[HN Gopher] Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft's self-driving ... ___________________________________________________________________ Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft's self-driving car division Author : bsilvereagle Score : 184 points Date : 2021-04-26 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (investor.lyft.com) (TXT) w3m dump (investor.lyft.com) | mNovak wrote: | In the end this makes sense; an actual car company is much better | positioned to actually profit from marginal improvements in self- | driving (read: safety improvements) year over year, rather than | wait for the windfall of FSD taxi service at some unknown point | in the future. | joshuawright11 wrote: | 100m a year, 0 roi expense gone. Also no more shared rides due to | COVID (which I expect will never come back to Uber or Lyft since | they were gigantic money sinks). Assuming ridership is bouncing | back from COVID I wouldn't be surprised if their first profitable | quarter was this year. | petra wrote: | Why we're shared rides such gigantic money sinks ? | | In theory at least, it can just be some algorithm and some | screen space on the app. | darkwizard42 wrote: | I can try to explain: | | - Ideally in a shared ride what happens is that instead of 2 | drivers, driving 12 miles for passenger A and 14 miles for | passenger B, you have 1 driver who drives 15 miles for both | passengers trips. | | - So 1 driver to pay who is now more efficient, and 2 paying | customers. You charge each customer X% less, pay the driver | Y% more, and theoretically you could keep your margin the | same but now fulfill more rides (another driver is free now | that you put two rides in 1 car) | | - However, now let's consider how much cheaper it can really | be... | | - Sharing a ride for a cheaper cost makes sense when you and | the person you share with have a generally overlapping route. | The discount you get as a customer is a function of how | likely you are to get matched with someone. | | - Turns out there aren't a lot of rides with good overlap | (airport rides might be the best type of ride tbh). Thus the | discount is quite small. If the discount is small it means | you have less people using it. Less people using it makes the | discount even smaller! Eventually you have no discount and no | incentive to use the service. | | - To keep users incentivized to use the shared mode, Lyft and | Uber have to subsidize the pricing to make sure that match | rate stays high. Every "shared" mode ride that has only 1 | person in it is a big loss, but incentivizing more people to | use it can result in a smaller net loss across the | marketplace | shaoonb wrote: | Uber and Uberlikes are doing fine here in New Zealand. As long | as they can pump money into/scam drivers into being cheaper | than taxis they will keep market share. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Score on the acquisition bingo card for the phrase "incredible | journey"! | minimaxir wrote: | Funny in hindsight from 2016: "Lyft's president says 'majority' | of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021" | | https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... | | https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revo... | plank_time wrote: | I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber | all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self- | driving is 20+ years away. | | The example video showed so many small things that we take for | granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or | hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. | There just isn't a way that you can train every single little | thing that could cause an accident. For some things you just | need experience and fear which I imagine can't be modeled via | any current AI. | andyxor wrote: | nothing new here, AI has been "5 years away" since the 1950s | bhk wrote: | It was 20 years away for a while. And may be again. | ravenstine wrote: | Back in late 2015, I was working at a media firm and one of our | top directors called together a meeting with our engineering | team to talk to us about the impact of our products/content. He | was _convinced_ that by 2018 most people would be using self- | driving cars regularly and that this was going to hurt our core | product. | | I don't think I ever tried harder in my life not to LOL. | mandeepj wrote: | Ha! I hope he did not pivot the company or shutdown the core | product | redis_mlc wrote: | Same feeling for passenger-carrying drones/quadcopters/etc. | Not gonna happen for decades in any commercially-viable way. | thathndude wrote: | Hard not to feel like we're seeing a swoon in self driving like | we saw in crypto back in 2017 and 2018. | | They hype got ahead of the tech. | adamnemecek wrote: | I wonder if it's possible that this is true in some restricted | area where companies are heavily testing their self-driving | cars, and COVID reduced the amount of driving people do. | SECProto wrote: | From very brief observation a year ago, it seemed like | Lombard Street [1] was 90% self-driving-car training. | Definitely a very special case that just disproves the quote | from Lyft's president. | | [1] https://goo.gl/maps/oXrvVYhDXWVxaoQC8 | gtirloni wrote: | Well... | | "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi- | city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." | | https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK... | ra7 wrote: | They also have a partnership with Waymo to provide autonomous | rides. Ultimately, I think Lyft, Uber and the likes will just | become a provider/maintainer of robotaxi rides, while the | actual tech will be done by Waymo et al. | tananaev wrote: | Lyft still works with third party partners, like Motional and | Waymo to provide self-driving services on the platform. L5 | division was a separate effort to have own self driving car. | Traster wrote: | Yeah, I remember when the company I worked for continually made | forward looking projections that were ridiculous whilst in the | process of negotiating a sale. Including the pressure not to | report anything that would need to be raised as part of the | acquisition. | fearling wrote: | Did not know Lyft had a self-driving car initiative. Was that | well known? Did they, like Uber, sink tons of money into it | before bailing? | ethanbond wrote: | Of course, yes and yes. The business model is complete nonsense | otherwise. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | The business model isn't nonsense. It justifies a company | existing to do what Lyft does, just at a much smaller scale | and valuation. | ethanbond wrote: | Yes, that's a good adjustment assuming the need for | hundreds (or thousands?) of highly paid engineers isn't | baked into the business model/product. | darkwizard42 wrote: | Not surprisingly it takes a lot of capital to make serious in- | roads into self-driving. Ultimately if your main business is not | profitable it is hard to justify spending 100m a year on L5 with | no reasonable end in sight. | | I think this is why only Waymo or Cruise or one of the other | well-funded-by-profitable-other-business will continue to | progress towards the true self-driving vehicle... its just too | damn expensive and uncertain as to when the | breakthrough/development will happen | tdhz77 wrote: | I keep getting downvoted. I'll keep saying it, we need government | investment into self driving. It cannot be done by private sector | alone. | cobaltoxide wrote: | In what way would government investment help here? The main | players already have tons of funding. | | Also, why should self-driving be a government priority? | hcrisp wrote: | Toyota / Woven Planet also just announced it was picking Apex.AI | as their software platform: | | https://electrek.co/2021/04/14/toyota-partners-with-apex-ai-... | ipsum2 wrote: | I've seen some directors recently leave Lyft's "Level 5" division | recently, in the last couple of months. I guess there were a lot | of warning signs. | _____bee wrote: | Most ride-hailing companies that invested in self-driving cars | are giving up on these projects. Most of these startups struggle | to sustain their business. | alonmower wrote: | *Most ride-hailing companies that needed a narrative ahead of | their IPO for why they had a defensible long term moat and | leaned heavily on 'self driving' as their answer to that are | now getting pressure from investors on why they keep sinking | more money into a problem it doesn't seem they'll ever be able | to solve | elpakal wrote: | I learned to drive in Mexico at 13, where there are almost | literally no rules or traffic signals (see the black arrow on the | wall? that means don't stop). I remember thinking about how | different things were when trying to get my driver's license in | US at age 16 - almost easier - in spite of how many more rules | there were. I wonder how self-driving cars perform when trained | in a world of rules and order and are then thrown into complete | chaos in other places. | | What does training look like? Do self-driving cars only work in | certain countries where they have been trained? | rossdavidh wrote: | Well, they don't really "work" anywhere, if your standards are | high enough. But your point is valid; making a self-driving car | for many national markets has to be harder than making a | regular car for those same markets. | moralestapia wrote: | >where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals | ... | | That's a lie, though. The meme that Mexico is an uncivilized | place is dumb and doesn't hold much substance. | quickthrowman wrote: | Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. | Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they | recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 | automated. | | Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, | or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? | | The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they | issue press releases is Waymo, because Google isn't trying to | juice their stock price all the damn time, and they have operable | robotaxis in AZ. I don't think Waymo claims L5 capability either. | rkalla wrote: | It's those _edge cases_ that make me think real FSD (vehicles | with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. | | Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a | bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a | steering wheel. | grecy wrote: | > _but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is | blinding the camera?_ | | I love these wildly over-the-top exaggerations. | | When was the last bridge you saw without a barrier to prevent | going off the edge? | | What makes you think a vehicle vision system will handle | "blinded by sun" any worse than humans already do? | | Remember it's projecting and predicting the road ahead, even | around corners and in the dark - so being blinded by the sun | isn't going to cause it to swerve wildly off course and off | the bridge - it can continue to use the data it had before | being blinded (just as you do). | | Also remember it has eight cameras it uses for this. The 16 | year old new driver texting and talking to friends coming | towards you at 60mph has two. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | > When was the last bridge you saw without a barrier to | prevent going off the edge? | | That's a disingenuous question. Many bridges have wooden | guards that will prevent you from going off if you make a | small mistake, but not a large one. | | > What makes you think a vehicle vision system will handle | "blinded by sun" any worse than humans already do? | | Humans can move their head, and block the sun with a hand, | hat, or sunshade in the car. Humans have two eyes so if one | is obstructed, the other may still get good vision. | | > so being blinded by the sun isn't going to cause it to | swerve wildly off course and off the bridge - it can | continue to use the data it had before being blinded (just | as you do). | | Unless it's an incredibly well-trained AI, it may mistake | lens flare for oncoming traffic, or a pedestrian. Car AI is | not at the point where it has common sense to assume that | lens flare is incorrect information. | thrwyoilarticle wrote: | >What makes you think a vehicle vision system will handle | "blinded by sun" any worse than humans already do? | | Self driving software tends to have very poor object | permanence. | xnx wrote: | "Blinded by the sun" is an understandable failure-state | when you design a driving system that's reliant on cameras. | From https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/feds-autopilot- | was-acti...: "Theoretically, it should be possible to | detect the side of a truck using cameras. But it's not | always easy. In some lighting conditions, for example, the | side of a trailer might be hard to distinguish from the sky | behind it." | grecy wrote: | How many of the 100 daily fatalities on the roads in the | US do you think are caused by drivers not "seeing | clearly"? | | The goal of an AI driver isn't no crashes. The goal is | less crashes than human drivers. | tayo42 wrote: | Idk if it's that simple, what if you reduce highway | deaths by 100 but rural roads go up by 10. If I'm | primarily a rural driver that's not enticing. | grecy wrote: | OK then, let's not put it into full scale production | until all types of driving are an order of magnitude | (10x) less. | drzaiusapelord wrote: | >The 16 year old new driver texting and talking to friends | coming towards you at 60mph has two. | | My two analog eyes see this perfectly well, why didn't the | AI? | | https://www.thedrive.com/news/33789/autopilot-blamed-for- | tes... | | I think there's a lot unfair criticism of human drivers in | this thread. I don't think we're at the point where we can | call machines better than humans when it comes to these | tasks. | nradov wrote: | The human driver's two eyes still have a wider dynamic | range than any current affordable video camera. This makes | a huge difference in difficult lighting situations like | looking into the sun. | theluketaylor wrote: | The edge case that I always go to on why truly autonomous | vehicles are decades+ away is winter driving. Lane markers | and road signs disappear. Slush and salt spray constantly | obscure sensors. | | Winter driving as a human driver requires an entirely | different approach and Waymo hangs out in the Arizona desert | where there is basically never any inclement weather. | heavyset_go wrote: | That, and construction, detours and city driving. In the | latter, driving contexts can change without a second's | notice, without any signs, markings or signals denoting the | change. You learn what those contexts are from experience | and understanding of what are ultimately complex social | situations, and a shared understanding between you and the | people around you. | Barrin92 wrote: | don't even need to go to bad environmental setting. Let's | talk about other countries. I haven't seen a lot of self- | driving cars in Rome or Mumbai yet, there's a lot of places | where traffic rules are treated more like suggestions than | actual rules. American style neat wide highways and grid- | like streets are not how the places look where most cars | are being driven right now already. | klmadfejno wrote: | Digital data instead of signs seems like the obvious | solution. | fnord77 wrote: | Driving in all conditions requires the computing power of a | human brain. When we have computers that powerful, we can | talk about L5. | alpha_squared wrote: | Just like reliability SLAs, I suspect every extra nine | requires an exponential increase in investment. My armchair- | know-nothing assessment is we're maybe at 90% coverage* right | now, with maybe 10x all investment up until this point needed | to reach 99%; then 10x _that_ to reach 99.9%. Even at 99.9%, | though, a failure scenario still threatens injuring or | killing 0.1% of drivers (350,000 motorists for US alone). | | * Coverage as a percentage of scenario's occurrence over the | total duration of driving. For example, over 90% of a long- | distance trip will be spent on a highway following traffic | patterns within a lane with the occasional lane change. | maxerickson wrote: | We regularize traffic more than your estimate though. Like | 99.99% of the 300 mile drive I took yesterday was sitting | in a lane. | | The hardest part was that Google hadn't mapped a service | drive, so it thought the adjacent service drive was the | best route (which would be addressed pretty fast if you | were trying to deploy self driving service in