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

thedetroitbureau.com

311–320 of 410 posts

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

#311
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sal…

Occam's Razor: would only work in the short run, crash data goes to regulators.

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

#312

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).

Yes. The liability factor is a great proof point, but the real tech innovation in my mind is not the self driving code, but instead the attack on the fundamental problem of building a model of where and when their stuff is trustworthy. As you point out, everyone else in the industry has simply punted that very difficult problem to the poor users to figure out!

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

#313
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20mph is considered to be good for survivability, but is not really good from a speed/travel perspective. I believe OP meant maybe 40mph is a good balance between the two factors of speed (higher is better) and survivability (higher is better) from a corporate risk / insurance perspective. Raising one of these lowers the other - so the actual threshold depends on how you value speed / convenience vs accident survivab…

20mph is within populated areas and not on a main road. In the US, the norm is 25mph, which isn't that far off.

25mph is >150% of the energy at 20mph. It's a big increase.

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

#314

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.

Autopilot is glorified cruise control and lane keeping. FSD is still occasionally trying to drive you into a concrete pillar and is not available unless you get selected to be a beta tester.

Unless Tesla assumes liability for their systems while you can legaly play on your phone, they are far behind.

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

#315

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

> And this happens regularly Do you have an example to demonstrate regularity that's not nearly 60 years old?

Thesr lawyers claim they got a multi million settlement out of a manufacturer of a defective automobile recently:

https://www.raphaelsonlaw.com/questions/how-much-to-expect-f...

Since it's out-of-court, there is probably a non disclosure agreement. Anyway, it happens enough for lawyers to think it's worth targeting the cases, at least.

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

#316

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

If it doesn't it's because it's not enforced. It's irrefutable that vehicles moving at 20mph are less dangerous than vehicles moving at 30mph.

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

#317
post #281

A point I commonly hear made from both Tesla and Comma.ai for example is that Lidar is far too expensive with Waymo's vehicle costing a total of $200,000 and that cameras alone are sufficient for full self driving. I do think that cameras alone are probably sufficient for full self-driving but every time I hear this point I think to myself that self driving progress is moving so slowly on the camera-only front that L…

,,Lidar might become so affordable by the time camera-only makes substantial progress that by that point it was much more efficient to just have been developing with Lidar from the start.'' Tesla and Comma are already making profit with great margins that they needed a lot when they started developing self driving capabilities. Waymo is using Google's coffers, but so far they lost billions of dollars that they have t…

The problem with Lidar is that it doesn’t work well in bad weather. So it’s not the “endgame” technology - that’s vision. It’s a bridging technology. Whether that bridge is needed today is an open question.

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

#318
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s both, right? The competitors may very well be just as safe in those conditions, but we wouldn’t know based on their liability stance; the Fight Club equation simply doesn’t apply. With Mercedes, the Fight Club equation gives something like a mathematical guarantee of their estimated confidence of the safety of the system. There are no mathematical guarantees from the competitors.

>It’s both, right? The competitors may very well be just as safe in those conditions, but we wouldn’t know based on their liability stance; the Fight Club equation simply doesn’t apply. 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…

Many things can be marketing - the drain cleaner sold in a bottle in a plastic bag doesn’t need it for safety - it needs it because it makes the product look more “dangerous”.

The interesting part is the balance they have to strike - be too lax and everyone uses it and you get the Tesla “autopilot did a big bad” articles; make it too restricted and you get “the damn thing never lets you turn it on”.

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

#319

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).

[deleted]

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

#320

Meanwhile at Tesla: "We're the industry leaders, wait for us!"

This is less sophisticated than Tesla Autopilot (you can do lane changes with AP) which has been in use for years. It's not anywhere close to FSD Beta.

The non-geofenced level 2 system that Mercedes also has, can of course do lane changes and is definitely on par with Tesla's autopilot. This is about their level 3 system, which is ahead of Tesla, both technically, and most importantly regulatory.
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