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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

theregister.com

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Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#321
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla FSD navigating the complex city streets of LA for 60 minutes with zero human intervention. 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a...

Autopilot is just fancy cruise control. How many crashes have there been with cruise control turned on? It's just a completely meaningless thing to even look at. How many crashes would there have been during those miles without autopilot?

Tesla doesn’t sell Autopilot as cruise control though.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, that is shockingly low! 43,000 people die in car crashes in the US every year, and only 17 in Teslas since 2019. That's only 1 in 7500.

These statistics are meaningless. How many Tesla cars with full self driving are there compared to regular cars? A Tesla with FSD will only be using FSD a small fraction of the time. If we had statistics on the number of hours FSD was active compared to the number of hours all other car driving of all cars we might be able to compared these numbers. Hour wise, I think normal driving is way above 7500:1.

Why are people willing to excuse things because they happen in a car? If an AI power tool were going haywire once in a while and chopping the arms off of bystanders near by, would we find that acceptable because people using non-AI powered tools also chop off their body parts sometimes? 'We can't know if it would have happened if a person were in control' is not an argument that would fly for anything else just as dangerous.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#323
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Boeing execs ended their career in disgrace after killing hundreds of people in pursuit of lower training costs ?

Dennis Muilenburg. 189 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610 157 people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_30... That's 346 people killed. Here's an article about his being fired in disgrace after this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/business/Boeing-ceo-muile...

Wow, totally missed anyone at all was held accountable for that. It’s not much but something at least.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#324

Many people are saying Tesla FSD is far more advanced, and I've seen videos of A Tesla driving around LA for 2 hours completely autonomously so I agree Tesla FSD is the world leader by far and blows what Mercedes has built out of the water. However Mercedes are taking liability whilst their system is in use which implies Tesla takes no liability whilst their system is in use. I'm surprised Tesla is scared to take leg…

If I were Tesla why would I take responsibility for something no one is forcing me to take responsibility for? Lawmakers are responsible for this charade and its embarrassing to me that a company can be so misleading with marketing and get away with it.

Because it means the feature is actually useful.

If the human "driver" is liable for what an autonomous car does, it means you have to watch the car like a hawk. At that point, may as well be driving.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA has an unwritten law where 2-3 cars make unprotected lefts after oncoming traffic has cleared on yellow/red lights. Letting FSD drive, it can’t honor this “cultural” (technically illegal) behavior. If I am operating it, off goes FSD in that moment.

It’s legal to turn left in such a case as long as you entered the intersection already. So at least the first 1-2 cars are not doing anything illegal

Yeah, but sometimes the second and usually the third (and fourth - I have seen it!) are not in the intersection.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#326
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We know Tesla cannot match Mercedes" - how? You know this? "reckless" "untrained fanboys" "defective software" - what is this tone? Why is it reckless? Why do the fanboys need training? Why do you think the software is defective? These are significant unjustified claims! To me, it seems each company has a different strategy for self-driving, which aren't directly comparable. Beta testing with relatively untrained pe…

>how? You know this? California seems to think so. >Beta testing with relatively untrained people on public roads seems necessary for either strategy though. Then why is Tesla the only company doing it? Mercedes has an L3 system shipping today and they didn't see any need to endanger my life to build it.

Mercedes' system does not do most of the things Tesla's does, right? Such as stop at stoplights or make turns, or do anything at all off-highway. It's a significantly different product, and since they didn't try to do many of the things Tesla is trying to do, it's pretty difficult to claim that those things aren't necessary because Mercedes didn't do them, when they haven't even attempted to deliver the same feature.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#327
post #2

"Slow and steady" better than "move fast and break things"? :-)

40k+ people die per year in car accidents in the US alone. I would say "move fast and break less things" is better.

You know how you could REALLY fix that?

1. Actual car checks everywhere. I've seen some crazy cars in the US that would be impounded ASAP in most of Europe.

2. Add pedestrian safety requirements for new cars, which would practically ban tall cars (trucks and SUVs) except for professional use.

3. Something for smartphones, not really sure about the best attack angle.

This "might not ever happen" self driving shtick is just moving the goalpost into the middle of nowhere.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#328
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] (2) (A) “Autonomous vehicle” means any vehicle equipped with autonomous technology that has been integrated into that vehicle that meets the definition of Level 3, Level 4, or Level 5 [2] (c) The manufacturer has in place and has provided the department with evidence of the manufacturer's ability to respond to a judgment or judgments for damages for personal injury, death, or property damage arising from the oper…

Sorry, where do you get "accept liability" from "ability to respond to a judgement for damages"? That's not a requirement to pay, that just requires that the company have the ability to pay if they are found liable! It's the corporate equivalent of requiring liability insurance. Show me the contract (or hell, even a press release) where Mercedes acknowledged accepting liability in the US. I really don't think this ha…

Why are you quoting "accept liability" as if its something I actually said?

> Show me the contract (or hell, even a press release) where Mercedes acknowledged accepting liability in the US.

I'm not sure why this is the bar to clear, there is no reason Mercedes would want to potentially open themselves to more responsibility than the law requires. That said, it should be obvious to most people that Mercedes is taking some legal exposure when they:

1) call their product SAE L3 when SAE L3 is the legal definition of a vehicle where the operator doesn't have to pay attention under certain circumstances.

2) tell the user they can watch movies while driving! (no US manual available yet but they make a similar statement in the press release) https://moba.i.mercedes-benz.com/baix/cars/223.1_mbux_2021_a...

That very obviously speaks to their level of confidence in their system compared to something like FSD:

> It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention on the road.

some legal analysis of US law on AV liability if you're interested: https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#330
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res... "once a driver turns on Drive Pilot, they are "no longer legally liable for the car's operation until it disengages." The publication goes so far as to say that a driver could actually pay zero attention to the road ahead, play on their mobile phones, and even watch a movie. If the car were to crash, Mercedes would be 100 percent responsible."

Yes, but is there any evidence this is actually happening? Not that they announced it might a year ago.

Folks, don't downvote me, show me where Mercedes actually says they are taking liability for actual cars that are actually on the road with customers. What people cite on this is a vague marketing puff piece from a year ago. If they are doing it, it should be pretty easy to find out how that is structured from their website or whatever the car owner has signed, or just like literally any evidence whatsoever.
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