[HN Gopher] Honda's now selling the first production car with le...
___________________________________________________________________
Honda's now selling the first production car with level 3 self-
driving
Author : nradov
Score : 304 points
Date : 2021-03-05 03:03 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| ianai wrote:
| Is anyone concerned with the possibility of a hacker taking over
| such vehicles?
| speedgoose wrote:
| The interior design is old fashioned and very bland on this Honda
| A8 "flagship". It doesn't look like the future but more like the
| past.
|
| The Honda E interior is a lot more interesting in my opinion. The
| Honda E may not have level 3 self-driving in traffic jam yet, but
| it does have a virtual aquarium.
| callesgg wrote:
| [X] Doubt.
| fblp wrote:
| > "Honda claims Sensing Elite was tested in 10 million unique
| simulated scenarios and 800,000 miles of real-world testing
| before it decided the tech was ready ready for primetime"
|
| This is not much compared to Tesla's 3 billion autopilot miles
| and Waymo's 20 million driven miles.
| minikites wrote:
| Is quantity the only metric?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Would you tolerate a probabilistic answer to that?
| testrun wrote:
| With visual deep learning quantity is absolutely crucial.
|
| Quality of course matters too, but the more information you
| have in different environments, the better.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Tesla isn't capturing everyone's autopilot miles. They're
| not even capturing incidents. They don't have anywhere near
| enough bandwidth for that.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| With supervised learning data set size.. ? Uhh
| andrewnc wrote:
| For deep learning it seems to be....
| selcuka wrote:
| True, but the results of an experiment is important too. Maybe
| they reached a satisfactory level of confidence relatively
| quicker than other manufacturers.
| deagle50 wrote:
| I would be pleasantly surprised if it's better than OpenPilot.
| I'm 99% hands off on the highway, 50-75% in the burbs.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Tesla Model X ?
| Daho0n wrote:
| Tesla can't do that (I have no idea if openpilot can either).
| Issaclabs wrote:
| Openpilot by comma.ai is what the comment refers to
| deagle50 wrote:
| 2015 Genesis with C2 running OpenPilot.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| the supersonic eurofighter typhoon has autopilot. Are self
| driving cars more complex then the most advanced airplanes in
| existence?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Typhoon's only flight inputs are basically: desired pitch rate,
| desired roll rate, desired yaw rate, desired power output. The
| whole airplane is completely controlled by a computer (all of
| the control surfaces, engine controls), which gives you an
| artificially stable, crazy overpowered, laws-of-aerodynamics-
| defying video-game-like toy to navigate in a huge and
| completely empty 3D environment. So, yes, self driving cars are
| infinitely more complex.
| rodgerd wrote:
| How often does the Typhone routinely travel within a few metres
| of humans, other vehicles which vary in performance from "the
| same" to "a fraction of your speed"?
|
| How many traffic intersections are there in the sky?
| Roundabouts? Wildlife? Domestic livestock?
| jjmorrison wrote:
| Yes - by several orders of magnitude.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Slightly o/t but I think it's interesting that in the imagery for
| this supposedly futuristic car we see a user interface filled
| with 3d gradients etc which are design elements you might have
| expected several years ago in the era of the serif Google logo
| and iOS 6.
|
| You'd think that in a car, with its limited display
| size/resolution and glanceability required the UI/UX designers
| would spring for a more flat, colorful option so you can simply
| touch the orange square for music or something along those lines.
|
| Not that touch controls in a car are a great UX in the first
| place, but you'd think they would have moved past the "everything
| is the same colored 3d rect with a glyph in the middle" phase of
| UI development.
| cachvico wrote:
| Let's hope nobody will lose their head over this.
| bearjaws wrote:
| 100 cars is not a production car.
| acd wrote:
| "While the vehicle is under the control of the system, the driver
| can watch television/DVD on the navigation screen or operate the
| navigation system to search for a destination address, which
| helps mitigate driver fatigue and stress while driving in a
| traffic jam."
|
| "Please do not overestimate the capabilities of each Honda
| Sensing Elite function and drive safely while paying constant
| attention to your surroundings. Please remain in condition where
| you can respond to the handover request issued by the system, and
| immediately resume driving upon the handover request.""
|
| How can you immediately respond and pay constant attention if you
| are watching a DVD?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I am guessing that it's more about being alert enough to take
| back the wheel once the car starts beeping and displaying that
| the censors are no longer able to distinguish the road. Hoping
| that this would also pause the media player.
|
| I have the 2019 Accord with the regular Honda Sensing and this
| happens in multiple situations. For example, the car will turn
| off automatic cruise control if the weather becomes too severe.
| Snow can also obscure the sensors in winter.
|
| Some roads are also too damaged (no lines, no barriers) for the
| lane keep assist to work and you need to control the steering
| manually when this happen. But that is probably not an issue
| for the honda sensing elite.
| nkoren wrote:
| Self-driving is a Hard Problem. I'm sure that there's an
| incredible amount of sophistication going into a system like
| this, and I have sincere respect for all the engineers working on
| it.
|
| Nonetheless, o, the hype! Some caveats:
|
| 1. 100 vehicles is not "production."
|
| 2. "Please ... drive safely while paying constant attention to
| your surroundings." is not Level 3 Automation. The point of Level
| 3 automation is explicitly that it should allow the driver to
| _not_ pay attention to their surroundings under limited
| circumstances, while the vehicle fully does the driving. The
| human remains the fallback mode: they must stay awake and alert
| so that they can take over control if the vehicle requests it.
| However they are NOT required to maintain a constant supervisory
| function. If they are, then that 's Level 2 automation.
|
| The problem with Level 3 has always been that it requires the
| vendor to take liability for unsupervised autonomous driving
| (like levels 4 and 5), but only some of the time, and the driver
| to take liability the rest of the time. The handover from one to
| the other is fraught, with the humans almost certainly being the
| weak link, since they're not all THAT good at staying alert in
| the first place, and get much much worse when they don't have
| supervisory duties to keep them awake. For this reason, many
| vendors have (wisely, IMHO) chosen to skip Level 3 automation
| entirely.
|
| So my synopsis of this would be:
|
| 1. Honda's engineers have come up with some genuinely interesting
| new capabilities for autonomous driving, albeit falling well
| short of what would be needed for full Level 5 autonomy.
|
| 2. Honda's management would like to convert those innovations
| into some good PR for the company.
|
| 3. Honda's lawyers, actuaries, and human-factors people have
| realised that there's no way in hell mass deployment of Level 3
| automation is a good idea, and so to limit the potential damage,
| are only allowing 100 vehicles to be shipped, to pre-qualified
| and well-trained buyers, and then furthermore attaching
| disclaimers which knock this down to L2.
|
| 4. L5 Autonomy remains a long ways away.
| hasa wrote:
| Why don't we have automated roads instead. Containers running in
| scheduled slots.
| mperham wrote:
| We call them buses.
| amelius wrote:
| You mean like railways?
| jfoster wrote:
| I think this would be a great way to bring some automation to
| some roads.
|
| Tesla/Boring almost did it when they were considering having
| electric sleds moving cars through Boring tunnels.
|
| If there's a schedule, pre-planned route, and a fenced off
| road, there's barely any need for fancy sensor suites & AI. The
| most difficult part of it is probably that the road then
| couldn't be used by all types of vehicles.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Do we know what compute stack they are using for this? What types
| of processors and software?
| FuckMeNow69 wrote:
| Fuck Me Now https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home
| ajhurliman wrote:
| I'm not sure I trust the tech of a company that's asking me to
| watch a DVD in 2021.
| bootlooped wrote:
| Well, to be fair you're probably not going to be on wifi while
| driving, so maybe a DVD isn't such a bad idea.
| thekyle wrote:
| I think lots of modern cars (especially the high-tech and
| expensive ones) have in-car Wi-Fi.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| That's to supply wifi to passengers. The car itself needs
| an uplink, and that'll be a cellular one
| gok wrote:
| > conditional automation, which means a car can read its
| environment and make decisions based on what it sees
|
| It's frustrating how technically illiterate the press is.
| SenHeng wrote:
| What's not mentioned in all the othe english based articles is
| that Honda's system only works on highways at speeds _below_ 50km
| /h. It's a system specifically designed for dealing with traffic
| jams on highways, and is not comparable to, say, Tesla's
| autopilot.
|
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Honda-launches-...
|
| > _It can free drivers from driving in congested traffic on an
| expressway when travelling slower than 50 kilometers per hour._
|
| > _The system automatically accelerates, brakes and steers while
| monitoring the vehicle 's surroundings, using data from high-
| definition mapping and external sensors._
| ckastner wrote:
| That significantly reduces the risk of fatalities.
|
| Even a head-on collision (as we've seen with Teslas) with a
| concrete pylon should be survivable at those speeds.
| glaucon wrote:
| What's weird is that the accompanying video (embedded in the
| same page and another one here
| https://youtu.be/PGLBiORNgOE?t=53) clearly shows aspects of the
| system being used at speeds well over 50km/h.
| yholio wrote:
| > It does all this with zero input from the driver, who Honda
| says can "watch television/DVD on the navigation screen or
| operate the navigation system to search for a destination
| address."
|
| So another batch of dangerous "half-self-driving" cars is hitting
| the streets, encouraging drivers to disengage from the wheel but
| ignoring the fact that distracted people tend to remain
| distracted much longer than their automated car desires.
|
| There is no such thing as "Level 3 automation", because driving
| is a wholesome intelectual endeavor that cannot be
| compartmentalized. You cannot drop a distracted driver in a life
| or death trafic situation, an expect them to correct course
| efficiently.
|
| Driving includes route planning, optical recognition of static
| and dynamic road conditions, trajectory prediction of other
| trafic participants, as well as being aware of the dynamic
| parameters of your own vehicle and predicting how your inputs
| will reflect into future trajectory. The brain is essentially a
| giant prediction machine, as explained yesterday by an article
| here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26341218
|
| This is a continuous loop where an attentive driver maintains
| state information from a large time period, from seconds to
| hours: this is slippery and curvy road section, a certain road
| sign was spotted a mile ago, the gray Honda following drives
| erratically, there is a kid with a ball and a cat on the
| sidewalk, the wheel is slightly tilted to right to match
| trajectory.
|
| There is no way to partition this activity into "simple" self-
| driving tasks that can be automated and "complex" things a man
| can drop in and do. It's all or nothing. Once the man looks away
| from the road for half a minute, he has lost critical state
| information that affords him human level driving accuracy, and it
| would take minutes to warm up again, including gradual increase
| of control authority. His role in a "Level 3 self-driving car" is
| essentially that of the monkey to take the blame.
| jjmorrison wrote:
| If I read this correctly, the point being made is that Honda got
| approval to allow drivers not to look at the road when in a
| traffic jam, which makes it technically level 3 when the car is
| in a traffic jam?
|
| It's a bit of an overstatement to say Honda is leading self-
| driving. This seems like a great regulatory win in Japan, but not
| a very interesting technical achievement.
| goshx wrote:
| This is a paid ad. "Leading" by doing less than the competition
| and having 100 cars to become available. This article is a
| joke. Kudos to Honda, but this ain't leading.
| kaba0 wrote:
| As if the tesla would not be surrounded by the most
| ridiculous marketing attempts.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| My industry leading AI can make sure the car remains motionless
| when it's parked. It doesn't even need a driver to be present.
| ;)
| refulgentis wrote:
| That is a _very_ good way of putting it, thank you, clarified
| my similar sense that something was 'off'
| jliptzin wrote:
| It reads like something that someone at a hedge fund put out
| right after shorting Tesla
| akg_67 wrote:
| Are these Honda cars using Cruise's self driving system? I
| thought they had partnership for development and Cruise cars were
| suppose to enter Japan in 2021.
|
| Only 100 Honda Cars with Level 3 system, seems like a marketing
| gimmick.
|
| Here is Toyota demo from May 2020 of a Tokyo metropolitan
| expressway, entering, lane change, and car overtake, with a
| reporter:
|
| https://toyotatimes.jp/en/chief_editor/027.html
|
| The Toyota page also has better illustration of different levels
| of drive automation.
| sychoptah wrote:
| Full self-driving right ? Like you need 3 person remotely
| operating that vehlices 24/7, that means 8 working hours, thats 3
| people per day if every of one of them is driving 24/7. Blink
| blink. (internal joke for honda guys).
|
| Another one of my ideas, do you know why Musk is building
| starlink ? To operate fleet of cars remotely all over the world
| by using remote operators and avoid paying NET connect to telco
| operators. With LEO orbit latency is piece of cake. Only thing is
| trsutworthy of that operators. The price for autdriving, will be
| payments for operators, calculated from local country HDP, to pay
| operators by local country "minimal" HDP wages. Problems with
| unemployment "solved".
| Shopolica wrote:
| https://www.shopolica.com/13-best-air-purifier-for-home/
| Bluestein wrote:
| > This allows a car equipped with a Level 3 system like Honda
| Sensing Elite to act on its own accord (no pun intended)
|
| Heh ...
| potatochup wrote:
| At least from this video [1], it looks like it has the following
| features:
|
| - hands-free overtaking of slower vehicles when at highway speeds
|
| - a "traffic jam mode" that is hands-off up to a certain speed,
| and plays a video on the center display
|
| This seems... not that impressive? I haven't seen many real
| reviews yet though, just a bunch of press releases filmed on
| closed courses.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBwmFbpNCA
| Geee wrote:
| Yeah, it's like a high school science project compared to
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7psq48HE-QQ
| BoorishBears wrote:
| If it's not impressive it's because a certain player in the
| field has distorted the standards of rigor for self driving for
| so many people with "Autopilot".
