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

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

#81

Post by bentcorner »

walshemj wrote: post #21
alpha_squared wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like reliability SLAs, I suspect every extra nine requires an exponential increase in investment. My armchair-know-nothing assessment is we're maybe at 90% coverage* right now, with maybe 10x all investment up until this point needed to reach 99%; then 10x that to reach 99.9%. Even at 99.9%, though, a failure scenario still threatens injuring or killing 0.1% of drivers (350,000 motorists for US alone). * Coverag…

Would not they detect the gates where down ? or are there still that many crossings without gates in the USA

Gates are only a suggestion - signals/gates malfunction so often you can find compilation videos of them on youtube.

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

#82

Post by ethanbond »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #31
ethanbond wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, yes and yes. The business model is complete nonsense otherwise.

The business model isn't nonsense. It justifies a company existing to do what Lyft does, just at a much smaller scale and valuation.

Yes, that’s a good adjustment assuming the need for hundreds (or thousands?) of highly paid engineers isn’t baked into the business model/product.

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

#83

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

admax88q wrote: post #63
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be interesting to put a black box in a car tied to the driver. Anyone who shows patterns of driving worse than average gets a self driving car.

If you are better than average you can keep your dumb car.

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

#84

Post by baybal2 »

adrr wrote: post #76
acover wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not radar?

Because radars lacks resolution. Why my Tesla phantom brakes due to low hanging signs or slow cars in the other lane. They tune it down to ignore these anomalies and it has issues running into disabled cars and emergency vehicles.

You don't need resolution to detect train about to ram into you.

Similarly, lidar resolution is a great overkill, and overcomplication over a moderatly sophisticated mm wave radar, which is on top of that will be much more durable, and reliable.

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

#85

Post by maxerickson »

alpha_squared wrote: post #14
rkalla wrote: 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.

Just like reliability SLAs, I suspect every extra nine requires an exponential increase in investment. My armchair-know-nothing assessment is we're maybe at 90% coverage* right now, with maybe 10x all investment up until this point needed to reach 99%; then 10x that to reach 99.9%. Even at 99.9%, though, a failure scenario still threatens injuring or killing 0.1% of drivers (350,000 motorists for US alone). * Coverag…

We regularize traffic more than your estimate though. Like 99.99% of the 300 mile drive I took yesterday was sitting in a lane.

The hardest part was that Google hadn't mapped a service drive, so it thought the adjacent service drive was the best route (which would be addressed pretty fast if you were trying to deploy self driving service in that area).

I don't think we get to level 5 very soon, but level 4 cars will have the ability to go lots of places pretty soon. If I overestimate driveway distances from yesterday, it's like 99.966% lane miles. There was some construction, but it was already well marked for human drivers.

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

#86

Post by kgin »

mikepurvis wrote: post #45
rkalla wrote: 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.

Or you need a high-bandwidth coverage-everywhere comms system and a robust infrastructure for remote teleop, like what Starsky was building: https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-... Then the steering-wheel-less car at least has the ability to call for help when it's only 98% sure of what to do instead of 99.99% sure. But obviously this kind of model only makes sense in a fleet context, not as a…

Most remote assistance is not live driving. A remote human adds labels and maybe even marks out a safe path for the vehicle so that vehicle has enough information to proceed.

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

#87

Post by Barrin92 »

theluketaylor wrote: post #38
rkalla wrote: 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.

The edge case that I always go to on why truly autonomous vehicles are decades+ away is winter driving. Lane markers and road signs disappear. Slush and salt spray constantly obscure sensors. Winter driving as a human driver requires an entirely different approach and Waymo hangs out in the Arizona desert where there is basically never any inclement weather.

don't even need to go to bad environmental setting. Let's talk about other countries. I haven't seen a lot of self-driving cars in Rome or Mumbai yet, there's a lot of places where traffic rules are treated more like suggestions than actual rules. American style neat wide highways and grid-like streets are not how the places look where most cars are being driven right now already.

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

#88

Post by jandrese »

ecpottinger wrote: post #33
okareaman wrote: post #19

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…

Self driving cars would have to kill over 1.35 million people each year to be as bad as human drivers[1].

But there is no reason we should be happy if a self driving technology "only" kills 1.2 million people in a year. That number is absurd and should not be considered acceptable. I think in the semi-distant future we are going to look at manual operation of a motor vehicle as a dangerous party trick, something only to be attempted by professionals or in limited circumstances like pulling into a field to park or some other low speed maneuvering.

[1] https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/

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

#89

Post by okareaman »

jandrese wrote: post #88
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Self driving cars would have to kill over 1.35 million people each year to be as bad as human drivers[1]. But there is no reason we should be happy if a self driving technology "only" kills 1.2 million people in a year. That number is absurd and should not be considered acceptable. I think in the semi-distant future we are going to look at manual operation of a motor vehicle as a dangerous party trick, something only…

> semi-distant future we are going to look at manual operation of a motor vehicle as a dangerous party trick

totally agree but I'm skeptical of current tech to get there in the near time frame being talked about. It's all in how you define semi-distant

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

#90

Post by okareaman »

admax88q wrote: post #63
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many people on Hacker News think self-driving cars will be a better driver than themselves in the near future?
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