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Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

thedetroitbureau.com

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Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#181

Post by deaddodo »

stavros wrote: post #172
Traster wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from a management perspective, even if you're super-confident in your engineers (which you shouldn't be), doing anything other than a very limited slow roll out would be negligent. This is a tectonic shift in liability. It's one thing if you sell 1,000,000 cars and 100,000 get in an accident. It's actually much worse to sell 10,000 cars and 1,000 of them get in an accident and the company is liable .

Oh man, I didn't expect to read a comment saying "it's OK if 100 times more cars have accidents as long as a company isn't liable".

From a corporate perspective, of course it is. It's the Ford Pinto study all over again.

This is why corporate influence on legislation is bad, as their "best interests" often come at odds with morality-based ones.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#182

Post by stavros »

doctor_eval wrote: post #179
stavros wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I didn't expect to read a comment saying "it's OK if 100 times more cars have accidents as long as a company isn't liable".

I read the parent as meaning to say that because Mercedes will be liable, even 1,000 accidents will be a real problem for them. This is a good thing because it shows that Mercedes expects a very low number of accidents while the system is enabled. Mercedes accepting the risk like this is a massive step forward for these reasons. It sets a precedent that hopefully others will follow. They wouldn't transfer the risk if…

I guess, maybe I misunderstood. I was just surprised to read "it's better to have a ton of deaths, rather than a few deaths we're on the hook for".

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#183

Post by eggsmediumrare »

robonerd wrote: post #111
bastawhiz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine this being at least two orders of magnitude higher than most human drivers (one in ten thousand misses versus one in one hundred). How many orders of magnitude better does it need to be before it's good enough?

Missing one in a hundred intersections? That's insane. Most human drivers are much better than that and wouldn't keep their license (or their life) for long if they weren't.

I dunno man, I live next to a school... And based on my observations, I think the actual occurence is probably closer to 1/100 than 1/10000.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#184

Post by stavros »

tra3 wrote: post #177
stavros wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I didn't expect to read a comment saying "it's OK if 100 times more cars have accidents as long as a company isn't liable".

That's not really what the OP is saying though, is it?

True, it was more "the company would rather have 100k accidents it's not liable for rather than 1k accidents it is". Doesn't make it much better for me.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#185

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

lorenzfx wrote: post #20

While the specs sound very underwhelming at first (geo-fenced on some roads, very low speeds, no bad weather), they seem to be so confident in their system, that they will take responsibility for the car when in autopilot. AFAIK, no other manufacturer does this for their systems (which capabilities they often make rather wild claims about).

I'm sorry Dave. There's a 60% chance of rain today. You're going to have to drive yourself.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#186

Post by stefan_ »

easytiger wrote: post #170
bryanlarsen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That threshold is generally considered to be 20mph. Below that speed pedestrian injuries are unlikely to be fatal. It's what urban speed limits are in Sweden, and they average about one pedestrian death a year in the entire country.

The reduction from 30mph to 20mph in London is political CV padding and has had no real effect on outcomes. All based on Chinese whispers. Wouldn't be surprised if your comment ended up as an original source in Islington's justification for some thing or other. It's that flimsy

Average speeds in London are below 20mph. Accelerating absurdly overweight, overpowered cars to anything over 20mph in between stops at lights is just a moral hazard.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#187

Post by coredog64 »

slg wrote: post #76
davidvarela_us wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

few things inspire confidence like companies putting their literal money where their mouth is

But haven't we all seen Fight Club? It isn't a question a confidence, it is a question of financial math. This decision tells us nothing about the safety of the Mercedes system compared to its competitors. All it tells us is that adding these limitations to ensure the system is only used in the safest possible scenarios makes taking over liability more reasonable. That isn't surprising. Their competitors' systems are…

The “Fight Club” math is incomplete for the sake of a good story. Regulators can force a recall on manufacturers and insurance companies can make a car uneconomical to buyers by appropriately pricing in risk. You may argue that the former has been undone by regulatory capture (something I would dispute), but I think we all recognize that insurance companies aren’t particularly charitable.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#188

Post by amelius »

bastawhiz wrote: post #102
amelius wrote: post #67

What I don't get: if deep learning can recognize a crosswalk with 99.99% accuracy, that's very impressive. Yet it is not enough.

I can imagine this being at least two orders of magnitude higher than most human drivers (one in ten thousand misses versus one in one hundred). How many orders of magnitude better does it need to be before it's good enough?

My 99.99% was just a number for the sake of argument. The real accuracy of classification networks is usually in the range of 90-99%. It's not bad for a lot of tasks, but for self-driving I'd say it's far from sufficient.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#189

Post by fragmede »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #37

For me the corollary of this ("you just invented a more expensive railway") is the business model assumptions that go away. Long distance trucking is still a likely winner, but there is still the "last mile / last off ramp". None of the business models touted today survive the new railway problem. That's not to say it's not a valuable technology - it's just we cannot whistle up a human shaped robot that just does wha…

Boston's Big Dig is an example of this. Surface space is now a series of green parks with limited car access, and the cars moving through the city are underground. It's quite lovely, though it's detractors will ask if it was worth the cost.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#190

Post by refulgentis »

slg wrote: post #171
refulgentis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was referencing Fight Club as an example of an auto manufacturer making a life and death decision based off their financial incentives and not the best interest of the customer. The decision to take on liability is about money, not confidence in safety. The Fight Club scene is about how these two things are integrated: their confidence in safety defines their ability to choose to take on liability. Yes, its inten…

This real life example is more complicated than the Fight Club version. It includes more variables like the added sales I mentioned and all these variables are unknown. How can you draw conclusions about one variable in a formula in which you don't know the value of any of the variables?

Not sure what you mean: the movie scene has the same property. It's not about the risk of individual failures of components, it's risk of a payout

Strong indicator I believe my anti-flood machine is good at preventing floods is I'm willing to take on paying for any liabilities you incur from flooding

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