|
| The fact you watch a video while it's active is a tiny
| difference to the driver (especially since some people are
| already watching videos using LKA), but a HUGE difference in
| terms of what the system is doing. The fact the system is
| driving with full responsibility on Honda
|
| To the point that instead of seeing existing LKA as a step
| behind this, you might as well see them as existing on
| different planes, where progress towards A does not affect
| progress towards B meaningfully
| potatochup wrote:
| > the system is driving with full responsibility on Honda
|
| Yeah. I guess we'll have and wait for real reviews to see
| under what conditions this operate (or more importantly, fail
| to operate and hand control back to the user)
| cecja wrote:
| not that impressive?
| timwaagh wrote:
| honda owners will seek out traffic jams so they can watch netflix
| in the bosses time.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| "Just 100 cars will be made available with the technology in
| Japan, and they will cost the equivalent of $101,900. None of
| these Legends will make their way to the U.S."
|
| I'm assuming if it won't come to the US it won't come to the UK,
| Canada or Australia either.
|
| Is 100 units really a "production car"? I don't agree.
|
| Also:
|
| "It does all this with zero input from the driver, who Honda says
| can "watch television/DVD on the navigation screen or operate the
| navigation system to search for a destination address."
|
| and yet:
|
| "Please do not overestimate the capabilities of each Honda
| Sensing Elite function and drive safely while paying constant
| attention to your surroundings. Please remain in condition where
| you can respond to the handover request issued by the system, and
| immediately resume driving upon the handover request."
| atty wrote:
| This mixed messaging of "you don't need to be looking at the
| road!", "but you should be looking at the road." Is going to
| lead to more deaths. As someone who works for one of the major
| global car companies, I'm very concerned for how breathlessly
| we (as an industry) talk about things like "autopilot" instead
| of "driver assist", and a million other flashy marketing terms
| that make it difficult to just understand what the system is
| and is not capable of handling.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I blame this largely on Telsa essentially driving the
| industry like a heard of cattle. This is/was a great when it
| came to accelerating the development of electric cars, and I
| realise that the software development community really likes
| the "move fast and break stuff" mantra, but there are reasons
| why engineering fields with chartered engineers have
| processes like FMEA: people die if things fail.
|
| A friend who is an engineer at a premium car manufacturer
| working on sensors for self-driving is telling me that the
| internal policy inside the manufacturer is, that the only
| competitor that matters is Tesla, so they only compare
| themselves to Tesla. The same friend also believes that real
| self-driving is still many years out, even sensors that can
| deal with general weather conditions do not exist yet.
| [deleted]
| kolinko wrote:
| How did your friend arrive at the conclusion that we don't
| have good enough sensors?
|
| IMHO AI to analyse the data is what's missing - we have
| cameras that are just as good as human eyes, so we know for
| a fact that the current sensors are enough to drive in
| general weather conditions.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Cameras don't give you depth.
|
| You have two choices:
|
| o have a sensor that gives you depth directly (ie laser,
| radar, or lenticular array) o try and infer depth from
| stereo cameras
|
| Lidars are expensive and power hungry, Radar is cheap and
| mature, but doesn't give you anywhere near as much
| resoultion
|
| lenitucular only has a tiny range. There are other time
| of flight sensors, but they are either not production
| ready, expensive or both.
|
| What Tesla have chosen to do is kinda try and merge radar
| and monocular object detection to give a higher frame
| rate depth estimation of _objects_. However its expensive
| to develop, unreliable, and terrible in corner cases (ie,
| if sees an unknown object, it can 't place its depth.)
| Now humans can do this, because we've had years of
| training, Tesla can't.
|
| Tesla's fancy cruise control is dangerous. Its auto drive
| stuff its trying to develop is even more dangerous.
| Instead of finding the sensors and processing spec needed
| to drive safely, they are trying to use the sensors and
| GPU they already have. Its not going to work and is
| unsafe.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > Now humans can do this, because we've had years of
| training...
|
| Humans can _mostly_ do this. Like 90% of UFO sightings
| are people seeing the moon and getting confused and
| thinking it is a nearby object following them.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| There are surprisingly sophisticated (and precise)
| machine learning algorithms for mono-camera depth
| estimation. It's not a problem anymore. Furthermore, most
| companies use various focal length lenses. The real
| problem lies in sensor fusion. Which sensor's input do
| you believe most, especially if one or more is
| occluded/dirty.
| amelius wrote:
| I have yet to see any ML algorithm that can reach 99.999%
| accuracy or better (we need better).
| evdoks wrote:
| Why do we even need such accuracy? Humans are extremely
| bad at estimating distance and nevertheless are quite ok
| drivers. ML needs to make sure that the car is not
| bumping at things or people, which is a very different
| task.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, so "can/cannot bump into" is a classification tasks
| which needs quite some accuracy.
|
| A human on the other hand can recognize another human
| with near perfect accuracy.
| myself248 wrote:
| A camera is a light sensor, a camera is not an object
| sensor. Cameras as light sensors definitely exist.
|
| A camera feeding into phenomenally sophisticated AI
| trained on all sorts of weather conditions with
| windshield wiper smear and glare and everything else,
| which can turn those horrible images into a picture of
| what actually lies ahead, is an object sensor. Those
| aren't good enough yet.
| spullara wrote:
| It doesn't lead to more deaths. See Tesla for proof. This is
| a super bad take.
| totalZero wrote:
| https://www.tesladeaths.com/
| spullara wrote:
| Ok, reduce that to where autopilot is engaged.
| ggreer wrote:
| It should be noted that that site is run by a group of
| pseudonymous people who do not hide the fact that they
| have been shorting Tesla for years. They count every
| death involving a Tesla. If someone jumps in front of a
| manually piloted Tesla and is run over before the driver
| can react, it is added to the spreadsheet. They're
| holding the company to an impossible standard. Moreover,
| they don't actually care about reducing deaths involving
| Tesla vehicles. They want Tesla to fail so that they can
| profit. It's a purely selfish act.
|
| The most prominent member of the TSLAQ people and (IIRC)
| the first to publicize a spreadsheet of Tesla deaths is
| Elon Bachman (a pseudonym). He has also been a charlatan
| on COVID. A year ago he said, "After 4 months of white
| hot Coronavirus panic, the disaster is visible everywhere
| except in the data. Total deaths, rounded to the nearest
| percent, remain 0% of annual flu deaths, and serious
| cases are falling"[1]
|
| I tried to bet him up to $1,000 that US COVID deaths
| would exceed 25,000 by the end of 2020.[2] He ignored me
| and continued to deny the harm caused by the disease.
|
| One simply cannot trust anything he's involved in.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/ElonBachman/status/123703029234031
| 4112
|
| 2. https://twitter.com/ggreer/status/1237164317142736896
| Pyramus wrote:
| > They want Tesla to fail so that they can profit.
|
| A more realistic take is: They think Tesla is massively
| overvalued and should be held accountable for fraudulent
| corporate behaviour.
|
| > He has also been a charlatan on COVID.
|
| Kind of ironic given that Elon himself was (is?) one of
| the first vocal Covid deniers.
|
| Check out TC's Chartcast [1] in case you are interested
| in TSLAQ, beware it's a deep rabbit hole.
|
| I've previously tried to sum up Tesla's red flags here
| [2].
|
| [1] https://www.buzzsprout.com/758369
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065075
| ggreer wrote:
| Musk has never been a covid denier. He understood that
| covid wasn't as dangerous as many claimed, especially for
| younger and healthier people. The only thing close to
| covid denialism that I can find is Musk's decision to
| resume production at Tesla's Fremont plant in defiance of
| Alameda county lockdown orders. This was in May of 2020
| after months of failed negotiations with government
| officials. It's important to note that unlike Bachman,
| Musk had skin in the game. He asked that if the
| government sent cops to shut down the factory, only he be
| arrested.[1] The factory resumed production and nobody
| was arrested. A week or so later, Alameda county changed
| its rules to allow the factory to operate legally.
|
| 1.
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259945593805221891
| "Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda
| County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else.
| If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me."
| Pyramus wrote:
| Here's a selection of tweets for you, by a celebrity many
| still trust and consider a "scientific genius":
|
| @elonmusk Mar 6, 2020
|
| The coronavirus panic is dumb
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1236029449042198528
|
| @elonmusk Mar 19, 2020
|
| Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases
| in US too by end of April
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960
|
| @elonmusk Mar 19, 2020
|
| Kids are essentially immune, but elderly with existing
| conditions are vulnerable. Family gatherings with close
| contact between kids & grandparents probably most risky.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240758710646878208
|
| @elonmusk Jun 29, 2020
|
| There are a ridiculous number of false positive C19
| tests, in some cases ~50%. False positives scale linearly
| with # of tests. This is a big part of why C19 positive
| tests are going up while hospitalizations & mortality are
| declining. Anyone who tests positive should retest.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1277507826529660928
| ggreer wrote:
| The only screw-up I see is his prediction that the US
| would conquer the spread by the end of April. All the
| other info is pretty accurate, especially considering how
| little we knew back in March. Compared to most
| authorities and experts, he did a pretty good job.
| Remember two weeks to flatten the curve? Remember when
| the official line was that masks don't work?[1][2][3]
| Remember when the WHO said that travel bans are a bad
| idea?[4]
|
| Musk was calling the panic dumb at the same time as the
| WHO was saying, "Our greatest enemy right now is not the
| coronavirus itself. It's fear, rumours and stigma."[5] If
| we judge him by the same standards as every major
| institution (media, governments, NGOs), Musk is far less
| deserving of criticism. And unlike those institutions,
| Musk never claimed to be an expert on the topic.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024
|
| 2.
| https://twitter.com/UNGeneva/status/1244661916535930886
|
| 3. https://web.archive.org/web/20200312104152if_/https://
| twitte...
|
| 4. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1224734993966096387
|
| 5. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1233418231261646849
| dheera wrote:
| > They think Tesla is massively overvalued
|
| > fraudulent corporate behaviour.
|
| These two things have nothing to do with each other.
|
| > and should be held accountable for
|
| Holding a company accountable should go through the
| courts, not personal profit.
|
| I'd be happy if short selling weren't an option. If you
| believe something is overvalued, stay out. You're not
| wanted.
|
| If you believe a company did something wrong, file a
| lawsuit.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| You haven't made an argument against short selling.
| dheera wrote:
| Pessimism is counterproductive to the long-term
| development of humanity and rapid deployment of electric
| vehicles and clean energy. Armchair pessimists don't
| deserve a place in the stock market. If you think Tesla
| is doing something wrong, either (a) go work there and
| fix it or (b) start your own Tesla competitor. Short
| selling isn't constructive.
| mercurysmessage wrote:
| What's wrong with short selling? The only reason why
| people like Elon Musk don't like short selling is because
| they know that their companies are massively overvalued.
| Geee wrote:
| The problem is profiting from spreading misinformation.
| Tesla short-sellers run large operations that fabricate
| and spread lies. It's usually easier to spread
| misinformation than to debunk it.
| mercurysmessage wrote:
| And the companies don't spread misinformation? Not saying
| it's right in either case but companies, Tesla included
| aren't shining beacons of morality and truthfulness.
| Geee wrote:
| It's not in their interest to lie in the long term. Those
| companies who lie are scams and they're spotted pretty
| quickly (e.g. Theranos, Nikola). Elon has made some
| mishaps, such as 'funding secured @420' tweet, which he
| was punished for. Public companies have to be pretty
| careful in their communications. Making promises with too
| optimistic schedules is not lying, it's just an error in
| forecasting, and is common in technology.
| Pyramus wrote:
| That couldn't be further from the truth. Theranos
| survived for 15 years. Wirecard 22 years. Enron 10+
| years. Fraud gives you a massive competitive advantage.
|
| Not too along ago I thought of Musk as a misunderstood
| genius, now I'm pretty certain he knows exactly what he
| is doing (for the most part). If you look at all the
| oddities surrounding Tesla, there are clear patterns
| emerging.
|
| Plainsite has a good summary [1].
|
| [1] https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf
| Geee wrote:
| That report is a bunch of horseshit. Lot of words without
| any substance. He even cherry-picked some data to "prove"
| that Tesla's sales are declining. Everyone can see the
| actual progress that Tesla and SpaceX has made. Their
| cars are winning awards and they're innovating and
| building new factories as fast as they can. Who cares if
| they miss a couple of estimates. SpaceX can deliver
| payload to orbit with much lower cost than competitors.
|
| True though that those companies survived for too long.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And Tesla will happily release misinformation too.
|
| One of the last fatalities, Tesla was more than happy to
| push out a press release based on telemetry, saying
| "Autopilot wasn't at fault, the driver was inattentive -
| the vehicle even told him to put his hands on the
| steering wheel!".
|
| They somehow neglected to mention that the steering wheel
| alert was triggered, ONCE, and FOURTEEN MINUTES before
| the crash.
|
| Misinformation is not a good thing. But lets not pretend
| that Tesla is some downtrodden underdog just trying to
| make our lives better.
|
| Also, if you have an accident in your Tesla, you'll have
| a lot of fun trying to get any telemetry information from
| them, even if Tesla isn't a named party and you're just
| dealing with the other involved person. You'll need
| multiple subpoenas and expect them to resist releasing
| any data as "proprietary".
|
| But should your telemetry from an accident be able to be
| spun (correctly or otherwise) into a Get out of Jail Free
| card for Tesla, expect it to be released to the media
| without your consent or authorization (I'm sure it's
| buried in Section 48, Subsection 24, Paragraph 14c iii
| that you consent, but still).
