[HN Gopher] Waymo's collision avoidance testing ___________________________________________________________________ Waymo's collision avoidance testing Author : EvgeniyZh Score : 288 points Date : 2022-12-14 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.waymo.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.waymo.com) | nixpulvis wrote: | I almost feel like AI enabled vehicles need a special light on | the exterior to indicate to other drovers that this thing is a | robot. As I'm driving I would probably learn to approach these | vehicles differently from the average normal driver. | [deleted] | quitit wrote: | This sounds like an excellent idea. There is a lingering issue | about drivers not paying attention and even sleeping while | their vehicle is in self-driving mode, that's contrary to the | requirement that the driver is actively supervising. | | I don't think it's a realistic expectation that drivers are | always fully attentive and able to respond in time to a crash | situation when the self-driving mode is active. Such a light | would give me the heads up that I should stay on my toes. | latchkey wrote: | I'd love to see an independent body conducting the same exact | tests across all platforms (ie: Tesla). | linuxftw wrote: | IMO, public road, public code. | cobaltoxide wrote: | That's a nice phrase, but it seems impractical given the | enormous complexity of these systems. | linuxftw wrote: | Impractical or not, public streets belong to the public, | and the public gets to dictate how they are used or not | used. | | I'm willing to negotiate. If companies don't want to | release their code, they can put up $50M in a trust, and | $1M bond per car, and automatically accept at-fault for any | fatalities involving one of their self-driving units, with | a minimum of $1M paid out for each deceased to their | survivors. | jeffbee wrote: | It should be adversarial. An independent body should administer | test suites provided by the manufacturers. Everybody has to | pass 99% of the union of all test scenarios before being | allowed on the road. The tests are run monthly. | xoa wrote: | > _It should be adversarial. An independent body should | administer test suites provided by the manufacturers. | Everybody has to pass 99% of the union of all test scenarios | before being allowed on the road. The tests are run monthly._ | | While I appreciate the spirit you're being overly glib, and | we should all be wary of overly simplistic answers since | reality can have surprising emergent effects. Like, your | proposal as written would give behind manufacturers who cut | corners and were bad an effective veto over companies doing | well. If say Tesla finds they have to pretty much start from | scratch, that they're 5 years behind Waymo now because they | took a shoddy haphazard approach, well they might as well | create a bunch of impossible tests that Waymo can't pass. It | doesn't matter that they can't pass them, because they | couldn't pass the ones Waymo proposes either, so this way | they could throw a spanner in the works and pull back on the | leaders. You could alter your suggestion to be that | manufacturers can only propose tests that they themselves can | pass with ready-to-ship vehicles, so everyone has to meet | each other's standards. But what if there really are tests | that everyone should pass but that no one can yet? Or what if | there is explicit or tacit collusion in the other direction, | where everyone low balls the tests because ultimately it's | more profitable to get stuff shipping? | | Basically I don't see any reason to not just have the | government continue to be involved here and come up with | independent road safety standards as advised by their own | experts, with public comment and rationale. Ultimately it's | the public interest at stake and the rules are about use of | public infrastructure. Why not just have an aggressive | federal standard course and set of tests that everyone must | meet? | | I also think in terms of incentives that FSD car | manufacturers should be fully liable for any accidents caused | by the car while FSD is active, simple as that. | jefftk wrote: | What if you limited to test scenarios that a human | ("NIEON") could reliably pass? | sebzim4500 wrote: | I'm sure motivated engineers could come up with tests | that are extremely difficult for current AI but basically | useless for deploying a real self driving system. | | See the millions of examples of trolley problems, for | example. | jefftk wrote: | Trolley problem examples are hard, but your "NIEON" won't | reliably pass either. | jeffbee wrote: | If Tesla can't pass each and every one of their proposed | tests then they aren't even in the game. What you describe | would not occur. | raldi wrote: | And a meta body should coordinate with manufacturers to | periodically submit faulty products to make sure they're | flagged. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | 100% | latchkey wrote: | I watched this video yesterday which seems really | applicable... | | How to crash an airplane - Nickolas Means | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8 | | Reflecting on the video, they don't need to save everyone, | but it certainly should be the first time when not everyone | dies. | laichzeit0 wrote: | So out of 10,000 tests, it's okay if they fail on 100 of | them? | jerf wrote: | As nice as it may be to think that humans are perfect, it's | not like they'd score 100% on this level of testing either. | kibwen wrote: | In fact, we can even subject human drivers to the same | tests and compare the results. | lelanthran wrote: | > As nice as it may be to think that humans are perfect, | it's not like they'd score 100% on this level of testing | either. | | Someone posted upthread that current fatalities on | something stupid like 1.5 per 100000 miles. | | Humans are currently ahead in the safety stats game. | adventured wrote: | The automated driving systems will have to pass a far | higher bar than human drivers as a comparison. People | will get even more upset about self-driving tech causing | injuries/wrecks/deaths/endangerment vs what human drivers | cause. | | Long after self-driving systems are superior to human | drivers on average, the headlines will still scream about | humans being killed by self-driving tech. The | sensationalism will still sell and people will still be | very outraged about it. | | The expectation will be no mistakes. Anything short of | that will always draw a hyper emotional negative | response, which will lure in political/regulatory | responses. | gretch wrote: | >People will get even more upset about self-driving tech | causing injuries/wrecks/deaths/endangerment vs what human | drivers cause. | | Will they? | | I mean for example Tobacco companies lied and the truth | that we know today is that smoking is very very | detrimental to their health. It's also detrimental non- | smokers in society via second hand smoke, and secondary | effects like cigarette butt litter. It doesn't even | provide any solid utility like transportation does, it | just feels good. | | Not only do people still smoke today, people _start_ | smoking today given all the information we have. | | So when I see behavior like that, I'm not confident that | people won't want FSD just because it's 'dangerous'. | mwigdahl wrote: | You're 100% correct. People will want FSD for themselves | for sure. That won't stop them from blaming the tech | companies when they read articles about the cars killing | people. Ralph Nader's _Unsafe At Any Speed_ tanked | Corvair sales after publication, although his critiques | arguably applied to other cars more than the Corvair. The | sales of other, similar contemporary cars weren't | affected at all. | | FSD will be incredibly convenient, which means humans | will always be motivated to come up a reason, valid or | otherwise, that justifies their own use of the tech while | allowing themselves to condemn others for mishaps | incurred doing the exact same thing. | | "They didn't maintain it correctly." "They didn't listen | to the warnings." "They bought the wrong brand." "They | weren't current on software updates." | Retric wrote: | I doubt it, the more common self driving deaths become | the less newsworthy they will be. | rootusrootus wrote: | > Long after self-driving systems are superior to human | drivers on average | | For starters, that's not the correct metric. Self driving | systems have to at least surpass the median driver, not | the average (mean). Auto-related fatality stats are | heavily skewed by a small subset of drivers who engage in | very risky habits. | sebzim4500 wrote: | Why should they have to pass the median? | | > Auto-related fatality stats are heavily skewed by a | small subset of drivers who engage in very risky habits. | | Right and it would be great if those people used self | driving cars instead. | rootusrootus wrote: | > Why should they have to pass the median? | | Because you have to convince people like me to buy a | self-driving car, and as long as that car is more likely | to get me killed than I am, my family will remain in a | car that I drive. I do not drive drunk, I avoid driving | in inclement weather when not required, or at night, or | when I'm really tired. I don't race, I don't road rage, I | am a very defensive driver. I have not had an at-fault | accident _ever_ (in 30 years and counting since I got my | license) and the only accidents I 've ever been in at all | were minor fender-benders. | | So convince me why I should endanger myself so that you | can have an unsafe computer driven auto on the road? | | > Right and it would be great if those people used self | driving cars instead. | | So make a self-driving car for _them_. You will need to | subsidize it, since these types of drivers are more | likely than not unable to afford a fancy new toy. When | the technology can finally cross the median point, then | we can talk again about regular, good drivers hanging up | their keys. | Antipode wrote: | Maybe have variable points per test and have a minimum | passing point total, so that an important test could fail | you in its own. | jeffbee wrote: | Yeah we can quibble over the details. The key aspect is | adversaries. | sekh60 wrote: | Kinda crazy to think the tests have to be done monthly, but | they'd have to be due to software updates, what crazy times | we are approaching. | lapetitejort wrote: | The "unit" in "unit test" will now refer to the car crashed | on every Jenkins build | kolbe wrote: | Consensus from the two AV articles today seems to be that Tesla, | despite releasing more data to the public on their FSD system, is | evil, incompetent and endangering society (the data doesn't say | so, but just the fact that Tesla won't release even more data is | shady). Whereas Waymo making a PR statement with no substance is | proof Tesla will fail and Waymo will save us. | enragedcacti wrote: | > Tesla, despite releasing far more data to the public on their | FSD system, | | The same Tesla who argues to the California DMV that FSD is a | level 2 system to dodge reporting requirements? The Tesla who | has a major EV outlet demanding that they release meaningful | disengagement data? [1] | | Perhaps I missed something but I really have no idea what data | you could be talking about, unless by "data" you mean access to | the FSD beta. | | [1] https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving- | data-... | kolbe wrote: | Tesla themselves released safety data quarterly for years. I | don't know why it stopped, but internet guesses range from | Tesla is a fraud to the NHTSA started to question its | accuracy, and they pulled it for liability reason. Tesla | actually updates miles driven on Twitter. And going on | YouTube, you can find endless videos of user experiences. I | said thousands of hours before, but it very well could be | hundreds of thousands of hours. | | Find anything on Waymo. The NHTSA released autopilot and AV | vehicle crash data in raw number of crashes, and I wanted to | normalize both Tesla and Waymo somehow, and I couldn't find | anything from Waymo other than some repeated claim of "over | 20 million miles" which dates back years. If it is only 20 | million, then Waymo is insanely dangerous, and no one should | be defending them, but I have a feeling they're into the | hundreds of millions at this point. Also, look up similar | YouTube experiences. Waymo has almost nothing--a few people | following their vehicles | bhauer wrote: | I wish HN would be better than that, but your summary is | perfect. | RC_ITR wrote: | What's your response to the fact that Tesla's data is | actually very bad? [1] | | [1]https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1602774335244177408? | re... | RC_ITR wrote: | >Consensus from the two AV articles today | | Consensus from informed industry observers who are _sounding | the alarm bells about how dangerous Tesla 's approach is from a | first-principles standpoint_ | | The "data" Tesla released is a meaningless attempt to pull the | wool over your eyes. | pugworthy wrote: | One thing I'm very curious about with AI driven cars, is whether | they will develop some of the overly cautious / paranoid habits | human drivers get around bicycles. | | Take people passing a bike in a bike lane for example. Some will | go way under the speed limit, and not just pass the bike even | though it's in it's own lane. Or others will swing WAY wide to | pass them, even though again, they are in their own line. | | Will AI itself learn that indeed, bikes do suddenly veer into | your lane, or will AI in fact learn that no, they don't do that? | panick21_ wrote: | Self driving cars are mostly a bad idea in most cases. The only | thing worse then cars with 1 person in it driving around is cars | with 0 people driving around. | | The goal should be less cars overall specially in cities. | Technology that will cause more cars and more traffic is just | terrible. | | Cities should ban cars, make it pedestrian and bicycle friendly, | build 'self driving' metros and S-Bahn style train systems. | wizofaus wrote: | There's no need to _ban_ cars - it would be quiet sufficient | just for governments to stop building infrastructure (and | making various laws around its usage) as though cars were the | only type of transport that mattered. FWIW, in principle self- | driving tech could make our cities far more "people" friendly | and less attuned to the needs to cars, but only if there was | some sort of motivation for the tech to be developed with that | goal in mind. | ape4 wrote: | So the AI learns - slow down when driving between shipping | containers | frogblast wrote: | Well... Yes. It is a scenario where you you have a blind spot | on the road ahead of you, so I'd hope a human driver would do | the same. | rkagerer wrote: | They refer to NIEON as an undistractable human driver, but isn't | it just another model? Is that a bit misleading, or can someone | shed more light on this? | kibwen wrote: | There's a footnote: | | _" NIEON is defined by (1) gaze being directed through the | windshield toward the forward path during the conflict and (2) | a lack of sleepiness and intoxication-related impairment."