractical to produce an
| effective warning and intervention system that is not regarded
| as too intrusive by its customers. Don't take that route,
| Tesla. Nothing but either true (not necessarily perfect) self-
| driving, or effective monitoring and intervention, is
| acceptable.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Not really, the system primarily exists for two reasons:
|
| 1) in case future regulation requires "monitoring if the
| driver is paying attention to the road"
|
| and
|
| 2) for their robo-taxi service that might or might not come
| out within the next 5 years as Elon says (hint: it will not)
|
| I own a Tesla and would love if this internal camera were to
| be available to Sentry mode/saved with dashcam footage (for
| insurance reasons, internal dashcams are great for
| strengthening the driver's case), but that's not possible
| currently.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The real feature should just be a button that shifts
| insurance liability to Tesla for the period of the autopilot
| engagement and charges you a floating premium for it based on
| traffic conditions per mile/km while the autopilot is on.
|
| No amount of money makes up for human lives. You can pay a
| premium of $1mil per mile, if the car end up smashing into a
| family car at 80mph because the system was fooled by a shadow
| or a reflection it's still a net negative
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _No amount of money makes up for human lives_
|
| Trivially untrue since you can save one life for under $1000
| but almost everyone with $1000 will keep it rather than save
| the life - revealing that $1000 is worth more than an
| arbitrary human life.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, how do I save one life for $1000?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Givewell has a model for you: https://docs.google.com/spr
| eadsheets/d/1BmFwVYeGMkpys6hG0tnf...
|
| They have more detailed information elsewhere. They are
| generally trustworthy. Of course I boosted the cost
| (based on memory) a little, and literalized the value
| (the truth is that each additional mosquito net has a
| marginal reduction in the probability of a child
| contracting and then dying of malaria).
|
| And it looks like I made two errors:
|
| * I had a memory of an older model - the newer one makes
| it more expensive
|
| * I misremembered the optimal strategy (it isn't anti-
| malaria, it's Deworm the World at $1003 / child under age
| 5 saved).
| cortesoft wrote:
| > No amount of money makes up for human lives.
|
| You clearly don't actually believe that, or there are a ton
| of activities you would stop doing. You wouldn't drive to
| work, because there is a chance you might kill someone while
| driving, and you only go to work for money, so why do it?
| hnracer wrote:
| We should delineate between resources (which has a fiat
| value) and fiat money. I agree that fiat money can't make up
| for a human life, since if money is destroyed, the remaining
| money supply increases in value through deflation and no
| actual resources are destroyed.
|
| However I disagree that a human life can't be equated with
| resources. Would you destroy $10 billion of value/resources
| in the economy to save 1 person? I don't think that's worth
| it, because that $10 billion of value could've been food and
| medicine which can save thousands of people. This is really
| just the trolley problem. But the bigger you make the sum (if
| you don't agree at $10 billion, what about $1 trillion?), at
| some extreme point you're going to have to say "ok, one life
| isn't worth that much."
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Would you destroy $10 billion of value/resources in the
| economy to save 1 person?
|
| You can spin any arguments by framing them in such
| ridiculous scenarios. My comment is obviously in the
| context of people able to pay money to get rid of their
| personal responsibilities.
| hnracer wrote:
| I was just demonstrating the absurdity of your comment.
| Taking things to the limit to demonstrate the absurdity
| of absolutist statements like the one you made is a
| perfectly acceptable thing to do and is not "spin". You
| said "no amount of money" and I took that at face value.
| If that's not what you meant then that's fine, there's no
| disagreement between us.
|
| From reading the many other replies to your comment,
| everyone else was left with the same impression by what
| you said.
| Gys wrote:
| > No amount of money makes up for human lives.
|
| In that case we should not allow cars driven by humans
| either?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _No amount of money makes up for human lives_
|
| Sure, but no human life is worth spending infinite resources
| to protect.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| There is no need to spend infinite resources. Look at the
| driver facing camera when the accident occurs. Either the
| driver was paying attention or he was doing something else.
| It's a legal issue, not a technical issue.
| thedrbrian wrote:
| You obviously aren't a part of the government coronavirus
| response
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > No amount of money makes up for human lives. You can pay a
| premium of $1mil per mile, if the car end up smashing into a
| family car at 80mph because the system was fooled by a shadow
| or a reflection it's still a net negative
|
| This is a metric human drivers fail to hit every single day.
|
| There is _some_ acceptable level of risk in shifting driving
| to a robot. How you draw that comparison and draw the line is
| tough. It 's complicated greatly because the kinds of
| failures autopilot makes are significantly different from the
| kinds of failures humans make.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > This is a metric human drivers fail to hit every single
| day.
|
| Yes exactly, and when they fuck up they suffer the
| consequences. Which if you were reckless will most likely
| be years in prison. You shouldn't be able to get away by
| paying money which is what the comment I replied to asks
| for.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| You mean that you'd have the choice between using autopilot as
| is (with you having the liability, not allowed to text) or
| switch to Tesla having the liability and be free to text?
|
| That would require the system to be safe enough to text while
| using it.
|
| If you mean that the feature should always be pay-to-use, that
| seems ridiculous. Why try to minimize the use of a driver
| assist feature?
| motohagiography wrote:
| A car you can drive drunk is the only meaningful definition
| of a self-driving car, imo.
|
| I mean both, and specifically that driver assist should be
| pay to use to offset usage because it is likely higher net
| risk for a collision than a human. Free driver-assist has a
| "tragedy of the commons" problem, or a moral hazard, where
| there is no cost to over-using it and courting a collision
| event, so this overall risk can be reduced by metering its
| use.
|
| Also, yes, the system should be safe enough to text while
| using it. That's what "self driving car" should mean. Another
| criteria would be that a person should be able to use it with
| a blood alcohol level higher than is legal today as well, and
| that it absolves people of an "impaired driving" charge.
| There is a division between driver assist and full autonomous
| self driving, but these are features that could be pay per
| use based on relative actuarial risk.
|
| To people who say you can't put a price on human life,
| clearly you do not have auto insurance?
| [deleted]
| noelsusman wrote:
| On a related note, I often wonder how many Tesla owners are aware
| that their cars take images/video from the external cameras and
| send them back to Tesla. This happens remotely at any time and
| you have no idea when or if it has happened.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is creepy. I don't want more electronics keeping eyes on me.
|
| In fact I don't want to be driving at all. Bring on the full-on
| self-driving car.
|
| I don't have a car though as I live in a city where I don't
| really need one (or could even park it if I wanted to). But in
| some countries you can't do without one sadly.
| arbitrage wrote:
| The font on that blog is awful.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| One of the reasons I would love to have autopilot is because I
| have a history of dozing off at the wheel. Never so much where
| I've had an accident, but bad enough where I've scared myself
| badly.
|
| I don't want autopilot so I can actually sleep at the wheel, I
| want it _in case I do_. I 'd vastly prefer if the car noticed I
| was inattentive that it notified me. My feeling is for long
| drives this would be a safety feature, but I'm concerned that the
| way it's built it will my worst driving behaviors instead of
| helping compensate for them.
| Shivetya wrote:
| I am one of those drivers that on long distance drives will
| occasionally view a bridge in my rear view mirror and cannot
| recall passing under it.
|
| Hence for me the system is insurance for the time where I am
| truly distracted. When I use my 3's driving feature on local
| roads I find I am more attentive as I am constantly looking for
| situations I think should confuse it but then I realize I am
| overthinking the situation far more often than not.
|
| While I love to drive I do look forward to the day anyone can
| just hop in and ask to be taken somewhere and safely
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| DO NOT DRIVE. What you are doing, and what others in comments
| are also doing, IS IRRESPONSIBLE.
| huid827 wrote:
| I'm also looking forward to getting autopilot at some point to
| address situations where I feel pretty drowsy. While yes, the
| correct thing to do is to not drive, to pull over, and so
| forth, reality doesn't always allow for those things and it
| would be nice to have autopilot as a driver aid.
| mrich wrote:
| In Germany, there are quite a few cars with "Emergency Assist"
| technology. There are different variants of it, in my VW Touran
| it works like this: When the car is in ACC/lane assist mode
| (similar to Autopilot), it will detect when there is no
| steering wheel input for a while. First it beeps, then it will
| brake a few times to "wake you up". Still no input? Then it
| will brake to a complete stop and turn on the warning lights.
| In more recent incarnations the car will park at the side of
| the road.
|
| It is great for medical emergencies (stroke/seizure) but of
| course you should not rely on it and drive without paying
| attention to the road.
| echelon wrote:
| > I don't want autopilot so I can actually sleep at the wheel,
| I want it in case I do.
|
| You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance
| you'll fall asleep! You shouldn't be driving. Period. This is
| incredibly dangerous and puts innocent people at risk.
|
| No technology should compensate for this. We don't design
| technology to help drivers under the influence feel better
| about their driving.
|
| Please don't get behind the wheel if you're drowsy.
| irrational wrote:
| > You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance
| you'll fall asleep!
|
| So, I should never drive? Not OP, but I experience the same
| thing. Driving just makes me tired. I've tried running A/C at
| full cold, caffeine, loud music, audiobooks, etc. Nothing
| helps. The strange thing is, outside of driving I don't get
| tired or want to fall asleep except at bedtime. I don't drive
| when I'm drowsy. Driving make me drowsy. The bad thing about
| it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until
| after I've dozed off once. Then I've got to keep myself awake
| long enough to get to the next rest stop. 20 minute nap and
| I'm good to go for another few hours.
| zingermc wrote:
| > So, I should never drive?
|
| > The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that
| I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.
|
| I'm not trying to be rude, but this sounds reckless. You
| absolutely should not be driving while you have this issue.
| Also, consider that you may have a sleep disorder.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > So, I should never drive?
|
| As other people have said.. yes, you should never drive
| until you get this issue taken care of.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| No, you should never drive.
|
| I appreciate that this sucks if you live in an environment
| that requires you to drive, but you are _way_ too blase
| about something that runs a decent risk of killing someone,
| and is _absolutely not normal_.
| fastball wrote:
| Driving in general comes with a decent risk of killing
| someone. You probably shouldn't do it either.
| [deleted]
| DanBC wrote:
| > So, I should never drive?
|
| > The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that
| I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once
|
| In England this knowledge potentially tips your actions
| from accidental death into manslaughter.
|
| You need to fix this.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Have you considered talking with a doctor about this issue?
|
| > The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that
| I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.
|
| This sounds pretty dangerous
| ZitchDog wrote:
| We are human, there is always a chance of falling asleep.
| adamsea wrote:
| Not if we are well-rested in general and healthy, and
| choose not to drive when we are tired.
|
| If we have a particular medical condition / issue then that
| is a different story.
|
| But folks don't randomly fall asleep (I think?) if they're
| getting sufficient rest and they're not already tired.
| laumars wrote:
| Not defending the GP but there are plenty of occasions
| where it's unavoidable for some people to drive tired.
| Like families with young children and where adults don't
| have the luxury of working from home nor good public
| transport links. Are they supposed to book a day off
| every time their child doesn't sleep?
|
| But there are also measures one can take to mitigate
| tiredness while driving: winding the window down or
| turning the AC down, putting energising music on,
| stopping mid-journey and taking a break, etc.
|
| There are also medical conditions one can have where they
| can fall asleep even when not tired. However I believe
| you're denied a licence if you do suffer from any of them
| so this might well be a moot point.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > turning the AC down
|
| Wouldn't you want to turn it up? You're less likely to
| fall asleep if you're cold.