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| That's an interesting table. I would say that it
| reinforces the case that Autopilot (actually labelled
| Autosteer in the UI of my 2015 Model S) is actually not
| dangerous.
|
| I presume that the aim of the site is the opposite
| though.
| vletal wrote:
| Have you mentioned how sparse the autopilot claimed
| column is? And how even sparser the verified autopilot
| is? Seems like the authors are trying to inflate the
| total numbers very hard.
| madamelic wrote:
| Not to mention the spreadsheet admits Autopilot was
| released in 2015 but they are still including deaths from
| 2013.
|
| This can't be more blatant.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Autopilot might not be around, but up until very recently
| Tesla refused to participate in a lot of auto safety
| testing saying that they believed the testing regime was
| "flawed".
|
| I have no issue with keeping track of auto deaths from a
| company who is claiming that their vehicles are safe
| while preventing anything but the legal minimum necessary
| tests from occurring.
| shafyy wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are going downvoted, this is true.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| The stats I've seen quoted about Tesla are super misleading
| and not at all apples to apples comparisons.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Tesla's miles have the advantage of being inherently
| autopilot capable, and turning off when things get dicey
| for it.
|
| Human drivers do not have those advantage.
|
| So Tesla is comparing drivers in situations where AP
| doesn't even try to drive the vehicle because it couldn't.
|
| This is amazingly misleading. And Tesla knows it.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The issue isn't whether having the technology saves more
| lives than not having the technology. The issue is whether,
| _given the technology_ , the marketing creates a perception
| that results in unsafe usage of the technology, costing
| lives.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's is easy, even almost trivial to drive long hours on
| almost nothing happens freeways. We don't have any sort of
| statistics on the dangerous close encounters, and on
| whether these remain close encounters with teslas.
| jiofih wrote:
| We have all sorts of statistics, every car maker keeps
| track of disengagements and events. What are you talking
| about?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Accidents per miles is not too informative. For example
| do teslas fair better than an average human driver on eg.
| someone running a red in front of the car? On a suddenly
| overturned car on the freeway? Do we have enough data to
| answer these questions?
| jiofih wrote:
| I don't understand this kind of question. Obviously you
| need some statistical measure to compare safety, and
| incidents per mile (or vehicle years, or hours driven) is
| an accurate way to estimate accident rates. All we care
| about is that on average it crashes less than human
| drivers. If there are specific conditions where it fares
| worse those would be pretty obvious to address, and
| naturally the odds of _when crashing_ the situation being
| weirder than usual is a given if safety improves for the
| average case.
|
| That aside, the answer to the first one is _yes_. Because
| of sonar and the cameras, a Tesla can see traffic two or
| three cars ahead and will initiate braking way earlier
| than a human would in the case of someone else running a
| red light - there a few videos of this exact situation
| available in YouTube. As for the second, probably not
| enough data, but in absolute numbers humans are
| responsible for nearly al of those cases so far, they
| happen weekly.
|
| By the way, the overturned truck was not a fatal accident
| - the car triggered emergency braking and the driver came
| out without a scratch. The fatal one was a couple years
| ago when a Model S ran _under_ a white truck making an
| unsafe u-turn.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > All we care about is that on average it crashes less
| than human drivers.
|
| All we care about is that on average it crashes less than
| human drivers _in comparable conditions_. If you compare
| a 40 year old driving a tesla on autopilot on a sunny
| freeway to an 18 year old driving a 1995 beater without
| modern safety features, no ADAS, etc, in a snowy busy
| intersection, autopilot doesn 't have to be that great to
| look better. If you compare tesla on autopilot to
| "average human miles" you rolling some very invalid
| comparisons into the averages. You can only usefully
| compare averages if they're averaged over comparable
| contexts.
|
| A less extreme comparison, if my memory serves, is tesla
| rolling out ADAS with autopilot when they did a
| before/after comparison. They compared autopilot-
| available + ADAS-engaged to autopilot-unavailable + ADAS-
| unavailable, or something along those lines, if I
| remember correctly.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Incidents per miles is fine with a big enough data set
| --- but I disagree that it is enough in case of a new
| technology that can potentially kill. Like let's say
| teslas are absolutely safe on the highways, much more
| than human drivers, but would have a tendency to hit
| pedestrians much more so than humans. It is possible that
| it will have a better incident per mile record even
| though no sane person would legalize them in this case.
|
| > If there are specific conditions where it fares worse
| those would be pretty obvious to address
|
| Like, if (inSpecificSituation) { payMoreAttention(); } ?
| This is the actually hard part of the problem, not
| breaking when something is close and stay in the lane.
| They can't even create adequate test environments for the
| many many special cases that can trivially happen in a
| city.
|
| Also, how does it see traffic two or three cars ahead? It
| sounds like a marketing gimmick but correct me if I'm
| wrong.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > Incidents per miles is fine with a big enough data set
|
| Only if you're comparing comparable conditions. If you
| compare autopilot in the sun to humans in the snow,
| infinite miles won't make it any more valid of a
| autopilot/human comparison.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Tesla's miles driven is self-selecting, because AP won't
| engage when it can't because of poor conditions.
|
| Humans don't get that luxury.
|
| You can't say for Tesla (deaths/miles driven on good-for-
| AP roads in acceptable conditions) and for humans
| (deaths/miles driven on all roads in all conditions) and
| then act as if they are comparable or prove "improved
| safety", because they don't.
| swarnie_ wrote:
| The issue is when there is a crash or a death could that
| situation have been avoided if the driver was looking ahead
| with two hands on the wheel, like you would in any other
| car without the marketing hype.
|
| I've seen more then enough crashes and deaths in Telsas
| that were perfectly avoidable providing the driver wasn't
| watching their ipad.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Really? I've been driving for over forty years (about 15k
| km per year) and I have never seen a death involving any
| car let alone the relatively rare Tesla.
|
| I've seen emergency vehicles attending a crash perhaps
| once or twice a year but never seen the crash occur. In
| fact the only ones I have personal first hand experience
| of is the time I rear ended a car, the two times that I
| was rear ended, and the time I slid off the road on an
| icy corner. All three rear ending events were relatively
| low speed incidents (under 30 km/h) and would quite
| likely have been mitigated or even completely avoided if
| the cars in question had had automatic emergency braking.
| The icy corner was my own fault for not thinking ahead.
|
| So, to me, your statement, without some more context,
| sounds like an exaggeration.
| swarnie_ wrote:
| I too have been driving some some time now but we have
| this thing called the internet, where you can see and
| share information.
|
| Lemme help you out friend - https://www.youtube.com/resul
| ts?search_query=tesla+autopilot...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| So you didn't mean: "I've seen more then enough crashes
| and deaths in Telsas"
|
| you meant: "I have heard about .." or "I have seen
| accounts of .."
|
| Those are not quite the same thing.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It doesn't say you should be looking at the road, simply that
| you are aware of your surroundings and that you remain ready
| to retake control should the vehicle notify you should.
|
| That's different.
| piva00 wrote:
| How can you keep aware of your surroundings going 60+ km/h
| without paying attention to the road? Even more if you are
| required to take control in an instant, you have to be
| completely enveloped by your spatial awareness.
|
| I have raced go-karts, I've raced GT cars, there is
| absolutely no way to keep aware of your surroundings if
| your focus isn't constantly on the road and checking
| mirrors, full stop.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The language here is critical. The question is where your
| focus lies, and at level 3 autonomous driving, there are
| situations where your focus can be elsewhere besides the
| specific road conditions.
|
| You are assuming "aware" means "ready to take over in an
| instant". That is not what it means in this context.
| lukebuehler wrote:
| Yes, it should be quite simple:
|
| Self-driving: car comes with no steering wheel.
|
| Lane/drive assist: car has steering wheel and you have to
| steer the whole time--with occasional nudges from the AI.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The Honda is level 3 only during traffic jams -- it's limited
| to 50km/h and only on the expressway. If it's completely
| incompetent the worst that will happen is some minor body
| damage. It's not going to cause any deaths.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > talk about things like "autopilot" instead of "driver
| assist"
|
| As stated countless times before, autopilot in planes isn't
| even geared towards handing most flight scenarios or
| challenging conditions. Tesla is technically correct to call
| it this, even though this naming is confusing to consumers
| who think "plane flies itself" and think it means their car
| can drive itself in all conditions and avoid at-fault
| incidents - which most likely will indeed lead to more
| deaths.
| yread wrote:
| I can't set target altitude nor heading on this thing, it
| can't use ILS, follow VORs. It doesn't make sense to call
| it autopilot
| nelox wrote:
| The passengers have no idea there are no pilots around
| when things don't go as expected
| jfoster wrote:
| Remember how dangerous the roads were when the car
| companies producing cars without gear shifts started
| calling their cars "automatic" as opposed to manual?
| totalZero wrote:
| This is ridiculous. A transmission failure and a self-
| driving failure have very different implications.
| Automatic transmissions don't have pedestrians walking
| through them, etc.
| brabel wrote:
| You say this is ridiculous but your premise that these
| new "self-driving" cars are "walking trough pedestrians"
| is even more ridiculous and not backed by any data of
| real world experiments currently being undertaken.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I think the point was that automatic transmissions are
| far simpler systems that are harder to screw up. And if
| you do screw them up it's bad but not driving into
| pedestrians bad.
|
| No, there's not many self driving cars that have driven
| into pedestrians but Uber ATG's car notably did, and
| there is certainly a lot of room for failure.
| jfoster wrote:
| Meanwhile, humans are driving into pedestrians every
| minute of every day, but yes, get upset about what Tesla
| called their system...
| FuckMeNow69 wrote:
| Hi
| nitinreddy88 wrote:
| The consumers are not techsavy like Tesla or HN world.
| Every word used for marketing should be wisely thought or
| we will end up with consequences
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| What are the rules to this "technically correct"?
|
| It's not even flying the car!
| ineedasername wrote:
| You need the latest Tesla firmware upgrade to activate
| flight. Or an unfinished bridge combined with lane
| tracking and an inattentive driver.
| ck2 wrote:
| I understood that reference.
|
| https://jalopnik.com/a-tesla-stan-dmd-me-to-show-what-
| they-t...
| ncallaway wrote:
| > As stated countless times before, autopilot in planes
| isn't even geared towards handing most flight scenarios
|
| As stated countless times in response, it doesn't matter
| what autopilot actually does when the concern is the public
| perception of the marketing.
|
| If "autopilot" sounds to the general public like "it drives
| itself" (which is the simple etymology of the word), then
| it doesn't matter one flying fig what autopilot on planes
| actually does.
| spullara wrote:
| Autopilot saves lives even in current state.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Based on what?
|
| What could save lives is intelligent automatic breaking -
| because that is something we are currently capable of.
| Humans as a species is terrible at paying attention to
| boring tasks and quickly react - so these gimmick
| autopilot takes are dangerous if anything.
| spullara wrote:
| It does that as well. Have you ever driven one?
| brabel wrote:
| Most standard cars already come with emergency automatic
| breaking.
| please-reread wrote:
| Is that so? Now if they also could brake...
| NavinF wrote:
| That's exactly what self driving cars do, silly.
| kaba0 wrote:
| They do it as well on top of some other non-safe
| features. Less is sometimes more. Breaking when a
| pedestrian steps before us in sub-human reaction time is
| great - it doesn't have to be combined with full self
| driving, which is simply really far away from now.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Why isn't there the same level of hand wringing over
| Ford's "co-pilot"? Surely a copilot is even more capable
| than an autopilot.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Common perception of a co-pilot is that a co-pilot
| _assists_ the pilot.
|
| It's another perception/reality thing. I realize that the
| co-pilot shares the load, and is capable of being the
| pilot-in-charge, or having control of the aircraft. But
| one implies self piloting (Tesla), the other implies an
| intelligent assistant pilot.
| ben_bai wrote:
| That would imply that people know aircraft-slang. Which
| they clearly don't.
| xmprt wrote:
| Because unlike auto-pilot the implication of co-pilot is
| that you're still primarily in charge of
| flying/driving/piloting the vehicle.
| jiofih wrote:
| It's not, the co-pilot might fly the plane for most of
| the flight.
| NavinF wrote:
| Umm no. Here's how it works
|
| me: "you have the controls"
|
| co-pilot: "I have the controls"
|
| me: "you have the controls"
|
| I am no longer flying the aircraft or even paying much
| attention to it. I could even get up and walk away from
| the controls. That's why co-pilots exist
| ncallaway wrote:
| The response I had earlier in the thread is absolutely
| applicable to this.
|
| It doesn't matter. At. All. How the operations work
| inside the cockpit of an airplane. What actually happens
| in an airplane is 0% important to the conversation.
|
| What actually matters is the public at large's perception
| of the term "autopilot" and their perception of the term
| "co-pilot". If the public perceives "co-pilot" as being
| less functional than "autopilot" then it _does not matter
| at all_ that in aviation a co-pilot is actually more
| capable than an autopilot.
| ncallaway wrote:
| This assumes that no one is hand wringing over Ford's
| marketing. I haven't seen as much of Ford's marketing as
| I have as Tesla's, so I personally have written as many
| words about it.
|
| But I have the same concerns about _all_ marketing that
| positions cars as being capable enough that people don 't
| have to pay attention. Until we hit true Level 4 or Level
| 5 self driving cards, I'm extremely concerned about the
| public's perception that they don't have to operate a
| motor vehicle. *Especially* if the vehicle is capable of
| enough automated driving that the driver doesn't need to
| pay attention during most of the operation of the
| vehicle.
|
| To your specific point though, I think in general the
| public would view something marketed at "autopilot" as
| more capable than something marketed as "co-pilot",
| despite the significant capability advantage that a "co-
| pilot" actually offers over an "autopilot" inside the
| cockpit of an airplane.
| madamelic wrote:
| The difference between Ford and Tesla is that Ford is
| "one of the good ones".
|
| Not interested in leading the pack; happy enough to
| follow, crush smaller competition by their bloat, declare
| bankruptcy and take in hundreds of billions in handouts
| because of their irresponsibility and ineptitude.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Just like tobaco is forced to print "this leads to
| cancer" on their products, self driving cars should have
| labels like "car crashing into wall" and "car killing
| other human".
| jiofih wrote:
| Please link to reports of a Tesla running over someone in
| AP.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Let's not forget that Tesla is well aware the car doesn't
| "drive itself" and have classified AP/FSD for
| legal/liability reasons as a level 2/3 system.