that area). | | I don't think we get to level 5 very soon, but level 4 cars | will have the ability to go lots of places pretty soon. If | I overestimate driveway distances from yesterday, it's like | 99.966% lane miles. There was some construction, but it was | already well marked for human drivers. | walshemj wrote: | Would not they detect the gates where down ? or are there | still that many crossings without gates in the USA | rurp wrote: | Where I live in the Southwest US there are many crossings | without gates. I'd say very few of the ones outside of | well populated areas have them. | bentcorner wrote: | Gates are only a suggestion - signals/gates malfunction | so often you can find compilation videos of them on | youtube. | ecpottinger wrote: | The place I talked about had no gates, after the accident | they added gates. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | That shouldn't be the standard. It probably will be, but it | shouldn't be. | | Humans are terrible drivers. If a self-driving car got into | half as many accidents as the average human, it would save | _millions_ of lives. And kill people, to be sure, but fewer | on net. | | I also think you could make a reasonable argument that _all_ | cars should be banned, right now, based on how many people | they kill, but since I don 't think that's gonna happen... | markkanof wrote: | You are correct on the aggregate, but that doesn't | necessarily work when applied to each individual driver. | | I'm a pretty attentive and cautious driver. In the 20 years | I have been driving I've been in one accident and that was | because another driver was attempting to make an illegal | left turn, came across two lanes of traffic, and t-boned | me. So if self driving vehicles are only doing better than | the worst human drivers, I'm going to be pretty hesitant to | turn over control. I'd be in favor of that other driver | that hit me using an autonomous vehicle though. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | _Everyone_ thinks they 're an above-average driver. Half | of them must be wrong, so the reliability of any | individual's self-assessment is about equal to chance. | Even if you're one of the truly good drivers--your record | certainly sounds excellent--our laws should account for | the fact that _most_ drivers can 't judge their own | skill. | usrusr wrote: | Just wait until self-driving "personality" becomes part of | a car company's brand identity. I suspect that we will see | no lack cars that are _designed_ to be terrible drivers. Of | course they will call it "confident", "assertive", perhaps | for some brands even "masculine". Cars could become even | more civilian tanks thank that already are. I desperately | hope that I'm wrong. | mikepurvis wrote: | Or you need a high-bandwidth coverage-everywhere comms system | and a robust infrastructure for remote teleop, like what | Starsky was building: | | https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of- | starsky-... | | Then the steering-wheel-less car at least has the ability to | call for help when it's only 98% sure of what to do instead | of 99.99% sure. But obviously this kind of model only makes | sense in a fleet context, not as an extension to something | you own, so it requires greater shifts, at least for personal | automobiles. | kgin wrote: | Most remote assistance is not live driving. A remote human | adds labels and maybe even marks out a safe path for the | vehicle so that vehicle has enough information to proceed. | nostrademons wrote: | IMHO FSD cars (along with drones, secure programming | languages/OSes, and distributed manufacturing) are a _post- | war technology_. The economics don 't make sense while we're | at peace and locked into the Pax Americana economy. However, | once folks start trying to kill each other, these | technologies will give a very large survival advantage to | those factions that adopt them. Imagine how useful not having | to risk human lives on supply lines would be. And risk | expectations get reset when things go from "nobody ever dies | unnaturally" to "people are actively trying to kill you", | which eliminates the biggest barrier to FSD adoption. | | I think we'll get such a war within the next decade, so we | may see FSD vehicles sooner than expected, just not in the | way we want. | usrusr wrote: | In a hot industrialized war (one that isn't wildly | asymmetric), a supply line has so many soldiers' lives | depending on it that having the transports manned or not is | insignificant. But I think I know the general concept you | are getting at, I'd call it the wartime risk economy: when | a large percentage of your combat aircraft sorties don't | return, it becomes reasonable to operate the engines much | closer to the limits of reliable operation than in peace | time. The extra performance can save more pilots than the | occasional engine failures caused by the emergency | operation mode cost. | okareaman wrote: | I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars | so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad | crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What | if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train | coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. | Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at | railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train | schedule in, but what if the train system changes the | schedule? That could be adjusted for, but how much would I | trust this system? Not enough to take a nap behind the