| fastball wrote:
| Demonstrably untrue.
|
| Monotony can make you drowsy, regardless of how healthy
| you are or how much sleep you've had. And when this
| happens, it can catch you unawares even if you're looking
| for it.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Car fatigue is real. The only way I avoid it is to be
| constantly scanning by moving my eyes around - side mirror,
| rear mirror, speed gauge, back to the road. Delay(5s).
| Repeat. It can happen to the best of us and when you
| realise it's safer to pull to the side of the road. Unlike
| a DUI this neither voluntary nor reckless unless you ignore
| the warning signs and keep on driving.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The only way I avoid it is to be constantly scanning by
| moving my eyes around - side mirror, rear mirror, speed
| gauge, back to the road. Delay(5s). Repeat.
|
| I'd add an occasional glance at the horizon too , if
| you're on a long trip. You can make it a game if you're
| driving a new route (guess which mountain is closest to
| the road you're on) Frequently changing focal distance
| helps a lot to prevent eye fatigue.
| orf wrote:
| That's a truism that doesn't add anything. You know when
| you're tired, and when a comfy warm enclosure might make
| you fall asleep. In such situations driving like that is as
| bad as driving drunk.
|
| Don't do it.
| arcticfox wrote:
| IMO your statement is the truism that isn't adding
| anything. Obviously people that might fall asleep
| shouldn't drive. But this is a matter of degree. Everyone
| _might_ fall asleep and it 's a risk everyone will
| eventually take even in a small degree.
|
| Some people are always somewhat tired (eg sleep apnea or
| CFS), some people aren't tired when they start driving
| but become impaired at some point. Some people might have
| an undiagnosed condition that contributes.
|
| There's no reason to not celebrate a simple advancement
| that might save people from a disaster.
| Mirioron wrote:
| > _But this is a matter of degree._
|
| This is it. I don't understand why this isn't higher up
| in the discussion.
|
| Do you check whether your brakes work every time before
| setting off? Do you check whether your wheels are
| attached properly every time before setting off? There
| are a million things that could break on your car.
| They're just _very unlikely_ to happen.
|
| Pilots/maintenance crew for planes checks that kind of
| stuff for virtually every flight. We accept this small
| risk with cars. In return we get an enormous increase in
| efficiency. If everyone had to do a 5 minute check on
| their car every time before setting off, then that would
| be a lot of productive time spent on it.
| serf wrote:
| Would you accept that response as the reasoning of a judge
| after an incident?
|
| I wouldn't. I'd consider it criminal negligence to get
| behind the wheel of a car at times when it's impossible to
| make a suitable effort to drive such equipment.
|
| It's not acceptable to hop into a car drunk, either.
|
| The effects aren't really that much different between the
| two, response-time wise.
| simmanian wrote:
| It's not as cut and dry as drinking and driving. A lot of
| times people who fall asleep on the road feel completely
| fine, until the moment they start falling asleep, and at
| this point their brain could be too asleep to tell it's
| falling asleep. I've dozed off on the road before and I
| can tell you, it's like someone just pressed the power
| button on my brain.
| kbenson wrote:
| The problem is, that like drunk driving, the person
| making the call doesn't always have the experience to
| know when they are impaired, or how close they are to
| falling asleep.
|
| I've driven the family from Northern Califorina to
| Sourthern California quite a few times, many of them
| overnight. It took one instance of actually falling
| asleep at the wheel for a few seconds to realize "oh,
| that's the difference between tired and falling asleep at
| the wheel."
|
| I definitely recognize it now and never let it happen now
| (stopping and sleeping, trading out for someone else to
| drive, etc), but the point is _I didn 't think I was
| close to that level previously_. Experience is something
| that we can't expect all people to have and exhibit the
| wisdom of, and unfortunately some things learned through
| experience are much harder (or nearly impossible) to
| teach without doing, and for dangerous things that's a
| problem for normal people.
|
| As a much much more extreme example, I've heard that's
| why Navy Seal training keeps candidates up and physically
| and mentally exhausted for days at a time. Partly to see
| who can handle the pressure, and partly so they have
| experienced that condition before and understand it in
| themselves and others.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _The problem is, that like drunk driving, the person
| making the call doesn 't always have the experience to
| know when they are impaired, or how close they are to
| falling asleep._
|
| Then they can follow the same rule as for overtaking: if
| in doubt, don't. It's not complicated. There is no way
| you are tired enough to be actually falling asleep
| without realising you're far too tired to be driving
| safely. It's not as if it's a close thing where one
| minute you're alert and driving responsibly and the next
| minute you're out. Anyone who can't make that
| determination reliably is demonstrably unfit to be in
| charge of a vehicle and should hand in their licence.
| simmanian wrote:
| Have you ever dozed off on the road? I ask because unless
| you've experienced it, it would probably catch you
| completely off guard as well. Sometimes the part of your
| brain that would normally make you aware that you're
| falling asleep is the first to go. I think this happens
| more while driving because you think you're concentrating
| on driving but really your brain is shutting off bit by
| bit until you're finally at a point where you're
| basically a mindless zombie. It's happened to me before
| and it absolutely caught me off guard.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The thing is, to be susceptible to that kind of effect, a
| normal adult -- meaning one without an underlying medical
| condition -- would already have to be very short of good
| quality sleep and/or doing foolish things like driving
| for several hours at night without taking a break. It is
| _not_ normal to be susceptible to just dozing off at the
| wheel without realising like that. If you are in that
| position, you should be aware of it, and should not be
| driving; you have just explained exactly why.
|
| The kinds of medical conditions that do make sudden
| dozing off normal for a few unfortunate people are
| grounds for refusing to issue a driving licence to those
| people in most places, for reasons that should hopefully
| be obvious.
| fastball wrote:
| These are pretty absolute terms you're talking in with
| little corresponding evidence.
|
| Monotonous activities frequently make people drowsy. This
| is not some medical condition, it is a common occurrence.
| Driving is often an acutely monotonous activity.
|
| I know a huge number of people that get drowsy while
| reading books. Do they all suffer from the same
| "condition"?
| [deleted]
| missosoup wrote:
| > Please don't get behind the wheel if you're drowsy.
|
| I know two people with the issue that GP is talking about,
| and it's not what you're talking about.
|
| They're perfectly alert when they get behind the wheel. They
| get drowsy on longer drives like 1hr+, which is why any time
| we do road trips I drive for them. And all that 'pull over
| and take a power nap' bullshit doesn't work. It's not
| grounded in any science to start with. I know both have tried
| coffee, breaks, stopping and taking a walk, etc. Of all those
| things, they said taking a nap is actually the worst because
| when they wake up they feel even more tired.
|
| So their choices are: have someone else drive them, don't
| drive beyond a 1hr distance range, or deal with the
| drowsiness. You can imagine how sometimes life just forces
| them into #3 even though both are keenly aware of their issue
| and do their best to mitigate it.
|
| Tech to detect when they phase out and save their life is
| absolutely the correct way to go.
| willbw wrote:
| Life can't just 'force' you into #3. It's still a choice
| you are making. If it is between you not being able to make
| a meeting on time or a cyclist getting killed because you
| fell asleep then I hope we can agree the negatives far
| outweigh the positives.
|
| If you can't stay awake for an hour that must be very
| challenging but I don't think you should be driving at all
| for longer distances. At least not on a road you share with
| other people!
| joosters wrote:
| If it's dangerous for you to drive, don't drive. It's as
| simple as that. If you can't stay alert enough for more
| than an hour, don't drive for more than an hour.
|
| If people think that #3 is acceptable, they should never be
| allowed to drive a car, for everyone else's protection.
| missosoup wrote:
| That's not how real life works. It's dangerous for
| _everyone_ to drive and in the future manual driving will
| be as legal as riding horses on highways is today.
|
| People do potentially deadly risk reward calculus all the
| time. And of all potentially deadly things that people
| regularly do to crack down on, this one would have a
| pretty huge negative ROI for society. This issue impacts
| a non-trivial percentage of the population. You can't
| tell them all to change jobs or move their houses to be
| within whatever travel time limit. This purist notion of
| 'they should never be allowed to drive a car, for
| everyone else's protection' crumbles at the most trivial
| examination when you consider that you're talking about
| leaving millions of people jobless or in significantly
| worse quality of life conditions, while also completely
| reshuffling the housing markets and zoning. And even
| then, sometimes events will come up that force them to
| take that chance regardless, such as family emergencies.
|
| Rather than this purist isolated-logic bullshit that
| would probably crash the economy if seriously enforced
| because you have absolutely failed to consider the first
| and second order effects of what you're suggesting, we
| actually have a viable tech solution instead.
|
| I'm going to guess that most people who share this
| viewpoint are either high income earners living in a
| bubble who don't know what real life is like for most of
| the population, or are logical purists looking at this
| issue in isolation and not accounting for what life is
| like for most of the population. Life for most of the
| population is working paycheck to paycheck at whatever
| job you can get in order to make ends meet and keep your
| kids fed, and living in whatever housing you can get that
| doesn't make it impossible to get enough sleep to
| physically keep living due to long commute times. Being
| prevented from driving would absolutely destroy most
| affected families. You're going to do a lot more damage
| to society by preventing all those affected from driving
| than by doing nothing and letting it contribute to a
| small percentage of the road toll, which in itself is an
| insignificant percentage of the total death toll. Which
| is why every country on the planet has done nothing more
| drastic than awareness campaigns, despite being aware of
| this issue.
|
| Really, this is where this entire discussion becomes
| moot. Fatigue and microsleep as a cause of road
| fatalities are a well studied issue that every developed
| nation is aware of and has done the calculus on. And not
| a single one of them decided to ban those affected from
| driving, because the calculus of that policy results in a
| massive net COST, not gain. And that calculus shifts even
| further now that we have fairly cheap car technology
| available to mitigate the issue. When you think through
| all this, the only conclusion is 'ban affected people
| from driving' is moronic and does significantly more harm
| than good.
|
| tl;dr: you'll save more lives by replacing a single coal
| power plant with renewable energy than by implementing
| your policy. And you won't destroy the lives of millions
| of people and potentially crash the economy in the
| process. And there's already a viable solution on market
| that mitigates it almost entirely anyway. Pick your
| battles.
| dontcarethrow2 wrote:
| Driving = Privelege Driving =/= Human right
| Silhouette wrote:
| _This purist notion of 'they should never be allowed to
| drive a car, for everyone else's protection' crumbles at
| the most trivial examination when you consider that
| you're talking about leaving millions of people jobless
| or in significantly worse quality of life conditions_
|
| You contend that there are millions of people who
| knowingly drive while tired enough to fall asleep at the
| wheel and with a history of doing so?
|
| If so, I contend that your argument is contrived and your
| claim is unrealistic. Most people do not and would not
| drive while so tired that they knew they were likely to
| fall asleep while doing so. For a start, such a pattern
| of behaviour would be suicidal. Statistically, there
| would be far more nasty accidents due to tiredness than
| actually happen.
|
| In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive while
| so tired that they might actually fall asleep at the
| wheel. Not only doing that but knowingly doing it when
| you have a history of dropping off while driving is
| utterly inexcusable.
| missosoup wrote:
| > Most people do not and would not drive while so tired
| that they knew they were likely to fall asleep while
| doing so
|
| For most people, the other option is to stop driving to
| work and then be jobless and eventually homeless, make
| their kids go hungry, or go bankrupt. You guys seriously
| seem to be completely disconnected from what reality
| looks like for 80%+ of the population.