|
| From a marketing perspective however, robotaxis are just
| around the corner.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The average consumer is not familiar enough with the limits
| of automated avionics to understand the limits of
| commercial jets' autopilot.
|
| If the average consumer was also an airline pilot then it
| would make sense to use an industry term with nuanced
| meaning. Instead, the average consumer assumes a
| straightforward meaning of the term, especially with pop
| culture throwing out phrases like "planes practically fly
| themselves these days".
|
| Claiming "autopilot is technically correct" would only
| approach being true if Tesla & others went into great
| detail to educate buyers about the limits of the avionic
| autopilot features referenced by the term, and difficulties
| of flying a plane in non-optimal conditions, so they
| actually understood the "technical" meaning and could apply
| it correctly to the car they're buying.
| spullara wrote:
| They tell you every time you engage it the limitations.
| Stop this fud. It is better than humans being in control.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| No it is not[0],stop this shilling.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/28
| /new-te...
| NavinF wrote:
| Meh. It only needs to be better than the average driver.
| Several companies have already achieved that
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Actually, it only needs to be better than the average
| mammal.
|
| And I am not sure any level of AI has reached that level
| yet.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes in California/Arizona sunny weather on wide US roads
| with. My experiences with even driving assist on small
| twisty road in the snow tells me me things are nowhere
| close. The car was accelerating in situations (e.g. coming
| over the crest of a small incline with a corner at the
| end), where no driver would ever accelerate and which would
| have resulted in some bad situation without intervention.
| We have seen Teslas getting confused by fork in the roads
| on the highway.
| daveswilson wrote:
| I don't think anybody's sanctioning the use of driver
| assist features on small twisty roads the snow yet, are
| they? If so please share what you were driving - that
| would be interesting even if it didn't work well at the
| time. Most of these things, AFAIK, are in the LKAS, ACC,
| LDW range and meant for highways and there are mutterings
| about that in the manual. I sometimes use ACC and/or LKAS
| on country roads but only with very low expectations.
|
| Teslas at least get better over time. If it got confused
| over a fork in the road, there's a decent chance that
| after a near-future firmware update that same car will no
| longer be confused. A few folks have acknowledged that
| they're now smart enough to slow down for curves (even
| sometimes a bit generously), and they are among the few
| that work pretty well off-highway (most of the time).
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| It may not being marketed directly, but calling something
| "full self driving" greatly implies that self driving is
| fully supported in all scenarios. I have not seen any
| Tesla marketing that says "full self driving, on big
| roads with clear markings in dry/slightly damp weather".
|
| Words matter
| dotancohen wrote:
| The average driver got to that level after years of
| practice. With this system in place, the new-average-driver
| will have the skills of someone who's just barely gotten
| their drivers license years ago and have never used it
| since. And that person will be expected to pilot the
| vehicle only in times of such dire conditions that the
| computer cannot do it.
|
| Perhaps the use of this system should be licensed
| separately from a standard drivers license, akin to an IFR
| rating. And to keep the rating, manual driving must be
| performed periodically and logged as well.
| NavinF wrote:
| If we have evidence that this is an issue, I'm on board
| with that.
|
| If it turns out this is not an issue and we unnecessarily
| made self driving cars less common, that would have the
| same effect as shooting a few hundred random people every
| day (3,700 people die every day from crashes)
|
| We'll find out in a couple of years
| mathgeek wrote:
| > 3,700 people die every day from crashes
|
| Can you provide your source please? Closest I could find
| is https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-
| safety/index... which states that "[e]very day, almost
| 3,700 people are killed globally in crashes involving
| cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, or
| pedestrians. More than half of those killed are
| pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists." I didn't find a
| number for just motor vehicle crashes, and since the
| rates are three times higher in developing countries, it
| seems like the cost of ownership is going to be a huge
| factor.
| azureel wrote:
| There is also the case of "liability". An average driver
| can drive the car into a tree with no problems at all. No
| one except the driver is responsible there.
|
| But if a company sells a product with the name "Autonomous
| Driver", than that company is liable if the product
| mulfunctions (ie. drives a car into a tree).
| NavinF wrote:
| Let the courts decide who's liable. I'm sure that in
| practice this would be decided on a case by case basis
| with logs from the car's computer.
| dagw wrote:
| _would be decided on a case by case basis with logs from
| the car 's computer._
|
| If I was a car manufacturer and I knew that my log files
| would undoubtedly be used as evidence against me in a
| criminal negligence trial, I would think very hard about
| what I did and didn't put into those logs.
| Vespasian wrote:
| But if the car is in full auto mode the driver is not
| expected to pay attention or look at the road. Based on
| the situation the car thinks it can drive autonomously.
|
| At least a partial liability will have to fall on the OEM
| that's why nobody is making any binding promises
| (including Tesla)
| dheera wrote:
| I think the bar needs to be much higher than "average".
|
| Although beating the average is arguably "good enough" to
| deploy in a collective sense, we live in a society of
| individual actors, and if I'm an above average driver, it
| needs to be better than me, not better than average, for me
| to want to use it.
|
| Assuming a society in which each person individually and
| rationally chooses whether or not to use it, if you want
| 99% of people to use it, your software needs to be better
| than the 99th percentile driver.
| stormbrew wrote:
| This assumes a lot about the correctness of people's
| perceptions of their own driving skills. My experience is
| 99% of drivers think they're above average, and that
| obviously can't be true.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| In my experience there's two kinds of people who'll say
| their good drivers and they're both good but with wildly
| different definitions of "good"
|
| You've got Jose the 35yo MRI service technician who logs
| 100k/yr for work and has had so much time to get good he
| can tell exactly what traffic is doing and are highly
| capable of printing what is about to happen and are
| preemptively making moves based on that. He knows his
| insurance company would crucify him if the saw how he
| flings an overloaded Transit Connect through an on-ramp
| or parallel parks by braille so if you press the issue
| he'll tell you he's good at getting where he's going but
| that the bureaucrats who write the state driver's manual
| wouldn't like him.
|
| And then you've got Karen the elementary school teacher
| nearing retirement who logs 10k/yr 5k of which are spent
| looking at her phone. She has spent a cumulative one hour
| of her life above the speed limit despite spending much
| more than that on highways where the traffic flow is well
| above the speed limit. She follows every rule in the book
| to the letter, gets honked at daily and once a week she
| has a story about "some asshole" she got in a conflicting
| situation with. She doesn't know how far down the gas
| pedal on her 4Runner goes but oh boy does that brake
| pedal get a workout when "oh crap almost missed my turn".
| She swears up and down that she's a good driver because
| of the seventeen fender benders she's been in she was
| only at fault in the three that were caught on camera or
| where witnesses stopped.
|
| Which definition of "good" do you want near you when
| there's 3" of snow on the road?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Which definition of "good" do you want near you when
| there's 3" of snow on the road?
|
| When there is snow on the road you should not be near
| either of them.
|
| You should be far enough behind that you can stop when
| the car in front gets into difficulties. The rule of
| thumb on a dry road is that you should be three seconds
| behind. At 100 km/h (about 60 mph) that's 83 m (about 270
| ft), say 17 car lengths (for my Tesla S that is). If
| there is snow on the road perhaps it would be wise to
| allow more distance.
|
| See, for instance,
| https://www.driveincontrol.org/drivingtips/the-three-
| second-...
| gunnarmorling wrote:
| > My experience is 99% of drivers think they're above
| average, and that obviously can't be true.
|
| It actually can be true, depending on the distribution of
| skills you assume. Say you have 100 drivers, 99 with the
| same skill level, and one driver which is worse. 99% will
| be better than the average. I'll see myself out ;)
| NavinF wrote:
| If you really think you're better than a self driving
| car, then don't buy one. Or do you want the gov't to
| choose for you?
|
| You should be happy that other people can buy them
| because they'll no longer crash into you ;)
| daveswilson wrote:
| Goodness gracious doesn't anyone in the auto industry ever
| even look at how the word "autopilot" has been used in the
| aviation and marine industries? It has _never_ meant that the
| vehicle operator gets to abandon their responsibilities.
|
| However I agree that the mixed messaging is sad and
| irresponsible, and this article's author could have been more
| circumspect.
| loudmax wrote:
| How the term "autopilot" is used by professionals in the
| aviation and marine industries isn't the main point here.
| What matters is what non-professionals think when they hear
| the term "autopilot". If you market something as
| "autopilot" don't be surprised that general consumers don't
| have the same nuanced understanding of the term as
| professional pilots.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| More important than short run death is longer term road
| deaths. Their messaging is flawed but hundreds of thousands
| die in car accidents yearly... The rollout of these cars
| needs to be smooth and quick to prevent longer term death.
| It's incumbent upon early adopters to be responsible for the
| sake of society.
| mrkwse wrote:
| Regarding this, I strongly believe the correct approach is
| L3 capability but only expressed through L2 features.
|
| We're not at a point where it's safe for drivers to move
| their attention from driving, but the technology is mature
| enough that it can and should intervene wherever possible
| to avoid collisions and other incidents.
|
| The expectation that drivers can divert their attention
| from driving to perform other tasks on the expectation that
| they can resume control at short notice is extremely
| misguided. This should not prevent similar sensor and
| software tech that could enable L3 autonomy from enabling
| more effective accident avoidance technology that
| intervenes in situations where the driver may drive in a
| careless or dangerous way.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Is going to lead to more deaths.
|
| It'll lead to the same number of deaths and slightly more
| complicated lawsuits.
|
| At a statistical level Nobody(TM) is heeding fine print
| warnings.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| YipYipYip. This is the blue wart in the green sea [0]. The
| system drives until you should have taken over and died. The
| situations that are detectable as faulty are not the lethal
| ones typically. As far as I remember, Volvo denied to
| implement Level3 years ago [1], which is the only grown-up
| and responsible answer to this problem.
|
| [0] https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/gallery/cm/articles/
| pre...
|
| [1] https://auto2xtech.com/volvo-to-skip-level-3-autonomous-
| mode...
| hkhjghg wrote:
| >YipYipYip...
|
| Is this a Sesame Street reference?
|
| https://youtu.be/KTc3PsW5ghQ?t=97
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| YipYipYip =|-D
|
| Com...pjutaaa.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Thanks for linking to good source material.
|
| > When the feature requests, _you must drive_
|
| Is there some kind of expected delay from the system
| requesting driver attention to the driver assuming control?
| Ie something like 3 seconds?
| buran77 wrote:
| That's the problem, no such system can guarantee it gives
| you a minimum amount of time. Some situations appear and
| develop in less than 3 seconds (think small child jumping
| in front of your car from between parked cars). You might
| only have 1s to react and if you are not "plugged in" and
| fully attentive at that instant you missed the window to
| react.
|
| The more you "disconnect" as a driver, the less likely
| you are to take over in a split second and this has been
| proven again and again with humans. A system that works
| 90% of the time is probably the worst because it's good
| enough to give you confidence but bad enough that it's a
| false one. The driver is in the position to buy the
| advertised "you can disconnect" feature but then only be
| able to use it under _explicit_ risk of harm to
| themselves and others. It actually increases the mental
| load as drivers will try to both "disconnect" (type on
| the phone, watch a movie) while also "paying attention to
| the road". Of course both can't be reasonably done at the
| same time so both experiences are sacrificed.
|
| It's like encouraging people to take a taxi after
| drinking but then expecting them to take over whenever
| the driver makes a mistake and holding them responsible
| and accountable for the outcome. You won't enjoy the
| drink, or the drive.
|
| These half-way solutions are great for marketing and for
| people who are all about the hype. But not only are they
| the bad compromises, they're also fueled by bad and
| incomplete data, and by marketing departments wanting to
| sell more. Almost no self driving outfit provides data on
| how many times did a human make the slightest correction
| while the self driving was enabled. Or out of all
| possible driving conditions, what percentage of them were
| covered by those self driving miles.
|
| My personal philosophy is that cars are either self
| driving or they're not. Meaning they can either match an
| average human driver in all conditions they're expected
| to encounter over the lifetime, or they're just assisting
| the driver. If it's self driving except when it's not
| then it's just like a student driver. You wouldn't
| confuse them with being perfect drivers just because of
| their perfect safety record, given the supervisor
| corrects their every mistake.
| omilu wrote:
| >situations appear and develop in less than 3 seconds
| (think small child jumping in front of your car from
| between parked cars)
|
| I trust full self driving tech to handle this situation
| better than a human driver more often than not. The
| computer doesn't get distracted and has better reaction
| time.
| buran77 wrote:
| > full self driving tech
|
| Full self driving tech is presumably (and by definition)
| fully able to handle things by itself. We're talking
| about "partial self driving tech" (SAE L3) which relies
| on the driver taking over when it doesn't know what to
| do. The context switching for a regular human absolutely
| kills the reaction time in these situations making this a
| "I'll mostly drive myself but when I can't you're almost
| guaranteed to cause a crash" type issue.
| 6pac3rings wrote:
| The Tiger Woods driving experience as informal industry
| use case standard to focus on is as good as the informal
| two golf bags carrying capacity.
| drran wrote:
| > Some situations appear and develop in less than 3
| seconds (think small child jumping in front of your car
| from between parked cars). You might only have 1s to
| react and if you are not "plugged in" and fully attentive
| at that instant you missed the window to react.
|
| Yeah, humans are weak at this task, which leads to
| numerous deaths on roads. Can we develop a tech for this?
| Something, that will watch the road and will assist the
| driver.
| mavhc wrote:
| Humans already kill 3000 people every day while driving
| rayiner wrote:
| Americans drive more than 3 trillion miles per year.
| ben_w wrote:
| Politics is emotional, and emotions do not always agree
| with Utilitarian ethics.
|
| Self driving doesn't just need to be safer, people also
| need to _feel_ that it is.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That's exactly the sort of task I'd expect an automated
| vehicle to perform better on. If they can't beat humans
| at that they're not ready for the public road.
|
| Of course hand-off could be for liability purposes, like
|
| Car: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm about to plow into a school,
| this is your problem now"
|
| Dave: [looks up briefly from his game of candy crush
| before dying in a crash]
| perl4ever wrote:
| >That's exactly the sort of task I'd expect an automated
| vehicle to perform better on
|
| If the AI could talk, it wouldn't be so much "I'm sorry
| Dave" as "I cannae change the laws of physics!"
|
| An AI can _think_ about the situation for several million
| instructions worth, if it is running at >GHz speeds, but
| it can't prevent a crash given a few milliseconds,
| because inertia. And for the same reason, it's futile to
| hand off to a human.
| jellicle wrote:
| Press release: "While the self-driving feature of our car
| had been engaged earlier in the drive, the driver was in
| control at the time of the crash."