wheel. | jonas21 wrote: | To be honest, this seems like one of the easier edge cases | to handle. Before crossing tracks, check if there's | anything coming down the tracks. | | Much easier than all of the weird edge cases related to the | behavior of other drivers or pedestrians. | ghaff wrote: | In England at least, if you're crossing HSR by foot, you | pick up a handset and call train operations to cross. | Probably overly conservative but obviously a simple thing | for a car to implement along with the usual safety | measures (though those would presumably involve gates or | not at grade anyway). | ErikVandeWater wrote: | Theoretically it should be able to use side-facing lidar | and cameras to sense that a big truck-like thing is | crossing. | acover wrote: | Why not radar? | adrr wrote: | Because radars lacks resolution. Why my Tesla phantom | brakes due to low hanging signs or slow cars in the other | lane. They tune it down to ignore these anomalies and it | has issues running into disabled cars and emergency | vehicles. | baybal2 wrote: | You don't need resolution to detect train about to ram | into you. | | Similarly, lidar resolution is a great overkill, and | overcomplication over a moderatly sophisticated mm wave | radar, which is on top of that will be much more durable, | and reliable. | xnx wrote: | In addition to obeying all railroad crossing signals, I'm | certain the Waymo Driver has the concept of trains built | in. The long-range sensors on the vehicle would project the | probable path of the train and determine if it was safe to | proceed along the car's planned route. | craftinator wrote: | Unless the train was obscured from view by foliage at the | height and angle that the lidar rests at, or if a truck | pulled up next to the car, or... Well yeah, the only | reason people can handle that situation reasonably well | is that they have a large range of sensory input, most of | that input has symbolic representation in the mind, and | there's a healthy fear of dying that causes us to notice | when the ground is shaking and reassess whether the train | signal is working correctly. | okareaman wrote: | I'm not certain the Waymo Driver has the concept of | trains built in, but what if they did? How good is it? I | applied at Waymo and found out they don't do well in the | rain. What if they train is splashing up water in front | of it? I'd like to know how it deals with falling rocks, | which is a problem in California. Would they tell me or | lie about self-driving, like some well known spoke | persons do? What are the hackable weaknesses of Waymo? | Have they tried to have visual and computer hackers fool | the car and send it the wrong way? It just seems to me | it's going to take awhile, maybe decades in my amatuer | opinion. | ecpottinger wrote: | In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were | killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no | gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it | is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he | was talking to much to hear the train. | | The person he was talking to said they were talking like | normal and suddenly the phone cut off. | | Computers probably can not be worse that the people already | on the road. | simias wrote: | Even if you're right, that's the same argument for | airplane safety. The problem is being in control versus | putting your hands in the hands of an unknown third | party. | | The psychological, ethical and legal implications are | completely different. If tomorrow I drive a car and run a | kid over then I'll be in trouble and you'll probably | never hear about it. If tomorrow I get in my Tesla self- | driving car and it runs a kid over then you'll hear about | it everywhere and Tesla's responsibility will be invoked. | Because whose else? | | The bar for self driving cars is not being as good (or | bad) as a human driver, they need to be orders of | magnitude safer in all situations. They need to have | airplane industry numbers, not Average Joe drunk driving | numbers. | mrtksn wrote: | People are great at some things that computers suck and | computers are great at some things that human suck. | | Machines doing horrible mistakes that no conscious person | would ever do is problematic because we don't have | reliable error correction methods for that kind of | mistakes. | | A FSD car will never accidentally press acceleration | pedal whey trying to press the brakes or loose control | when trying to read an SMS. Instead it will mistake a | bird for a train, hit and run someone and it would be | like "something slowed me down, are my batteries | degrading?" | | How do you deal with a driver that fails to understand | what's going on? | joe_the_user wrote: | A human being can drive a million miles without a serious | accident. 2018 saw 1.1 deaths per 100 _million_ vehicle | miles driven[1]. Human beings are extremely good at | driving safely overall. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_ | rate_in... | steve_adams_86 wrote: | Yeah, I think people conflate seeing people drive | erratically or doing dumb things in cars with an | inability to operate a car in a way that ultimately | prevents deaths. Humans are incredibly good at that in | the bigger picture for reasons that are currently | impossible to replicate with a computer. | | Criticize human driving all you want, but even the worst | of us can typically manage to get from point a to point | b... Somehow. | joe_the_user wrote: | One of the eye-opening things about the wikipedia | statistics is that advent and universality of mobile | phones at worst caused a very small uptick in fatalities. | With all the bullshit you see with on the road, somehow | people manage to mostly avoid death doing it. My guess is | people can pull attention back to the road at moments | it's really needed. | admax88q wrote: | If the bar is "better than someone talking on cell phone | while crossing a railroad crossing without looking," I'll | stick to manual driving. | | Self driving needs to be better than me, not better than | average. | andy81 wrote: | Not a problem if you only sell to the bottom 50% of | drivers. | alexanderchr wrote: | Only a small minority of drivers consider themselves to | be in the bottom 50% of drivers, so you might have | trouble with that strategy. | 2muchcoffeeman wrote: | It would be interesting to put a black box in a car tied | to the driver. Anyone who shows patterns of driving worse | than average gets a self driving car. | | If you are better than average you can keep your dumb | car. | Hydraulix989 wrote: | Does the average driver even look both ways at the | railroad crossing? I do every single time. Such a low- | cost preventative measure that could very well end up | saving my life one day. | heavyset_go wrote: | At least where I learned to drive, not only was stopping | to look both ways at railroad crossings taught in driving | classes at school, it was part of the written test to get | a permit/license, as well. | okareaman wrote: | How many people on Hacker News think self-driving cars | will be a better driver than themselves in the near | future? | cameronh90 wrote: | Probably me. Waymo may already be in most situations. | | I drive about once or twice a year, always in a rental, | and consequently never really know how well my car | handles or its dimensions. That, plus generally being | rusty, tends to make me fairly nervous. | | Yet, nevertheless, I am in charge of a 2000kg block of | metal hurtling around pedestrians and cyclists at 70mph. | | Scares the shit out of me, to be honest. | jandrese wrote: | Self driving cars would have to kill over 1.35 million | people each year to be as bad as human drivers[1]. | | But there is no reason we should be happy if a self | driving technology "only" kills 1.2 million people in a | year. That number is absurd and should not be considered | acceptable. I think in the semi-distant future we are | going to look at manual operation of a motor vehicle as a | dangerous party trick, something only to be attempted by | professionals or in limited circumstances like pulling | into a field to park or some other low speed maneuvering. | | [1] https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/ | gpm wrote: | We should be _delighted_ if we have a self driving | technology that only kills 1.2 million people a year. | | 1. That's an incredible amount of saved time, people now | get that time back that they use to have to spend | driving. We would have eliminated the largest suck of | human time on the planet (truck driving). Etc. The main | benefit of self driving is not safety. | | 2. We have a working baseline that we can improve upon to | drive that number down, and since computer programs don't | have the "new drivers need to learn from scratch" | problem, those improvements will stick around | approximately forever. | okareaman wrote: | > semi-distant future we are going to look at manual | operation of a motor vehicle as a dangerous party trick | | totally agree but I'm skeptical of current tech to get | there in the near time frame being talked about. It's all | in how you define semi-distant | f6v wrote: | Now look at AstraZeneca craze. Vaccines save lives, | thrombosis cases are extremely rare. Yet the guy on | street is talking to someone on the phone: "Do not take | AZ! I repeat: do not take AZ!!!". Technology has to make | just one mistake to lose layman's confidence. | heavyset_go wrote: | > _Computers probably can not be worse that the people | already on the road._ | | And yet there is no evidence that computers are better | drivers than people are. | | I do have to ask, are we using the same computers? I've | been using them for decades, and they're consistently | buggy, error prone and straight-up factually wrong a lot | of the time. | [deleted] | glofish wrote: | that's not quite right. | | Computers currently are far worse than the good drivers | out there. It is not clear if they ever could be better | than a trained and cautious driver. | | For example you can easily avoid the situation above by | not talking on the phone while driving across rails. | | if the AI abruptly crosses the median how are you going | to avoid that? | carlmr wrote: | >I suppose they could program the train schedule in, but | what if the train system changes the schedule? | | I laughed at this, thinking about how the German trains are | usually +-30 mins and often off by hours. | | The train schedule would probably not fare better than a | coin flip, except in Switzerland or Japan. | AnssiH wrote: | > I suppose they could program the train schedule in, but | what if the train system changes the schedule? | | Just check the train locations instead :) | | https://rata.digitraffic.fi/api/v1/train-locations/latest/ | jeffbee wrote: | This seems like the edgiest of all possible edge case | arguments against self-driving cars, considering that a | meat-driven car crashed through a working barrier and into | a perfectly obvious train in the Bay Area just this | morning. | mulmen wrote: | Obviously meat-based drivers