|
| > In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive
| while so tired that they might actually fall asleep at
| the wheel
|
| You have no idea how microsleep works. It does not
| involve 'knowingly driving while tired enough to fall
| asleep'. This single statement makes it clear that you're
| expressing some pretty strong and sure-sounding opinions
| on a subject that you know nothing about. You (as in
| specifically you) could be experiencing microsleep on a
| regular basis and never even know it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep
|
| And even when talking about the other cause - fatigued
| driving, are you suggesting that people come in to work
| late after every night they had poor sleep? I mean that
| would actually be a decent policy if not for the fact
| that a handful of instances of that in a year would get
| most people fired? Are you suggesting that someone
| shouldn't drive home after a long shift? (do they like,
| sleep at their workplace? have you thought through
| this?). And we're back to my first point - I don't think
| you understand what life is like for the majority of the
| population who live paycheck to paycheck and work any job
| that they can get just to survive and keep their kids
| fed.
|
| As someone enjoying the 'privilege' of working in tech
| and having flexible hours and being able to arbitrarily
| work from home and having enough savings to take a 6
| month long sabbatical without any financial strain, I can
| see where you might be coming from. As someone who spent
| the first half of their life working blue collar jobs and
| having a panic attack over an unexpected 300 dollar
| expense which literally meant I spent 2 weeks eating
| nothing but pasta, I'm pretty sure you either never knew
| or have forgotten what life is like for most people out
| there. Yeah for you and I being banned from driving is
| just a mild inconvenience and 'sigh, now I have to use
| Uber for all travel'. For most people, it's a life and
| family destroying sentence.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _For most people, the other option is to stop driving to
| work and then be jobless, make their kids go hungry, or
| go bankrupt. You guys seriously seem to be completely
| disconnected from what reality looks like for 80%+ of the
| population._
|
| You keep writing as if this is a normal problem that
| everyone faces. If it were, and if everyone or even a
| moderate proportion of drivers were doing what you seem
| to be arguing is essential, then population numbers would
| be falling rapidly due to all the fatal accidents. As far
| as I can see, however, you haven't actually provided any
| data to back up your repeated claims about how widespread
| this problem is and how much damage would be caused if
| the relevant drivers stopped driving when they were
| unsafe.
|
| _You have no idea how microsleep works._
|
| Susceptibility to microsleep is usually a result of
| failing to sufficient good quality sleep normally, an
| underlying medical problem, or both. Common conditions
| like obstructive sleep apnoea can be tested for.
| Effective treatments like CPAP machines exist. Given that
| OSA can have other serious health effects as well as
| causing the unusual tiredness that becomes a danger if
| you're doing something like driving or operating heavy
| machinery, investigation and treatment of potential sleep
| disorders is definitely recommended.
|
| Of course if you simply don't get enough hours of sleep
| regularly, if you don't sleep well because you do things
| like drinking excessive amounts of alcohol in the
| evening, you can go to bed earlier, cut down on the
| booze, etc.
|
| _You (as in specifically you) could be experiencing
| microsleep on a regular basis and never even know it._
|
| Given that there are many warning signs of microsleeps,
| one of which is being very tired all the time, and given
| that the subject of this thread is people driving when
| they know they're so tired they might fall asleep and
| having a history of scares caused by falling asleep at
| the wheel, I don't see that your attempt to make this
| personal has any relevance to the debate.
| aspaviento wrote:
| > For most people, the other option is to stop driving to
| work and then be jobless and eventually homeless, make
| their kids go hungry, or go bankrupt.
|
| You say that as if there weren't any other options. You
| have public transport and you can share a car (and
| expenses) with someone who has your same destination.
|
| > For most people, it's a life and family destroying
| sentence.
|
| Dying in a car accident is literally a death sentence and
| has worse implications for your family.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| A very large number of people in the US have access to no
| public transit whatsoever - and as for sharing a car...
| that's what they're likely doing with their partner. One
| person uses it to go to work while the other is at home,
| probably caring for their children.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _A very large number of people in the US have access to
| no public transit whatsoever - and as for sharing a
| car... that's what they're likely doing with their
| partner. One person uses it to go to work while the other
| is at home, probably caring for their children._
|
| How do all these hopelessly trapped families ever take
| their kids to things like medical appointments?
| TylerE wrote:
| They own cars?
|
| 93% of American households do - and I expect if you took
| away a few large dense metros like NYC and Boston, that
| number would jump up to about 98%
| TylerE wrote:
| > You have public transpor
|
| No you don't. In 95% of the US "Public transit" is maybe
| a bus that stops a mile away once every 2 hours. If that.
| scarmig wrote:
| > You say that as if there weren't any other options. You
| have public transport and you can share a car (and
| expenses) with someone who has your same destination.
|
| So, how does this work, exactly? So you set up carpooling
| with a coworker. And then one day you don't sleep well.
| Luckily enough, they're there to pick you up so you don't
| have to drive! ...but what happens when it's your turn to
| drive? You tell them, whoops, I'm tired today, so you're
| going to have to drive and get your spouse to change
| _their_ plans so that you have access to a car? Or maybe
| they 're always the one driving... what happens on days
| that they're tired? They cancel and you both have to find
| your own way via public transit?
|
| Like what are the specific logistics here, accounting for
| failure modes? Does it amount to "spend $100 on Uber on
| days after a mediocre night's sleep"?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I don't fall asleep behind the wheel after just a night
| of mediocre sleep.
|
| I think if you fall asleep while driving _regularly_
| there is a serious and systematic problem.
| scarmig wrote:
| Drowsiness is very dangerous in itself, comparable to
| driving drunk.
| jhloa2 wrote:
| Exactly. I live in the US in a relatively typical suburb
| and the vast majority of people here don't really have an
| option on whether or not they drive. Our public transit
| is lacking, jobs are inflexible with WFH, and the
| majority of housing located close to where jobs are
| clustered is exorbitantly expensive.
|
| The issue is also compounded if you work a blue collar
| job where it's likely that you aren't even commuting to
| the same place every day and need to haul tools with you.
|
| It's really easy for people to make blanket statements
| that you shouldn't drive if you have a history of being
| tired at the wheel, but the reality is that a large
| portion of our population doesn't have an option.
| scarmig wrote:
| > You contend that there are millions of people who
| knowingly drive while tired enough to fall asleep at the
| wheel and with a history of doing so?
|
| Yes? There are even millions of people who drive drunk
| every year, which is a far more conscious choice to
| endanger other people than someone driving home after
| long, late shift.
|
| 15 million people work a night shift. If 10% of them
| drive home drowsy one night per year, you're already at
| millions.
| Mirioron wrote:
| > _According to the National Sleep Foundation, about half
| of U.S. adult drivers admit to consistently getting
| behind the wheel while feeling drowsy. About 20% admit to
| falling asleep behind the wheel at some point in the past
| year - with more than 40% admitting this has happened at
| least once in their driving careers._
|
| From: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-
| topics/fatigued-drivi...
|
| Those are enormous numbers. I wonder how big the economic
| hit would be if none of those people drove.
| Silhouette wrote:
| This is a matter of degree. The start of this thread
| wasn't about someone who was driving home at the end of a
| long day at work and feeling a little tired. It was about
| someone who, by their own admission, had a history of
| dozing off at the wheel, and wanted to knowingly continue
| driving while unfit to do so.
|
| If we're being brutally objective here, road accidents
| are _extremely_ expensive in purely economic terms.
| Obviously there could be a loss of productivity for
| anyone directly involved who was injured. But then you
| also need to expend considerable resources to clear the
| accident site and fully reopen the road. While you 're
| doing that, you might be delaying many people due to
| congestion in the area of the accident. Then there is the
| cost of caring for anyone wounded, repairing any physical
| damage done to public infrastructure, and repairing or
| replacing any other vehicles that were involved and any
| cargo they were carrying. And of course, in the worst
| case, you have the profound effects of losing people
| entirely under such tragic circumstances, which involve
| not just losing anything they would have contributed for
| the rest of their lives, but also the consequences for
| their family and friends, their employers or clients, and
| anyone else who depended on them economically right down
| to the place on the corner where they stopped to buy a
| coffee each morning on the way into the office.
|
| So even if we're only trying to avoid the most
| catastrophic cases such as someone actually falling
| asleep and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up on a major
| road, and even if we err on the side of caution and take
| many thousands of drivers off the road who are at
| significant risk of causing such an accident but in
| reality would not have done so, it's _still_ not clear
| cut that the economic hit would be greater than the harm
| prevented.
|
| For those who like hard data, I can't immediately offer
| you any, but as a very rough guide, here in the UK (where
| we already have lower per-capita road deaths than most of
| the world) I have seen arguments made about local road
| improvement schemes that suggested a seven-figure cost to
| save a single life would be economically justified. It's
| not hard to believe if you consider that a fatal accident
| can close a road for several hours, leaving thousands of
| vehicles stranded, and involving dozens of emergency
| responders and all of the equipment and vehicles they
| need, in addition to the injury, death and damage caused
| to anyone directly involved.
| fastball wrote:
| The start of the thread was actually:
|
| > You should never get behind the wheel if there's a
| chance you'll fall asleep!
|
| I would say anyone that feels drowsy has a change of
| falling asleep. So 50% of the population should regularly
| not get behind the wheel, by GC's standard.
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| You've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make a
| longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency?
| Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet?
|
| In this case, if the person isn't able to get disability
| b/c of their condition, I can't fault them for doing what
| they need to survive. I don't like that it puts others at
| risk, and hope they are taking steps to reduce the risk.
| Detection technology that alerts them seems like a step
| in the right direction.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _You 've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make
| a longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency?
| Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet?_
|
| I've had to do all of those things. At some times in my
| life, I've had the first and last for an extended period.
| To my knowledge, I have never as a result driven in a
| condition that made me unsafe behind the wheel, though.
|
| Yours is another comment that talks about people doing
| what they need to do to survive, which is an ironic
| characterisation given we're talking about behaviour that
| is borderline suicidal.
| spike021 wrote:
| Then you pay for a taxi, bus, or some other mode of
| transportation unless you're prepared to pay both
| financially and emotionally for any incident you wind up
| causing. Both for yourself and everyone else affected.
|
| It's really not that complicated. Stop making choices for
| other people that could cause them to wind up injured or
| killed. Because yes, that is in fact what you're saying
| to do here.
| [deleted]
| spike021 wrote:
| The fact that this comment is a plethora of words trying
| to win an argument how falling asleep at the wheel
| shouldn't be considered unsafe is incredible.
| scarmig wrote:
| That's an ungenerous reading of the comment. They would
| agree that falling asleep at the wheel is unsafe.
|
| We've designed a system, however, that is set up such
| that it's bound to happen sometimes. Not everyone can
| call in to work and tell their boss "sorry, I slept badly
| last night, I'm not coming in" or order a $60 Uber to get
| somewhere on a whim. Moralizing at people is just virtue
| signaling.
| missosoup wrote:
| In one paragraph you've conveyed my point better than I
| could across multiple comments. This is the heart of what
| I was getting at.
|
| This, and the fact that the HN demographic, mostly being
| techies, seem to be a bit disconnected from what real
| life looks like to 80%+ of the population of the world. A
| few instances per year of not coming in to work due to
| poor sleep or having to order Uber wouldn't just
| inconvenicence them - it would completely destroy their
| lives along with their children/families. People are
| doing what they need to do to survive and look after
| their loved ones.