_ | snotrockets wrote: | So basically, a public transit driver. | tantalor wrote: | NIEON is "a reference model that represents an ideal human | state for driving" | | You can use this for comparison, as in "what would NIEON do in | this situation"? | TulliusCicero wrote: | It's just a hypothetical for comparison: "is our self driving | car doing as good or better than a competent, undistracted | human driver?" | bingblogger wrote: | Share your unique Blog post, create a Backlink to your site and | raise your site's rating in Google search, Your BingBlogger | | website: https://bingblogger.com | random_upvoter wrote: | As with all AI, it works until that special set of circumstances | pop up where it fails and when it fails there is no bottom as to | how it fails. | nojvek wrote: | I'm the side of LIDAR is a crutch. Not only is it crazy expensive | and has many moving parts, but the sensor input is a bunch of | dots. One has to have cameras anyway for the high density vision | input. | | With newer algorithms, you can stitch multiple cameras to | reconstruct a scene and semantically identify important objects. | I do like what Tesla is doing with its new voxel neural net. | | Yeah it will take a few more years, but the hard problems are | doing what our visual cortex does with two cameras (our eyes). | Also keep in mind a car has multiple cameras around to give full | 360 view. They also sense in IR range that our eyes do not. | samwillis wrote: | Teslas vision based system makes a prediction of what the | environment around it is, how far away things are. A LIDAR | based system knows _with certainty_ how far way things are. | | LIDAR may be expensive now, thats not to say it won't get | cheeper, with fewer parts. | | But the main issue is a social one, I don't think the public | will except _any_ fatalities as a result of a vision based | system making a mistake. Even if the deal rate from accetends | is lower than with a human driver. | | A self driving car can't be 50% better, or even 200% better it | needs to be thousands of times better than a human driver for | it to succeed. I think the certainty of a LIDAR baed system is | the only way to do that. | | An AI based vision system is Tesla saying that can make a | "brain" better than a human at understanding vision. | | LIDAR is saying, humans can't measure how far away things are, | we can do better than humans by doing something they can't. | abraxas wrote: | I really want to see how testing goes for MobilEye when they | start to open up their prototypes a little more. Of the youtube | videos I've seen theirs is by far the most impressive and I have | a lot of respect for Amnon Shashua. | tr33house wrote: | can't wait for the day I'll leave work, get into a self-driving | car, watch a movie, have it stop for takeout, sleep as it drives | me across the country and then wake up in the morning on the | other side of the country ready to start my day. Rooting for | Waymo! | voz_ wrote: | I spent a few years in self driving, I have immense respect for | Waymo, and very little for Tesla. I think ultimately they will | win the space. | lynndotpy wrote: | This is my view as well. (I did self-driving related research, | like platooning and taxi scheduling/allocation.) Waymo, Baidu, | Didi, and others are the names that come to mind for places | that produce research, produce data, _and_ apply their | technology in real-world practice. | | My impression of Tesla is mostly shaped from (1) | nonparticipation in the research community, (2) a very early | "mission accomplished" declaration by calling their cars fully | self driving, and (3) a longterm refusal to use LIDAR. | | I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving (edit: self- | driving _research_ ), but I don't think Tesla does either. | There's no reason for them to try to "win" the space. | | From Tesla's side, it makes more sense to continue on their | current tack: Applying results from existing research. I think | Tesla's strategy is to be the highest bidder when it comes time | for Waymo (or Didi, etc) to sell their tech. | pantalaimon wrote: | How do you view the approach of comma.ai ? | lynndotpy wrote: | I don't know anything about them to be honest! Just | searched them up. | | AFAIK, they aren't working on self-driving or trying to | advance research there, so it doesn't make sense to compare | them to Waymo either. | | But an open-source driver-assist upgrade package is | interesting, but doesn't overlap with my experience. Sorry | I don't have anything more meaningful to say! | azinman2 wrote: | They literally sell a package to purchasers of cars called | full self driving and autopilot. They claim their competitive | advantage is all the cameras of miles driven. They put | special boards in cars for it. They absolutely consider | themselves a player. | minsc_and_boo wrote: | I don't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers | _themselves_ to be a player, especially since it sells more | add-ons to their cars. Repeatedly publicly knocking the | benefits of LIDAR in self driving demonstrates otherwise. | mehwoot wrote: | > _I don 't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers | themselves to be a player_ | | > _I don 't consider Tesla a player in self-driving, but | I don't think Tesla does either_ | pdabbadabba wrote: | They clearly are a player in the self-driving cars | _market_. They may not be a player in self-driving | _research_. These things can both be true at the same | time. | | I think that's the distinction driving the confusion | here. | lynndotpy wrote: | Let me clarify my position: Tesla does not advance self- | driving research, and they don't need to. Tesla won't be | the first to release fully self-driving cars. (I think 'SAE | levels' are bunk, but let's say this is level 4.5 for the | sake of discussion.) | | EDIT: Sorry, and to clarify, I meant "not a player in self- | driving _research_. I also do not think anyone has any | vehicles we should call "self driving". | | (I'll keep the rest of my pre-edit clarification below.) | | To clarify further: | | Tesla's offerings come from applying and engineering | existing published research. That takes work, and they're | making some money from that. | | To the extent that "fully self driving" is an achievable | goal, it makes no sense to expect Tesla to make the | advances that get us there, when (1) they aren't doing | that, and (2) they don't need to do that to make money. | | To make this even more clear, let's make it concrete with | one plausible future: In 2032, Waymo (or Didi, whoever) | achieves true 'level 4' fully-self driving with proprietary | technology. Their tech is seen in trucks, busses, taxis, as | well as being equipped to a few thousand private vehicles. | The safety stats are superhuman, and insuring such a | vehicle is cheap. | | In this future, Tesla Motors would like to enter into an | exclusive partnership to integrate this technology into the | cars they manufacture. | 411111111111111 wrote: | > _Tesla won 't be the first to release fully self- | driving cars._ | | Technically speaking: yes, they were the first ones, back | in 2017. | | Their car might've been more likely to crash then | actually end up at the desired destination, but they did | release first with a pretty hilariously bad product. | kiratp wrote: | Literally making their own AI training chips with novel | architecture doesn't count as participating in research? | | Google has tried and failed at commercializing similar | technology in other verticals (like building | environmental automation from their DC tech). The reason | is actual incumbents (rightly) see the value of their | position while Google comes at it as "our AI is the | value, you just make dumb things". | | I expect the automakers to ship mediocre stacks that are | put together by existing players like Bosch. | | As an ex-Googler I would be floored if Waymo actually | lands a sell-into deal with an automaker. A fully | vertical taxi service is their path today because they | tried and failed to sign any partnerships. | hcrisp wrote: | Maybe it depends on how you define "full" self-driving. Is | it full if it works only for the scenarios it was designed? | Are you working full time if you only work 30 hours a week? | munificent wrote: | They want customers to consider them a player. | | They doesn't necessarily mean that they themselves believe | their own marketing. | mv4 wrote: | can you elaborate? something wrong with Tesla's approach? | everly wrote: | Yes. Photogrammetry + ML is fundamentally inferior to a | LiDAR-based solution, particularly on the time-scale motor | vehicles operate on. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | They have a habit of running into things. | aantix wrote: | How do the number of accidents compare to Waymo when fleet | size is taken into account? | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | The stats don't matter much when it's clear they can't | handle collision avoidance with anything outside their | limited training set like airplanes. You have to ask what | else can't they detect in front of the car if they're | 100% dependent on ML to decide there's an obstruction. | That is an irresponsible threat to public safety no | matter how lucky they are scraping by on their current | architecture. | jcims wrote: | Except the stats *do* matter. It's how we measure things | that operate in the real world. The blind baby stroller | benchmark might be academically interesting, but if | distracted drivers are smashing kids on public roads for | another decade while Waymo perfects it's craft the net | result is just more flat people. | redox99 wrote: | Talking of FSD beta here, I don't think there has been | any death or even major accident to date. But that's | mostly because (especially until a few months ago) it was | bad enough that nobody would trust it, so people were | always alert to intervene. | | If you were to let FSD beta just drive by itself enough | time, and intentionally never intervene, it _would_ | eventually crash, no doubt about it. Before v10.69 it was | hard to get a 20 minute drive with no interventions | (unless it was mostly straight roads). | amf12 wrote: | Relevant HN: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984922 | | Comparing disengagement and driver intervention data | might be useful to compare Tesla FSD vs others. | threeseed wrote: | I wouldn't rule out Cruise. | | They already have robotaxis in SF and are expanding into | Arizona and Texas by the end of this year. | zndr wrote: | Saying they have taxi's in SF is a bit hyperbolic. I have an | invite to that program and it's | | - only after 10pm - used such an odd slice of the city I not | only can't get picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. | | I would love to use either of these programs both for the | novelty and because I think Autonomous driving is great, but | I literally can't use the program I do have access to. | darkwizard42 wrote: | I think the parent wasn't referring to it being perfect, | but that open road real-life testing is something very few | companies have, and was implying we shouldn't count out | Cruise because they are at least at that stage. | [deleted] | hemloc_io wrote: | as a fellow beta tester, they are expanding their service | area to include a majority of the city incl Mission. | | Totally agree w/ you rn thou right now it's basically a | neat party trick I have to go out of my way to show off | instead of a super useful service. | wutbrodo wrote: | > used such an odd slice of the city I not only can't get | picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. | | It's been a month and a half since they've covered almost | the entire city except FiDi/Union Square (and Twin | Peaks)[1]. That's not a trivial omission, but do you really | never take rides that start or end in any other area? In | particular, that entire area is a fairly close walk from | the only dense transit line in the city. | | [1] https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1587589014525448192 | aeternum wrote: | Great appeal to authority. Why not explain the technical | reasons you believe Waymo will win? | guilamu wrote: | I did not spent a few years in self driving, but correct if I'm | wrong, but how would Waymo win when they can work only with HD | maps (aka, nearly nowhere) while Tesla FSD work nearly | perfectly now even on dirt roads (aka anywhere) with no map at | all? | Zigurd wrote: | This is a _very_ good question. Elon is dumping on LIDAR and | 3D high resolution mapping. | | That may be a smokescreen. Tesla collects a lot of data from | their cars. What they do not have are these supposedly | superfluous high resolution maps. If Tesla's camera-sourced | data proves to be insufficient, that will have been a very | bad gamble, in addition to whether camera data is sufficient | for real time decisions. | | When they pay off, bold gambles make businessmen look smart. | That's why nearly all business hagiographies are the product | of survivorship bias. Just like your buddy who won in Vegas. | | We will see this risk-taking play out in Starship and | Starlink, too. | voz_ wrote: | Collecting HD Maps is an 80/20 problem (I have a patent in a | subfield of this, for better or worse lol) - you can get a | ton of value from a small set of focused areas. If you can | solve greater metro areas (no dirt roads?), you've got a real | solution. | | I also think that the mapping and routing component matters a | lot less than how