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| The problem is, they can't do this today with the
| necessary classification quality. Elaine was killed,
| because someone at Uber wanted these cars to drive so
| badly. It also is about culture and prediction. If the
| other participants behave differently to your prediction,
| it can get hazardous quickly at highway speeds. I can't
| find a better link [0], but maybe it's good enough to get
| the point across. The term is "warning dilemma" and means
| that you only have perfect information at the time of
| impact. Before, the classification if there will be a
| problem or not is worse, the earlier you ask. But asking
| early is necessary for the human to have a chance to
| react.
|
| [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326568066_To
| wards_a...
| Aeolun wrote:
| From what I remember, Elaine was mostly killed because
| she stepped in front of a moving car in the middle of the
| night.
|
| I'm not convinced that's the best example, since the AI
| might have actually done better if it had full control of
| the car instead of defaulting to 'please take over now'
| mode.
| mbreese wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the cars built in system for
| emergency braking in this scenario was disabled. So, any
| other car of that type would have avoided the accident.
| However, because the AI apparently knew better, it was
| disabled and someone died.
|
| AI has the problem that not only does it need to observe
| the environment and determine what to do, but it has to
| predict the actions of non-rational actor (humans). We
| aren't always predictable. AI isn't always predictable
| either. The woman who died may have assumed that a car
| driven by a person would have stopped.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Right. I could have stated it better, what I meant was
| that the (safety) driver was not paying (enough)
| attention to the road and was basically driving Level 3
| (the car drives and it will beep whenever I need to take
| over, so just relax and browse the web). It was
| impossible to react to the short notice and the warning
| was _not_ given 10 seconds ago. I personally think the
| system had sensed her as a succession of standing targets
| and never predicted any velocity vector. Braking for
| static radar targets is not happening, because of the
| clutter you get everywhere you would not drive at all. So
| the misclassification and misprediction was not
| detectable for the system (in it's world model,
| everything looked consistent) and it warned too late.
| scrose wrote:
| Who would the car optimize for? Saving the kid or saving
| the driver from getting rear-ended or swerving into an
| object?
| Asooka wrote:
| See kid => hit brakes. This is already way better than a
| driver who doesn't notice the kid and doesn't hit the
| brakes. The inside of the car is very well designed to
| keep the occupant alive in case of collision, the car
| should prioritise not hitting other people. I hope self-
| driving technology will at some point be regulated
| regarding what the car should attempt to do in those
| situations. With more vehicles having collision avoidance
| technology, the car behind you won't rear-end you because
| its AI will react fast enough while also refusing to
| drive dangerously close to the car in front.
| mannykannot wrote:
| This sort of _assistance_ is an excellent use of current
| technology, and a way to move forward to true autonomy.
| What needs to stop here is the two-faced, fatally
| ambiguous marketing, and if manufacturers cannot act
| responsibly, regulation will be needed (more than the
| current regulation for responsible driving, which only
| kicks in after the damage is done.)
| Gravityloss wrote:
| The systems probably already have some kind of an
| estimate of "surprise possibility in the next 3 s".
|
| For example on a narrow road with a building right in the
| corner, going around the corner, anything might happen.
| You don't know what's around the corner. So the system
| will either go so slow that there's ample warning time or
| then require driver attention already before attempting
| to turn, because the driver needs to be ready to react to
| potential up-and-coming new information fast.
|
| In contrast on a wide highway, it's a more easy-to-
| estimate environment, visibility is better etc. So as
| long as other cars are far away and the velocity
| differences are not huge etc, the driver can stay
| inattentive.
| buran77 wrote:
| The challenge self driving cars face is that being
| "overall better" is probably not enough. Regressions in
| certain segments would hardly be acceptable for anyone.
| You can't tell people "FSD cars lowered overall deaths by
| 10% but we now kill 30% more toddlers because [technical
| reason]", or that "highway deaths are going up", or
| basically any segment that anyone could reasonably care
| about. Cars have to match and exceed human drivers in
| every category for them to be acceptable, and even 99%
| there may not be enough.
| sorbits wrote:
| Another point is that there is a psychological difference
| between sitting behind the wheel in a vehicle knowing
| that around 10 in 100,000 people get themselves killed
| each year, and then sitting in a machine that kills 10
| out of 100,000 people each year.
|
| In the first situation, you feel in control, and at least
| think that you can do what is necessary to avoid that you
| end up in the statistics.
|
| Personally I would be very skeptical about trusting my
| life to a machine that has a non-zero chance of getting
| me killed, even if the machine, on average, performs
| better than a human, because most of us think that we are
| better than the average driver.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Unless, you know, there's a reflective truck passing by.
| Or faulty recognition of lines on the road steer you
| straight into a barrier.
| madamelic wrote:
| This is the blue wart in the green sea.
|
| The system gives you more power and you'll kill yourself.
| Similar situations with horse-drawn are not as lethal. As
| far as I remember, Volvo denied to use horseless carriages
| years ago, which is the only grown-up and responsible
| answer to this problem.
| beanders wrote:
| I do not see how this gives more power to the driver.
| Decreasing responsibility is not equivalent.
|
| Edit: sp
| sitkack wrote:
| Volvo is absolutely making the right call here. There is
| too much irrational exuberance around SDC.
|
| The obvious answer is to apply AI to the entire system, not
| just the car navigating the road
|
| * Is the driver paying attention, how much attention should
| they be paying verses the conditions?
|
| * What is the environment like, how should I react, refuse
| to drive? Go slowly? Honk?
|
| We already have self driving vehicles, they are called
| Mules. Why not make artificial mules instead of artificial
| pole position. The car should be an active participant,
| more of a copilot and than a blind automaton.
|
| Self driving cars should be _shown_ to have passed a
| repeatable rigorous adversarial gauntlet before being
| allowed on the road. And the individual cars should have to
| be re-certified every 6 months by retaking the test.
| dm319 wrote:
| As a side note - I think humans should require retaking
| their test on a regular basis. Maybe every 5 years, and
| just a short 'refresher' test on the way home from work.
| It would help find those who simply can't drive safely
| anymore, and may dissuade others who don't think it's
| worth going through that process. It would also take a
| lot of stress and anxiety from the problem of families
| who know mildly-demented grandad really shouldn't be on
| the road because he can hardly see at night, but find it
| hard/impossible to actually do something about it.
| leetcrew wrote:
| there's a deeper problem here in the US. a large portion
| of the workforce needs to drive to work. a lot of these
| people are not very safe drivers, through some
| combination of incapability, unwillingness, or ignorance.
| it's hard to strike a good balance between keeping unsafe
| drivers off the road and not upending people's
| livelihoods.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Also the driving test is a joke in the first place so
| there are a ton of unsafe drivers.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I'm sure this varies state-to-state. I wouldn't say my
| driving test was a joke (in the sense of easy), but the
| hard parts had very little to do with driving safely. the
| whole thing took place in a parking lot at 5 mph. I
| failed the test my first two times because it was really
| difficult to perfectly parallel park my dad's massive
| truck.
|
| I think it would be okay to make the initial test a
| little harder, and ideally more focused on real world
| driving safety. the real problem is if you let someone
| have a license, they plan their life around it, and then
| you yank the rug out from under them because they
| couldn't back up 100 feet in a straight line ten years
| later.
| j1dopeman wrote:
| In my state, the test never touches the highway or any
| busy roads so you don't have to learn how to merge, stay
| in your lane, drive at speed, etc. Actually most highways
| around explicitly prohibit permit holders. I personally
| know more than one person who had their first experience
| on the highway after they had a license and it was an
| absolute disaster. They were white knuckled, driving
| 20-30mph under the limit and every merge was a close
| call. I think the only thing they actually test is
| whether you can parallel park or not.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Maybe getting to work should be an incentive for
| practicing safe driving. You cant get to work if you
| crash your car either.
| leetcrew wrote:
| sure, that's not unreasonable. but with the current
| situation in the US, you would need to drastically expand
| welfare, public transit, or both if you really want to
| lean into the "driving is a privilege" idea.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| It's because they know that Self Driving Cars are the way to
| Guarantee a revenue stream for the life of the vehicle.
|
| Screw actual utility, this is about revenue, plain and
| simple.
| craftinator wrote:
| > talk about things like "autopilot" instead of "driver
| assist"
|
| I actually find driver assist technologies almost as
| damaging. For example, lane assist (car centers itself in
| lane) can cause the car to veer when lanes are mis-painted.
| After having it turned on for a few minutes without issues,
| you begin to relax, then the car decides to take an off-ramp
| or swerve towards the shoulder.
|
| As a comparative example, let's look at automatic gear boxes
| vs manual. As far as I know, there are no auto gear boxes
| that will occasionally require you to hit the clutch in order
| to successfully change gears. Their either completely auto,
| completely manual, or auto with manual override. Having
| something halfway between automatic and manual is just ASKING
| for problems; that being said, an auto gearbox that is
| expected to work only 99% of the time also really doesn't
| exist, which is why self driving is hard.
|
| I'd much rather better alerting and imminent danger
| capabilities; more ubiquitous and accurate blind spot
| sensors, lane change cameras, brake alarms (or even auto-
| braking, if it's high reliability). These technologies will
| allow the overall self-driving landscape to improve (because
| there's so much overlap; self-driving NEEDS all of these
| sensing techs, and needs them to be REALLY good in order to
| work) and mature over time, while road infrastructure,
| mapping, legislature, and public opinion catch up.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Tesla's marketing.
|
| "Summon your car while dealing with a fussy child _. "
|
| (_ do not summon your vehicle while distracted, maintain
| constant visual contact with the vehicle)
|
| "Full self driving capability _"
|
| "_ vehicle has all equipment capable to self drive, but may be
| limited by laws or regulations in your area"
|
| and so on. Tesla is full of nudge nudge wink wink, and
| disclaimers that walk back their ledes, so what exactly is
| problematic about Honda's statement about limitations?
| samstave wrote:
| I wonder if cars will be able to be put into "overly cautious
| mode" implying any other following: inclement weather, children
| inside, inebriated passengers who may not be in any condition
| to respond to situations, "HOSPITAL NOW" voice function,
| "POLICE NOW" voice function. As well as other one-word voice
| commands "Car, Home" "Car, Work" etc..
| loeg wrote:
| It's super weird to only sell 100 of these in a single market.
| If it does what they say it does, they should be able to make a
| killing as the first mover. Just more reason to be skeptical.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I'm guessing it's more of the idea that Japan will tolerate
| 100 possibly dangerous vehicles to further their engineering
| goals.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| That's still incredibly sketchy.
|
| What any sane engineer would do is to keep testing these
| cars with a safety driver and gather anough
| information/miles to claim higher statistical safety than a
| human driver, while keeping track that those miles were
| really in fact driven without intervention/(or with
| predictable and managed intervention). Once they would have
| those numbers, then they would know for sure that the car
| is safe and they could release/manufacture hundreds of
| thousands/unlimited number of units to the market. If they
| didn't - it means either the car really isn't tested or it
| doesn't do what they claim it does.
|
| Releasing a 100 vechicles just doesn't make sense, unless
| the claims are somehow shady or misrepresentative.
| rodgerd wrote:
| No different to the Toyota Century, or the Nissan President,
| or (to a lesser degree) Alphard etc. The major Japanese car
| makers have quite a few vehicles (or options) that don't get
| exported, but whose features show up later in a Lexus or
| similar.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Toyota Century/Crown/Alphard/etc is specially designed car
| for Japan but Honda Legend isn't. It's not well sold, I
| believe its primary market is US or China (sold as Acura
| RLX).
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Worth noting the Acura RLX has been discontinued with no
| successor planned. The Legend will continue to be sold in
| select markets, but as of right now, plans have only been
| announced for Japan.
| jfk13 wrote:
| I'm not sure "make a killing as the first mover" is the best
| choice of wording when the topic is self-driving cars.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Is very careful initial launch for such product weird? I
| don't think so.
| Geee wrote:
| It's just a marketing piece. Tesla's FSD is way more advanced
| than just a 'traffic jam pilot', but they don't market it as
| level 3. It's a low-hanging fruit for marketing.
| therouwboat wrote:
| I guess you are technically right, since Elon promised
| level 5 last year.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| "Full self driving, coast to coast, this year, no hands
| on the steering wheel!"
|
| He also promised it by the end of 2018.
|
| Oh, and before that, 2016.
| Geee wrote:
| Who cares. Few years here and there don't matter. Here's
| a video of the current FSB beta driving from San
| Fransisco to Los Angeles without driver intervention:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQG2IynmRf8
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I hear this repeatedly from people. "Who cares, it's
| marketing, he's cheerleading", as if Elon's quotes don't
| have a material impact on Tesla's stock price. They'll
| then cry and complain about "the shorts, the shorts", and
| how unfair it is that they're having an impact on stock
| prices.
|
| Coast to coast means places like Iowa, Pittsburgh in
| winter, downpours, poor roads.
|
| Not LA to SF on a perfect, cloudy (no sunglare) day on
| well-maintained interstate. Or a 14 minute video from a
| Tesla fan site that says "Here's a brief video of a 8
| hour drive where, we swear, there was no intervention".