| spike021 wrote:
| That's quite a reach and a bad take.
|
| I've only been in the full-time tech industry for about
| 3.5 years.
|
| Before then I was working hourly jobs to make ends meet,
| including working half time or more while studying full-
| time in college, working during high school, etc. This so
| I could pay rent and tuition with minimal, if any, aid.
|
| I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating from
| university.
|
| I was walking or taking public transportation everywhere
| prior to finally getting a car.
|
| I won't disagree that people in SV can be snobby but
| let's not jump to conclusions here.
| missosoup wrote:
| > I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating
| from university.
|
| > I was walking or taking public transportation
| everywhere prior to finally getting a car.
|
| I _had_ to afford a car in order to be able to get to
| work when I got my first job. Taking public transport
| would be a 4 hour journey in each direction (assuming I
| get to each transit point on time, assuming everything
| arrives on time). I couldn 't afford the car by a long
| shot. I ended up asking friends to lend me money and
| taking a loan that ended up with me paying like 3x the
| value by the time it was done. And the car I got was a
| total piece of shit which ended up costing multiples of
| its original price to keep operating, but that was the
| only way for me to keep the job and start climbing the
| life ladder, so I sucked it up.
|
| You won the demographic lottery of being born in
| circumstances where you had the option to walk and take
| public transportation everywhere you need to. Most people
| have not won that lottery. I'm 0% SJW but I think you
| seriously have no idea of how privileged you are just
| through the random circumstances of how and when and to
| whom you were born, compared to the average person.
|
| Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent
| position in the tech industry, my mind is constantly
| blown by the fact that the average techie thinks their
| life is anything like what the vast majority of people on
| this planet are dealing with.
|
| I'm not saying all this to win some victimhood points.
| I'm saying all this to try to get across to you that
| having the ability to catch PT or walk to everywhere you
| need to get to without it literally taking up 100% of
| your waking time is a huge privilege that you won in the
| random lottery of life. A privilege that you're not even
| acknowledging or aware of. Most people didn't roll as
| high as you in that lottery, so they take the 0.0000001%
| (or whatever) chance of death to drive to work in 1 hour
| each time they wake up tired, instead of the 100% chance
| of having a mental breakdown due to an 8hr commute time,
| etc.
|
| And again, every state in every developed nation is fully
| aware of this, has researched this, and has crunched the
| numbers on this. And not a single one in the world has
| acted to prohibit it. Because they are all aware that
| doing so would result in more harm than good.
| spike021 wrote:
| I think this discussion is becoming rather pointless for
| the overall discourse about this singular topic, so I'll
| just leave with this.
|
| >Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent
| position in the tech industry, my mind is constantly
| blown by the fact that the average techie thinks their
| life is anything like what the vast majority of this
| planet are dealing with.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, here? You
| say that I, and other like-minded people, are just
| "average techies" despite literally just explaining that
| some of us too had our own challenges.
|
| I think it's okay to admit that nearly everybody has had
| their share of challenging backgrounds. Some people's
| privileges are the other's disadvantages and so on. That
| much is obvious.
|
| But aside from that. Backgrounds aside.
|
| Driving when you know you have a constant issue of
| falling asleep, getting drowsy, all of the above is
| unsafe. Even if you have priorities that you place above
| your own health/well-being, the problem with having those
| issues and still choosing to drive is that you are now
| deciding how others will be affected by your decision.
|
| The moment you begin endangering other people's lives is
| the same moment that backgrounds, poorly-disadvantaged or
| not, become meaningless.
|
| Because I highly doubt some victim's family is going to
| be impressed that you or someone else knowingly chose to
| drive repeatedly while acknowledging they would not be
| fully aware of what they were doing just because of
| working conditions.
| scarmig wrote:
| In an earlier life, I worked in the trucking industry. If
| you refused to drive anytime you were fatigued, you would
| not be successful in the industry (one reason I am very
| glad to not be doing that anymore; it's also one of the
| most dangerous occupations out there, partly for that
| reason). I think that lots of the people here have never
| worked a non-privileged job in their lives.
| spike021 wrote:
| I've seen the results of this first-hand when a big rig
| about 10 car lengths ahead of me on I-5 abruptly began
| moving from the right lane through the center median and
| into the lanes of oncoming traffic.
|
| He slammed into a pickup truck and killed that truck's
| occupant.
|
| I had to be called in as a witness of the incident by the
| victim and trucking company's attorneys.
|
| I think there's a strong difference between (rightfully
| so) blaming the companies that force this environment and
| the people who are just trying to make a living safely.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > If it's dangerous for you to drive, don't drive. It's
| as simple as that.
|
| You've never lived in the States, have you? The absolute
| vast majority of anything in the States is inaccessible
| without a car. If you live in a city, sure, you might get
| by with public transport (almost universally very bad in
| the States). Anywhere outside the city center? Good luck
| getting anywhere without a car.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > You shouldn't be driving. Period.
|
| what a stunningly pretentious and ignorant thing to say.
|
| reasons to be tired and drive: rotating shiftwork, working
| multiple jobs, caring for a newborn, caring for the sick.
| that covers millions of people, off the top of my head,
| without doing any research. and those are only the most
| black-and-white examples. more ambiguous cases include:
| driving from physical activity like OP mentioned, long drives
| to visit friends/family, events like weddings.
|
| if you want to make the argument that sleepy driving is more
| dangerous than we give it credit for, then we can talk - but
| thats not what you said. "You should never get behind the
| wheel if there's a chance you'll fall asleep!" is an absurd
| thing to say.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| If you're for some reason drunk and one of these reasons to
| drive comes up, does the logic still apply? I'd say not. So
| why would it apply to being tired?
| echelon wrote:
| > what a stunningly pretentious and ignorant thing to say.
|
| It's not. We're talking about people's lives.
|
| I've felt tired before and you know what I do? I nap in the
| parking lot. Because the remote chance I kill or maim
| myself or someone else is not worth the momentary
| discomfort. It's not fun, and sometimes people harass you,
| but it's far better than driving drowsy.
|
| > reasons to be tired and drive: rotating shiftwork,
| working multiple jobs, caring for a newborn, caring for the
| sick.
|
| None of that is an excuse to get behind a many thousand
| pound piece of equipment and not be able to control it.
|
| > "You should never get behind the wheel if there's a
| chance you'll fall asleep!" is an absurd thing to say.
|
| I stand behind my assertion and hope you'll come around.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > I've felt tired before and you know what I do? I nap in
| the parking lot.
|
| and this is exactly my point. you think being tired is
| exceptional, something you just "nap" and solve. you have
| clearly never been exhausted for months on end. I have. I
| have nodded off on highways, and worked with people that
| fell asleep at stoplights. not everyone gets to have 9
| hours of sleep and then work 8 hours in a chair.
|
| > None of that is an excuse to get behind a many thousand
| pound piece of equipment and not be able to control it.
|
| i'm glad youre so concerned about public safety, but
| those people are probably more concerned about eating and
| paying rent (or their infant, or dying parent, etc).
|
| > I stand behind my assertion and hope you'll come
| around.
|
| this isnt about me or my opinion. there are literal
| millions of people that simply cannot do what you propose
| (and millions more that will not because they dont share
| your opinion in the grayer areas), despite your objection
| that "None of that is an excuse". you seem to be confused
| about what options people have.
| [deleted]
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| I agree -- it seems like many of the responders here are
| unaware of just how much privilege they have. (Or maybe
| they're just not in the US.) You can't just take a nap
| you need to pick a child up or the boss expects you at
| the next shift or you'll end up with DSS/Police at your
| door, or unemployed. Is this right? No, of course not,
| but it's reality. Hell, many people are driving vehicles
| that are very unsafe, which also poses a risk to others,
| for the same reason -- they have no choice.
| echelon wrote:
| I empathize, but this is still rationalization.
|
| Having children is a choice, and sometimes people back
| themselves into untenable situations. You can't use
| children as an excuse to put the lives of others at risk.
| Realize what you're saying here.
|
| People driving cars they can't afford to upkeep are also
| risking themselves and others.
|
| Yes, it sucks. I empathize. I shouldn't be throwing
| stones. But if I'm a juror on a vehicular homicide case
| I'm not going to think less of deaths that were caused
| because the defendant had children to take to school. It
| would be more compelling than a DUI case, but it doesn't
| bring people back to life.
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| Almost no one should have children then, as very few of
| us have sufficient resources to guarantee we can support
| a child for 18+ years. Just having a child in the car is
| distracting and puts others at risk, but we accept that.
| And once the child is there, and it becomes a struggle to
| meet the schedule, then what? Give them up?
|
| Obviously this line of thought has devolved pretty far
| from the original point as someone who can afford a car
| with driver drowsiness detection can probably afford to
| make different choices. It's just the idea that no one
| should ever drive when they have even a slight risk of
| falling asleep seems quite unrealistic, at least in the
| US.
|
| Personally, I can find myself a bit tired by the end of
| the day. I've never felt at risk of falling asleep while
| driving, but I'm human, so can't say with certainty that
| it will never happen. Maybe a driver aid will lull some
| into driving when they know they shouldn't, but I still
| think it will be a net win (just like seat belts).
| verytrivial wrote:
| > reasons to be tired and drive
|
| What? You have provided a long list of reasons not to
| drive. It's the law and a moral requirement that you don't
| go out and kill other people or yourself due to
| incapacitation.
|
| People drive with varying levels of alertness, yes. But if
| there is a reasonable, foreseeable chance you might FALL
| ASLEEP, then no, of course you ABSOLUTELY should not be
| driving and I'm sad but not surprised that this needs to be
| pointed out.
| missosoup wrote:
| The 'you shouldn't be driving' commenters are people who
| are are either living in a privileged high-income bubble
| and don't understand what real life is like for most of the
| population, or are logical purists thinking about this
| issue in isolation without considering what real life is
| like for most of the population. Neither of those
| demographics has considered that their 'you shouldn't be
| driving, period' policy would cause a lot more damage than
| it would mitigate, when considered at a societal scale.
|
| The fact that this kind of policy would do net negative
| damage is trivial to arrive at, and is exactly why no
| country has ever stopped people with this issue from
| driving even though the issue itself is well known. The
| 'shouldn't be driving' mindset is tunnel visioning and
| swatting a fly in your house with a nuclear missile.
|
| The fact that anyone going against that viewpoint is
| getting downvoted makes it pretty clear that HN is trending
| towards reddit where downvotes have become an 'I disagree'
| button. It's been pretty sad watching this trend play out
| over the last couple of years.
| jowsie wrote:
| There's a big difference between driving when you are
| knowingly on the verge of falling asleep, and driving
| while slightly under-rested.
| [deleted]
| wobblyasp wrote:
| > "You should never get behind the wheel if there's a
| chance you'll fall asleep!" is an absurd thing to say.
|
| No it isn't? We expect drivers to be able to react to
| situations that can arise when your driving a ton of metal
| and plastic. 24 hours w/o sleep is equivalent to having a
| BAC ~0.1%; well above the legal limit. Sure; most people
| aren't staying up 24 hours and going for a cross-country
| road trip, but you need to be aware of what affect is has
| on your ability to operate
| (https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/drowsy_driving.html)
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| It is a sensible request but an absurd demand.
|
| Unless we first institute livable wages with sane working
| hours and paid commute time along with free childcare.
