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

#271

Post by zaroth » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:06 AM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #266

Aperocky wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It clearly has a point, because they successfully market and sell the feature. And everything is dangerous to some degree.

Clearly it is not 100% their fault because the feature can certainly be used responsibly.

Is there a more nuanced and substantive form of your argument against developing and selling a launch control feature?

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

#272

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

aperson_hello wrote: post #231

fragmede wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 retrofitt…

Legally, it’s up to the jury.

Each side has the right to bring in experts to testify about what were reasonable design choices, what was greed, and what was just a bone headed mistake.

If the jury concludes that the product wasn’t unreasonably dangerous or defective, defendant wins. If they find that is was, plaintiff wins.

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

#273

Post by rodgerd » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:08 AM UTC

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).

> AFAIK, no other manufacturer does this for their systems (which capabilities they often make rather wild claims about).

What's interesting is the level of nit-picking scrutiny this is attracting compared to the uncritical defence of those wild claims that we're seeing here. A whole lot of copium.

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

#274

Post by zaroth » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

drooogs wrote: post #248

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…

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…

No, this reasoning is flawed.

The baseline safety of cars is an absolute shit show. 30,000 people dying every year and trillion dollars of damages and lost productivity.

Car A can enable FSD in all cases, be safer in all cases, but still not be a good deal economically for the manufacturer to accept liability.

Car B could be making drivers less safe overall by preventing them from enabling FSD in most cases, but at least they aren’t liable.

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

#275

Post by gota » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:16 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #269

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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?

I guess because appropriate usage and maitenance makes that kind of hardware failure extremely unlikely, no?

I can be "warned" to check for issues if the car is older, creaking, seems to be "driving" different etc

A mistake in a mostly completely uninterpretable bundle of software is definetely much sneakier. You can't prepare for it

So I guess that's one argument.

The other aspect of the same argument would be that if you're in an accident due to your car breaking in a way that is obviously the fault of the maker, they will absolutely eat the liability. I think this is how a few recall cases get kickstarted

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

#276

Post by zaroth » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:22 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #246

FinnKuhn wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We’ve gone from “unless you’re actively engaged you can’t possibly be ready to takeover immediately” to “unless you’re actively engaged you are easily going to be sleeping”.

People fall asleep behind the wheel all the time. They just usually crash and maybe die when this happens, if FSD is not enabled at the time.

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

#277

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:24 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #246

FinnKuhn wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you can't stay awake then you need to not use this feature. If you're not exhausted it should be an easy task. If you are exhausted, arrange something else.

Attention drifting is supposed to be fine. That's the entire point of level 3. How long do you think you need to regain focus? Maybe a different brand will cater to that amount of time, or you can lobby regulators.

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

#278

Post by zaroth » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:25 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #46

daenz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if 40mph is a magic number that is a good tradeoff between speed and survivability (and injury-related out-of-court settlements)

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.

This is only on highways. Survivability is concerned only with passengers not pedestrians.

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

#279

Post by zaroth » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:35 AM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #261

wfhordie wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It’s not a stretch to say that the obesity epidemic in the US is causing limited health care resources to be redirected to a vast number of people with self-imposed health issues, leading to significant deaths and under-investment in populations with diseases that were not self-imposed.

However this is in no way is a convincing argument for government to take over control of what people stuff in their mouths.

Things can pretty much always be made safer by eliminating personal freedom. The safest human protected by the best 5-laws-safe robot overlords probably doesn’t get outside all that much.

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

#280

Post by scrozier » Sat, May 07, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #173

scrozier wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Model 3 and love it. But you're 100% right: the "full self driving" claim Musk/Tesla has been making for years is bizarre. I live in a major city and have never had a trip using FSD where I didn't have to take control multiple times. At times, updates seem to make it get worse. Simple example, on a highway, it can't even keep the car in the middle of the lane through moderate curves. It almost always drifts t…

> using FSD Unless you mean FSD Beta, Autopilot is just lane keep and adaptive cruise control, and doesn't take turns for you. Even if you bought the $12k option you don't have the beta until you reach that 98% or better safety score and opt in.

We’ve paid for something several times now. They always make it sound like the car drives itself.

But the real point of my comment was that if they can’t even keep the car in the middle of the lane, I seriously doubt their ability to handle situations an order of magnitude more difficult.