Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:48 AM UTC

idoh wrote: post #129

thematrixturtle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://inaneexplained.blogspot.com/2011/03/fight-club-car-re... TL;DR; If there's a defect that kills or maims people, car manufacturers compute if it's cheaper to recall or just deal with the lawsuits. And this happens regularly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

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

By treating any lies to the customer as criminal fraud.

For some reason misleading investors in a way that causes them to loose money lands you in jail very quickly. You must provide extensive 'inverstment risk' report with the shares you are selling.

But when selling a car or tickets to faulty and deadly airplane, you don't have to inform customers of all the flaws you've discovered.

The lawsuits of Theranos case and Anna Sorokin make it clear that our society has one set of laws for owners of capital, and another one for the plebs.

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

#242

Post by endominus » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:49 AM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #208

oconnor663 wrote: post #193

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…

You missed one option; "You're falling prey to the is-ought fallacy." That is, saying that something is true is not the same as saying that something should be true. The original claim was that from the perspective of management at a company, 1,000 accidents the company is legally liable for is worse than 100,000 it isn't. Which is true! From that limited perspective! The reply "so you're saying it's ok that..." implies that the comment agreed with that perspective, which isn't necessarily the case. It could simply be pointing out a failure state of current management practices and corporate law. But further than that, that phrase is usually a particularly uncharitable one, and I find this usage of it to be more common than any other. I think "implying the speaker believes that the unfortunate condition they pointed out is right and just" is the normal use case for that phrase, rather than trying to bring attention to the consequences of a policy.

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

#243

Post by user3939382 » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:50 AM UTC

switchbak wrote: post #150

user3939382 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they seem to be so confident in their system Having spent a lifetime building networks and software that actually makes me nervous

There's nothing about the way that I've seen automotive related software built that inspires me with confidence. Quite the opposite.

If you've spent enough time building software you learn that the real world almost inevitably introduces edge cases that even the most careful testing couldn't foresee. Self driving to date has proven itself not to be an exception to this.

I just can't imagine how Mercedes could be confident in a highly complex (self driving) system, designed to manage an insanely complex and unpredictable (driving) environment with no real-world tests. Maybe that's coming from the marketing/PR department and not engineering.

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

#244

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:52 AM UTC

I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #84

slg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This decision tells us nothing about the safety of the Mercedes system compared to its competitors Mercedes is just taking notice that grandstanding and PR worked for Tesla, so they are doing the same thing. Everybody who is serious about this knows that unless you get Level 5 it's all just grandstanding. Level 5 won't come from unleashing Level 3 into the world and throwing deers , cyclists and pedestrians at it (…

Bigger cars? Have you seen the new pickups, what do you want to drive, a tank?

Also bigger cars kill more pedestrians

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

#245

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

stubish wrote: post #210

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 think other manufacturers will also be taking responsibility for liability when they come to market. It is just insurance. You can already pay an insurance company to accept liability. The difference with lv3 self drive and beyond is that insurance companies no longer have the data to correctly price their policies, because this is all new and they rely on historical data. The car manufacturers believe they have th…

> You can already pay an insurance company to accept liability

If the car drives over a child in self-driving mode, will insurance company go to jail instead of you?

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

#246

Post by ghaff » Sat, May 07, 2022, 1:58 AM UTC

FinnKuhn wrote: post #226

ghaff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if I am actually asleep, I can barely speak coherently on the telephone within 10 seconds much less take care of situation with a vehicle that a computer has thrown up its virtual hands about dealing with.

Level 3 autonomous driving isn't made with the use case of sleeping but with you being able to do other things while still awake (for example use your phone or watch a movie). For those situations 10s is more than enough time to react.

If you're not paying attention, you can easily end up dozing off. You're either more or less paying attention--and yes drivers' attentions can drift a bit--or you're going to take some time to reacquire some awareness of what exactly is going on.

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

#247

Post by nradov » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:00 AM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #237

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 .

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

Not obvious at all. Companies the size of Mercedes usually self insure for routine risks.

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

#248

Post by drooogs » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:10 AM UTC

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…

I don't really see what it has to do with fight club.

suppose car A and car B have autonomous driving that perform identically across a wide range of conditions. the manufacturer A enables FSD whenever the customer feels like it, but accepts no liability. manufacturer B accepts full liability for FSD use, but restricts it to situations where that's a good bet. car B is safer for the average customer, because it doesn't let them use FSD when it is especially risky. unless I understood a lot more about ML, CV, etc, I would pick car B every time.

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

#249

Post by slg » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #190

slg wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are only thinking about payouts and not the change in sales. Imagine you make $100m selling your anti-flood machines. Maybe your machine fails 10% of the time and a failure costs 2x the unit price. Taking on liability in that situation would bring you down to $80m. Bad deal for you. But what if someone in marketing comes and tells you that market research suggests taking on liability leads to an extra $30m in sales. You come out ahead because the $30m in new revenue exceeds the $26m in new liability. That isn’t confidence in your machine. It is marketing and accounting.

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

#250

Post by slg » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:16 AM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #187

slg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn’t this logic suggest that the economic value of taking on this liability is minimal considering insurers haven’t made cars with competing tech unaffordable for buyers to insure?