|
| So that survival does not demand that people abuse their
| bodies with lack of sleep.
|
| agreeing that externalities like house work, parenting,
| commuting exist, have cost, and need to be considered in
| a viable economy could be a great step.
|
| Doughnut economics is one such approach.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_
| sho...
| wobblyasp wrote:
| I totally agree; there should never be a situation where
| an individual is required to put their life and limb on
| the line to provide for their families.
|
| It still does not justify placing the life and limbs of
| all other people on the road in jeopardy.
| [deleted]
| Silhouette wrote:
| _what a stunningly pretentious and ignorant thing to say._
|
| It is not, and just to be absolutely clear, none of the
| scenarios you mentioned justifies doing it either.
|
| Driving while tired is comparable in effect to driving
| while impaired by alcohol or drugs or while distracted by
| devices such as phones. It can easily cause sufficient
| delay in reaction or error in judgement to lead to a
| serious accident that was entirely avoidable.
|
| Driving while tired enough to actually fall asleep is a
| matter of life and death. Unless you are literally doing so
| in order to avoid an imminent and even greater likelihood
| of death -- and if you are, then I humbly suggest that it
| is extremely unlikely that you are truly in danger of
| falling asleep at the wheel yourself anyway -- you are
| risking the lives of everyone around you, as well as your
| own, and you should be treated accordingly in the eyes of
| the law for their benefit as well as your own. In my
| country, that would potentially mean multiple years in
| jail, a driving ban and being forced to take an extended
| test to demonstrate your competence again before being
| allowed back behind the wheel. And that's if you were lucky
| and got pulled over before you caused an actual accident.
| root_axis wrote:
| Some people don't have that privilege. Ever known someone
| that works two jobs trying to make ends meet? You don't have
| a choice except to drive home from work.
| wow_yes wrote:
| Take the bus
| t-writescode wrote:
| Some people don't have _that_ privilege either.
| spike021 wrote:
| I would argue that a car is totally a privilege that is
| above that of finding other means of transportation. I
| couldn't even afford one until I graduated college and
| was working full-time.
|
| Before then I walked if I had to, sometimes over a mile
| depending on the destination, or took public
| transportation.
| root_axis wrote:
| Not a realistic option for daily life in the U.S. and
| often not even possible if you work late hours. Ride
| sharing is way too expensive to use every day.
| konschubert wrote:
| You can try to emigrate to a richer country, you can try to
| reduce your expenses, you move in with relatives, you can
| sleep in the car. These are all terrible choices but
| endangering other people is also a choice.
| root_axis wrote:
| Good luck getting people to move to other countries as a
| way to avoid driving home to their family and comfy bed
| after a hard day's work.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Ever known someone that works two jobs trying to make ends
| meet? You don 't have a choice except to drive home from
| work._
|
| And will it be easier to make those ends meet when you are
| dead, or paralysed, or locked up because you left someone
| else dead or paralysed?
|
| The arguments that a few people are making here, as if not
| driving while so tired you might fall asleep would cause
| some devastating loss to society and herald the end of life
| as we know it, are just silly. Only a very small number of
| drivers would be affected, because fortunately most people
| aren't so irresponsible in the first place. And given the
| extremely high likelihood of those few drivers getting
| themselves and, worse, possibly many other people injured
| or dead, with all the negative consequences that will
| imply, it still doesn't make sense from a greater good
| perspective.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Please don 't get behind the wheel if you're drowsy._
|
| You're shouting at a wall.
|
| People think "drowsy" isn't a problem, the same way they
| think that texting and driving isn't a problem because they
| saw someone jump backwards in slow motion in The Matrix.
|
| Drowsy driving is no better than buzzed driving, which
| legally is drunk driving.
| foobarian wrote:
| One time I was driving between cities at 2am for unavoidable
| reasons, and was drowsy. At one point my brain interpreted
| the shifting red taillights in front of me as a game of
| Tetris. That's when I knew it was too dangerous to continue
| so I pulled over (rest stop was close by) and took a 15
| minute nap. I found that powernaps like this are really
| effective at energizing me past browning out and letting me
| finish the drive safely.
|
| Measures like opening windows in the middle of winter,
| playing loud music, pinching, etc. stop working eventually
| and a nap really is the only way out.
| sangnoir wrote:
| You need discipline to avoid inattentive driving more than
| advanced technology. You know roughly when you will get
| tired from driving: plan around that. Technology won't save
| you from poor judgement.
|
| I do agree, power-naps are amazing to help you regain
| focus. One time I was driving and it was almost dawn, and I
| was desperately trying to force myself to reach the next
| town so I could get a room. I realized I probably wouldn't
| even make it that far and pulled over at the next rest stop
| and slept for 30 minutes. I woke up feeling more well-
| rested than I had any right to be.
|
| When you start having micro-sleep episodes (your
| attention/memory has inexplicable gaps), or start
| experiencing sensory hallucinations, it's well past the
| time for you to rest.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance
| you'll fall asleep!
|
| I don't know about the upthread commenter or how common a
| thing it is for him/her. But this isn't feasible advice. It
| is _never_ possible to drive perfectly safely, it 's just
| not. Everyone makes mistakes in cars, and preventing them
| needs to be a defense in depth treatment and not an
| impossible prohibition like this.
|
| Saying "people sometimes drive tired" (goodness knows I have)
| leads to "maybe a driver-facing camera might save lives".
|
| Saying "You should never drive tired!" is just a recipe for
| blaming the driver and fixing nothing.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| You know people are going to do it, though, so it's good to
| have checks on it.
| echelon wrote:
| I disagree wholeheartedly. This technology empowers people
| to make stupid decisions and rationalize them.
|
| We never had people deliberately sleeping in cars (with
| pillows!) before autopilot was a thing. If the kinds of
| people prone to make these types of decisions come to trust
| technology to save them, we're going to wind up in a worse
| spot than before the technology existed.
|
| People will rely on the tech to save them when it was never
| meant for that.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _This technology empowers people to make stupid
| decisions and rationalize them._
|
| Not just "this" technology -- technology in general.
| There are always risk adjustments; airbags and seat belts
| had similar riskier-driving effects.
| 14 wrote:
| I have the unfortunate ability to be wide awake when I leave
| and then suddenly be tired. I often have to stop on even 1-2
| hour drives. But I recognize when I am tired and am know for
| just pulling over to nap even if I have passengers. Sleep
| driving is like drunk driving.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| This is such a bad take. If a system can help prevent
| accidents due to drowsiness, it's a net positive. There are
| plenty of reasons to be drowsy and still have to show up to
| work/commute:
|
| Maybe you have a newborn at home, and... Got a bad sleep. Or
| were woken up by a fire alarm. Or maybe you're just drowsy in
| the mornings, like me!
|
| I used to have a real easy 35 minute drive to work, on a
| single, straight road with a few sets of lights.
|
| I probably nodded off a bit while driving at least once a
| month, if not more. Especially at a set of lights.
|
| I'm not a morning person!
| echelon wrote:
| While this technology can help prevent some percentage of
| accidents under the existing regime, it will likely lead to
| some population of drivers putting more faith in the
| technology and becoming more reckless.
|
| It's hard to say if there will be more or fewer accidents
| as this becomes prevalent. I'm wary of it by default given
| the already prevalent incidence of DUI and sleepy driving.
| Those individuals seem likely to use this as an excuse or
| crutch. I'd be happy to be surprised.
| fastball wrote:
| Well humans can't get any better than they are now, and
| they're quite dangeous.
|
| Computers are always getting better.
|
| My money is on the computers.
| danudey wrote:
| This sort of technology would be great, even if the data
| never leaves the user's account, is never farmed by Tesla,
| and is never used by the autopilot.
|
| Imagine if the parent poster falls asleep at the wheel and
| _does_ injure or kill someone. They could point to the fact
| that it 's never happened before, but if the court can
| subpoena Tesla to get data that indicates this guy dozes off
| with some regularity (and can see indications that he knew
| about it), then he's going to face a harsher sentence,
| possibly even bumping it up from involuntary manslaughter to
| second degree murder if they can argue that it was extremely
| reckless disregard.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| As a daily cyclist who has experienced many close calls
| over the years at the hands of inattentive, impatient, or
| unaware drivers, I would love to believe that this world is
| coming. But unless insurance companies can actually go to
| work on _predicting_ how accident-prone a person is based
| on this kind of data, and raising premiums accordingly, I
| don 't know if it will make much difference in terms of
| actually changing behaviour.
|
| Like, there should already be a lot of this kind of data
| out there to nail drivers to the wall post-crash, and you
| just don't really see it happening. Even when someone is
| killed, everyone involved basically shrugs, says it was a
| fluke, and tells the family they should get over it and
| move on (watch for the phrase "came out of nowhere" as a
| sign that everyone involved has checked out of a particular
| case).
|
| And how much will consumers accept a car that tattles on
| them about their bad behaviour? People already lose their
| minds over provably-effective external automated
| enforcement measures which rely on plate reading like red
| light cams and average speed cams.
| foepys wrote:
| The court will very likely not have to subpoena anything.
| Tesla has a history of publicly putting all blame on the
| driver when Autopilot once again kills a person by driving
| them into a divider or a stationary truck. They will go out
| of their way to show and twist the driver's harvested data
| to their advantage.
| kraigspear wrote:
| Unless AP doesn't allow the driver to control the vehicle
| it is the drivers fault.
| [deleted]
| epistasis wrote:
| Unfortunately, if the poster lives in the US, there's a
| really high chance that laws have prevented suitable non-car
| transportation from being available.
|
| There's a few places where one can live daily life without
| cars: a subset of really huge cities, some downtown areas of
| mid size cities. But usually we highly restrict housing from
| existing in such places, and we strict zoning prevents mixing
| of residential and commercial in areas that did not have it
| before these restrictions became prevalent in the last
| century.
| trhway wrote:
| >No technology should compensate for this.
|
| not surprisingly that the "holier-than-thou" purists'
| arguments in this thread sound the same as the typical
| conservative argument against contraception - "by decreasing
| the weight of consequences it will encourage vice behaviour",
| and not surprisingly that these style arguments just outright
| fail in real life.
| devit wrote:
| If you have to drive despite this, you probably should ensure
| to have a supply of caffeine in the car (e.g. caffeine gums,
| instant coffee, maybe energy drinks) and take a sufficient dose
| before driving
| [https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/motr/can-a-
| caffein...]
|
| You might also be able to get a prescription for modafinil,
| which might be even more effective.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _One of the reasons I would love to have autopilot is because
| I have a history of dozing off at the wheel. Never so much
| where I 've had an accident, but bad enough where I've scared
| myself badly._
|
| This is pretty selfish. If you're falling asleep at the wheel
| enough that you want Tesla's Autopilot to save you, you have a
| problem.
|
| I've seen Tesla cars do absolutely insane maneuvers on the
| freeway that no sober driver would ever consider doing, only to
| find out that the person behind the wheel is asleep or doing
| another task other than driving.
| OBFUSCATED wrote:
| Ford has a system that does this. It looks out for things like
| sudden corrective steering inputs.
| https://www.haynesford.co.uk/Tech-Ford-driver-alert
| spike021 wrote:
| Honestly if you're driving even somewhat regularly I'd highly
| recommend stopping that immediately and getting this completely
| figured out.
|
| I don't even mean "well I think I know now how to tell when
| it's coming on and if I should pull over." I mean get it
| diagnosed, whatever.