good your collision and realtime avoidance | systems are. And in that arena, Tesla is an unmitigated | disaster. | guilamu wrote: | Thanks for your anwser. I see a lot of bad things on Tesla | FSD and I totally get the critics. | | Yet, I follow DirtyTesla's YouTube channel and I think FSD | is quite impressive compared to any other self driving | software I've seen. | | Would you mind to direct me to similar videos from Waymo | for example in similar situations? I can't find anything | even remotely as good as what Tesla is doing now. | | I'm not a fanboy nor do I possess any TSLA actions (or even | a car for that matter), I'm just interested in the field | and until now I thought Tesla was the most promising tech | (it seems I'm wrong, but I really like to see it!). | vgt wrote: | Compare Waymo[0] with Tesla [1].. | | These are easily searchable which leads me to question | your sincerity in feinting ignorance. | | [0]https://youtu.be/mWvhw1KCmbo | | [1]https://youtu.be/3mnG_Gbxf_w | Zigurd wrote: | They're just asking questions. Geeez. | zaroth wrote: | I think you missed OPs point. | | As I understand it, Waymo can't drive on unmapped roads, | and therefore there are no comparable videos of Waymo | actually doing that. | | You chose a Waymo video from their marketing channel, and | a newspaper hit piece. And then questioned sincerity of | OP... | simondotau wrote: | Not to mention that there's no evidence that any | autonomous driving system was engaged on that Tesla. | vgt wrote: | did I? Here's a direct quote I was responding to: | | >I see a lot of bad things on Tesla FSD and I totally get | the critics...I think FSD is quite impressive compared to | any other self driving software I've seen. > >Would you | mind to direct me to similar videos from Waymo for | example in similar situations? I can't find anything even | remotely as good as what Tesla is doing now. | | I can't believe one can make an honest argument that | Tesla is ahead of Waymo on FSD | dinobones wrote: | Waymo has proven driverless operations in Chandler, then | Downtown Phoenix, then San Francisco. Truly driverless, no | people in car. They've demonstrated driverless capability and | the ability to expand to new regions, even if it means taking | HD maps. | | Tesla has not proven any reliable driverless operation, | anywhere. They have removed hardware from their cars (radar, | uss) and have not shown any meaningful progress in the past | ~5 years nor any willingness to change from their "vision | only, big data" strategy. | | If things continue on the current trajectory Waymo will | likely be operating in all major US cities and metros in a | few years while Tesla's self driving offering will probably | be forcibly renamed by regulation and end in a class action | lawsuit. | | Basically, Waymo has proven N and N+1 capability, meanwhile | Tesla has yet to prove N, and has lied to consumers and | actually reduced their chances at achieving N due to cost | cutting measures. | panick21_ wrote: | > Waymo has proven driverless operations in Chandler, then | Downtown Phoenix, then San Francisco. | | And how many years did that take. Are they adding | profitable operations in new cities year after year, with | every year adding new cities? | | As far as I can see they simply lose billion and billions | of $ for no real success in actually having a product. | | Tesla is actually using the technology to improve its Level | 2 systems and make money with it. | | > meanwhile Tesla has yet to prove N | | First of all, Waymo has not proven N, because they don't | make money on any of these things. | | Tesla at least try to drive in N+10000000 other cases and | navigate many of them without seeing them first. | | If you have to go one by one threw every single city in the | world its not clear to me that this is a better approach | then solving a more general problem. | | > reduced their chances at achieving N due to cost cutting | measures | | Tesla just made 3 billion $ of profit in a quarter. What | cost cutting? They are currently doing major investments in | upgraded sensors suits, upgraded data-centers and overall | their team is still growing. | | How much did Waymo make again? | dinobones wrote: | Just because Tesla is profitable and making money by | selling vehicles does not mean they are on a better path | to engineering a self driving system than Waymo. | | The opposite is also true, just because Waymo does not | make money does not reflect the capability of their self | driving systems. Saying "Waymo has not proven N, because | they don't make money on any of these things." doesn't | make any sense, and is not even true. | | I can go to downtown Phoenix right now and request (and | pay for) a fully self-driving ride from point A to point | B. Teslas can not reliably complete any self driving | route without any disengagements. | | We are discussing who is closer to realizing a fully | self-driving system, not who runs a better business. | simondotau wrote: | > and have not shown any meaningful progress in the past ~5 | years | | Really? I've had some casual interest in the progress of | FSD beta and the past six months alone has seen dramatic | improvements to numerous adversarial situations. | | FSD beta is currently able to drive with confidence on | unmarked roads at night in the rain, with only basic maps | for wayfinding. This has been demonstrated by customers in | their own cars, driving roads which haven't been vetted by | the developers. | | I'm sure Waymo and other systems can do this too, but I | haven't seen it demonstrated. | guilamu wrote: | "ot shown any meaningful progress in the past ~5 years nor | any willingness to change from their "vision only, big | data" strategy." | | I guess they did now that they can make their own cheap | lidars and adding them back in 2023. | daveguy wrote: | Reversing the "cameras only" position is a step in the | right direction. They are currently ~3 years behind | collecting lidar data compared to Cruise / Waymo. I | wonder if they'll be able to make it up with "ghost- | rider" volume in 2023. | RankingMember wrote: | ? Where are you seeing that they're adding lidar? The big | news recently was that they're going to bring back radar. | vel0city wrote: | > nor any willingness to change from their "vision only, | big data" strategy. | | It sounds like they might actually be including a new radar | system in January. Nothing official yet though from what | I've seen. | | https://electrek.co/2022/12/06/tesla-radar-car-next-month- | se... | Laremere wrote: | This is something that seems really important, and is | definitely a significant effort, but actually is | inconsequential. | | Think about a section of lightly used suburban road. The | amount of work that went into making it involved was immense. | A crew of road workers using expensive machines and large | amounts of material were required to make it, and are | required in it's maintenance. Don't forget the surveyors and | engineers who made a highly detailed map and plans in the | first place! (Though that map format isn't useful to self | driving cars). | | Also consider the sheer number of cars that drive that patch | in a day. One car every few minutes adds up over hours, days, | months, years. | | So, yeah they have to drive a mapping car down the street a | bunch of times to expand their coverage area. However this is | insignificant compared to the effort that goes into our | transportation infrastructure already. | crote wrote: | Not to mention that Google Street View has demonstrated | that such effort is viable even with way less incentive! | | Besides, most miles driven are spent on highways and other | town-connecting roads. To the average consumer, self- | driving cars are way more interesting for commuting or | long-distance travel than they are for a 5-minute drive to | the supermarket. | londons_explore wrote: | The cars themselves have the hardware necessary to make an HD | map. | | That means that Tesla could make an HD map covering 95% of | miles driven in the USA within a week with their fleet of | users. And next week they could make an updated version of | the same map. | | So, making and updating an HD map isn't an issue. | Zigurd wrote: | Tesla cars do not have LIDAR sensors. The downside risk is | that high resolution imaging using multiple sensors is a | requirement for level 5 AVs to work well enough. That means | all the data Tesla has collected could be of limited value. | HereBeBeasties wrote: | I created some 3D models of a real world building and | surrounding environment using photogrammetry from 20+ | megapixel DSLR photos and decided the accuracy was totally | inadequate and the artefacts were too hard to manually | clean up. | | I then hired a dude with a LIDAR scanner and did it | properly. The difference in quality/accuracy is like 120x80 | ASF video files in 1996 compared to 4K footage today. | | Anyone who thinks you can build "HD" virtual worlds using | the crappy cameras on a Tesla needs their heads examining. | Maybe with thousands of passes and some epic compute and | signal processing, but why bother? Just LIDAR it. | | My Tesla can't even decide if a traffic light is a single | traffic light or not on a sunny summer's day from a | distance of twenty feet. Almost every time it is either | dark or humid or winter (road grime) it tells me one or | more cameras are obscured. But only after I've already | started driving, obviously. This supposedly cutting edge AI | driving machine frequently thinks I'm leaving the | carriageway on UK B-roads (it's almost dangerous) and is | significantly less reliable at distance cruise control and | lane-assist than my Skoda. (I presume VW just quietly | bought a black box from Bosch or whoever to do this.) | | Tesla are barking up the wrong tree IMO. At this point the | camera-only stance feels like a religious thing, not based | on sanity or the real practical world. I imagine that | someone came to Elon and said "reconciling conflicting | radar and camera signals is hard" and he applied his | considerable genius and issued an edict to "let's not do | that then!" like it would magically make all the actual | hard problems go away. | | Heck, Teslas can't even seem to reliably parallel park | themselves, frequently getting stuck halfway, or hitting | kerbs. If they can't solve that highly constrained problem, | I'm hardly going to trust taking my eyes off it at 70mph. | codenesium wrote: | 99% of the time it doesn't kill you isn't what we're shooting | for. | daveguy wrote: | With 1.5 fatalities per 100,000,000 miles[0], the benchmark | to meet is 99.9999985% of the time it doesn't kill you. | Injuries are going to be a lot higher, obviously. Still, I | think most self-driving enthusiasts underestimate the bar | that needs to be crossed wrt safety. And general vehicle | safety isn't going to remain stagnant. I think it's going | to be a cost vs injuries tradeoff for quite a while until | we get human-level or better self-driving safety in all | circumstances. | | [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/193018/number-of-us- | cras... | margalabargala wrote: | Waymo currently works with HD maps. | | Tesla currently works not at all. | | It's not valid to compare Waymo's current capability | unfavorably to a version of Tesla's capability that only | exists in someone's head. | | I would bet on Waymo working on a dirt road before Tesla | does. | Domenic_S wrote: | ?? | | Literally a Tesla with FSD working well on a dirt road: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv1l6aTnB_I | margalabargala wrote: | Fair enough; my "not at all" was hyperbole, Tesla's | driver assistance software does not in fact crash every | single time it is used without human intervention. | | I do find it mildly disturbing that in that video, the | driver points out the car making fully blind turns where | it cannot see that there's nothing it would hit. | enragedcacti wrote: | my dumb car "works" for self driving assuming a straight | enough road without obstacles. A safety critical system | needs to have a very robust definition of "works" that is | far beyond "it happened to not crash on this particular | road at this particular time with this particular set of | obstacles". | paxys wrote: | I like the level 5 or bust approach taken by Waymo and Cruise. | Anything in the middle (like what Tesla is doing) is IMO more | dangerous than useful. The whole "the car is self-driving but | you must also pay attention and have your hands on the wheel at | all times" thing is idiotic. | jvolkman wrote: | Here's Chris Urmson talking about this 7 years ago when he | was still working on (what is now) Waymo: | https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=169 | Justsignedup wrote: | Humans are notoriously bad at just paying attention and not | being in charge. Those few seconds their actual attention is | needed are critical. | | I do appreciate that my car can do full distance control and | assist if I am drifting, but it doesn't control itself, so I | can never disengage. Personally I feel that this is wonderful | and should be the limit. Anything past that should just be | fully autonomous. Otherwise you're asking for trouble. | mikepurvis wrote: | 100%. If I'm driving and my attention wanders, I need the | _immediate_ feedback of drifting out of the lane and having | to abruptly course correct, and being like "dang yeah, | let's not do that again", possibly reinforced by passengers | scowling at me from elsewhere in the vehicle. | | I can't imagine trying to focus on supervising an AI pilot | without that kind of feedback. | xplanephil wrote: | interestingly, I don't have much trouble with that, as it | works exactly like most airplanes that I fly as a pilot. | | An airplane autopilot is a dumb device, in that it does | execute _exactly_ the plan you tell it to, and it is up | to the pilot to at all times decide whether the current | plan still makes sense or needs to be altered. So the | pilot makes the strategic decisions, and leaves most of | the physical tasks of flying to the autopilot. | | I find myself using my M3 w/FSD in exactly the same way, | as that I put on autosteer pretty much immediately when | I'm out of the driveway, but I constantly nudge it into | the lane that I want it to be in (by using the turn | signal) or push the accelerator when I think it