have flaws. The question is | if the FSD robots at least retain all the existing | capabilities of meat-based drivers. Trading one set of | deficiencies for another raises the question of which set | is preferable. | | The reality is that for a long time we will combine both | sets of capabilities and use "self driving" tech to | enhance human driver capabilities. | | In that case self-driving first needs to be able to avoid | the relatively simple case of not of smashing through a | barrier and the human driver can use their wetware to | figure out how to handle railroad crossings which are | diverse and complicated. | okareaman wrote: | This is where you're wrong because I'm obviously a far | better driver than that person who drove in front of a | train this morning and it would never happen to me. I | trust myself more than I trust other drivers. I trust | myself more than I trust Waymo. I'd be happy to have | Waymo prove me wrong. | Swenrekcah wrote: | I agree that it's an edge case but there are always | completely bonkers people, out of the world on drugs or | just suicidal. | | I don't want to risk getting figuratively in a car with | one if I turn on FSD. | echelon wrote: | > It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles | with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. | | I'd be willing to bet it's a quarter century or longer | problem. (Longbets, anyone?) | | FSD is absolutely achievable, but the task is much bigger | than some proponents give it credit. | Spooky23 wrote: | I think you're right. For the AI we have today, it's the | equivalent of 1990. My guess is that as sensor arrays | improve, wireless networks improve and quantum laptops are | available in 2040 or so. | | Think about it -- most software is deployed cloud first these | days, but one of the most complex computing tasks we have is | relying on some black box computer. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | It is mostly a hardware problem. Tesla's can't do FSD with | current hardware because there aren't redundant cameras in | each direction. One camera gets mud on it and your car runs | itself into oncoming traffic. (It does that anyway right now, | but even if software bugs are fixed this is still | intractable). | | A real solution has to be capable of cleaning all cameras | (probably faster than a windshield wiper would), because the | distortions caused by even normal rain are hellish to train | an AI to handle. | xnx wrote: | Tesla would be lucky if the extent of its challenges were | having enough cameras pointing in the right direction. | Tesla handicapped itself by only developing its driving | systems with cameras and not lidar. | ecpottinger wrote: | Right, because people have LIDAR installed already. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | I don't disagree. But since adding more cameras to a car | that already has cameras is a much more intuitive | extension for Tesla to select, I used that as an example. | estaseuropano wrote: | 100% agree but i wonder about the standards applied. | | Where I live the streets are tight and most drivers mediocre at | best, unaware that cyclists might have right of way and about | 1/20 doesn't seem to know the difference between different kind | of light settings in the car. At least half the cars on my | street have visible scratches/dents. | | For me _that_ is the standard to be beaten, not perfection. And | the car could still give signal and ask for a human to take | over in some cases. Self-drivinf cars for me could also be much | slower, no need to speed when you can read a book or play games | waltherg wrote: | So, essentially, you live in Italy where traffic signs and | lights are nothing more than street art and some extra frills | on the side of the road. | borroka wrote: | Silly generalization, please avoid. | ryanlol wrote: | It's not a generalization. | galuggus wrote: | It's a generalisation but not silly. | utexaspunk wrote: | I dunno, I've seen the Domino's [Nuro](https://www.nuro.ai/) | car roaming Houston and it seems to be doing okay and I haven't | heard of any issues... If it's good enough for my pizza, it's | good enough for me -I'm mostly pizza anyway! :P | Hydraulix989 wrote: | I think it's remote-controlled though? | sanguy wrote: | Waymo has given up on ever getting L5 capabilities. They have | so much invested they can't just shutter it, and keep it going | in hopes it attracts an interesting partnership or purchaser. | | They did the same thing with Skybox imaging/Terra Bella. | jollybean wrote: | I loathe to think about more complicated regulation, but I | think Elon is pushing the boundaries of disclosure. That, and | that we have a lot of new populism in stocks, makes me think | the SEC maybe needs an update. | | I kind of like Elon being able to say 'whatever', but on the | other hand, it's not his money now, it's crossed the threshold | into public financing, so statements like L2 v. L5 are | 'material' and saying the wrong thing is a 'lie' and 'bad'. | | Again with the paradox is that he's going to be hosting SNL | which is kind of fun to see, on the other hand, it's going to | be another occasion to hustle a stock or some kind of crypto | which is distasteful. | omgwtfbyobbq wrote: | Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? | | He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by | fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't | heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021. | LightG wrote: | Even if I don't want to, I can't help but keep