|
| I'm not sure how someone who knows they have this issue feels
| the least bit okay with going out on a road in a 1+ ton car.
| dmead wrote:
| you should not be driving at all.
| cozzyd wrote:
| In this case, the Tesla should pull over and then call the
| highway patrol to give you a ticket.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| Have you been evaluated for sleep apnea?
|
| Microsleeps while driving are extremely dangerous. You should
| take this seriously.
| dheera wrote:
| The one thing I hate about most cars' active lane keep systems
| is that if you fall asleep and don't grip the steering wheel
| for a while, it does the most UNSAFE thing possible, which is
| to beep a few times and then disable itself, which would mean
| that you crash, 100% of the time. Yet other lane keep systems
| disable themselves below 40mph which means you crash as soon as
| the car slows down to that speed.
|
| What it _should_ do is continue to aggressively lane keep,
| switch on emergency flashers, and sound progressively louder
| alarms until you wake up, but NEVER stop lane keeping, even as
| the car slows down below 40mph. It should lane keep all the way
| down to 0 and keep sounding the alarms.
|
| What does Tesla do if you actually fall asleep and ignore the
| warnings?
| awad wrote:
| The hazard lights go on, the car will slow down, and
| eventually pull over to the side of the road while Autopilot
| is disabled for the rest of the trip. Though the "disabled
| for rest of the trip" bit can be trivially worked around by
| shutting down and powering back on, this seems to be better
| than what you mentioned in immediately shutting down the
| system while still driving.
| dheera wrote:
| That's awesome, at least the hazard lights and pulling over
| to the side of the road, sounds infinitely more safe than
| any other lane keep system I've seen.
| sorenjan wrote:
| You're describing driver drowsiness detection, and that is
| available in a lot of different cars, and was launched in 2007
| by Volvo.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| It's not a solution (you really shouldn't drive when you're
| sleepy) but a great many modern cars will warn you if you
| slowly quit your lane without having used your blinkers first,
| which is typically what happens when someone get sleepy while
| driving (slowly drifting out of your lane on the highway). My
| wife's little Toyota CH-R does just that: it tries to correct
| the car's trajectory, does give feedback both through vibration
| (in the steering wheel) and through an audio signal.
|
| I think it's more realistic to settle for that kind of features
| than to wait for a real 100% complete autopilot.
| dimgl wrote:
| I was involved in a major car accident that totaled my new
| vehicle due to falling asleep at the wheel on a highway.
| Obviously it scared me enough that I'll never fall asleep in a
| car again, but it was due to sleep deprivation from being up
| many hours irresponsibly the night before.
|
| If you're falling asleep often at the wheel I would recommend
| you tell your primary. He'll likely refer you to a sleep
| doctor. I didn't have major symptoms, but after a
| recommendation from my primary I discovered I have a bad case
| of sleep apnea.
|
| If you're falling asleep at the wheel often (and btw, you're
| doing the right thing by pulling over and napping) you should
| go to a sleep doctor. You might not be getting a proper amount
| of sleep, for whatever reason, and they might be able to help.
| vaccinator wrote:
| I fell asleep once and only hit tall grass... No damages
| luckily. I hope that they would stop mowing the side of
| highways (it is good for slowing you down)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I replied in another comment, but it was never super
| frequent, and hasn't happened to me in years. Just like it
| sounds like with you, the fear of it happening again has
| lingered.
| kerng wrote:
| Maybe a warning system to tell you to stop driving might be
| better?
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Aren't autopilot and sleep detection totally independent
| features?
| gene91 wrote:
| Auto manufacturers are approaching Adaptive Cruise Control in
| a manner that intermingles the two: GM "Super Cruise", Ford's
| upcoming "CoPilot 360 Active", etc.
|
| In my opinion, these two features are very related. In order
| to have a reasonably low false positive, the sleep detection
| must be reasonably lenient. In turn, this means the vehicle
| must be able to (most of the time) tolerate a few seconds of
| inattentive driving.
| kerng wrote:
| Maybe a warning system to tell you to stop driving might be
| better? I believe such systems that track your eye movement
| actually exist already
| dosshell wrote:
| Yes, head, eye, eyelid, glasses and facemask trackers do
| exist now in cars. BMW, GM etc. Face recognition, speak
| detection (who is speaking) and drowsiness is coming very
| soon as far as I know.
|
| The car will know when you changed driver last time etc.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I have a history of dozing off at the wheel.
|
| Have you tried to address this issue? This seems like a huge
| safety concern and you're actively choosing to put others in
| harms way by continuing to drive.
| adolph wrote:
| Indeed. In a fail-safer world maybe an original use for
| driver monitoring and autopilot would be to move the vehicle
| to a safe spot to stop and perform alerting.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Yes. Mostly I just learned to recognize when I'm getting
| tired and pull over and take a nap which is a massive help.
| Also, it's pretty uncommon for me to drive solo anymore so
| it's far less of an issue.
|
| Oddly, it was a bigger issue when I was younger. It hasn't
| happened to me in quite a few years, but the awareness of it
| has lingered, thus my desire to take extra precautions.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> Also, it's pretty uncommon for me to drive solo anymore
| so it's far less of an issue._
|
| There's almost nothing a person in another seat can do if
| you are asleep, even if they realize that in time (and
| that's a huge assumption). Speaking as someone who has
| unhealthy interest at failures, disasters, and their root
| causes, this type of attitude is super common, and always
| leads to disasters. Please seek medical attention before
| you killed somebody and yourself. You can't rely on self-
| control.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess what he is meaning is that you can change drivers
| when you are not alone?
| nmcfarl wrote:
| My guess is that he has someone to talk to. I've found
| that this makes get drowsy much less likely.
| nexuist wrote:
| I agree. If this is something like e.g. narcolepsy, you
| should see a doctor. There are a few low-risk prescriptions
| worth looking into.
|
| When I used to pull 18 hour days, I would also notice myself
| getting tired behind the wheel, but never fully falling
| asleep. My low-tech solution to this was to set an alarm for
| 10 minutes after I started driving and setting the alarm
| volume to max. Then, the alarm would go off in the middle of
| my drive, usually surprising me and jolting me awake since
| I'm obviously not paying attention to the time. Then,
| snoozing the alarm would make it go away for another 10
| minutes, and so on until I made it home. This is probably not
| the perfect solution but it worked for me. Obviously the
| better long term solution is to a) not do 18 hour days and b)
| address what is making you so sleepy and stop it from
| happening.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > When I used to pull 18 hour days, I would also notice
| myself getting tired behind the wheel, but never fully
| falling asleep.
|
| This is fairly similar to what would trigger it with me. My
| solution was to ensure I have passengers or let someone
| else drive.
| smeyer wrote:
| It's hard to imagine that you were alert enough to safely
| drive even with the alarm. I'd urge anyone in a similar
| situation to stay off the roads; your ability to work 18
| hour days is less important than the safety of everyone on
| the road.
| nexuist wrote:
| Yeah, what helped me is that on those nights I elected to
| avoid the highway and only take city roads, so lots of
| traffic, red lights, stop lights, etc. that allowed me to
| drive slowly. The downside is that sitting at stop lights
| made me sleepier, hence the alarms.
|
| Avoiding highways was what saved me I think; a mistake at
| 20mph is far less expensive than a mistake at 80mph. But
| certainly you're right; the obvious answer is to avoid
| driving or as another commenter said, carpool!
| mtgx wrote:
| Then the Autopilot should never be a thing people can enable at
| will. It should be something automatic like automatic-braking
| in case of imminent accident. And in such scenarios it should
| be MUCH louder than just beeping about while you doze off after
| 20h of not getting enough sleep.
|
| And if it happens say 3 times in a short amount of time, it
| should just ull you over.
| iddqd wrote:
| I hope as soon as EYES_CLOSED trigger loud alarms go off and
| the car slows down carefully, with or without autopilot
| enabled.
|
| You should probably stay off the roads if you're having these
| issues and/or seek help to resolve them.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Bjorn Nyland on YouTube drives a lot of different EVs in
| Norway, and one of the thing he tests is the Lane
| Assist/Autopilot/driver assist disengagement behaviour if
| there is no response from the driver.
|
| It seems like some cars will actually try to kill you -
| they'll beep a bit and try to alert you, then if you don't
| respond the autopilot will simply disengage. And drive off
| the road or into whatever.
|
| The better ones (such as the new Polestar) go to great
| efforts to try and alert you (noise, flashing lights, tugging
| on seatbelt tensioner) then will finally activate hazard
| lights, slow down gradually, and pull over safely.
| dosshell wrote:
| No it won't do that directly. Even if it is longer then a
| blink. And the reason for that is false positives. It is
| _very_ hard to see the difference between a person looking
| down and when the person is closing the eye.
|
| The system usally have an EXTENDED_EYE_CLOSURE signal that is
| triggered after a certain time (together with a quality value
| of this signal). So not directly, but yes, close too.
|
| But it is still tricky. What happens if you start blinking
| and then the camera get covered. Should it warn? It can not
| always warn if it loses tracking.
|
| How should it warn? Disturbing the driver can actually cause
| accidents.
| Diederich wrote:
| The first road trip we took with our Tesla Model S was from the
| SF Bay Area to Lompoc, CA, to see a SpaceX launch. (Seeing ANY
| rocket launch in person is a highly encouraged activity by the
| way!). The timing of it allowed us to drive there, see the
| launch, and drive back the same day, but getting home pretty
| late.
|
| Getting into the bay area, it was dark, and I was damn tired.
| Had this been a long trip of some kind, I'd have at least
| pulled over and done a power nap, but I foolishly decided to
| press on, since we were less than 30 minutes from home and bed.
|
| I'd been using autopilot for most of the trip, closely
| supervising it of course.
|
| Suddenly I was awakened by the frantic, loud beeping that you
| get when you don't keep some minor torque on the steering wheel
| for a while.
|
| It scared the hell out of me and my family in the car.
|
| With their help, we were able to make it home safely.
|
| Your specific use case is valid, but the other commenters are
| also correct. Autopilot still needs to be supervised, and one
| should NOT be driving while extremely drowsy.
|
| In my many decades of driving, and countless long trips, this
| is the first time I've fallen asleep, and I've always done the
| right thing and (at a minimum) taken power naps as needed.
|
| But circumstances conspired and I did the wrong thing.
|
| I'm not claiming that Autopilot saved our lives or anything; I
| would almost certainly have been woken up by the rumble strips
| when the car drifted out of the lane.
|
| To those who might argue that using Tesla Autopilot might tend
| to cause people to take bigger relevant risks: that's possible,
| but it's been a godsend for us. Using it doesn't make me,
| personally, any less attentive of a driver. Indeed, I'm quite a
| bit more alert to the important things than without it.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| In some states your medical condition would prevent you from
| getting (or renewing) a driver's license.
|
| You need to talk to a doctor _immediately_ because you 're an
| active risk to other people on the road.
| closeparen wrote:
| If anyone took this seriously, the hospital would take your
| drivers license before handing over your newborn.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| See my comment in the other thread.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| That other comment was posted after my reply, and your
| original comment said nothing about falling sleep after
| strenuous activity or large meals, so my comment still
| stands as a response to what you originally posted.
|
| _Mostly just doing something physically tiring and having
| a full stomach, plus being in a monotonous 1-2 hour drive
| is a recipe for sleep._
|
| What you are describing still suggests an underlying
| medical condition or extreme indifference to the safety of
| others. I was being generous and assuming you were not
| deliberately being indifferent to the well-being other
| drivers.
|
| It's not normal to fall asleep driving after only a few
| hours of strenuous activity followed by food.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > That other comment was posted after my reply, and your
| original comment said nothing about falling sleep after
| strenuous activity or large meals, so my comment still
| stands as a response to what you originally posted.
|
| You made a bunch of assumptions based on a small comment.
| I didn't say I have narcolepsy or regularly fall asleep
| at the wheel.
|
| > What you are describing still suggests an underlying
| medical condition or extreme indifference to the safety
| of others.
|
| I find it fascinating that people feel they are capable
| of coming up with a medical diagnosis for a random person
| over the internet based on a few vague comments.
| dathinab wrote:
| What if?
|
| You need you driver license for your job, without you will
| lose _everything_.
|
| You already know that this is not something the doctor can
| easily help you with (e.g. caused by overwork or because you
| already visited the doctor).
|
| Sure it's kinda wrong, but most people would just continue
| driving, especially in countries with no good social net
| where permanently losing your job can easily lead to it
| really messing up your live (no health insurance, losing you
| home, not being able to care for your kids properly, maybe
| even starvation).