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| It's possible they are selling these at a loss to seed or
| whet the market. If it takes off then maybe it will reappear
| at a profitable price.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > If it does what they say it does, they should be able to
| make a killing as the first mover
|
| Of course, if it _doesn't_ do what they say it does, they
| will, ah, also make a killing. Or many killings. You can
| understand the caution.
| bayindirh wrote:
| WRC has (or had) a rule for car homologation which required at
| least 100 road-going copies to be made for some higher end
| tiers (This is why we have Lancer Evo & Impreza WRX on the
| roads). There may be another rule/law in the automative
| industry where 100 units are considered "serial production".
| mkl95 wrote:
| They really are making it seem like it's level "2.5" self-
| driving and it was rounded out to 3.
| divbzero wrote:
| Perhaps it's no coincidence both examples involve the
| navigation system? Makes it easier to flash an alert and return
| the driver's attention to the road.
| stubish wrote:
| I would have thought some sort of display on or in the
| windscreen, but maybe that is too distracting and causes
| panic?
| spullara wrote:
| Sound is way better, especially if you aren't already
| looking out the windscreen.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Solving self-driving in dense slow moving traffic on narrow
| city rodes is a simpler problem than on high speed freeway
| style roads, mainly because the risks are much lower - you wont
| get injured at 20mph in moderns cars. Dings and dents can be
| compensated relatively cheaply.
|
| Much of urban Europe with pre-industrial-revolution cities and
| part of urban Asia is slow moving traffic. Slow, compared to
| California/Atlanta/Houston non-rush-hour freeways.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Surely not. Motorway driving is very simple compared to urban
| driving. This consequences of a collision are probably less
| serious in slow moving traffic but the risk of them happening
| is much higher. And the density of traffic and of pedestrians
| makes the job much more complicated.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > It does all this with zero input from the driver
|
| Isn't this different from things like Tesla's autopilot in that
| in certain conditions the Honda will take full responsibility
| for driving and the driver can concentrate on other things. But
| needs to be ready when the car tells the driver to take
| control/responsibility. I'm guessing these conditions could be
| quite specific and limited - like traffic jams and freeway
| driving when the car is effectively in a 'convoy'
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Is 100 units really a "production car"? I don't agree.
|
| Considering you couldn't even get into Group B rally
| homoligation with those numbers (200) in the 80s, or Dakar race
| spec production (2500) in 90-2000s I don't think it is, either.
|
| > It's possible they are selling these at a loss to seed or
| whet the market. If it takes off then maybe it will reappear at
| a profitable price.
|
| Exactly. It seems more like a mass produced prototype, or a
| proper limited edition model and if I'm honest this looks
| exactly like an Accord/Insight with all the JDM goodies we
| don't get in the West. But this is about marketing.
|
| I wish them well, Honda (auto) has a ton of muck in their face
| due to their failure to, once again, make any inroads in
| Formula 1 after their epic success with Mclaren in the 80s--
| this last time around was so hard to watch, and the mere
| utterance of 'GP2 engine' will live in infamy forever. Which
| it's raison d'etre to trickle down it's production car, but
| with V6 turbos and KERS systems pretty much maxed they need
| something like this to justify their R/D budgets.
|
| I'm not sure how to feel about it, to be honest: had this been
| on an limited edition EV insight it would definitely be a step
| in the right direction. Whereas this will fall into obscurity
| as more manufacturers move to EV.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| > you couldn't even get into Group B rally homoligation with
| those numbers (200)
|
| Unless your name is Lancia and you move 100 cars from one
| parking spot to the other while you're treating the officials
| to a lunch with loooots of wine.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Unless your name is Lancia and you move 100 cars from one
| parking spot to the other while you're treating the
| officials to a lunch with loooots of wine.
|
| I really wish Clarkson would do more of these kind of
| stories, the trio would be the ideal team to make a docu-
| series for the Motorex and GTR fiasco!
|
| It's such an insane story that I cannot believe they're on
| the 100th version of Fast and Furious but we have not seen
| this story be told.
|
| Having lived through it myself, I was in the early drifting
| community in SoCal back in 2002 and a regular on Fresh
| Alloy/NICO since 2000. I even saw a few of those cars that
| got sold at the old meetups at Life Plaza before the canyon
| runs, the Bee*R rev limit kits on those R chassis [0] were
| so absurd back then when they first came out, they sounded
| like the meanest rally cars.
|
| My memory is fuzzy after all these years, and I can't
| remember if it was big bird, or black bird but we saw it
| being tuned on the freeway in LA doing high speed wangan
| runs and the helicopters may or may not have showed up,
| good times.
|
| I'm going to miss the ICE days because of this, but...
| they're dinosaurs and we can always tell the story from the
| glory days. I'm just glad I was born when I was, because I
| think that is a culture that has since peaked and is now on
| a very sad descent, other than Tesla and Rimac I don't see
| anyone even trying to make EV cars be anything more than a
| soulless utilitarian computer enclosure with wheels to get
| you to point A to B.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pUReXK3zM
| m463 wrote:
| I can think of a few reasons to be japan only:
|
| - probably easier to have a japan-only dataset
|
| - probably easier to get engineers to work on this at
| headquarters
|
| - japan highway markings might be more predictable than say 50
| states all with subtly different rules and state of repair
|
| - us liability law
| jackson1442 wrote:
| The second quote seems to insinuate that you should remain in a
| state where you can drive and can use the context of your
| surroundings. For example, if you see flashing lights, you will
| likely get a handoff request because there are emergency
| vehicles which suggests an unpredictable situation.
|
| To me, it appears to mean "don't sleep or 'drive' intoxicated."
| The car can presumably predict when it needs to handoff with
| enough notice to allow you to regain the full focus needed to
| drive.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > The car can presumably predict when it needs to handoff
| with enough notice to allow you to regain the full focus
| needed to drive.
|
| This is the critical assumption. And:
|
| > suggests an unpredictable situation.
|
| All driving situations are unpredictable. From the kid
| running into the street after their ball to the drunk guy in
| a truck careening into the same crossroad.
|
| We can never reach this dream of "watching a movie while the
| car drives" without railroading our roads in some form or
| agreeing on a new distribution of risk.
| dubeye wrote:
| This where Tesla is underestimated I think. There is a huge
| difference between a high volume, sellable product, and a
| highly priced concept designed for PR. You could argue Tesla
| has both, but at least they are attempting to place this
| technology into the hands of consumers.
|
| The unavoidable penalty for this is a longer period of driver
| responsibility and perhaps never reaching level 3. It's a trade
| off tesla buyers seem willing to accept.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I really think this is an example where the litigious nature of
| the US is going to drag on self-driving efforts. There is
| simply no way to deploy this tech without learning from
| crashes, and there will be crashes, people will get killed, and
| the US market is the last place where you'd want to be a
| manufacturer if that happens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This isn't an issue. Congress can create safe harbours if it
| becomes a problem.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That's like saying Congress can reform our liability laws
| and turn it into more of a Japanese system.
|
| Well, OK, sure, it's a _possibility_ , but the reason why
| that wont happen is because we as a nation are much more
| litigious and expect to have a right to sue. We love to
| blame big business and make them pay.
|
| People have been clamoring for reform of medical liability
| for decades - still no progress on that front, either.
|
| Safe harbours are not politically popular here, and you
| tend to get them only in very niche areas that are below
| the radar of most people. Auto accidents and traffic injury
| law, not so much.
| kaba0 wrote:
| The US is like one of the most pro-company countries I
| can imagine. The amount of lobbying to only benefit Big
| Co is ridiculous from a European point of view - I don't
| see it as a negative to even increase the liability of
| companies. They should very well be responsible for
| everything they do, and it should not cost/risk innocent
| lives to further a private companies profits without
| public benefit!
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Haven't there are already been self-driving car accidents
| that killed people? And also - is the US behind in the
| self-driving race?
| spullara wrote:
| Fewer than cars by people and no.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Rocket launchers kill much less people than guns, but I
| doubt it is a reasonable assumption that the former is
| less dangerous/deadly..
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Do you know how many lawyers are in Congress or donate to
| politicians? Trial lawyers as a group are big donors to
| the Democratic Party. There is no way, Congress is going
| to do anything to make it harder for lawyers to sue
| people.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Probably true but I'd think Google, GM and every other
| company working on this tech that is probably going to be
| a 100B+ industry would have at least some influence here.
| nradov wrote:
| Several US states have actually imposed caps on medical
| malpractice damages.
| jcims wrote:
| People have already been killed. I just don't see it as that
| big of an impediment.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Is 100 units really a "production car"? I don't agree.
|
| Sounds more like a beta test.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Tesla has been doing a much larger beta test and charges 9k
| for the sign up.
| [deleted]
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I felt like Tesla did a cash grab when they recently
| offered an upgrade from "auto pilot" (which I pre-ordered
| on the forthcoming Cyber Truck) to "full auto". This
| upgrade raised my estimated delivery price by $10k. I went
| ahead and did it, but WTF? My initial estimate already
| included the $9k for "auto pilot" so now I'm paying $19k
| for self driving?
| jiofih wrote:
| Autopilot is included in the base price, it has never
| cost 9k. The FSD price went up from 7k to 10k last year.
| totalZero wrote:
| I loled at this, not at all because I find joy in your
| situation, but because it's so difficult to picture (A)
| someone who buys a cybertruck being price sensitive, or
| (B) someone who is like "well, ok I guess" in the face of
| a $9k price hike on a truck.
| greenyoda wrote:
| > I'm assuming if it won't come to the US it won't come to the
| UK, Canada or Australia either.
|
| Since Japan drives on the left side of the road[1], a car
| manufactured for the Japanese market would have its steering
| wheel on the opposite side of a US or Canadian vehicle. It
| would be OK for the UK or Australia, which also drive on the
| left, but the cars can only be leased for now[2], and the
| provisions of the lease would probably disallow taking the car
| to another country.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-
| hand_traffic#W...
|
| [2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Honda-
| launches-...
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| I was more getting at that if they aren't interested in the
| US market they're unlikely interested in the other ones I
| mentioned either, rather than commenting on sidedness.
|
| Yes, technically it's easier to bring this car to other RHD
| countries but I'm assuming Honda has plenty of manufacturing
| capacity to do that if they want to. It just seems like they
| don't want to.
| 1e100 wrote:
| It's rare, but I have occasionally seen left hand drive cars
| in Australia
|
| https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/registration/register/left
| FuckMeNow69 wrote:
| https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not sure but I bet it's perfectly legal to drive a right
| hand drive in North America.
| loeg wrote:
| Mail carriers often have right-hand drive in NA.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yes, it is, but you can't sell a right hand car here.
| Individuals have to import it, but sometimes this happens.
| olyjohn wrote:
| There are no laws against selling right hand drive cars
| in the US.
| adolph wrote:
| Seems to be a lively market: http://www.texasjdm.com/
|
| Jeep has a RHD Wrangler for 2021 and I'm not certain if
| they ever paused making them.
| sjwalter wrote:
| Your comment elides that Jeep exclusively markets these
| (afaik) to USPS for rural delivery drivers. Though they
| are widely available in the secondary market, are you
| sure they sell them directly to consumers?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Rural mail carriers are contractors who buy their own
| vehicles. Anyone can order that jeep or a RHD Subaru.
| sjwalter wrote:
| Great to know, thanks.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Possibly the self-driving system on a car sold in JP/UK is
| optimized for left side, and vice versa.
| [deleted]
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Honda seems like a very conservative company. It's released a
| couple of low volume "production" cars as it's dipped its toes
| into electric cars as well. The Honda Fit EV was a real
| production car, available to the general public (and I did see
| a couple of them on the roads in the US). But it was only
| available to lease, and Honda only leased about 1000 of them
| IIRC. Seems like a hedge - it gets them some experience with
| running an electric vehicle program, and data on how their
| vehicles do in the wild, but in a limited enough number that
| there won't be any serious harm to their reputation if the
| vehicles are deficient in some way.
|
| So where Tesla might want to put this sort of tech into the
| hands of as many customers as possible, as soon as possible,
| Honda is being Honda and entering the water very slowly.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It seems to make sense. You can be distracted, but should be
| able to take back control when the car asks you to.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That doesn't really work. It will take seconds for you to
| orient yourself to what is going on if you're not paying
| attention. At 70 MPH that's about 200-300 ft of travel.
| adrr wrote:
| Level 3(eyes off)can perform emergency actions and doesn't
| require drivers to pay attention. It will handle all
| immediate response situations. Tesla is level 2(hands off)
| because it will run into things like stationary fire
| trucks.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| I think you have answered the question of why they only
| are releasing a 100 cars. Tesla has million cars on the
| road, yet everyone talks about the car that runs into a
| truck or fire-engine.
|
| Considering the odds, it is likely you would see no
| accidents if you only look at just 100 Tesla cars.
|
| This would be more impressive they put 100,000 cars on
| the road and then we saw the stats.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > everyone talks about the car that runs into a truck or
| fire-engine.
|
| Not to mention that plenty of non-self driving cars run
| into stationary vehicles on both motorways and ordinary
| roads.
|
| A fireman I spoke to says it happens all the time and
| that the fire engine is parked upstream of the incident
| that they are dealing with so that errant vehicles run
| into it rather than the fire crew.
|
| It is a matter of lively debate in the UK right now with
| regard to 'Smart Motorways' which have no hard shoulder,
| several people have been killed in collisions with
| stationary vehicles.
|
| In fact even on motorways with hard shoulders a number of
| people have died because they stopped on the hard
| shoulder because of a breakdown and another vehicle
| strayed onto the hard shoulder and rear ended them at 70
| mph.
| adrr wrote:
| As an owner of a Tesla with FSD. My car would have ran
| into a stalled car in the carpool lane and has tried to
| change lanes into a concrete barrier. Tesla is level 2
| and needs your attention to be safe.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I would prefer roads that are not the test lab of some
| dystopian experiment for some rich people.
