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

thedetroitbureau.com

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

#351

Post by FabHK »

hgomersall wrote: post #313
zip1234 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And not only that. In a situation where, with 20 mph, you can just come to a complete stop before the child, with 25 mph initially you'd hit it with 15 mph.

  vr = (c^2 - 1)^0.5 v1
where v1 is the original slow speed with which you'd come to a standstill just before the obstacle, and v2 = c*v1 is the faster speed, and vr the speed with which you hit the obstacle coming in with the faster speed (assuming you hit the brakes at the same spot, and constant deceleration).

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

#352

Post by FabHK »

easytiger wrote: post #170
bryanlarsen wrote: post #46

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

The effect is huge. Energy goes up quadratically, so here (4->9) you have more than doubling. Stopping distance goes up quadratically (well, due to reaction time there is a linear component in there as well, but still).

And if there is a sudden obstacle that you can just avoid hitting going 20mph initially, you'd hit it with 22 mph if you're going 30 mph initially (assuming no reaction time and constant deceleration).

I submit that that's a massive difference: hitting a child not at all or with 22 mph.

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

#353

Post by qeternity »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #305
qeternity wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Or Tesla are the real masters of the PR stunt, and are not a decade ahead of everyone. EDIT I watched this comment drop from 15 pts to 5 pts. The Elon apologists are out in full force.

I believe that Tesla is ahead in the self-driving industry from an overall technology perspective. What they have failed to do, however, is to tackle the problem of when and how much the user can actually trust their system. This leaves users to struggle to build their own mental models of the same ("Oh, it likes this road", "I don't trust it at high speeds", etc.) This is terrible UX. Mercedes seems to be stepping u…

> I believe that Tesla is ahead in the self-driving industry from an overall technology perspective.

What info could you possibly have access to that would give you remotely enough confidence to assess this? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying I doubt you have the info to claim this.

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

#354

Post by arein3 »

sangnoir wrote: post #322
icelancer wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a parallel industry where capturing motion at high speeds is critical, and in the last two decades, the cost of LIDAR and RADAR has barely come down - and the technical specs haven't gotten much better - while the cost of optical continues to absolutely crash through the floor and technical specs skyrocket. Mobile phones and laptops are the obvious main reason for this. Optical tracking (cameras) have econo…

> I work in a parallel industry where capturing motion at high speeds is critical, and in the last two decades, the cost of LIDAR and RADAR has barely come down This doesn't track for me. What was the price of the cheapest Velodyne LiDAR unit 12 years ago, and what is the price of the cheapest today? My not-in-the-industry searching says a Velodyne unit cost $75,000[1][2] 12 years ago. IIRC, estimates of Google's inh…

Apple also puts lidar in the iphone pro models

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

#356

Post by LightG »

jhugo wrote: post #282
zaroth wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Your comment is predicated on the assumption that FSD (the actual system installed in the car, not a future theoretical perfect system) is safer than the average driver in the situations where Mercedes currently disables it. I'm not sure we have data to support that? We know Tesla's autopilot is safer on average, but most of those miles will have been driven in the situations where Mercedes allows it to be used.

"We know Tesla's autopilot is safer on average"

Am I allowed to just use "LOL" on hackernews?

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

#357

Post by zip1234 »

jeffbee wrote: post #265
zip1234 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, fair enough—-looks like I cannot update the original post anymore though

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

#358

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #331
cortesoft wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The overwhelming majority of crashes are because of human error, not hardware failure.

Because we have rigorous laws and liability managing hardware quality and maintenance.

If liability for software will rest with the driver, there are no laws regulating it's quality and maintenance, what is the basis to believe it will be anywhere near ad reliable?

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

#359

Post by maxerickson »

kortilla wrote: post #291
maxerickson wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is just naive. Every company that makes any kind of product has made some kind of trade like this. Costco sells you knives cheaply because they will not be liable if you murder people with them. If the Costco investors were liable for murder every time one of their knives was used to kill someone, you can bet they would just not sell them entirely. Just because a company thinks about liability doesn’t mean it’s…

I'm not sure what your point is. My comment is a statement that corporations do have a responsibility to act in the interests of society, not an analysis of the particular ethics of selling knives or avoiding liability.

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

#360

Post by Forgeties79 »

yissp wrote: post #143
Forgeties79 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t think this is accurate in real life Ehhhh I mean they often don’t say the quiet part out loud but many companies definitely run a variation of the equation he describes.

The "Pinto Memo" [1] being a notable example. Although, as the article says, the cost / benefit analysis was against "societal costs" of the safety issues, not just the cost of litigation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefi...

Yeah, very good example and explanation
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