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _You need you driver license for your job, without you will
| lose everything._
|
| This is why they provide ID cards that do not grant driving
| privileges.
|
| And why public transportation exists.
| damnyou wrote:
| Public transportation does not in fact exist in large
| parts of the US.
|
| Our society puts so many people in impossible binds. This
| discussion needs a great deal more empathy for them.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| FWIW, I'm pretty sure "5 hours of mountain biking", having
| post-ride food with buddies then driving home isn't
| considered a medical condition. Mostly just doing something
| physically tiring and having a full stomach, plus being in a
| monotonous 1-2 hour drive is a recipe for sleep. Thus my
| comment below about taking a nap and having company on the
| return trip.
| [deleted]
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I've done drives where for various reasons it's difficult
| to stay as alert as I'd like to.
|
| FWIW - I normally have some kind of insomnia and take long
| time to fall asleep; but if I'm that tired, I can pull up
| into gas station or Tim Horton's (it's a Canadian thing:)
| and have a 30min power nap immediately. It's the only time
| I CAN have a power nap, but it works wonders.
|
| I fully 100% support the general notion expressed here that
| if we find outselves in a risky position as a driver, we
| should do _something_ to mitigate that risk. I don 't think
| "don't drive" is always in every circumstance a achievable
| recourse though, so a power nap can mitigate risk
| significantly.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| I agree - the problem with a lot of the replies to your
| comment is that everyone's mental image of what you mean by
| "history of dozing off at the wheel" differs. I would guess
| that most drivers, and certainly _every_ doctor who drives
| has "nodded off" at least once in their life. And you're
| right, most of these situations are _not_ indicative of a
| medical condition.
|
| I think it's true that every driver _should_ take
| responsibility for their own internal state, and do
| whatever they can to ensure they don't drive in an impaired
| state, whether that's just getting enough sleep, avoiding
| alcohol or certain meds, or being prepared to pull off the
| road and nap.
| adriancr wrote:
| Have a coffee/redbull, get some sleep, or have someone else
| drive you.
|
| You might just doze off for a second or two and hit a tree
| or worse, someone... ( best depiction:
| https://youtu.be/ya3_EwQdJrk?t=30 )
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Nonsense, this is almost certainly not a medical condition,
| this is normal biology. The constant attention required when
| driving makes everyone tired, during long drives especially,
| and if you're tired when you start driving from sleep
| deprivation or stress it's even worse. The important thing is
| that you recognize when you're tired and choose not to drive
| at those times. People get tired and need to sleep, usually,
| we can recognize it ourselves, it would be nice if technology
| could help us keep tabs on our tiredness automatically.
|
| I pushed my own tiredness limits when working 40 hours a week
| at a job 40 miles away while going to college full time that
| was 20 miles away, when driving for my first job delivering
| equipment 3 hours away, spending all day at programming the
| equipment, and driving back home in a single 15+ hour day,
| and also when trying to commute to work after staying up most
| of the night with my infant. I've never fallen asleep at the
| wheel, but I've noticed many times that I'm struggling to
| concentrate, so I opened a window and found somewhere to pull
| over and take a walk. Being tired in those conditions is not
| a medical problem.
|
| Being unsafe, however, is a choice. If and when you get too
| tired, you ought to pull over into a rest stop (that's what
| they're there for) and take a quick nap. The trouble is that
| whether or not you're getting tired is something you have to
| actively be checking (along with a million other things while
| driving), it's all too easy to let your brain transfer speed,
| lane centering, and navigation to your subconscious and not
| realize where you've been for the last 10 minutes.
|
| If cruise control can help you keep your speed, adaptive
| cruise can do it while in traffic, lane control can help you
| check that, and a driver-facing camera can help you check for
| attention, that's a big help.
|
| BTW I now work about 35 hours a week and commute just under 4
| minutes each way - I worked hard to get here, but it's so
| worth it.
| jacksonlango wrote:
| You're using your experience of "I've never fallen asleep
| at the wheel" to normalize "I have a history of dozing off
| at the wheel" FYI.
| myHNAccount123 wrote:
| Yeah this persons actions are VERY concerning. They need to
| change their behaviour immediately.
|
| To Ogre_... you cannot self diagnose by saying "I know when
| I'm feeling tired so I nap." Go To A Doctor NOW.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Im struggling to imagine how going to the doctor is going
| to fix this guy's issue.
|
| Do you hypothesize the doctor will be able to cure him?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| They have good medicines for narcolepsy nowadays.
| Modafinil is an extremely good stimulant that reduces
| accidental sleeping like this significantly. They can
| also look at their sleep and see if there is an
| underlying issue that can be fixed.
| FriedPickles wrote:
| Driver monitoring is most important at night, when the camera
| Tesla included can't see anything in the cabin. I bet Tesla is
| kicking themselves for not putting an IR camera + LED in, like
| the front facing camera on Comma.ai.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Tesla has a history of using remote diagnostics to snitch on
| drivers instead of allowing investigators to do their job.
|
| It's a valid concern that your car manufacturer will use the
| interior cameras to blame a crime on you.
|
| These automatic tagging features also bring to question the bias
| in algorithms. What does this mean for drivers with disabilities?
| Is it possible that a safe driver with ADHD or Turrets etc might
| be flagged as inattentive during an autopilot crash and therefore
| at fault?
| jlarocco wrote:
| > These automatic tagging features also bring to question the
| bias in algorithms. What does this mean for drivers with
| disabilities? Is it possible that a safe driver with ADHD or
| Turrets etc might be flagged as inattentive during an autopilot
| crash and therefore at fault?
|
| I'm not understanding your point here, and you seem to
| contradict yourself a little bit.
|
| A driver with a disability that makes them inattentive can't be
| a "safe driver." Having a disability that makes them
| inattentive, appearing inattentive, and getting into a crash
| (autopilot or not), seems to be a "three strikes and you're
| out" situation, IMO. You'll have a very hard time convincing me
| the person wasn't at fault in that situation.
|
| Certain disabilities prevent people from driving cars safely.
| It's unfortunate, but it's just the way it is.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Safety is in the sum of all things, AKA performance. An ADD
| person may drive a car safely and we might not know why; what
| we do know is performance.
|
| If an ADD person does then get into an accident, should they
| endure higher civil and criminal risk, regardless of prior
| performance and in light of their condition?
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >A driver with a disability that makes them inattentive can't
| be a "safe driver."
|
| A driver with a disability that makes a computer system
| classify them as an inattentive driver is not the same thing
| as a driver with a disability that makes them inattentive.
| megablast wrote:
| Good. Driving is dangerous enough. We should get bad drivers of
| the road.
| yardie wrote:
| If a driver was inattentive and had a crash wouldn't they be at
| fault regardless of ADHD or Tourets?
| notyourwork wrote:
| Falsely flagged is the keyword your statement ignores.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| I think the question was asked with the implied addition
| 'What Tesla says won't matter in court.'
|
| I don't agree with that though, for two reasons.
|
| First, it will be harder for them to fight, meaning it will
| still be a source of bias even if the court isn't biased at
| all. Even if they can show it was a false flag, that is
| time and money others wouldn't have to spend. Potentially
| time and money of someone who was in a life altering crash.
|
| Second, it would not be surprised that the court ends up
| being biased towards the manufacture and would give undue
| weight to them because they have the fancy algorithms and
| all the well payed lawyers.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The OP is suggesting neuroatypical people might be flagged as
| being inattentive despite being attentive due to being
| underrepresented in the training set.
| gravitas wrote:
| > _What does this mean for drivers with disabilities?_
|
| You mention ADHD and Turrets; a leg-disabled person (e.g.
| paralyzed waste down) can still drive just fine, special hand-
| operated equipment is installed to a car to allow the hands to
| take over for the foot pedals.
|
| By design this driver may be looking down frequently at their
| controls (let's assume not everyone is a pro driver yet and
| knows them by heart) which could easily be misconstrued as
| looking down at a mobile phone, placing immediate bias against
| them on video before the facts of hand-controls are revealed in
| court.
| hnarn wrote:
| Since you have both now misspelled the name of the
| neurological disorder, I feel obliged to point out that it's
| spelled Tourette's syndrome.
| bdamm wrote:
| While I agree with the concern, I think there's almost zero
| chance that a neural net trained on people looking at phones
| would classify a driver looking at hand controls as that same
| thing. The neural net would more likely have another
| classification of "unknown attention", being unable to
| conclusively classify the driver's attention.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Is there any incentive for the drivers to not just tape over
| this camera? As far as I see this information will almost
| certainly only be used against you. But then again, perhaps
| taping over the camera will be used against you as well.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I love that the car is capturing this data. I would imagine Tesla
| engineers on the analysis side of this data are thinking "holy
| shit, look how much time our drivers are spending not paying
| attention at all, we need to do something about this."
|
| They need this data for regulatory reasons, anyway. At some point
| they need confidence to say how people are really (ab)using their
| self-driving tech.
| uniqueid wrote:
| "holy shit, look how much time our drivers are spending not
| paying attention at all, we need to do something about this."
|
| "Quick, man, contact PR straight away to write a belligerent,
| categorical denial! There's no time to lose!"
| muffa wrote:
| So having worked in the space of driving facing cameras here are
| my 2 cents.
|
| - Why use it? If you have the car driving autonomous and you want
| the driver to take over, you need to know if they are able to
| take over or not (sleeping)
|
| - Placement The placement of the camera needs to be well below
| the head, otherwise you will not be able to fully see the eyes
| and also not be able to tell if a person has it's eyes open or
| not. This is more true for Asian people.
|
| The placement of this camera shows a lot of the inside of the car
| compared with other OEMs. This is an interesting feat and could
| for example be used if you see the temp in the car incrase during
| parking you might want to turn on the AC if a child or animal is
| left in the car.
| bArray wrote:
| > DARK
|
| Ooooof. This is of course a joke, but it's why you should be
| careful in naming. My guess is they mean "SHADOW" or "LOW_LIGHT".
| umvi wrote:
| Can we stop making of big deal (tm) out of every word that has
| even the flimsiest connections with race or racism?
| eska wrote:
| I couldn't even figure out what he's talking about. People
| who want to see race will see race.. Facepalm
| tareqak wrote:
| Not just people. Institutions, processes, and algorithms.