| jiofih wrote:
| You might be disappointed to learn that human drivers run
| into firetrucks way more often than Teslas.
|
| The current rate as of October is:
|
| Tesla Autopilot Accidents: 1 out of 4,530,000 Miles; US
| Average: 1 out of 479,000 Miles
| adrr wrote:
| Most accidents happen where Tesla autopilot isn't being
| used like city driving and exiting and entering the
| freeway. Sitting in one lane on the freeway is the safest
| thing you can be doing and any car with lane centering
| and adaptive cruise control can do it. That's why those
| numbers are a joke. I use autopilot everyday day on a 45
| mile commute and my only accident is entering the freeway
| where my car and another car merged into the same lane.
| [deleted]
| jiofih wrote:
| Nothing better than A/B testing within the same
| population, right?
|
| > In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for
| every 3.45 million miles driven in which drivers had
| Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot
| but with our active safety features, we registered one
| accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those
| driving without Autopilot and without our active safety
| features, we registered one accident for every 1.27
| million miles driven.
|
| Even if you assume most accidents happen in that last
| group, city driving with AP off, that ratio (3.45:1.27)
| is better than the overall estimated proportion of city
| vs highway accidents for all vehicles, at 2.3:1. At a
| minimum, AP is making highway driving 10-20% safer, and
| obviously not causing any new city accidents when it's
| off.
| adrr wrote:
| AP doesn't switch lanes. SO you turn it off during these
| events. It's not an AB test since AP is used in a very
| specific scenario where a person driving is used in
| situations where AP is incapable of handling like dealing
| with a stalled vehicle on the road.
| kaba0 wrote:
| How confident are we in the first number? Accidents
| usually do not happen just because on a straight road,
| they happen when something unexpected happens. How many
| unexpected cases were recorded in the first number vs the
| second? Because simply because of the number of teslas on
| the roads, I doubt many.
| jiofih wrote:
| That's where the "per mile" part comes in.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| We're absolutely not, but Tesla fans love to repeat this
| quote, no matter how many times it is explained to them.
|
| You cannot at all equate "subset of miles where AP is a
| possibility, be it good conditions/road/weather", where
| AP will turn off or not be available because it can't
| work, with "all the miles driven by humans in all
| conditions", and say in any way with a straight face,
| "Look, safer!". But that's what Elon, and a large number
| of people do.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Not sure how this factors in but autopilot primarily only
| works on the highway.
|
| It's certainly possible that city driving is safer and
| also more complex to be done autonomously but it's
| something that needs to be considered.
| jiofih wrote:
| The ratio of city vs highway accidents is 2.3 to 1. At
| worse the Tesla number is cut in half.
| stubish wrote:
| The bit about watching DVDs is for the traffic jam mode, where
| it is crawling forward locked to the car in front of you.
| Pretty much the same as automatic parking features. Thankfully
| they won't recommend having a snooze though, since you will
| need to take control at the end of the jam or at an
| intersection. The warning about overestimating capabilities is
| on the rest of the features, where failing to respond to a
| request to take control will assume you are asleep and do an
| emergency stop. It seems to be a bunch of apps that you have to
| select and turn on/off manually, rather than 'autonomous
| driving'. ie. it assists you driving, rather than you assisting
| the car to drive itself.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| First question is, where do you buy a DVD? Second question,
| where do you put it in?
| wil421 wrote:
| You put it in your Honda Legend of course!
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Does it works with rain, fog, snow and the night ?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I have worked for one of leading self-driving software companies.
| I think self-driving is now going through the same tech curve as
| all new tech out there: we have passed the peak of inflated
| expectations (it will work everywhere, cars won't even have
| steering wheels), have gone through the the trough of
| disillusionment (crashes, moral dilemmas, companies going bust or
| merged due to expensive research not yielding enough fruits) and
| is now in the slope of enlightment: limited release of limited
| functionality. Self-driving is essentially an insurance problem:
| instead of the drivers, the car brands (or their OEMs) need to
| assume responsibility. This is probably not going to fly with the
| current car pricing model.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Confusing..Honda wants (ie specifically suggests) you to watch a
| DVD (???) while also asking you to pay complete attention to your
| surroundings.
|
| Not sure this messaging is safe, much less the car itself.
| ben_bai wrote:
| It lets you watch a movie in "traffic jam mode" so when the
| vehicle is stopped or moving slowly because of heavy traffic.
| As soon as it's moving faster you are not allowed to watch a
| movie b.c. you need to watch the road.
|
| Edit: it's a joke. LVL3 no way.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBwmFbpNCA
| Danieru wrote:
| > while also asking you to pay complete attention to your
| surroundings
|
| No. That is the true benefit of Level3: you do not need to pay
| attention. The car is paying attention and will notify you when
| you must retake control.
|
| Tesla's Level2 "autopilot" will not tell you before it drives
| into a wall. Tesla Drivers must constantly watch the road and
| ask themselves "Do I think my car is trying to kill me?". When
| they think "Yeah, my car appears to be trying to drive under
| that parked semi-truck. I don't we fit, I better take over".
|
| Meanwhile Honda's level3 will say: "Please take over. I see a
| semi-truck and I don't think we'll fit."
| throwawayboise wrote:
| L2: If you're not paying attention, you'll run into the semi
| and be dead before you even know it.
|
| L3: Your car will warn you and you'll have enough time to
| look up, realize what is happening, and say "oh shit"
| cryptoz wrote:
| Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me nor does it square with
| the direct Honda quotes from the article.
|
| > "There is a limit to the capabilities (e.g. recognition
| capability and control capability) of individual functions of
| Honda Sensing Elite," reads an official statement. "Please do
| not overestimate the capabilities of each Honda Sensing Elite
| function and drive safely while paying constant attention to
| your surroundings. Please remain in condition where you can
| respond to the handover request issued by the system, and
| immediately resume driving upon the handover request."
|
| You cannot be watching a DVD and then immediately resume
| driving at request. It is not humanly possible in my opinion.
| There is a critical context-switching time that even the best
| of people will be slow to handle.
|
| I'll admit I don't understand the L2/L3 difference - and
| maybe that is part of the messaging and the problem. Your
| demeaning quotes about Tesla drivers seem to fit 100% with
| how Honda wants you to behave in their car. They are telling
| you the system could fail and you need to be ready. But you
| can't "be ready" without already being ready - if you have to
| 'get ready' by quickly stopping your attention to the DVD and
| changing to the road, it may be too late.
| [deleted]
| liquidify wrote:
| I have a really hard time of understanding what the differences
| are between level 2 and 3. The article is short of words relating
| to the distinction. It claims Tesla isn't there, but Honda is,
| but they don't really say exactly why or how they were able to
| surpass Tesla. Is this really believable when they don't have a
| fleet of cars to test on like Tesla does?
| kube-system wrote:
| Here's the official descriptions:
|
| https://www.sae.org/news/press-room/2018/12/sae-internationa...
|
| TL;DR: In levels 0-2 you are driving the car and the
| electronics are helping to manipulate the controls. In levels
| 3-5, you are handing over the responsibility to drive to the
| car. You do not need to babysit the car to make sure it's not
| trying to do something stupid.
| qznc wrote:
| An accident happens in a traffic jam. A person gets injured. If
| it was a Tesla, the driver gets sued. If it was a Honda Legend,
| Honda gets sued.
|
| This changes the legal situation for car manufacturers
| dramatically and has technical implications. If the power in
| your car for the controlling device fails, normal cars have the
| driver as fallback to break. Honda needs to have some technical
| redundancy somehow.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Tesla has demonstrated that is not the case.
|
| Tesla acts as a third party. They leverage a tort system not
| designed to accommodate the type of telemetry they have to
| aggressively find fault with the drivers action.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Level 2: driver is expected to override mistakes made by
| vehicle.
|
| Level 3: driver is expected to take control, with brief notice,
| when vehicle cannot determine correct action.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automated-vehicl...
| jowday wrote:
| The article is terrible at describing it - and really, the
| entire level scale is terrible - but there is a real important
| distinction between level 2 and level 3.
|
| Level 2 means that the car automates several different parts of
| the driving task, but that you must be ready to take over at a
| moments notice - you still have to keep your hands on the wheel
| and your attention focused on the driving task in case you need
| to intervene. This is what Autopilot, and the FSD beta is. You
| can turn them on but you have to keep your hands on the wheel
| and your attention focused. This also means you're legally
| liable for any accidents, since the onus is still on the driver
| to intervene.
|
| Level 3 basically means that, in certain situations, you can
| take your attention off driving completely and play on your
| phone, read a book, etc. The car might still need you to take
| over in certain situations, but it will warn you in advance and
| give you enough time to transition back to driving. Companies
| have largely shied away from pursuing level 3 system because it
| puts the legal burden on them - if the car gets in a crash when
| it's operating at 'level 3', the onus is on the company, since
| the driver was not told to be ready to intervene.
|
| WRT your point about how they could 'surpass' Tesla, two
| things:
|
| Level 3 can be pretty restrictive - I'm not sure on specifics,
| but they could offer this on, say, only the ten largest
| interstates in Japan, and it would still qualify as level 3
| self driving. The 'levels' aren't really a strict progression
| in capabilities. A level 2, 3, and 4 solution is really three
| separate problems to solve, not succesively better versions of
| the same system. It's conceivable to me that a legacy automaker
| could focus on getting this working on a few major interstates
| and have a system they're confident in after a few years, since
| they don't have to worry about nearly as many edge cases as a
| general highway ADAS solution.
|
| Tesla's data/fleet advantage is overstated in their messaging.
| Most of the stuff presented in their autonomy day presentation
| doesn't actually exist (follow some Tesla reverse engineers for
| more info). Self-driving/ADAS is not, by and large, a data
| problem.
| goshx wrote:
| I can already use autopilot on a traffic jam without having
| to touch the wheel all the time. It seems to me the
| difference here is purely legal/regulatory and not the
| technology.
| gfodor wrote:
| It's kind of funny if what you wrote is the full description
| that we are going to gauge the capability of a self driving
| system by how willing the manufacturer is to put themselves
| on the line, instead of data-driven analysis of the systems
| involved.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Data can be faked and fudged.
|
| Legal liability tells you how confident the manufacturer
| really is in its technology.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Exactly. I don't care what your CEO tells me about being
| able to self-deliver in a couple of years. Show me what
| you'll be liable for.
| jowday wrote:
| That's how this industry works, unfortunately.
|
| It's widely accepted that the disengagement stats companies
| are required to report to government agencies are
| essentially meaningless. There's no real standardization in
| how any of this stuff is reported. There's no way to do
| independent verifiable data driven analysis of the systems.
|
| Waymo's the only company that's put out a really robust
| deep dive into their safety stats - the white paper they
| out out was really pretty comprehensive.
| durkie wrote:
| > Self-driving/ADAS is not, by and large, a data problem.
|
| can you explain more?
| cryptoz wrote:
| Whole article is confusing and self contradictory on several
| fronts. Level 3 is described as decision-making, which is not
| specific enough to differentiate from any other self driving
| initiatives in production, including Tesla, the supposed anti-
| example quoted.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Given that is is limited to Japan, I wonder if the Level 3
| driving will be limited to highways and major cities that have
| been 3D mapped by Honda in advance. Self-driving without the
| kind of data TSLA has is doable if the solution is less
| generalized.
| liquidify wrote:
| I've often wondered why we haven't been spending some effort
| developing optimized test areas which integrate helpful
| elements for self driving cars into the roads. Obviously, we
| wouldn't want a car that couldn't go everywhere, but it seems
| like at a national level, we could implement something into
| the highway system that would make it easy for interstate
| self driving vehicles.
| cachvico wrote:
| As I understand it:
|
| level 1 = expect car to go into ditch if you're not careful
|
| level 2 = hands on steering wheel but it should be ok (Tesla)
|
| level 3 = hands off steering wheel, looking around, expect to
| have to take over control (Honda's beta test)
|
| level 4 = either taking over control rarely needed, or vehicle
| has limited ability (e.g. can't drive in snow)
|
| level 5 = you can sleep
|
| The confusion lies around whether we're allowed to watch TV -
| however I'm fairly sure no country or state has passed
| legislation allowing us to take our eyes off the road while
| driving.
| liquidify wrote:
| Yeah that was an especially confusing part.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| On my understanding is that level 4 is full self driving, but
| not everywhere. It will refuse to drive where it can't, and
| will stop safely if conditions change. So you can safely
| sleep.
| anticensor wrote:
| If it refuses going there altogether, then it is level 5.
| If it goes anyway and waits for you to take over while
| parking safely, then it is a level 4.
| numpad0 wrote:
| NHTSA/SAE/UNECE refused to listen to Google and defined that
| the technology is to advance through their Level system that
| allow progressively slower response time for the
| driver/operator.
|
| Level 2 requires instantaneous takeover should the system fail,
| Level 3 system must tolerate ~30s delay, etc. in feature
| checkbox style.
|
| Automakers are fully committed to the Level system, but it does
| not agree with the reality that algorithms don't fail gradually
| like a turbine engine would, so the reality do not agree with
| the Level system and Level 3 is just going nowhere.
|
| Your confusion around Level 3 comes from the fact that Level 3
| do not exist. So no worries.
| jowday wrote:
| +1
|
| I'm not confident L3 actually exists. The only real levels
| are 2 and 4.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > I'm not confident L3 actually exists
|
| It's pretty "easy", actually, by making the take-over
| optional. I.e. you need the driver to take over within a
| few seconds if you can't navigate, but you'll fall back to
| a safe stop if the driver can't take over. So your auto-
| pilot doesn't need to handle all situations (well), but you
| can safely be inattentive; it might just cause a sub-
| optimal response.
| caseyf7 wrote:
| Traffic jam driving sounds great. Are there any cars out now in
| the US that can do this? Which one is the best?
| jackson1442 wrote:
| The Kia Niro EV can drive pretty well on highways at L2, it's
| actually almost difficult to use at night because you really
| are just holding the steering wheel.
|
| It doesn't do lane changes or anything fancy, mind you, but I
| definitely like how it manages traffic jams; while normally I
| find them stressful, in adaptive cruise mode it's more like
| just idle time.
|
| You do, of course, have to keep your hands on the wheel as that
| is the standard for anything built in in the US at the moment.
| If you got something like OpenPilot you could probably get away
| with hands-off.
| jiofih wrote:
| Tesla. As a bonus, it can do it even without the traffic jam!