is taking | too long pondering a turn. So i leave the physical | driving (keep lane and distance) to the car but manage | the car to always go exactly where I want it. | | I have no trouble staying alert this way when doing | medium long drives. Long highway drives where autopilot | is so good that it requires no manual interaction is | where the trouble starts and I find it hard to keep | paying attention. | | This is where in an airplane you have a copilot and can | discuss strategic things like overnight stops, fuel | stops, etc... Maybe Tesla needs a built-in chatbot to | make me do that :) | mtgx wrote: | jsnell wrote: | Aren't they geofenced, which would make them level 4? | redox99 wrote: | > Anything in the middle (like what Tesla is doing) is IMO | more dangerous than useful. | | Even if a hypothetical, future Tesla FSD sometimes crashes in | ways that could be prevented had the driver payed attention, | it could still be statistically safer than a fully human | driver (ie the number of FSD crashes even if left unattended | < the number of crashes by humans driving). | | To clarify, I'm not talking about the current state of FSD, | I'm talking about a hypothetical, future Level 3. | paxys wrote: | Doing such aggregations is pointless. The majority of | traffic accidents are caused by drunk drivers, drivers who | are too young/too old, people on their phones or otherwise | distracted, people driving in bad conditions, people | driving unsafe cars etc. So yes, while Tesla autopilot may | be better than all of them on average, I will still only | use it if it is better than ME. | redox99 wrote: | > I will still only use it if it is better than ME. | | You're free to not use it. But if Tesla FSD is safer than | the average driver (even if that's because the average | driver is on their phone) then, going back to your | statement, it _is_ more useful than dangerous for the | average driver. | sebzim4500 wrote: | >Anything in the middle (like what Tesla is doing) is IMO | more dangerous than useful | | Intuitively I would have agreed with you, except Tesla has | been doing it for years and their cars are statistically | safer by every metric (fatalities, indicents, etc.). | twiceaday wrote: | > their cars are statistically safer by every metric | | Compared to what population? Older, tech-savvy people | buying 60k-120k usd vehicles? And do you mean in full self- | driving mode Beta, which Tesla won't allow you to use | unless you have a track record of save driving? | peder wrote: | I suspect the below-"Level 5" driving systems will become | more of an "augmented driving". I've driven in newer vehicles | with automatic lane centering, pedestrian detection, etc. and | they don't really seem like they're even doing anything, you | still feel like you're the one driving, except that it's more | precise with the occasional interruption by the car when it | perceives risk of a collision. | | These augmented systems will probably reduce the risk of | accidents so greatly that the value proposition for Level 5 | driving systems just won't be there. | chime wrote: | > These augmented systems will probably reduce the risk of | accidents so greatly that the value proposition for Level 5 | driving systems just won't be there. | | I've driven a lot for decades and frankly enjoy driving. I | drove from TPA to SLC via PHX and back for fun. But I will | pay $500/mo level-5 subscription for a comfortable car that | drives itself. | oangemangut wrote: | I'm trying to figure out how many hours a month are you | in a vehicle where that makes sense for you? | HDThoreaun wrote: | Having level 5 available honestly opens up tons of | options that were not available before. A 90 minute | commute is so much more palatable when you can be | sleeping. So are road-trips. | david_allison wrote: | That's $17/day. If it gives you an extra hour a day and | eliminates driving-based stress then it seems very well | priced. Especially if it includes the car | dpkirchner wrote: | $500 seems reasonable compared to loan payments, full | insurance, and parking. The math may not make as much | sense if you would otherwise own your car outright, | though. | amf12 wrote: | > These augmented systems will probably reduce the risk of | accidents so greatly that the value proposition for Level 5 | driving systems just won't be there. | | The value proposition of L5 systems is also the _not | driving_ part. | Animats wrote: | "Augmented driving" is Level 2. That's where commercial | products (GM, Mercedes, Tesla) are now. | | Volvo was talking about level 3 back in 2017, but they gave | up.[1] Level 3 means that the system may ask the driver to | take over, but if the driver does not do so, the system | must get the vehicle to a safe condition. Preferably pulled | over out of traffic, but as least stopped without hitting | anything. The driver is not required to watch the road. | | The serious players are trying to get to level 4, where the | driver is not expected to take over but the set of roads | you can use is limited. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q00jIBhkq4 | peder wrote: | The leveling system is a bit off. Level 3 doesn't mean | "better" than Level 2. A Level 2 system might actually | offer the best safety profile of any of the Levels. | That's what I'm getting at: there's a lot of runway in | Level 2 systems, and I think they'll be so good that it | will kill momentum for Level 3+ systems. | SoftTalker wrote: | Yes. Eliminating or vastly reducing the head-on | collisions caused by drivers drifting across the center | line, and the rear-end collisions where they don't see | the stopped or slow car ahead of them, are a huge win. | I'd trade full self-driving for really effective lane | departure warnings and auto-braking collision avoidance | any day of the week. Next step (or included) would be | reacting to red lights/stop signs if it appears that the | driver is not stopping. Deal with those things well and | you've eliminated the causes of most serious accidents. | masklinn wrote: | The problem is that when a level 2 system gets too smart | it can confuse drivers and lead to bad reactions in | response. | | e.g. let's say you have a level 2 system which starts | auto-evading, suddenly steering without user input, the | user is likely to reflexively try counter-steering in | response. | cycomanic wrote: | I think Mercedes has level 4 on highways now? I think | this is the way forward actually, let cars drive cars | themselves on the long boring bits (which are actually | easy for AI) and leave the driving to the humans | everywhere else. Having tried many augmented systems I | don't believe in self driving in varied conditions within | 10 years. I think the locations where waymo operates is a | good indication of what is possible at the moment. | peder wrote: | I'll also add that I think what Waymo is doing right now is | closer to a semi-autonomous streetcar. There's probably | immense value in that approach, especially as an | alternative to mass-transit systems that have costly labor, | but it's not clear that they are imminently close to | "anywhere, anytime" self-driving. | babelfish wrote: | What does 'win' mean here? It seems like being able to pass on | the costs of fleet management, insurance, gas, parking/storage, | etc to drivers (the way taxis/ride sharing apps currently do) | will always be cheaper than maintaining it yourself, even if | you save on the driver fees. | paxys wrote: | This would imply that Uber/Lyft drivers on average are losing | money by being on the service, which is obviously not the | case. Having a large fleet of driverless taxis, even if you | have to maintain them yourself, will be a very profitable | business. There are other potential revenue sources as well, | like licensing the tech to car manufacturers. | just-ok wrote: | _> obviously not the case_ | | This is a strong claim. I thought there was a decent body | of evidence that suggested most drivers make much less | money than they think, when you take | depreciation/repairs/etc. into account? | kibwen wrote: | At the rate things are going right now, Waymo will win when | Tesla throws in the towel on developing in-house and licenses | Waymo's tech in order to finally deliver on full self- | driving. | mahkeiro wrote: | They are also Chinese solutions in that space like Baidu | Apollo. | moonchrome wrote: | Tesla already sold self driving for years - waymo uses way | more sensors than a camera from what I can tell - not only | would that bump unit cost they would probably have to | upgrade previous customers due to their marketing. | misiti3780 wrote: | and fuck with the aerodynamics - causing drag on the | cars, decreasing range. | | LIDR isnt an option. | cycomanic wrote: | That highly depends on the lidar system. All players are | working a lot on minaturizing LIDAR systems and they | fundamentally don't have to be as big as the waymo | systems. | someotherperson wrote: | > not only would that bump unit cost they would probably | have to upgrade previous customers due to their | marketing. | | Only if they don't change they name. They can call it an | upgraded RealDrive(tm) QuantumSense(tm) feature that no | longer requires having your hands on the wheel. | hobofan wrote: | How things are going right now, I'd be surprised if anyone | will be willing to license Tesla's tech. | siquick wrote: | One reason to introduce self driving cars is to hopefully remove | the number of SUVs from city roads, which are only driven by | people because they're "safer and protect me". At best they're an | absolute nuisance to every other car and pedestrian, and at worse | they're absolute death traps that clog up roads. | panick21_ wrote: | The self driving cars will be SUV or CUV at a minimum and there | will be more of them, not less. | akira2501 wrote: | The fact that they don't highlight any night testing is | troubling, and that they have a single closed course facility in | a place where it never snows. | | I often wonder if these companies are truly trying to | revolutionize driving, or just trying to put a couple of "Johnny | Cabs" in the southwest and call it a day. Their strategy really | does seem geared towards the latter outcome. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Waymo has been testing in other cities, including ones with | snow, for years. | | One example: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/waymo-starts- | testing-in... | abhorrence wrote: | Recently there have been Waymo vehicles out on the streets in | the Seattle area. I even saw one driving around the day it was | snowing here. | | I suspect we'll start seeing more training and testing in | places with less nice weather as time goes on. | kibwen wrote: | Night isn't especially concerning for vehicles that have more | sensors than simply cameras; headlights and infrared cameras | exist. Rather, dealing with winter conditions seem like the | reason that these will be confined to the southwest. | dvirsky wrote: | It could just be that night testing doesn't look as good in a | blog post. | akira2501 wrote: | > Night isn't especially concerning for vehicles that have | more sensors than simply cameras | | This is precisely the type of presumptions I'd like to see | tested. I mean, if you're going to go to the trouble of all | this and have a 118 acre road course, it seems the height of | hubris to just say "well, the sensors will probably be better | than cameras at night." | | It's amazing to me that on Hacker News people people have | this puritanical embarrassment over obvious technical | questions. | light_hue_1 wrote: | Oh this is definitely false! | | Night is very concerning and is a problem for computer vision | systems. | | During the day illumination is fairly consistent. Sure the | sun moves around, but it's not a spotlight. At night, | illumination varies a lot. A detector that works during the | day may not work at all at night. This is no joke, there are | papers that show dramatic performance losses for tasks like | pedestrian detection at night. | | Cameras are worse at night. They need to be more sensitive | which dramatically increases their noise. They may need to | have longer exposures leading to blur, which is of course | made worse if you are moving the camera. | | Headlights also don't provide the same visibility so your | reactions must be faster. Reflections are a big problem too. | Oncoming headlights are also an issue. | | Nighttime testing will be critical. | minsc_and_boo wrote: | >Cameras are worse at night. They need to be more sensitive | which dramatically increases their noise. | | This is solved by having multiple sensors. Nighttime is | really not a problem, especially given the broad spectrum | and LIDAR. | jack_pp wrote: | These speech recognition systems don't really work that well | when there's a lot of speakers present, talking over one | another. Are these researchers even trying to revolutionize | speech recognition? it seems their only goal is to make speech | recognition work with one speaker in a silent room and call it | a day. | akira2501 wrote: | I think the safety margin between a speaker and a car are two | entirely different things. If your smart speaker fails to | work for you, this does not offer any potential to harm me. | | I think it's worth putting them into different classes, don't | you/ | jack_pp wrote: | Research and all tech advancements are done in increments, | there's no other way about it. I see no point in tackling | rough weather conditions when the basics aren't even | finished. Of course for the product to actually hit the | roads it needs to be held to a very high standard but | that's beside the point. You were criticizing their | progress, even though we know they don't have a final | product yet and they're probably some ways off. | | It's like criticizing the Wright Brothers, saying stuff | like "meh, they barely were off the ground, who cares" | STM32F030R8 wrote: | What does that have to do with self driving cars? These are | meant to be used on roads in varied conditions. Your comment | isn't applicable. | pb7 wrote: | Some conditions don't exist in many places. Someone can | have a self-driving car and use it for life in Arizona and | it doesn't matter that it wouldn't work in Alaska. It's | still progress and still useful to a subset of people. | Hell, even a car that works 9 