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Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

economist.com

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Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#61

Post by simion314 »

zaroth wrote: post #50
robotresearcher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data that supports what you think?

The quarterly safety numbers that Tesla releases are difficult to draw conclusions from, because they do not represent a controlled experiment over the same road conditions. However here are the numbers for millions of miles per crash (higher is better). With AutoPilot, Without AutoPilot but With Active Safety Measures, Without AutoPilot or Active Safety Measures, and NHTSA Average Vehicle 19Q3 - 4.34 2.70 1.82 0.50…

Those numbers are useless for concluding anything about what would happen if you remove the human completely, there are videos that show how the human intervened and saved the car from certain crash and I this situation should be counted as "Deaths" for the AI only column.

Driving assistants would improve safety certainly, but removing the driver and letting the assistant drive will need real world like tests, for now maybe you could have an independent group monitoring a number of Teslas and checking each time a human intervened and give a score on how bad the AI was.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#62

Post by robotresearcher »

rayiner wrote: post #57
robotresearcher wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article describes a failure of Tesla’s system that had terrible consequences. It gives no data comparing with human performance.

That article describes a systematic design defect of Tesla’s system. (It’s a defect that all camera based systems have. They are designed to ignore stationary objects because they can’t adequately distinguish background objects from obstacles.) Car and Driver tested this last year, and the Tesla ran into the stationary dummy nearly every time. This is something humans have almost no problem dealing with.

Assuming what you say is true, is the Tesla system worse than a human driver overall in its operating domain?

Humans have weaknesses too. What do the data say on their relative performance? I’m not taking a position here, just asking for data.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#63

Post by robotresearcher »

bsamuels wrote: post #41
robotresearcher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data that supports what you think?

Sure, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal...

That link does not provide data either way. In fact it explicitly declares its inability to do so:

“Cars driven under traditional human control are currently involved in approximately 1.18 fatalities for every 100,000,000 mi (160,000,000 km) driven.[3] According to many automotive safety experts, much more data is yet required before any such clear and demonstrably higher levels of safety can be convincingly provided”

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#64

Post by zrm »

goatinaboat wrote: post #34
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or even rocket science. One bad driver kills themselves and maybe a handful of others. One bad software update kills... everyone. So, the demand that the software be near-perfect is not at all unreasonable. It’s strange not to acknowledge this fundamental difference.

Problems like that have technical solutions. You phase in updates over time. A hundred vehicles a day for the first week after release, then a thousand a day, then ten thousand a day and so on. That way if there is a serious bug, you find it when it's running on hundreds of cars rather than hundreds of millions.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#65

Post by listenallyall »

theieindjri wrote: post #38
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype. How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

I agree and think a lot of smart people still don't really comprehend how non-linear the task is. In other words, they believe if a self-driving car handles itself properly in 95% of situations, the final 5% is right around the corner, when in fact the final 5% (often the difference between life and death) may, in all likelihood, take longer to get right than the previous 95%. It's just that much harder to be perfect than to be pretty good.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#66

Post by pinkfoot »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #45
robotresearcher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data that supports what you think?

That's not how this works. If the cars are safer, there should be independent data that shows this. As it is, we get one-sentence "safety reports" from the manufacturer with a single data point. They're not safer by default because the manufacturer says so.

Unless you are Boeing.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#67

Post by listenallyall »

zrm wrote: post #64
goatinaboat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or even rocket science. One bad driver kills themselves and maybe a handful of others. One bad software update kills... everyone. So, the demand that the software be near-perfect is not at all unreasonable. It’s strange not to acknowledge this fundamental difference.

Problems like that have technical solutions. You phase in updates over time. A hundred vehicles a day for the first week after release, then a thousand a day, then ten thousand a day and so on. That way if there is a serious bug, you find it when it's running on hundreds of cars rather than hundreds of millions.

Just like 346 people flying Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines became unwilling parts of a "technical solution". No thanks.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#68

Post by KaiserPro »

rayiner wrote: post #46
baroffoos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same Ideally we should not be accepting either. It is outrageous how many people we allow to be killed regularly for slightly more comfortable transport.

Cars are way more comfortable and more convenient than public transit. Working Parisians who take transit spend 113 minutes a day commuting: https://www.thelocal.fr/20160418/parisians-spend-23-days-a-y... DC, where most people drive, averages about 70 minutes. Commuters in Dallas, where everyone drives, spend just 54 minutes a day commuting: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Hou...

your implied conclusion is that its better to drive doesn't stand up.

You _can't_ drive to central paris. London you're looking at a £15 charge and a time penalty of ~15-45 minutes.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#69

Post by KaiserPro »

rmason wrote: post #14
xbmcuser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that ditching Lidar by Musk is the wrong move. From what I have read most if not all the self driving accidents that Tesla have been involved in could have been avoided if a Lidar type sensor was involoved. With tech available trying to use the same limits as human vision is stupid.

I agree with Musk and George Hotz that lidar is never going to get there. That's because in Michigan the terrain that lidar has mastered changes drastically every time it snows. For those of us in snowy climates limiting us to self-driving to seven months a year isn't going to cut it.

Lidar has no problem with snow, only when its _snowing_. However, if visibility is reduced, a pure visual approach is going to be even worse.

Musk made a mistake, and he's spending billions to prove that he never made it.

snow makes HD maps somewhat less useful, as the terrain changes shape. But then, you need a map that evolves. Sadly for musky, the only company that can do that using purely visual data is Scape Technologies. Not even lyft can do that.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#70

Post by KaiserPro »

robotresearcher wrote: post #62
rayiner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article describes a systematic design defect of Tesla’s system. (It’s a defect that all camera based systems have. They are designed to ignore stationary objects because they can’t adequately distinguish background objects from obstacles.) Car and Driver tested this last year, and the Tesla ran into the stationary dummy nearly every time. This is something humans have almost no problem dealing with.

Assuming what you say is true, is the Tesla system worse than a human driver overall in its operating domain? Humans have weaknesses too. What do the data say on their relative performance? I’m not taking a position here, just asking for data.

Look, "autopilot" works on highways, where there is a median. Everything goes the same direction, and there is a minimal amount of clutter.

Its about as easy as driving gets. This is why a level 2 "autopilot" can parade around the place as something that is both innovate and safe.

None of the data compares what happens at junctions, which is where the majority of crashes happen.

It cannot work in suburban sprawl, It can't cope with poor weather, it can only drive on highways.

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