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I have a general question about self driving tech/software. I
| assume the data from the cameras/lidars is processed via
| something like a "stream". How can a company or their devs make
| sure that stream never enters a buffering state? Similar to a
| video platform when the viewer gets a loading spinner in the
| middle of a movie or a stuttering frame rate. Self driving tech
| processes much more data and it sounds to me like this is bound
| to happen.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| You either can assure you have enough processing power to stay
| within cycle budgets, or prioritize objects or whatever and try
| to process the n most meaningful ones. Getting these priorities
| wrong can get you into trouble. But at least the framerate is
| ok =;-). This is normal business in realtime systems.
| daguava wrote:
| I wanted to view a page about honda and got visually assaulted by
| no less than 5 massive and un-dismissable Ford ads before I could
| read the first words of the article. This site can eat shit and
| die.
| eps wrote:
| Use an ad blocker if your religion allows it.
| Danieru wrote:
| What is notable is level 3. Not the features, but the legal
| aspect of claiming drivers can now be distracted with your mode.
|
| Tesla "auto"pilot does more, while pretending to enforce an
| always alert driver. This has resulted in a couple wrongful
| deaths no one at Tesla has been prosecuted for.
|
| Honda meanwhile is taking advantage of the Japanese governments
| legal changes which make level 3 legally tenable. Drivers need
| not watch the road, but they must respond when the car asks them
| to. This means Honda is promising your Honda will not silently
| drive you into a wall as the Tesla autopilot is known to do.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| It won't silently drive them into a wall, but at 65mph it might
| only give them just enough time to look up and panic as they
| hit the wall, internal alarms blaring for their attention. Lane
| keeping combined with construction combined with curves in the
| road won't be a good mix for for distracted drivers in these
| cars.
| stubish wrote:
| How far ahead to the sensors work? Maybe there is lots of
| time at 100km/h. They certainly need to look far enough ahead
| to detect a stationary object in the road and come to a
| complete stop, as does a human. A car coming towards you in
| the wrong lane at 100km/h is a different kettle of fish
| though (as it is for a human).
|
| Over here, the speed limit with road works is 40km/h
| ineedasername wrote:
| In the US on highways the speed limit near construction
| generally drops from the usual 65mph/105kmh down to 50 or
| 55mph/85kmh. I think the federal reference is 45mph to
| 55mph, but in my experience it's usually at the highest
| level, 55mph, unless there's really active work with crew
| on the ground. If you're accustomed to 40kmh, I can only
| imagine how insane these speeds probably seem to you. (And
| I'm not saying you'd be wrong in that)
|
| Overall, the problem of course comes down to reaction
| speed. An _attentive_ human with hands on the wheel might
| respond in 250ms. A computer obviously can respond faster.
| But some problems won 't give you any more than that 250ms
| to respond. Situations where faster sensors or cpu are
| meaningless in giving the driver more warning because there
| is literally only 250ms from onset of stimulus to the time
| needed for a reaction if catastrophe is to be avoided.
| Meaning that if the computer _can 't_ respond without human
| intervention, an inattentive driver is screwed because
| their 250ms reaction speed was based on them _already_
| paying attention. To break it down in rough estimates:
|
| 1) The car detects & make its own assessment and raises an
| alarm. 1ms? 10ms?, It almost doesn't matter.
|
| 2) The human receives & registers the alert. This is the
| initial 250ms reaction time.
|
| 3) Only then can the real work begin: The human, from a
| cold start, needs to take in the entire situation and
| understand what's going on. This is more than just reaction
| speed. This is task switching, which is cognitively more
| costly, especially for un-practiced tasks, and the task
| here is rapid analysis & synthesis of a panic inducing
| situation that most people never experience. 750ms is
| probably about right, based on research that shows the
| cognitive burden of task switching can be even higher [0]
|
| So, a full 1000ms, a full second.
|
| This is way, way too slow. As I said at the beginning,
| there are moments driving where that 250ms is required to
| avoid catastrophe. When those situations arise then there
| is simply not enough time for the car to get help of an
| inattentive driver to respond. It's simply not possible.
| Either the car makes the decision, or the human has just
| enough time to go wide-eyed before it's over.
|
| Basically the only situations where the car's notifications
| can facilitate meaningful human response are those that can
| be foreseen at least a full 1000ms in advance. Certainly
| this encompasses a lot of difficult scenarios, but not many
| of the most dangerous ones. Any time a split-second
| decision saved the life of a driver? That same driver, if
| inattentive when the car's alert comes in, is now dead.
|
| There is simply no self-driving car that that can safely
| allow human inattention until the car can make a whole lot
| more of its own decisions.
|
| In the meantime, if overzealous marketing & breathless
| hyperbole don't continue to oversell these capabilities,
| then computer-assisted driving by _attentive_ drivers
| should greatly improve safety.
|
| [0] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Task-switch-
| costs-subs...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Of course, since they're only releasing 100 of them, that's a
| low bar. Tesla has sold over a million vehicles.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > while pretending to enforce an always alert driver.
|
| To be fair amongst automakers, not many other mass-market car
| is different (right now) - they only auto-steer if the user
| applies torque to the wheel periodically and beep at the driver
| if torque isn't applied every 10/30 seconds (30 seconds is only
| set for interstates from my experience). Only sometime this
| year will the Ford Mustang Mach-E get an optional $600 upgrade
| to enable hands-off-the-wheel driving which uses hardware
| (already installed) in the steering wheel to monitor the
| driver's road attentiveness[0].
|
| 0: https://www.slashgear.com/ford-active-drive-assist-
| mustang-m....
|
| e: no other -> not many other - apparently Cadillac has eye
| tracking
| ineedasername wrote:
| How does it determine torque application if you're on a
| straight away? Or does it detect hands-on-wheel? (Preferably
| both)
| theshrike79 wrote:
| My Hyundai applies a bit of resistance to the steering
| wheel, so I need to keep the opposite torque.
|
| It won't drive to a ditch if I let go, but will start
| howling after 20-30 seconds of not touching the wheel.
| bootlooped wrote:
| With Honda you must move the wheel a bit, even if it's not
| necessary for correcting the car's direction. It does not
| detect if your hands are merely on the wheel, that would be
| nicer though.
| jjmorrison wrote:
| I agree - I don't know how it use to work, but today, Tesla's
| a pretty pushy about keep you alert. I can't imagine blaming
| my car for crashing when I'm using autopilot.
| GhostVII wrote:
| Cadillac supercruise has eye tracking that makes sure you are
| watching the road.
| BadOakOx wrote:
| Doug Demuro has a nice video about this:
| https://youtu.be/AhthZ5rxQJs
| cvak wrote:
| Since last Passat facelift, all* VWs have capacitive steering
| wheel, where it is enough to just have a hand on it. I also
| think other carmakers moved to this in past ~2 years.
| gfodor wrote:
| Your last sentence should read:
|
| ... as previous versions of Tesla autopilot have done.
|
| Talking about any one of these systems via their branding as if
| they are a singular fixed thing (and not a network of software
| versions and models under continual update) leads to bad mental
| models.
| Danieru wrote:
| Here is your "but this time it is fine" Autopilot attempting
| to murder yet another driver just 9 months ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmAG4dk-rU
| jcims wrote:
| What a bunch of zombies holy moly.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It looks like the car at least _tried_ to stop. I 'm sure
| some software engineer at Tesla saw that and said "Yes! A
| real-world UAT on the latest _don 't hit stationary
| objects_ point release! Now I can close out that story in
| Jira."
| zhte415 wrote:
| I suppose we need more captcha images of overturned trucks
| rather than a brain behind the wheel.
| jiofih wrote:
| Here is a human driving into 36 cars:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u5KgLVh-4Mg
|
| Here is another doing a burnout and crashing into a store,
| a month ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tJu5TZ6rwXg
|
| Human-driven truck runs straight into a 100-car pile up, 1
| month ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VqNy7v5YekM
|
| Beat that, Tesla!
| bildung wrote:
| This isn't how statistics work. Teslas are only about .1%
| of all cars in the US, and only a fraction of those have
| autopilot on. If autopilot is as safe as a human driver,
| we'd expect to see about 10000 cases of human stupidity
| for every case of autopilot stupidity.
| jiofih wrote:
| That's exactly my point. There are millions of Teslas on
| the road, a single incident _nine months ago_ means very
| little. You will find thousands of these for humans in
| the past month alone.
|
| Teslas per-mile incident rate is currently about 1/10th
| that of human drivers.
| bildung wrote:
| _> There are millions of Teslas on the road,_
|
| It's only 1.4 million ever sold worldwide.
|
| _> Teslas per-mile incident rate is currently about 1
| /10th that of human drivers. _
|
| But the reason for that is obvious, isn't it? It is
| strongly encouraged to activate autopilot in trivial
| situations (e.g. lane assist on interstates), whereas
| most dangerous conditions (rain, freezing, bad roads,
| road works and so on) and their higher incident share is
| almost completely in the human driver column.
| jiofih wrote:
| These cars have driven about 4 billion miles with AP on,
| only six confirmed AP fatalities total since 2016. If it
| was such a hazard you'd expect to see hundreds or
| thousands of serious incidents.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What is really amazing about that video is the people who
| must obviously be witnessing a really bad crash but just
| keep in driving.
| jowday wrote:
| Here's a Tesla hitting a highway wall from last week.
|
| https://youtu.be/XgzpAN4qsmg
| Geee wrote:
| How can any AI make sense from such a low-quality video?
| Why isn't there some kind of lens hood that blocks the sun
| glare?
| goshx wrote:
| I'd probably hit that wall too. I wonder how many non-
| teslas have hit the same spot.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, but that's not the old version. The latest versions
| are failing in new and interesting ways. /s
| ogre_codes wrote:
| The Tesla should have caught that.
|
| But that is the stupidest way of temporarily? (I hope)
| relaning a highway ever. What were they thinking?
|
| One of those situations where Musks insistence on not using
| LIDAR is clearly wrong.
| jiofih wrote:
| The car has radar which can see that wall. It's most
| likely a problem of _what to do_ , which humans face just
| the same - do you swerve into the right lane potentially
| causing a much worse accident?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Can radar see concrete? I thought radar was only reliable
| for metal obstacles.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I believe Teslas rely 100% on cameras for this type of
| maneuvers. Regardless, it didn't need to swerve into the
| next lane, just move to the right 6 inches in the same
| lane.
| aembleton wrote:
| It could check its side cameras first.
| Shivetya wrote:
| LIDAR would not have made any difference if the car is
| not coded to handle the situation, let alone how in the
| hell is that even legal? We can only make an assessment
| of what the car saw if he were lucky enough to have the
| screen data as seen in car if not all telemetry from its
| recordings.
|
| I own a TM3 and I do not have the "FSD beta" that is in
| limited testing. I will say that the car display portion
| of the UI really does not impress me in what it shows and
| does not show.
|
| As in it is damn happy to show cones and garbage cans but
| I have instances where it showed me cones front and back
| of a vehicle but did not draw the vehicle in between.
| Same with a floating garbage can where sometimes the
| loader was visible but the truck itself would wink in and
| out.
|
| I really wish people would quit ascribing super natural
| abilities to LIDAR let alone superiority. Plus I really
| want to see studies done which show the impact having
| hundreds of LIDAR equipped vehicles would have on people,
| animals, and even insect, life. (then again how many
| vehicles in traffic does it take to cause an issue for
| them)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| The only reason I mentioned LIDAR is because I strongly
| suspect the reason the Tesla didn't avoid that is because
| the angle of the sunlight made that pillar difficult to
| see.
|
| I fully agree with you that that spot on the road is
| pretty horrible, which is why I mentioned it. But dealing
| with crappy roads is the inherent problem any self
| driving car has. It's the car's job to not hit things.
|
| I own a Model Y and I feel like Tesla's autopilot gets a
| worse rap than it deserves. But there is an inherent
| disconnect between what the car is capable of and what
| some people presume it is capable of. Tesla doesn't help
| this with their branding.
|
| Why did the driver just let his car plow into the pillar
| instead of taking control? Were they even looking up at
| the time? Would you have let your car drive into a pillar
| like that? I'd like to think I would have, but perhaps
| not.
| shock-value wrote:
| Interesting, I think this is the spot: https://www.google.c
| om/maps/@34.0357838,-118.169596,3a,75y,2...
|
| Seems like when the Street View pic was taken this was not
| a lane. I'm shocked it was converted into one. Seems very
| dangerous, for human or AI.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| > This means Honda is promising your Honda will not silently
| drive you into a wall as the Tesla autopilot is known to do.
|
| If Tesla only sold 100 vehicles, I assume it could also have
| avoided them driving into walls...
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Stats matter, Tesla has a million cars on the road. Choose a
| random 100 and odds are very favorable you see no accidents.
|
| If Honda had a million cars on the road, I would not be
| surprised if the accident rate was well over that of even
| humans drivers.
| 2rsf wrote:
| Maybe, but in Tesla's case it's a known bug/design choice
| that can probably be consistently reproduced and not just a
| random edge case.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Is that the case? Most people get into an accident at least
| once in their lifetime and most people don't drive for 100
| years.
|
| It certainly wouldn't be statistically significant but over
| the course of a year or two you'd except a couple accidents
| for 100 cars.
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