months out of the year in the | Northeast would be useful. Don't see too many bikes out | when it's -5 degrees but no one is claiming bikes aren't | useful. | throwayyy479087 wrote: | To be fair I have seen a large number of people say that | bikes aren't useful because they can't perform a | supercommute or can't be used when it's below 0. | xnx wrote: | Waymo and Tesla's approach to self-driving could not be more | different. One of the scariest parts about Tesla is that they | don't even seem to know what they don't know. In related news: It | looks like Tesla may add radar back: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/12/12/tesla-... | freedom-fries wrote: | The thing is - nobody cares! | | People can scream bloody murder till the cows come home, but | Tesla for all its faults is king of the hill - literally more | valuable the rest of the car industry combined. Musk is the | invincible and irrespective of any shortcomings he's literally | the richest person on Earth. | | Tesla's approach is demonstrably the best approach in the court | of the customer, irrespective of what we (others on the road) | think or are put at risk. | mikeyouse wrote: | Market cap has absolutely no relation to the "court of the | customer", nor should it in terms of what safety features we | allow or disallow. | themacguffinman wrote: | "we (others on the road)" is not "nobody", and we definitely | care. The law is supposed to intervene in tragedy of the | commons cases like this for precisely this reason. The free | market is known to have a few blind spots and this is one of | them. | stardenburden wrote: | > literally the richest person on Earth | | Not anymore https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63963239 | bdcravens wrote: | "invincible"? He has literally lost over $100B this year. | | Tesla's market share is eroding every year, and is expected | to decline to less than 20% by 2025. | | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/29/teslas-dominance-of-evs- | is-e.... | | There are plenty of people like me, who are choosing non- | Teslas when they buy EVs. | macawfish wrote: | He sucks | [deleted] | adrr wrote: | They need to add radar back. Ability to "see" slow downs or | stopped traffic even if your vision is obscured is a great | benefit for self driving. | freedom-fries wrote: | That's your opinion, but Tesla does not "need" to add | anything from the point of view of actual Tesla customers! | | Tesla cars are selling faster than they can make them and | adding a Radar will slow down the manufacturing, not make it | faster. | RankingMember wrote: | > Tesla cars are selling faster than they can make them | | If this is true, why are they reportedly cutting production | and offering incentives? If they were booked solid, no | incentives would be needed. | | https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- | transportation/tesla-... | | > Radar will slow down the manufacturing, not make it | faster. | | ? They are adding radar, though: | https://electrek.co/2022/12/06/tesla-radar-car-next-month- | se... | threeseed wrote: | > adding a Radar will slow down the manufacturing, not make | it faster | | Tesla told the FCC that it plans to market a new radar | starting next month. | | https://electrek.co/2022/12/06/tesla-radar-car-next-month- | se... | appletrotter wrote: | Tesla is currently being sued by actual customers based on | this exact issue. They've promised FSD, and can't deliver | it - especially without lidar. | threeseed wrote: | They need LiDAR. The biggest problem for FSD is still around | bounding box detection. | | I just don't believe that you can infer the dimensions of | objects using stereoscopic images with a reliability that you | need to make FSD work. | cycrutchfield wrote: | How do our eyes work? | threeseed wrote: | By us constantly moving them around in three dimensions | unlike a car. | | And also having a computer behind them that deeply | understands what an object is, the forms it should take | and what its expected behaviour should be. We don't ever | confuse billboards for real people. | sebzim4500 wrote: | >By us constantly moving them around in three dimensions | unlike a car. | | Fair but to compensate the car has many more cameras than | we do. | vel0city wrote: | For looking forward Tesla's have three fixed cameras | looking from the rear view mirror. All the other cameras | do not have stereoscopic vision and are not looking | forward. A camera looking out from a side pillar isn't | helping gauge the distance to something far up the road. | | On top of that these cameras can't move, can't be re- | aimed, and have generally far worse dynamic range than | our eyes. | RankingMember wrote: | Our eyes work in concert with a supercomputer accessing | huge stores of contextual data (far eclipsing anything in | a Tesla neural database) to understand and react to | unique situations. | minsc_and_boo wrote: | Rather poorly, given the rate of traffic accidents by | humans. | vel0city wrote: | Far more complex sensors than cameras attached to some of | the most complicated and least understood processing | systems running a general intelligence with millions and | millions of years of training. | | Also, when you're in the car, you probably move your head | more than you realize. Moving your head around and | looking around also gives you better understandings of | distance. Far more than a couple of cameras feeding a few | megapixel images into a ML model. | xnx wrote: | Why make the difficult task of self-driving any harder, | by artificially limiting the sensors you use? Planes have | rigid aluminum wings and jet engines instead of bone | muscle and feathers. | [deleted] | leesec wrote: | And one of the scariest parts of Waymo is that they may never | ship and it'll be 20 billion dollars down the drain | marricks wrote: | I mean, that's good though right? If it doesn't work it | doesn't work. Worst comes to worst taxi drivers still have a | job. | leesec wrote: | I think you mean, worst comes to worst 1.35 million people | still die in traffic accidents every year. | michael1999 wrote: | I don't understand what you mean. Doesn't the Phoenix launch | count? They've definitely shipped something to prod. | nova22033 wrote: | But Tesla's software version is 10.69.x....69...get it...LOL!! | [deleted] | jeffbee wrote: | I agree. Tesla FSD has so many obvious limitations that can be | worked out on closed courses that it has no legitimate reason | to be tested on public roads. For example, it cannot drive | directly into the sun. That's a flaw they could work out on the | test track (by adding different sensors). There needs to be | regulatory intervention to force FSD off the road. | taf2 wrote: | Curious you mention this I was using it this morning driving | directly into the Sun... even without our lanes painted after | they repaved the roads it kept me in the right part of the | road and even engaged the turn signal automatically as it | stopped at the traffic light before our right turn... I know | they had issues with direct Sun few years ago but it would | seem to me driving with it enabled into the sun works just | fine... | jeffbee wrote: | https://youtu.be/DMa9VrEoUoY?t=420 | taf2 wrote: | Yeah, I see that is a pretty intense road and | situation... my road is much much straighter... I'll try | to capture it and share definitely not difficult... | appletrotter wrote: | What is a "pretty intense road and situation" for you is | some people's daily commute. | palm-tree wrote: | How is this an intense road? It looks pretty wide and | clear of traffic with a few parked cars. If it can't | handle this, it's got no chance in an average city in | Western Europe. | judge2020 wrote: | Might've been because it perfectly obscured the straight- | ahead view, given the hills where he's driving. While not | perfect, the lenses on Tesla's forward-facing camera is | good at retaining detail if the sun is above eyeline. htt | ps://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1200626377097129984? | ... | bhauer wrote: | Which is consistent with what they had said at the time when | they removed the low-resolution radar they had been using. | Specifically, they had said that radar would be useful if it | were sufficiently high resolution. The radar in the works and | rumored to be added soon is anticipated to be high resolution. | ajross wrote: | I don't see how that's supported here? I mean, clearly Tesla | does its own closed-track testing. I've seen coverage of that | in the past. They don't release public software the doesn't | pass these kinds of tests. Likewise it's not like Waymo | restricts their testing to closed tracks, they have vehicles on | the streets too. | | > One of the scariest parts about Tesla is that they don't even | seem to know what they don't know. | | I'm curious what the reference here is? Again, are you taking | coverage of Waymo's test environment as evience of its absence | at its competitors? | newaccount74 wrote: | Tesla claims they are safer than human drivers by fudging | statistics about accidents per mile. | | Waymo describes in detail how they test their algorithm | against specific scenarios and makes statements about those | experiments. | | One company is trying to sell you cars and telling you what | you want to hear, the other company is extremely careful with | their statements. | judge2020 wrote: | > fudging statistics about accidents per mile. | | How? The only problem with this page[0] is that they | haven't released 2022 stats. Otherwise: | | > To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any | crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds | before impact, and we count all crashes in which the | incident alert indicated an airbag or other active | restraint deployed. | | 0: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport | CobrastanJorji wrote: | That "vehicle safety report" is 70 words, none of which | answer the question of "how many crashes were there" or | "how many people were injured or killed." One of the few | numbers they give us, the percentage of incidents/hour | for driving "with active safety but without autopilot," | bounces around by like a factor of two from quarter to | quarter, which doesn't make any sense. Literally every | provided number is in Tesla's favor, and context is only | provided in ways favorable to Tesla. | | This is a press release, not a safety report. | thebooktocome wrote: | Tesla's FSD is so terrifyingly bad at routine tasks (I used | it for six months before giving up) that it's natural to | assume whatever closed track testing they did was | ineffective. Or perhaps they did a lot, I don't know--but it | doesn't feel like many of those lessons learned made it into | the "production" system. | jsight wrote: | I really like AP in general, but for FSD Beta, I tend to | agree. I've seen enough mistakes from even the really | careful Youtubers that I don't understand why its still in | the field. | | And those are the mistakes that they were willing to show! | To be clear, I mean situations where the driver needed to | take over but either didn't, or didn't in sufficient time | to avoid an illegal or dangerous maneuver. | simondotau wrote: | From what I can tell of people posting FSD videos on | YouTube, they are actively seeking adversarial conditions | with a desire to show where it fails. I'm sure there are | some YouTubers that are trying to sugarcoat FSD, but I | haven't seen any. | jsight wrote: | I partially agree. I mean, I find dirty tesla's videos to | be pretty fair. | | Having said that, he's also been really clear that the | video doesn't always make it obvious just how many | aspects of FSD are just plain weird. Even when its not | actively failing, it moves in odd ways that are | uncomfortable. | | He's also said that earlier versions resulted in curbed | wheels. | JacobThreeThree wrote: | There's no reference. It's just fashionable to hate on | anything associated with Elon at the moment. | mannykannot wrote: | While both Waymo and Tesla are testing vehicles on the | streets, and have done so for some time, their approaches | could hardly be more different. | enragedcacti wrote: | > They don't release public software the doesn't pass these | kinds of tests. | | Do we actually know that this is true? October of last year | "internal QA" found regressions on an already public release | and they rolled out an update in less than 24 hours after | that was published. Both the fact that it was already public | when QA found an issue and that they were able to push new | public version in such a short time seems to me like they | don't necessarily have a release gauntlet for each version, | or at least not a very robust one. | | https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/25/tesla-rolled-back-fsd- | beta-v... | AlotOfReading wrote: | I'm honestly curious what test tracks Tesla uses. Do they | just rent private tracks for their road testing before it | gets to public beta? It clearly isn't done onroad by safety | drivers. | | GM has Milford and Yuma + others, Waymo has Castle, Zoox uses | Altamont Raceway, Nuro has a track at the Vegas speedway. I | can't imagine Tesla's small Fremont loop and their winter | track in Fairbanks are sufficient. | [deleted] | panick21_ wrote: | The really scary part is actually the one nobody in these | comments seems to address. We are letting humans drive these | things with barley any training on roads that are terrible | designed for safety of the people around the vehicles. | | This utter disaster of a situation leads to 10000s of deaths | that has well known solutions. | | But instead of preventing these deaths with well known low tech | solution, a super expensive technological holy grail is gone | somehow fix those problems. | mabbo wrote: | I think the problem we have with self-driving cars is more social | than technological at this point. | | Consider the hypothetical: a million self-driving cars on the | road that, collectively, will have 1/10th of the fatal accidents | that human drivers would have[0]. _But_ , the ones they _do_ have | are accidents a human driver would almost certainly have avoided. | | Is this something we would accept? | | My guess is that no, we wouldn't. Because the accidents avoided | don't make the news, but the accidents that occur- especially | ones that you say "my god, how did it screw that up?" will make | the news, and our perception would be that they are more | dangerous. | | Until Waymo's cars are better than most humans _in every single | situation_ , they won't be able to win over the public perception | war. | | [0]I'm making those numbers up. I acknowledge that. But it's a | hypothetical so give me some leeway on this! | amelius wrote: | It's not necessarily true for people who think they are in the | 99th percentile of best drivers. | tim333 wrote: | So far people have been pretty good about accepting self | driving cars, even the Teslas on autopilot that crash into | parked trucks quite regularly. | qwezxcrty wrote: | Why self-driving trains are much easier to implement, yet there | are not that many systems capable of doing that? Many newer | metro lines are GoA 2 or 3, theoretically capable of running | autonomously, but they always require a driver in the loop. | | My partial answer is, making an extremely reliable system is | hard. If someone wrote a deadly bug even only happen at a very | corner case, it still can kill people. And it's quite hard to | prove there isn't such bugs. | konschubert wrote: | Regulations. Nobody ever got fired for buying microsoft or | for requiring a driver in the seat. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | A bigger problem is this: Say you need to prove to the public | that the autonomous car is significantly safer, and you do an | apples-to-apples comparison between a hypothetical Level 4/5 | car and well designed new Level 2 electric car like a Volvo C40 | or a BMW i4. | | The modern Level 2 car is already today at below 1 fatality per | billion vehicle miles travelled (VMT). The autonomous car then | needs to be below 0.1 fatalities per billion VMT. Meaning that | if you have 1 million vehicles of your make deployed, they each | need to have driven 30-40 000 miles autonomously before you | have enough statistics! | | That means _proving_ the safety of a Level 4 /5 autonomous | system is extremely expensive and slow, and requires | significant public adoption before it's proven to be safe. The | consequence is that, _assuming_ proven safety is necessary | before public adoption, it becomes impossible to prove safety. | | Another point is that OTA upgrades for autonomy become entirely | pointless, as you'll be polluting your statistics if you change | the code more frequently than every ~3 years. | cipheredStones wrote: | > The modern Level 2 car is already today at below 1 fatality | per billion vehicle miles travelled (VMT) | | Does this statistic count fatalities to people outside the | car? I ask because (in the US, at least) car safety ratings | don't take those into consideration. | rootusrootus wrote: | > in the US, at least) car safety ratings don't take those | into consideration | | Which ratings? The NHTSA does include non-occupant | fatalities in their statistics. E.g. | https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-traffic-crash- | data... | ryanwaggoner wrote: | I think you'd use crashes, not fatalities. | rwmj wrote: | My semi-serious suggestion is self-driving cars should be | painted bright orange with big squishy bumpers and a maximum 20 | mph speed limit. They would still be perfectly useful as taxis | in big cities but it would greatly limit the damage they could | do to anyone. | alphabetting wrote: | If 10% of the time they got into accidents humans would have | avoided we wouldn't be where we are today. I can't imagine any | scenarios where these cars get in accidents that a human would | have certainly avoided. You also say avoided accidents don't | make the news but I'm pretty sure footage of them avoiding | accidents that humans would have no chance of will be a major | part of their marketing. | RhodesianHunter wrote: | >I can't imagine any scenarios where these cars get in | accidents that a human would have certainly avoided. | | Then you've not been following the space. The one that | immediately comes into mind is the Tesla that slammed into | the side of the semi truck because it was painted blue like | the sky. | alphabetting wrote: | I've been following it pretty closely. I don't consider | Teslas to be anywhere near self driving. By saying "these | cars" I was referring to Waymo. | brightball wrote: | Another part of this is that driving is a lot of fun. People | (like me) really enjoy it and definitely wouldn't give it up | easily. | lynx23 wrote: | You're hitting the nail spot on with this one for me. As a | blind pedestrian, I very much feel I am in danger of falling | into exactly that group of potential victims you are hinting | at. Right now, I have the illusive comfort of the | "Vertrauensgrundsaatz" which basically tells every driver | obtaining a drivers licence that they need to take special care | when it comes to disabled pedestrians. Sure, one might say | these new self driving systems will "just" have to follow that | same rule as well, but I am very much doubtful this is | technically possible. So currently, I feel like the drive to | put innovation on the streets and pull money out of pockets is | actually actively endangering me in the future. Not very bright | outlook I must say. | nicbou wrote: | By your use of German, I assume that you experience a far | higher driving standard than people in North America and | frankly most of the world, and even that is far from perfect. | | The Vertrauensgrundsatz does not account for distracted, | tired and inebriated drivers. | [deleted] | konschubert wrote: | As a pedestrian who isn't disabled but just inattentive and | erratic, I know I will feel much safer around 100 waymo cars | than 100 human cars. | jjeaff wrote: | My guess is that self driving cars are already far, far | better than human drivers at not hitting pedestrians. | [deleted] | krferriter wrote: | My guess is that it depends a lot on the driver. There are | a lot of really reckless drivers, or really bad drivers out | there on the roads right now. I know people who've been in | several (relatively minor) car crashes, driving the same- | ish sort of route to/from college and work that I was | during the same period. I think they're just a bad driver. | I feel like they're driving recklessly when I'm a passenger | in a car they're driving. So a self-driving car might be a | better driver than them, while also being worse than the | median driver, and much much worse than like the upper | portion of the human driver spectrum, like the 1st quintile | of the 20% of human drivers who are pretty good. | | Given how reckless some drivers are, I'd imagine the | distribution of crashes among drivers is very skewed. I | don't know numbers, but I'd expect to see something like | 80% of car crashes involving (or objectively caused by) 20% | of the drivers, with most car crashes involving people who | have been involved in numerous crashes, and a large | minority of drivers having been involved in zero car | crashes. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | > My guess is that it depends a lot on the driver. | | There is a lot of variation in drivers. Young ones with | good reflexes and senses but bad on experience, old ones | with worse reflexes and senses but better on experience. | Ones that stop at stop signs, ones that blow through them | if they think they can get away with it. Cities like New | Orleans where drivers are much more aggressive because | the cops don't care, etc... | bandyaboot wrote: | I think the important point is that self driving cars are | likely better than the averaged real world group of | existing human drivers at avoiding pedestrians. | alexose wrote: | This is one reason I never understood Tesla's vision-based | approach. In order to be accepted, self-driving cars don't need | to be just somewhat better than humans most of the time. They | need to vastly better in _every_ situation, as you mention, to | the point that they 'll need every sensory advantage they can | get. | | I got out of a ticket once because I didn't see a "no through | traffic" sign against a bright sunset. No chance that same cop | gives a self-driving car a pass, nor should he. | jkeddo wrote: | They are standing firm on the vision-only approach because it | is the correct approach. FSD cannot be perfected unless the | Tesla team puts 100% exclusive focus on perfecting vision | based models that don't have lidar as a fallback. Tesla can | only use lidar again for redundancy only after vision is | fully solved problem. | | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BurningTheShips | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Combing multiple sensory inputs is a hard problem in | itself. Say Tesla uses LIDAR with vision...they can have a | great vision experience, a great LIDAR experience, but | fuses those two experiences together can create lots of | problems that wind up being worse than either by itself. | szundi wrote: | Karpathy claimed they worked for years and could not reap the | benefits from multiple sensors however hard they tried. He | seemed really convinced and does not get to me as one who | tells stuff just to justify cost reductions, like Elon | sometimes is carried away. | hackmiester wrote: | The problem is, in reality, we have Tesla vehicles that | sold with other sensors that are now disabled, and those | cars are now very difficult to drive with any automation | enabled, even simple cruise control, due to the limitations | of vision-only driving. And this is leading to them | slamming on brakes at inopportune times, blinding oncoming | drivers with the bright headlights, etc. - issues that did | not happen when other sensors were used. | kiratp wrote: | This claim is not true. | | As someone who drives a Tesla with the FSD beta, the | vehicle has been getting progressively better since 2018. | | It's drives smoother and brakes more predictably dive | they stopped using the front radar. | rootusrootus wrote: | This claim is not true. | | As someone who owned a 2019 Tesla and who owns a 2023 | Tesla, the older car had better autopilot. It was | starting to degrade in 2020. The new one is worse. | Phantom braking was quite rare in 2019. The very first | night I drove home the new car, it phantom braked on a | lonely, empty stretch of I-5. | | I want the radar back. | jkeddo wrote: | FSD stack is disabled on highways. You are using the | years old code. Beta v11 when it comes out will enable | OP's FSD referenced improvements for highways. | brandonagr2 wrote: | In reality, we have Tesla vehicles that sold with other | sensors that are now disabled, and those cars are now | better to drive with automation enabled than with the | extraneous sensors, even simple cruise control is better | and phantom braking is actually decreased vs spurious | radar returns that existed previously, due to the | limitations of low resolution radar. Auto high beams is | now better at not blinding oncoming drivers with bright | headlights, etc. - issues that happened all the time when | other sensors were used previously. | papertokyo wrote: | How is your experience the direct opposite of the parent | post, given the same change? | kiratp wrote: | Believe it or not, if you spend enough time with a Tesla, | you quickly realize that actually detecting things is a | solved problem. | | The thing they need to improve and are doing so rapidly | is actual trajectory policy calculations. | | And that's not going to get better with more sensors | seeing the same things it already sees. | muglug wrote: | It's also possible they weren't able to see benefits given | the processors that were available to them at the time. | | It's also possible that they were so far behind Waymo in | the journey to FSD that they weren't yet at a point where | multiple sensors would make a significant difference. | alexose wrote: | This is my read on it as well. I listened to the same | interview (it was definitely on the front page, if not at | #1 for a while). I stepped away feeling like Karpathy had | described a lot of good business reasons for not using | other sensors, but not a lot of good technical reasons. | Sensor fusion is hard, yes, but maybe not harder than | perfectly re-projecting 2D pixel images into 3D vector | space. | | Just my interpretation, but it felt to me like a hail | mary because they were fully committed to being the first | mover. Waiting around for LiDAR prices to come down would | have meant that Waymo would have beat them. | impulser_ wrote: | I always thought it came down to two reason, costs and | looks. Telsa has to sell a car people want to drive daily. | They can't have a bunch of lidar sensors on their cars no | one would buy them even if they could drive themselves. | Also they would most likely cost a lot more due to lidar | sensors not being cheap compared to normal cameras. | | Unlike Waymo who doesn't care about selling cars to people | to drive daily. No one going to care that the taxi they are | taking looks ugly as long as it get them to the place they | are going for cheaper. The cost is also a less of a factor | due to them being able to produce an income by charging | people to ride in them. | rootusrootus wrote: | > They can't have a bunch of lidar sensors on their cars | | Why not? There are production cars with lidar now that | isn't the big spinning thing on top of the car. | upbeat_general wrote: | If you're referring to the Lex Friedman interview, at the | start of his answer, he mentions it was a cost-based | decision. And that _radar /ultrasonic_ wasn't worth it for | them, due to the additional time it took. Not that it | wasn't helpful, just more effort that could be better spent | elsewhere. | 10x_contrarian wrote: | He clearly states that extra sensors "contribute noise | and entropy into everything. And they bloat stuff." | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io | | Essentially that trying to utilize multiple sensors | cripples any progress (given that resources will never be | infinite). | righttoolforjob wrote: | Then something else was the bottleneck at the time. It is | very easy to prove that some sensors in some situations | will be able to perceive things that other sensors cannot. | In those situations the additional sensors are crucial | first steps. I would guess the bottleneck is shitty | reliance on statistical machine learning with a long tail | of unhandled edge cases. Each case very uncommon, but in | aggregate a very important sum. | typon wrote: | You are misunderstanding the situation. Karpathy claimed | that sensor fusion of radar, sonar and vision isn't working | well. He made no such claim about Lidar. Lidar is the | sensor that is the crucial difference between Waymo and | Tesla's approach to self driving. | stergios wrote: | The reason he claimed sensor fusion was not working well | was due to vendor versioning. He claimed the same sensor | from different manufacturing batches performed | differently and thus needed to be re-characterized, which | then has follow on effects in various math models. | Multiply this by many sensors, and the need for | replacement parts inventory for a decade or two and the | problem becomes intractable was his claim on his most | recent appearance on the LF podcast. | cbsmith wrote: | Almost sounds like a supply chain/manufacturing problem | than a software problem. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | Wasn't the Summon feature downgraded when they moved to a | vision-only approach? One YT video I saw compared a version | 1 and a more recent version and the vision-only wasn't able | to do as much. Contradicts the idea additional sensors do | not add value. | rootusrootus wrote: | One of my biggest concerns about Tesla's vision based | approach is that it appears to be entirely about cutting | costs. Nothing about it says they _actually_ think it is | superior; the cameras on a Model 3 /Y are mediocre. They were | mediocre the day the Model 3 was first released. If you were | going to rely on a vision system in a serious way, you'd at | least invest in better camera tech. Hell, Subaru EyeSight has | a significantly better camera setup, last I checked, and who | looks to Subaru as a technical leader? | | Someone else said it here on HN, and I think they're | absolutely right -- Tesla is all about vertical integration, | and this is preventing them from excelling at anything other | than saving pennies. A good part of why the new EV | competition is doing everything better is they didn't roll | their own tech. They bought packaged solutions from companies | that only do one thing, but do it _well_. | taeric wrote: | I also never understood why we had to use "vision" approaches | that have the same visual spectrum as what humans see. Any | sort of sensor on a device is already synthetic, why limit | the spectrum that you attach it to? Should use light sensors, | sound sensors, gps, everything. | rootusrootus wrote: | And even then, the best cameras today are still a long ways | off from matching human eyesight. Tesla's cameras are not | state of the art, either. | wongarsu wrote: | So far nobody really cared how road markings, signs etc | look outside of the human visual spectrum, so there's | likely a lot more variation there. Both in terms of how | things look like when new, and in terms of acceptable wear. | taeric wrote: | Right. But that is in designing the existing roads. I'm | talking about the cars. And I'm specifically asking why | not adding more options? I don't mind a camera being part | of the solution at all. Gives an obvious path to human | labeling of training data. But, why not have more? | GaryNumanVevo wrote: | To me, self-driving seems like a band-aid fix for terrible car | infrastructure. Driving a car is already one of the most | dangerous things the average American can do. Due in part to | larger, heavier vehicles, high speeds in residential areas, | etc. Even if you had a "perfect" driver that doesn't prevent | someone from ramming into you. | rootusrootus wrote: | > one of the most dangerous things the average American can | do | | About comparable to the risk of falling. Lower risk than | suicide. Or death by opioid overdose. And of course, the most | dangerous thing most Americans do, by a huge huge huge | margin, is overeat and lounge on the couch. | gitfan86 wrote: | It is a valid point but the financial incentives are so big | that some jurisdictions will allow it. In fact they already do | allow these autonomous systems on public roads. That is going | to continue to expand and since the financial incentives are | huge even when deaths happen the governments will continue to | allow it. | | And in fact some regulators fully understand the tradeoffs and | will prefer autonomy for the better good of the public. An | example of this is the Boeing 737 Max, those crashes wouldn't | have happened if there were no autopilot systems. But | regulators are not suggesting that all autonomous systems on | planes be turned off because of the safety and financial | advantages of keeping them in place even though they are | obviously not perfect. | larusso wrote: | As a software engineer myself they will always lose the | argument. I saw so many smart systems falter in some weird way | that I would never trust a software system completely. I drive | an EV with some AI based system that automatically throttles | the car etc. But to trust my life and my Familie in the hands | of this system (or any other) no thank you. | taeric wrote: | To double down further on the social side of this, public | transit is largely getting there faster than point to point | driving. In that many trains and such are already largely | "hands off the wheels" for operation. | | Relatedly, another "problem" with "self-driving" cars is that | we want all of the convenience and ease of use, without | adjusting liability and ownership considerations. Consider, if | Waymo gets to the point where they have a self driving car that | you have to have a subscription to use, do you own the car? Are | you the liable for any accidents it has? | | To lean in on that hypothetical. I'd imagine a lot of families | will use self driving cars to send kids to school. Is | effectively a bus that terminates at your house. Who is liable | for a mistake if the operation of it is completely remote? | amf12 wrote: | > Consider, if Waymo gets to the point where they have a self | driving car that you have to have a subscription to use, do | you own the car? Are you the liable for any accidents it has? | | I'd imagine the company would take on liability, as long as | humans can't drive the vehicle or they aren't driving when | the accident occurred. Mercedes already got the ball rolling | on this [1]. | | [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens- | if-... | taeric wrote: | I can't see that path getting taken without you basically | losing ownership of the car? | cbsmith wrote: | This is the gist of it, but you have to ask yourself why it's | just the accepted wisdom that it's okay to have the massive | level of failure we have now. | yyyk wrote: | I agree it's a social problem, but IMHO it's a rather different | social problem: Current cars, roads and car culture is adapted | to human drivers, and AI is expected to be able to integrate | into that. | | What if we would make cars and rules that are adapted to AI | cars and ignore human drivers? e.g. Ban human drivers from some | roads, allow AI cars with designs that exploit AI advantages | (e.g. much better reaction time) but do not require or even | allow human backup (enabling us to put the passengers in a | secured shell), etc. I suspect we could than reach a 1/20th | rate today. | amelius wrote: | > will have 1/10th of the fatal accidents | | I think I'm relatively safe from cars on the sidewalk. Yet with | fsd cars I'm not so sure anymore. | 10x_contrarian wrote: | I think you're mistaken. There are still massive technological | challenges. I have seen nearly no evidence that current self- | driving car technology is even remotely close to matching the | ability of a novice human driver. Sure while the "don't crash | into things" algorithms may generally be fine, these systems | seem to frequently deadlock in completely mundane situations. | They also seem dependent on remote operator assistance when | encountering non-ideal conditions, greatly limiting their | maximum speed. | | If anything, legislation and social acceptance has moved faster | than the technology. That's the opposite what many of us | observing this space expected 10 years ago. | | At this point I'm starting to have doubts about whether the | full dream of self-driving cars will even be realized within my | lifetime. | baby wrote: | I read this comment after taking a cruise in SF, which is a | self driving cab with no driver. It basically reminds me of | all the comments saying that VR has no future, written by | people who have never tried VR and would get their mind blown | by it if they tried the latest iteration. Maybe you should | come to SF and try one of these self driving cars yourself :) | 10x_contrarian wrote: | I actually do live in the Bay Area and spend a lot of time | in San Francisco. I applied for the Cruise waitlist well | over a year ago but have not been accepted. I've tried to | organize with friends who have access but we rarely have a | reason to go the Richmond or Golden Gate Park after 10PM. | The coverage area is very limited. | | I'm impressed that they're actually offering driverless | rides on SF streets, but my point stands. The cars operate | only on the slowest streets at the quietest hours. Any | problem they encounter is handled by remote operators. | | I'm not outright dismissive of self-driving cars. I truly | want them to exist. I don't even own a car and dislike | being behind the wheel. I just don't buy into infinite hype | pushed by a revolving door of charlatans. | | Also I do have a modern VR headset and celebrate the | technology. But, to make a similar comparison, the | metaverse "ready player one" vision is not within our | lifetimes. | just-ok wrote: | I agree with you entirely. | | Continuing with your hypothetical, even though we'd be 90% | safer _as a collective_ , the safety of the _individual_ feels | compromised: the risk of an accident is non-uniform when | involving humans (depending on e.g. age, experience, safety, | alertness, etc.), but becomes uniform (or at least more | uniform) with an algorithm in charge. | | That's a tough thing for people to buy into. | jsbg wrote: | > the safety of the individual feels compromised | | Exactly. I have had zero accidents in 20 years; I'm not | interested in a car that will lower the overall accident rate | if it increases mine. | _cs2017_ wrote: | A very good observation. Based on your comment, I think we | can relax the requirement stated by OP by saying: | | "Until Waymo's cars reduce any individual's chance of an | accident." | | So for example, suppose a Waymo car is better than humans | overall, but tends to do worse than humans when there's a | small bump on the road. And suppose that all humans (in a | given regulator's area, e.g., California) tend to encounter | such bumps at roughly the same rate (per mile driven) over | their lifetime. In that case, it's probably going to be | acceptable, since every individual is better off. | | I don't know, maybe this is not impactful / obvious enough | for people to care about? | | What certainly is obvious is that the safest drivers are much | safer than an average driver (does anyone know of a study | that estimates this ratio?). Therefore, _at the very least_ , | the threshold for Waymo should be not the average accident | rate, but the accident rate for the safest drivers. | watwut wrote: | I really don't think so. And we are not nearly close to that | situation either. We have some obvious crashes in cars that are | nowhere near to be probably "safer then human". And then we | have super confident claims of safety by manufacturer. | godelski wrote: | I appreciate that in this they demonstrate not just rigs where a | manikin is thrown in way of danger, but actual humans performing | regular/irregular tasks. This to me is akin of the bullet proof | {vest,glass,etc} manufacturer willing to put themselves behind | their product for demonstration. With AI systems I think this is | particularly important because with such high dimensional data it | is possible that the vehicle picks up on things like the pull | cable or that it is a manikin and not a human (e.g. pneumonia | predictions strongly correlating with medical equipment within | x-rays rather than inflammation). A kinda two for one confidence | builder here. | killjoywashere wrote: | > akin of the bullet proof {vest,glass,etc} manufacturer | willing to put themselves behind their product for | demonstration. | | I suspect the cyclist in the video is not a $500k/year ML | engineer, it's a $50K/year veteran trying to stay out of the | welfare line. | 1024core wrote: | While Waymo is spending $$$ gathering driving data, Tesla has | 100s of 1000s of cars doing it, for free. In terms of sheer data, | in this race, Tesla wins. Now whether Tesla can actually use the | firehose of data and actually train models that use it | productively, remains to be seen. With the departure of Karpathy, | I am not so sure. | | If Tesla gave all the data to Waymo, Waymo would reach L5 in no | time. | dundermuffl1n wrote: | Seems like something I'd expect CNBC to say, not Hacker News. | influxmoment wrote: | Hacker News is superficial negative group think. Inverse | hacker news is where it's at. Then you can predict the | success of startups like Dropbox and Coinbase | minsc_and_boo wrote: | Waymo was collecting data before Tesla, and switched to | simulated training a long time ago because it's more effective. | | The self driving AI can gain 100 years experience in just 1 day | using simulation: https://blog.waymo.com/2020/04/off-road-but- | not-offline--sim... | panick21_ wrote: | Tesla uses simulation to but there is no replacement for real | world data. The real world is crazy and Tesla can see people | driving in real condition from Alaska to Miami Florida. | londons_explore wrote: | Waymos velocity seems to have slowed dramatically since 2015 when | they first did fully driverless rides on the public road and | started deploying to multiple regions. | | Now, 2 billion dollars and 7 years later, they are still only in | a handful of small regions with limited numbers of vehicles. | | That tells me there is still some fundamental issue that is hard | to solve. I wonder why they aren't more transparent and tell us | what that issue is that they've been battling for 7 years? | jmartrican wrote: | I suspect that the issue is with cars being so cautious