|
| I can easily see an insurance company claiming the driver
| to be at fault based on retrieved car telemetry, which in
| turn was erroneous because the machine-learning algorithm
| was trained on certain faces. There was a flagged HN
| submission about Twitter consistently centering image
| previews on whiter faces recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24530968 .
| bArray wrote:
| The _joke_ was that it mentions "DARK" as a method of
| detecting whether somebody is damaging a vehicle:
|
| > CEO Elon Musk said that it would be used to prevent
| people
|
| > from vandalizing cars when they are being driven
|
| > automatically on Tesla's upcoming self-driving robotaxi
|
| > network.
|
| The _joke_ was that if removed from context, somebody could
| insinuate that they are measuring whether people are black
| to detect if they are likely to damage a vehicle.
| teddyh wrote:
| I don't think so. All the words which _had_ actual
| connections have (understandably) fallen out of use.
| bArray wrote:
| It was a joke, not a real call-out. I was just making the
| point that as programmers we should be careful about naming
| things in code, because one day they might be taken out of
| context.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean when you say "it" was a
| joke, but also the point you were making was not a joke.
| What is "it" if not the point being made by the comment?
| bArray wrote:
| I'll quote my other comment here:
|
| > The _joke_ was that it mentions "DARK" as a method of
|
| > detecting whether somebody is damaging a vehicle:
|
| > > CEO Elon Musk said that it would be used to prevent
| people
|
| > > from vandalizing cars when they are being driven
|
| > > automatically on Tesla's upcoming self-driving
| robotaxi
|
| > > network.
|
| > The _joke_ was that if removed from context, somebody
| could
|
| > insinuate that they are measuring whether people are
| black to
|
| > detect if they are likely to damage a vehicle.
|
| Jokes can have a half-serious point behind them (for
| example, political jokes). To really break it down:
|
| Joke: Clearly Tesla's inclusion of the parameter "DARK"
| is not in reference to black persons, but somebody taking
| an unfavorable view of the article could make it.
|
| Point: Programmers should be more aware of what they name
| things to avoid such cases. You might think "well this is
| a closed source app and should never be leaked, there's
| no way the public would be reading this" - and yet some
| years after MS-DOS and Word were written people are
| reading all sorts of things [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/26/5549208/microsoft-
| early-c...
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I think I see what you're saying - but the replies didn't
| accuse _you_ of thinking it referenced black people. They
| disagreed that it is an example of something which is
| likely _enough_ to be misinterpreted that it should have
| had a different name.
| bArray wrote:
| I thought that the implication of a connection between
| persons identified as "DARK" and vehicle damage had
| enough potential to be misinterpreted (either
| accidentally or maliciously).
|
| It was just a throwaway comment that people have taken
| quite seriously.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Comments on the site itself are pure gold as some are pointing
| out the various (mostly humorous) events that are not being
| actively tracked with their driver-facing camera. I will try to
| compile this list below:
|
| - DRIVER_ON_PASSENGER_SIDE
|
| - DRIVER_MISSING
|
| - DRIVER_PICKING_BOOGERS
|
| - DRIVER_SEAT_FULLY_RECLINED
|
| - DRIVER_SNORING
|
| - DRIVER_SHAVING
|
| - DRIVER_VAPING
|
| - DRIVER_LIVESTREAMING
|
| - DRIVER_ADJUSTING_MAKEUP
|
| - DRIVER_APPLYING_LIPSTICK
|
| - PASSENGER_ON_DRIVER
|
| - PASSENGER_UNDER_DRIVER
| fuzxi wrote:
| PASSENGER_UNDER_DRIVER is making me think a lot harder than I
| expected to.
| stcredzero wrote:
| I really want to know what HEAD_TRUNC in the actual symbol list
| means. I totally read that as "head truncated," as in the
| Florida man who perished in a Tesla while watching Harry
| Potter.
|
| Also, you could add more items like, DRIVER_ON_PASSENGER_TOP.
| skykooler wrote:
| I suspect it means "head truncated from the camera's
| viewpoint", as in there is something blocking the top of the
| driver's face (a brimmed hat, for example) that prevents the
| camera from figuring out where they're looking.
| colanderman wrote:
| How about DOG_ON_DASHBOARD and DOG_IN_LAP. Seriously; you are
| operating heavy and deadly equipment. Keep your pets in the
| back seat at least.
| dosshell wrote:
| There was a demo at CES this year that detected the position
| of a dog in the car [0]. let's hope it gets to market soon.
|
| [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2yRaztxSEQw
| specialist wrote:
| Huh.
|
| I just assumed that Tesla is monitoring the driver to detect
| surprise.
|
| I also assume that Tesla's awesome sauce onboard AI is running
| a simulation. For both the driver and other vehicles. Make
| predictions, gather actuals, continuously try to narrow the
| delta. Forward anything really weird up to the mother ship for
| detailed analysis.
|
| Knowing when the driver is surprised would be a pretty good
| signal. If both the driver and the simulation are surprised,
| then the simulation could infer which events were way out of
| scope.
|
| I have no reason, data, or insight for my conjecture.
|
| It's just how I'd do it. And would account for why the onboard
| computer is so beefy.
| GordonS wrote:
| > - DRIVER_SHAVING > - DRIVER_ADJUSTING_MAKEUP > -
| DRIVER_APPLYING_LIPSTICK
|
| I've actually seen drivers doing all 3 of these. The shaving
| (with an electric razor, obviously) I only saw once, but I
| _frequently_ see women applying makeup and lipstick.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| I have seen drivers in huge cargo trucks read the newspaper
| on the autobahn (the newspaper strategically positioned over
| the steering wheel, of course), or watch TV. Scary shit. One
| guy was very interested in his porn mag, one hand holding the
| mag the other hand "occupied" too, so he somehow steered with
| his knees.
|
| One day I drove with a fellow student to some university
| event, and he suddenly at a red light took out an electric
| razor and started shaving. "Want me to take over and drive?"
| "Nah, you're not insured to drive this car" (true).
|
| And the makeup thing too, seen that a lot of times, once even
| two ladies (driver and passenger) in the next car applying
| eye makeup at the same time, as if to make sure neither of
| them could watch the traffic.
|
| But nothing beats the guy who was so deep down in his seat he
| was barely visible except for his feet on his dashboard. He
| apparently thought that being able to use the brake was
| optional on the autobahn. I can only hope that his car was
| one of the rare special fitted cars that had a hand operated
| break paddle, tho the car's steering column looked pretty
| regular from my POV.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Would you immediately report such drivers to the police?
| athenot wrote:
| Relevant Mr Bean episode where all these dangerous things are
| done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYuQctvKNLg
| stcredzero wrote:
| I've seen someone bury her head in the passenger-side
| footwell while merging into traffic while making a turn onto
| a busy 4-lane city thoroughfare! (No, there was no
| passenger.) I had to brake to let her by.
| kelvin0 wrote:
| If someone comes up with a autonomous mobile hair
| salon/manicure/pedicure/waxing/make up vehicle, there is
| certainly a huge opportunity.
| snapetom wrote:
| A couple of friends of mine prototyped a site dedicated to
| distracted drivers on I-5 in Seattle ala the Highway 17 Hall
| of Shame. It was just too easy. My favorite, though, and I
| still have the pic, was a guy, who I presume to be a solider,
| driving a military truck with a big ol' binder open on his
| lap.
| colanderman wrote:
| Best I've seen was a woman with a laptop open, between her
| and her steering wheel. (Morning commute on I-90 in MA.) I
| honked at her enough to shame her into putting it away at
| least while I was near her.
| protomyth wrote:
| I know of at least one person who would be tagged as
| DRIVER_READING_BOOK
| cwhiz wrote:
| DRIVER_PLAYING_TRUMPET
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > Tesla's upcoming self-driving robotaxi network
|
| Heh.
| ubu7737 wrote:
| HEAD_TRUNC? Is this to detect when Autopilot has driven through a
| freight trailer and severed the driver's head?
| faitswulff wrote:
| Anyone else get the impression that this is to head off litigious
| drivers?
| cma wrote:
| Since it isn't an IR camera with illumination, it won't be
| useable at night, right?
| [deleted]
| jaywalk wrote:
| One of the events it detects is DARK so, yeah.
| ggreer wrote:
| It's not pitch black inside of the vehicle. The giant LCD puts
| out some light. There are reflections from your headlights
| (bouncing off what's in front of you). There are street lights.
| There are other vehicle headlights. Your eyes have to see stuff
| for you to drive, so there must be photons hitting your face,
| and some of those get reflected.
|
| The external cameras have excellent low light sensitivity. If
| the internal camera is anything like those, I think it'll work
| fine at night.
| cma wrote:
| Why do other people use illuminated IR cameras then? Aren't
| they looking for decent gaze direction detection, etc.?
|
| Isn't it unsafe to drive with a ton of light from the giant
| LCD, etc.? I would have though they would dim that and/or
| have a night mode with inverted UI colors.
| ggreer wrote:
| Have you looked at footage from Tesla cameras at night?
| They have higher dynamic range than the human eye and
| they're very sensitive. They can see stars.
|
| The LCD changes its brightness automatically. It also
| changes from light to dark mode (inverted UI colors) based
| on the time of day. Still an LCD showing black will leak
| some light, and as I said those cameras are pretty damn
| sensitive.
| jccooper wrote:
| For context, a camera monitoring the driver for attention isn't
| anything new or specific to Tesla. Many cars from other makes are
| already doing this, and they tout it as a feature of their driver
| assist systems.
| chrismeller wrote:
| I realize that this is still supposedly a "help us improve"/"data
| gathering" step, but I'm having trouble deciding how I feel about
| it.
|
| Yes, of course, safer drivers (whether automatic or fleshy) is a
| great thing, but this still hits that deep-seeded paranoia level
| for me.
|
| I mean, what if FaceID had been proven out the same way? The
| number of times I unlock my phone every day and the number of
| times I'm doing it somewhere that the government/my employer/my
| significant other/a random hacker would find objectionable or
| lucrative to exploit... That's with just me there (or an ex, or a
| former employee or prospective employer, or someone I met at a
| bar who turns out to be on some list...).
|
| Turn this back around to the car I'm driving and it's honestly
| slightly terrifying for me. It could be the next evolution of
| those devices insurance companies want you to plug into your OBD
| port so they can monitor how quickly you accelerate, take turns,
| etc. Except now Tesla (and whomever they decide to sell it to)
| know that when that innocent-seeming accident happened you seemed
| to be looking down, so now you're completely liable for damages.
|
| With the good comes the bad, but I'm terrified of the bad and the
| good doesn't seem that much better than the current.
| hellisothers wrote:
| Yea a friend only drives older cars without ODB to avoid
| tracking anything (he's pretty paranoid). But I'll resist
| buying a car with a driver facing camera as long as I can, I
| don't care how much they discount insurance premiums if you get
| one, it's not worth it.
| jedberg wrote:
| I wonder if they car will stop working if you put a piece of tape
| over the camera.
| judge2020 wrote:
| No https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S5BFN6M
| mypalmike wrote:
| Clickbait title.
| moscovium wrote:
| Not at all
| mypalmike wrote:
| It generates a curiosity gap rather than a summary. The
| essence of clickbait.
| SEJeff wrote:
| The "hacker" is greentheonly and has a fun twitter feed if you're
| into the guts of Tesla. He reverse engineers just about every
| Tesla firmware:
|
| https://twitter.com/greentheonly
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