up with his | marketing-claims through the interests I have. My take, being | aware of him but not focused, is that beta-FSD has already | been released! ... I mean ... what? Maybe I've got it wrong. | omgwtfbyobbq wrote: | It's been released to a small number of people, but... | beta-FSD isn't level five. | | The only specific statement I've read from him is that the | basic functionality for level five will be available this | year. | | What's interesting to me is that people seem to attribute | what news articles synthesize about his statements as | statements made by him. | | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53349313 | drzaiusapelord wrote: | >news articles synthesize about his statements as | statements made by him | | Musk promised the coast to coast drive in 2017: | | https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self- | driv... | | Then admitted he couldn't do it in 2017: | | https://www.autonews.com/article/20180208/MOBILITY/180209 | 770... | | This isn't the media delivering a dishonest commentary. | These are his words. | mandeepj wrote: | > Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? | | Google is universally accessible to everyone. Please don't be | that guy who corners himself into a blind spot. | | Musk claimed coast to coast self-driving trip by end of 2017. | | https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self- | driv... | omgwtfbyobbq wrote: | I've searched, but I haven't found any comment from Musk | about level five being ready by 2021. | | edit - The closest is about the basic functionality for it | being ready by the end of the year (see above). | bidirectional wrote: | If someone says by "fall/winter/spring/summer" and they don't | mean the immediate upcoming instance of that season, they are | lying. That is not being cleverly ambiguous, it is pure | dishonesty. | [deleted] | heymijo wrote: | This feels like bad faith. Musk has been making these claims | every year since 2016. His coverage of these claims on HN is | regular and thorough. | | I went ahead and Googled one for you from 2020: | | _Tesla will be able to make its vehicles completely | autonomous by the end of this year, founder Elon Musk has | said. | | It was already "very close" to achieving the basic | requirements of this "level-five" autonomy, which requires no | driver input, he said._ | | - July 2020 | | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53349313 | omgwtfbyobbq wrote: | Do you mean this comment? | | _I remain confident that we will have the basic | functionality for level five autonomy complete this year._ | | Basic functionality for level five isn't level five. | gcanyon wrote: | You are probably right about 2021, but I think it is very | likely that when L5 _does_ come, it will arrive suddenly and | unexpectedly. The same as AlphaGo did. Yes, I am aware that | AlphaGo was the result of years of effort. Obviously there is | an element of "how do you define 'arrive'" here. | misiti3780 wrote: | I don't think Tesla will have L5 in 2021, but the FSD videos on | youtube are pretty impressive no ? | dawnerd wrote: | Yes, they are but also a lot are sped up. The videos that are | raw show the car still struggling to see around corners since | the cameras are just not in a good enough spot. They really | should have put cameras on the very front corners. | | But TBH I'm not really THAT impressed it can take corners and | follow more lines. It still doesn't handle very important | edge cases, and the people testing and uploading videos are | naturally biased to show how good it is to push their | referral codes. | | I'm not anti-Tesla, I love my M3, but we need to be realistic | about the future of what these particular cars can do. | They're never going to be L5 with the current sensor suite - | and they're certainly never going to be robo taxies. Who | really wants that anyways? Last thing I want is some drunk | bros to destroy my car and have to deal with Tesla support. | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | They're impressive when they're on a straight road. But I | think it's very concerning just how noisy and low resolution | the data the cameras are working with is. You can watch some | of the videos and the car won't recognise other traffic until | it's literally within 20 meters of the car. The 3D positions | of the cars are jumping around constantly. It will get the | speed of traffic wrong and try to turn straight in front of | someone that would cause an accident. Yes it's Beta but it's | still a huge huge huge way behind what Elon claimed it would | be by now. And he's doubled down on the current hardware | being all that's required. | | I am 100% unconvinced that Tesla can get anywhere with their | current system. I don't see how their low resolution cameras | can get the necessary information for Level 5 autonomy. It | almost feels like a reckless brute force approach to the | problem. "Just let AI figure it out". Every autonomous | vehicle company is going to be using some sort of machine | learning but they're going to be feeding in huge amounts of | data. Waymo for example is using multiple LIDAR scanners to | build up an accurate 3D model of the world surrounding the | car. That's what you need. Not what is effectively guesswork | by an AI. | | We still don't have truly reliable face detection even after | decades of research and we're supposed to believe that a car | can reliably drive itself on shitty low resolution cameras | alone. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-26 23:00 UTC)