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

thedetroitbureau.com

231–240 of 410 posts

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

#231
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always a tradeoff between cost and safety, how else would you imagine this to work?

I imagine that they'd ddmit that the car as designed is bad and fix or replace the bad cars. Leaving cars on the road that have a design flaw that randomly kills people, because it's cheaper to pay off dead people's families is reprehensible.

There's a question about what a design flaw means though. What about a car that was built without a backup camera because it was older than when they were commonly included? Or built when they were commonly available, but not before they were mandated? Is that a design flaw?

What about something that's more accidental that causes fewer deaths than the lack of a backup camera, but also costs more to fix than retrofitting a backup camera?

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

From the company's point of view this is correct reasoning. The sooner people realize companies do not have any responsibility to be moral the better

They absolutely do have responsibility. There's no reason we should allow investors limited liability if they are going to be assholes about it.

Corporations should only exist because they are net beneficial to the public!

I do agree that enough companies are unethical that it is reasonable to expect it.

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

#233
post #168

It needs to be going under 40mph and on a highway, which sounds like this only works in stop and got traffic on the freeway. Pretty cool.

I wonder why that speed limit would exist. Sensor range? Computational power? It seems like the difference between being able to self-drive at 40 and at 65 on the same road would not be all that significant.

I first thought it might have something to do with the range of LIDAR sensors and breaking distance, but that doesn't seem to be the case as LIDAR sensors can detect objects at around 200m away and a car at 60kmh needs only around 50m to break comfortably. While I don't know if this is the reason 60kmh is the limit for this system to be allowed to drive on German highways a vehicle needs to be able to drive 60kmh, so this might be the reason, but I am not an expert so who knows.

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

#234
post #60

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).

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 .

'This is a tectonic shift in liability. '

Its the only form of liability i consider acceptable - I woupd never use autopilot where I would be to blame if i fail to react in 50 milliseconds once the car fucks up

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

#235
post #110
post #105

> Drive Pilot can only be engaged on a certain highways, and the car must not exceed 40 miles per hour. > The system will only operate during the daytime, in reasonably clear weather, and without overhead obstructions. Inclement weather, construction zones, tunnels, and emergency vehicles will all trigger a handover warning [1]. There's a very limited subset of areas that one would be able to use this. [1] https://cl…

Mercedes system seems as capable as my 2002 Nissan's cruise control.

You, however, aren't allowed to use your phone in these situations with the car manufacturer assuming all liability.

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like almost any summary of the form "so you're saying it's ok that..." is almost without exception not something the other person would agree with.

That's kind of the whole point. If a decision or policy has predictable consequences that aren't being addressed, either the decision-maker is unaware of those consequences or is accepting of those consequences. Asking the question removes ignorance as a possibility, and lets the conversation continue. Sometimes the answer is "No, I was unaware, and I will adjust my decision." Sometimes the answer is "Yes, here are t…

> Sometimes the answer is "Yes, I don't care about those people."

Frequently true but rarely admitted

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

#237
post #60

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).

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 .

Mercedes will obviously outsource the liability to an insurance company. That’s what insurance companies are for.

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breadth of operating conditions is a trade off with reliability of operation. It’s possible to do a lot of things okay, or a couple things perfectly, but not yet possible to do a lot of things perfectly. When you remove the driver from the equation, the requirement for reliability goes up. There’s going to come a day when Tesla is forced to make difficult decisions about their “FSD” system. They’re either going to be…

The big risk that Waymo/Mercedes is taking with this approach is that they do not know what blocking issues they will run into when adding new functionality to these systems. What if driving in rain or snow is incompatible with their architecture and they have to do a major rewrite to expand into that functionality? With the Tesla Approach they already know where the system fails and where the system isn't making any…

"We killed a few people but we got a bitchin' architecture going from the start."

You should be a construction site manager in Qatar.

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

#239
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 .

Mercedes will obviously outsource the liability to an insurance company. That’s what insurance companies are for.

Insurance isn’t magic get out of risk free, if self driving cars have loads of accidents and payouts the cost to insure will correct itself.

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

#240
One of the youtube channels I watch has been testing driver assistance features, and apparently Mercedes didn't do so well. I have not watched the video yet, and I'm just going by the clickbait title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irFzESPCegA

They tested a "brand new Mercedes GLS 450 4MATIC with the maximum level of driver assistance available in this model."

I wonder how much tech that shares with their L3 system..

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