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Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

investor.lyft.com

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Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

Theoretically it should be able to use side-facing lidar and cameras to sense that a big truck-like thing is crossing.

Why not radar?

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#62
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

This feels like bad faith. Musk has been making these claims every year since 2016. His coverage of these claims on HN is regular and thorough. I went ahead and Googled one for you from 2020: Tesla will be able to make its vehicles completely autonomous by the end of this year, founder Elon Musk has said. It was already "very close" to achieving the basic requirements of this "level-five" autonomy, which requires no…

Do you mean this comment?

I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year.

Basic functionality for level five isn't level five.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

If the bar is "better than someone talking on cell phone while crossing a railroad crossing without looking," I'll stick to manual driving.

Self driving needs to be better than me, not better than average.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#64
post #3

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK...

Yeah, I remember when the company I worked for continually made forward looking projections that were ridiculous whilst in the process of negotiating a sale. Including the pressure not to report anything that would need to be raised as part of the acquisition.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

Now look at AstraZeneca craze. Vaccines save lives, thrombosis cases are extremely rare. Yet the guy on street is talking to someone on the phone: “Do not take AZ! I repeat: do not take AZ!!!”. Technology has to make just one mistake to lose layman’s confidence.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

> Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? Google is universally accessible to everyone. Please don't be that guy who corners himself into a blind spot. Musk claimed coast to coast self-driving trip by end of 2017. https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driv...

I've searched, but I haven't found any comment from Musk about level five being ready by 2021.

edit - The closest is about the basic functionality for it being ready by the end of the year (see above).

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

> Computers probably can not be worse that the people already on the road.

And yet there is no evidence that computers are better drivers than people are.

I do have to ask, are we using the same computers? I've been using them for decades, and they're consistently buggy, error prone and straight-up factually wrong a lot of the time.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#68
post #58
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blinded by the sun" is an understandable failure-state when you design a driving system that's reliant on cameras. From https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/feds-autopilot-was-acti... : "Theoretically, it should be possible to detect the side of a truck using cameras. But it's not always easy. In some lighting conditions, for example, the side of a trailer might be hard to distinguish from the sky behind it."

How many of the 100 daily fatalities on the roads in the US do you think are caused by drivers not "seeing clearly"? The goal of an AI driver isn't no crashes. The goal is less crashes than human drivers.

Idk if it's that simple, what if you reduce highway deaths by 100 but rural roads go up by 10. If I'm primarily a rural driver that's not enticing.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#69

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

You are probably right about 2021, but I think it is very likely that when L5 does come, it will arrive suddenly and unexpectedly. The same as AlphaGo did. Yes, I am aware that AlphaGo was the result of years of effort. Obviously there is an element of “how do you define ‘arrive’“ here.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#70
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

> I suppose they could program the train schedule in, but what if the train system changes the schedule?

Just check the train locations instead :)

https://rata.digitraffic.fi/api/v1/train-locations/latest/

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