that | they just stop as people keep walking, or at best herky jerky | move fwd. In NYC, a car like that wouldn't get anywhere as the | pedestrians just won't stop. the pedestrians stop when they see | that the driver isn't going to stop and they gonna get hit. | londons_explore wrote: | It's clear which bits they haven't been focussing on... There | are multiple videos on youtube of rides (some where it has gone | wrong) and the user experience is terrible. The car has a | robotic voice which plays a long and annoying unskippable | message with every ride, and 'Rider support' sounding like they | are following a strict script with no ability to be helpful or | fix the problem [1]... | | Imagine if every time you started your car, a robotic voice | said "Welcome to your Ford Pickup XYZ model. Please ensure your | seatbelts are fastened. If you are too hot, you can adjust the | climate with the climate controls. If you want to lower the | windows, please don't put your arms out. etc etc. Have a nice | ride today in your Ford(tm) Pickup(tm).". | | [1]: https://youtu.be/2ZmdxkBV5Tw?t=180 | saxelsen wrote: | Not entirely different from getting on a plane? You have to | listen to the safety protocol before take-off. | londons_explore wrote: | Most things about planes are pretty user unfriendly to be | fair... "arrive 2 hours before departure"... "queue for | hours through security"... "walk miles to your gate"... | "have to buy your ticket a long time in advance, and then | 'check in' more than 3 hours in advance but less than 48 | hours"... | | We're a long way from the ideal of "show up at the airport | 5 mins before, hop on a plane, and hand cash to the pilot | for your ride". | stevehawk wrote: | (I know nothing about self driving) | | I seems like the hardest 90% of the work is the last 10%. | summerlight wrote: | Regulation is one of the major factor that slows down. You need | more and more test cases to achieve higher reliability, but | data collection at scale need approvals and regulators want to | see if it's reliable enough to approve. This chicken and egg | problem is not something easy to solve since at its heart it's | a trust problem. Tesla was an exception because they choose to | put all the responsibility to the drivers by making it | technically ADAS but marketing it as "full self-driving". | gok wrote: | Waymo first deployed on public roads in 2019 | | (I appreciate 2019 _feels_ like 7 years ago) | jeffbee wrote: | Did you mean offered a service to the general public? Because | Google's older self-driving car drove that one blind guy to | the Taco Bell drive-thru more than 10 years ago. And they had | been driving Googlers back and forth from their homes and | offices for years prior. | rootusrootus wrote: | I realize this is essentially a PR piece, but still, it makes me | feel _much_ better about the potential future of automated | driving than what Tesla is doing. If I owned TSLA right now I 'd | sell. | teacpde wrote: | Not to defend TSLA, but I don't think self driving is the | reason why Tesla cars sell, it is more about being arguably the | best mass produced EV out there. | watwut wrote: | Afaik, they are not. They have best charging network in | United States. They come low in reliability index. And many | people like their software. | | They are not obvious winner among EV cars currently. They | were first to do actual high end EV car and that vision | changed the market back then. | rootusrootus wrote: | > more about being arguably the best mass produced EV out | there. | | In 2018 this would be a really good argument. What does Tesla | do better now, compared to another modern purpose built EV, | for example a Ford Mustang Mach E, or a Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia | EV6, etc? | | I struggle to identify any particular feature I would say | they are better at, much less something that would make it | the best mass produced EV. I say this as a two-time Model 3 | owner, having just bought the most recent one two weeks ago. | I don't quite have buyers remorse yet, but it's nagging at me | that I may have just made a foolish choice for the wrong | reasons. | lallysingh wrote: | I think Tesla's charging network is a nice part of the | package. I'm pretty worried about going EV -- I'm not going | tesla, because I don't like the way they look -- mostly | about dealing with finding charging stations that work (and | well) when I need them. | aeternum wrote: | A canned test should not make you feel better. This could be | the first time they actually passed the test. They might still | fail with a cardboard cutout half the size. | Robotbeat wrote: | Will I ever be able to have self driving on a personal vehicle, | or is this just centralized automating the work of a taxi | driver? IMHO, these are two _very_ different things for the | consumer. This is why I actually prefer the Tesla approach, or | actually Comma AI. (If it can be made to work robustly...) | | It would suck to be in a world where the only way to do self- | driving is indistinguishable from the Uber or taxi service we | already have (and likely wouldn't even be cheaper if it's | proprietary to one or two mega-companies who can extract nearly | all the productivity surplus from this as monopoly rents). | i_love_cookies wrote: | tbh car ownership for day-to-day is kind of silly, leave it | to more commercial use and enthusiasts | | i may be biased since i use public transit or bike for | everything | kfarr wrote: | Coming from a corn-fed midwesterner who got his license as | soon as legally possible, car ownership is totally silly. | We are all fleet managers of extremely complicated | mechanical objects with huge liabilities from a financial, | legal and moral perspective. If self-driving cars do one | thing it could at least set people free from personal | vehicle ownership, even if they still have car dependent | lifestyle. | lelanthran wrote: | > i may be biased since i use public transit or bike for | everything | | That's just a different way of saying that you never have | any cargo (children, groceries, etc) to move. | | You should also bear in mind that not everyone wants to | live in such high density that everything you could ever | need is 5 minutes away on foot. | kfarr wrote: | > That's just a different way of saying that you never | have any cargo (children, groceries, etc) to move. | | We have plenty of cargo (children and groceries) and do | not own a car. | Robotbeat wrote: | Having just had to get around quite a bit via walking and | scootering, I'm definitely not excited about a future | totally without personal cars. This works very well if | you're childless or if you live in a place like Manhattan | (loved the subway there) or with excellent weather, but | it's just not the same as the personal room and safe area | with your personal belongings that a personally owned car | provides. | panick21_ wrote: | Kids can use bicycles from when they are very young, and | until then you can put them into a little thing you can | drag behind your bicycle. | | If you are doing longer travel, using the train is | actually awesome. Those trains have actual places for | children to play in. | | If you cities and that goes for small cities as well are | properly designed its very possible. Its just that in the | US cities are literally designed so as to make it | impossible. | jonasdegendt wrote: | I extensively use car sharing services in Europe and it | covers almost all of my use cases, the only exception | being long distance trips, those are just too expensive | when you're paying by the minute or kilometer at todays | prices. | | There's options with fixed parking spots, and services | that allow pick up and drop off anywhere. | | You tend to structure your life a little different once | you don't own your own car anymore, you start to think | twice about little trips you would've done otherwise. On | the flip side I now have access to 5 different types of | cars ranging from small to big (vans) from my phone. It | doesn't even require that much more planning considering | it's reached critical mass around here and there's a ton | of cars available. | | The biggest player around is profitable too, so it's not | going away any time too. It's saved me thousands and | spared me from so much hassle surrounding car ownership. | I consider myself an enthousiast but I just got a | motorcycle for the weekend instead, pennies on the dollar | compared to a car. | | All in all I notice I'm just happier not being in a car | all the time anymore, you might consider it your safe | area but it might as well be a golden cage at times. | | I understand it's different once your throw small | children in the mix so it might make sense there, but the | reality is that a lot of people could do with a lot less | car at most points in their life. | rootusrootus wrote: | Something that seems to happen a lot on HN is the | pervasive assumption that everyone lives in an urban | area, or wants to. It is totally fine that some people | choose that life, but it makes for these one-sided | conversations where someone explains in detail why they | have the right answer, while describing things that | largely do not even exist outside of a relatively dense | urban environment. | waboremo wrote: | What's the difference from a (better maintained) taxi | service? Especially one that in this hypothetical future, | would be driverless. | | In general I think the trend of personal car ownership is | something that will become somewhat of a hobby rather | than a daily necessity, even outside of cities as long as | Waymo (and others) are able to actually achieve their | ambitious goals. The only way I see that reversing is if | people are forced to live out of their cars due to absurd | home costs, which is a very very bleak future. | Robotbeat wrote: | Because you don't have your personal belongings in the | taxi, you have to take them in and out. A personal car is | a little room, like a little part of your home, that you | bring with you when you travel. With kids especially | (diapers, wipes, books, toys, car seats, snacks, a place | to change diapers or change clothes or breastfed in | privacy or nap, etc... protected from the elements and | climate controlled), this is really helpful. | rootusrootus wrote: | > i may be biased since i use public transit or bike for | everything | | It is good to recognize this. A very large portion of the | population does not live somewhere that makes good sense | for pervasive public transit, walking, or biking for | regular transportation needs. And many of those people | actively don't want to live somewhere like that. Personal | vehicles have a use case, and that does not become invalid | just because it does not match your own preferences. | krschultz wrote: | I do not think the outcome is only Uber / Lyft but with AI, | but if that is the outcome I still think it would be a win. | Today supply of Uber / Lyft in my area at off hours is | spotty, and that makes it unreliable. I have gotten stuck | walking home 2+ miles multiple times in the last year because | I couldn't get a ride at any price. That's not a problem in | Manhattan, but not everywhere is Manhattan. Driverless cars | would be on 24/7/365 so wouldn't have that problem. The more | reliable these taxi services are, the more viable it is for | people to get rid of their cars. | | I also expect long term self driving cars will be safer than | humans, and as a person that primarily walks around instead | of driving that's a benefit to me even if I'm not in the car. | mechagodzilla wrote: | Why wouldn't driverless cars have the exact same problems? | A driverless car is pretty expensive, so it needs to be | making money a high fraction of the time or it's not | economical for a company to invest in it, just like a | regular taxi service (I'm really curious how they would | handle 'surge' times - have fleets of cars that sit parked | and unused 99% of the time??). Uber and Lyft actually have | a lot of flexibility in this regard, since the cars already | exist for other reasons (and don't cost Uber/Lyft anything | when they're not driving). The idea that 'driverless' | somehow means 'lots of cars, everywhere, at all times, very | cheap' doesn't make any sense to me from an economics | perspective. | tantalor wrote: | You can buy puts. | concordDance wrote: | The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay | solvent. | jsolson wrote: | If you're buying puts you have bounded risk (the amount you | invested), albeit with a more cliff-like risk profile than | other strategies. | JamesSwift wrote: | As well as a time/volatility element added so its not | necessarily "TSLA went down a lot, so you profit a lot". | ihattendorf wrote: | In this case replace "you can remain solvent" with "the | put remains valid". | panick21_ wrote: | The argument literally everybody always makes and 99.99% | they are simply wrong and don't want to admit it. | rootusrootus wrote: | Options are gambling, which is not how I play the market. | Aside from some lucky YOLOs, you are far more likely to lose | money in that game. | Timothycquinn wrote: | Personally, I don't understand the economics of lidar for self | driving vehicles. 1) How many lidar units will one vehicle need | and how much will this cost? 2) How will noise from other lidar | systems be addressed? Eg two or more disparate lidar systems on | other vehicles using similar frequencies? 3) How small can the | lidar systems be made while still being effective in real world | use? These units being used for testing are massive and probably | stupendously expensive! | notatoad wrote: | i have to chuckle at the use of language to humanize their tech | here - comparing "the waymo driver" to "NIEON". the one of those | that sounds like the name of a robot from the future is actually | just referring to a normal human. | dmd wrote: | The whole point is that it's _not_ a normal human; it 's a | model that is better than any human could be. | pas wrote: | also "real agent" which just means human | jcims wrote: | Tesla mentioned in this thread almost twice as many times as | Waymo. | | Elon love/hate is a powerful force. | mooneater wrote: | Is any of Waymo Driver's design published? Like do they use RL or | how do they approach control. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-14 23:00 UTC)