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

#261

Post by zip1234 » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

wfhordie wrote: post #217

zip1234 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that loads of people drive drunk, drive illegally, and drive dangerously--on public roads. Police enforcement clearly doesn't work. Automated enforcement would. Why should people get to endanger others? The leading cause of death for children and teens almost every year is 'motor vehicle crashes' and it wasn't the children and teens causing those.

>Why should people get to endanger others? This is a dangerous frame for this argument. "Get to" implies a "right," or that the action is condoned somehow. It's not. Not everything bad in the world needs to be prevented by government action. We could stop all traffic deaths today by banning cars. We could stop all forms of obesity by making everyone drink Soylent. Personal liberty prevails because, in the end, the kn…

Obesity isn’t putting others at risk in the same way. Cars endanger others. People make a special exception to norms for cars because it is hard to look past the convenience of them.

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

#262

Post by upbeat_general » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:48 AM UTC

FinnKuhn wrote: post #233

jeffbee wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's important to distinguish the sensor range vs. the range at which your model can accurately perform detection.

There's time involved in solidifying the prediction, performing computations, and you also want a safety margin for a backup system to intervene, etc.

Lower speeds means you have more timing tolerance for all your systems.

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

#263

Post by MBCook » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #216

MBCook wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phantom traffic jams are so common, where things aren’t moving as fast as they should because people keep slamming on their brakes and scaring the people behind them (who in turn do the same). Even if the original reason was good I imagine it makes a lot of real life traffic jams worse. But if the cars are all driving themselves, wouldn’t they avoid that? I wonder if traffic jams would get smaller just from the lack…

Some years ago, I read an article claiming the opposite. I could not find it again, but the main arguments, as I remember them where, that a) if self-driving cars drive according to the law, they drive slower and with greater distance from the car in front than human drivers, and b) for people to feel comfortable inside a self-driving car, the car must accelarate and break more smoothly than a human driver does, who…

I could easily see you being correct too. Unfortunately I don’t think there is any way to truly know until real life hits that point.

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

#264

Post by upbeat_general » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #258

halotrope wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It should be kept in mind that Mobileye solution has not really seen a wide rollout and scrutiny yet. One can be optimistic considering that the CEO Amnon Shashua is known for a very careful and responsible conduct compared to e.g Tesla. This apparently let to them having a falling out because Tesla overpromised on the old stack selling it as “Autopilot” when it was L2 at best. Which resulted in them doing FS…

The levelling system in self-driving really needs to die. If Autopilot is L2 at best how is the OC L3? What features does the Mercedes Drive Pilot solution have that AP does not?

LiDAR for one: current SOTA monocular depth estimation is pretty poor compared to even poor LiDAR

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

#265

Post by jeffbee » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:51 AM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #259

sib wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 164% more energy - not exponentially.

You used 1/2mv^2? It is 2.64 times the energy. Squared means it is increasing exponentially

No, quadratically. Exponentially would be if it was some term raised to the exponent of the velocity.

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

#266

Post by dghughes » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:54 AM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #228

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".

Most car accidents are 100% operator error, it'd be really far fetched to try to blame those on the manufacturer. Autopilot not so much, the point stands.

Launch control option added by car manufacturers I'd say is 100% the car manufacturer's fault they thought of it, installed it, promoted it, but it's pointless and dangerous.

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

#267

Post by MereInterest » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:59 AM UTC

endominus wrote: post #242

MereInterest wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..." impl…

> 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.

I think I'd put that as a subcategory of the second case, that the options were considered and this one was considered the best. That may mean that it is the least worst of several bad options, or that there are restricted options to choose from.

> Which is true! From that limited perspective! ... It could simply be pointing out a failure state of current management practices and corporate law.

I definitely agree, this is a fantastic example of options having been considered and rejected. In this case, the alternative would be "A self-driving car company accepts more liability than they can handle, and go bankrupt. This saves lives in the short-term, but costs lives in the long-term." It can then be the start of an entirely different conversation of how to avoid that failure state, and what would need to change in order to still get the benefits of that decision.

> The reply "so you're saying it's ok that..." implies that the comment agreed with that perspective, which isn't necessarily the case.

I'd make a distinction between a comment agreeing with a perspective and a commenter agreeing with a perspective. One is based solely on the text as it is written, and the other is a human's internal belief. It's not necessarily a statement that the person is wrong, but that the words they have spoken may have unintended consequences. The difference between "So you're saying $IDEA." and "So you believe $IDEA."

> 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.

Good point. In situations where there are no long-term social relationships to be maintained, and where there isn't a good chance for a reply, the message given to the audience is the only one remaining. This is a major issue I have with any social group beyond a few dozen people, and one that I don't have any good solutions for.

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

#268

Post by tiahura » Sat, May 07, 2022, 2:59 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #60

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).

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 .

Legally, they’re all liable.

If your product is unreasonably dangerous and defective, and that defect is the proximate cause of injury to another, you’re responsible.

I know nothing of German law, but from a US legal perspective, it appears that MB is just promising what they already have to do - compensate those harmed by defects in their products.

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

#269

Post by cortesoft » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #234

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 .

'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

You are already going to be to blamed if you get in an accident for most hardware failures in a car. Why is this one so different?

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

#270

Post by blhack » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #253

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as majority of below 40mph driving will be in city streets with pedestrians, frequent turns and more variables What this article fails to mention, but other articles on this system mentioned in the past, is that this system can be enabled only on designsted highway streteches. So no city driving. Here: https://group.mercedes-benz.com/documents/innovation/other/2... , page 18, Operational Design Domain.

Yeah, this seems barely beyond Tesla's Autopilot and not even close to the FSD Beta.

Neither autopilot nor FSD would let me take my attention off of the road. It sounds like this thing is fine if you're distracted, as long as you can take control within 10 seconds.