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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

theregister.com

361–370 of 778 posts

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#361
post #200
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude it's totally following the law. You're allowed to enter the intersection for an unprotected left even if it's not clear to turn (possibly not if the end of the intersection you're going to is full of cars). If you are in the intersection, you're allowed to clear when possible regardless of the color of your light. Most intersections with unprotected left turns let you fit at least a whole car, sometimes two in t…

While you are allowed to enter the intersection during a yellow, you are also considered legally to have been warned and would be consider liable if doing so causes an accident. This extra liability would seem like making self driving cars error on the side of stopping to be in the interests of auto makers who would be exposed to that liability.

How would entering on yellow cause an accident?

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if we built more of those, more people would be within walking distance of them.

Trains for local transportation make no sense. Trams for high-throughput and buses for everything else is the only sensible thing for local public transport.

> Trains for local transportation make no sense

Depends what you mean by "local".

For the :last mile", well duh.

But for journeys over 20km there is nothing like trains for efficiently moving vast numbers of people.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#363
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, in LA, I turn off FSD basically every minute while trying to use it, due to it doing something slightly “inhuman” or not ideal/too to the letter of the law, signaling incorrectly while staying in a lane that curves slightly, etc. I can’t imagine letting it go for a full hour without causing some road rage or traffic blockage. To be clear there is a definite driving “culture” in LA that is very permissive…

Every time you disengage it invites you to leave immediate voice feedback as to why, and presumably they are using all this feedback in conjunction with camera and data feeds from cars that are opted in (which includes all FSD beta cars I believe). So, they are getting what they need to make it better.

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Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#364
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without any comparison to humans those numbers are completely meaningless

> Without any comparison to humans those numbers are completely meaningless I disagree. What I want to know, is is it safe? Not is it safer than the average human driver, but is it safe in an absolute sense. When a human driver crashes we can almost always pin the cause down to human error. Errors caused by some human failing, being less than they could be. The promise of machines is that they are consistent. They ar…

1. It's the adaptive cruise control, not the FSD.

2. What would a good absolute number for that period be? Our threshold can't be zero or we'd have to give up every technology from showers/baths (~60x more deadly) to fresh produce (E. coli, salmonella, listeria).

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#365
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will almost accelerating straight into the guard rail at 30 mph do it? - https://youtu.be/sNBEHumIHJI?t=14 https://www.carscoops.com/2022/05/tesla-driver-claims-model-...

That road is not within the operating requirements of the Mercedes L3 which is only allowed on highways where such turns are never found.

Plus it's a U-turn situation on ancient version of FSD Beta from two years ago (see the dotted lines in the display, or the YouTube upload date for that matter) that did not support U-turns. And it's not necessarily clear it wasn't going to brake more abruptly if the driver had not intervened.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#366
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time you disengage it invites you to leave immediate voice feedback as to why, and presumably they are using all this feedback in conjunction with camera and data feeds from cars that are opted in (which includes all FSD beta cars I believe). So, they are getting what they need to make it better.

The problem with Tesla is the lack of LiDAR not training data. You need to be able to accurately do bounding box detection in order to determine whether that billboard of a person is real or not or if that dog with a hat should be avoided. Research has conclusively shown that vision only systems simply can't match LiDAR for this task.

Don't humans drive with vision only?

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#367
What do we want from self driving cars?

Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap.

That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it.

Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) is great. Helpful, especially in city driving.

I would appreciate "automated rumble strips" that warns me gently if I veer out of my lane.

Stopping at a parking spot, push a button, and park my car for me, less useful but still worth it.

But unless I have L5, and can turn my back on the road as I drink my vodka drink, (would that be L6? The impossible dream....) I am not interested in anything that lets me take my hands off the when whilst driving on any road. It seems too dangerous.

As a computer programmer I make my living building complex machines, and I have a very deep distrust of machines built by my comrades, at Tesla or Mercedes.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't legally enter an intersection (advance past the stopping line if present) until you are clear to perform your transit of the intersection. Left on red is never legal and marginal on yellow.

The law here is clear. There has to be "sufficient space on the other side" before you enter the intersection. There is no need to make the entire maneuver at once.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#369
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attempting and failing is clearly, clearly worse for the general public and in my opinion Tesla should be strictly liable.

It's not necessarily worse, since there is a person driving the car who can prevent the car from behaving badly. What's the safety difference between this and a regular cruise control, which will happily plow you into a wall or car if you don't intervene? And, empirically, there's no evidence that these cars are less safe when driving this way. Tesla claims people driving with FSD enabled have 4x fewer accidents than…

You do not get to assume safety in a safety-critical system, period. The burden of proof lies with the entity trying to release a dangerous product to prove that it is safe, not demand everybody else to prove that it is unsafe. The entire argument that there is no evidence that it is unsafe and thus it is okay is wrong to its very foundation. It is such a bad argument that a licensed engineer would stand a good chance of literally losing their license if they advocated such a safety-regressive position. Whoever you heard that from who is actively actually promulgating such inane logic is completely unqualified to talk about safety-critical systems engineering and should be completely ignored.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#370
post #220
post #43

Friendly reminder that this system is HEAVILY limited, with the following restrictions: - Must be under 40 mph - Only during the daylight and only on certain highways - CANNOT be operated on city/country streets - CANNOT be operated in construction zones - CANNOT be during heavy rain or fog or flood roads And for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjZSZTKYEU4 Tesla FSD navigating the complex city streets of…

I have a Model 3 in Europe with the so-called FSD, and it’s mostly terrible. I regret paying for it. The car often doesn’t understand even speed limit signs, so it fails at the bare minimum of safety. Recently I visited LA and a friend gave me a drive in their Model 3. The difference in sensor interpretation quality was massive compared to what I see back home. That gave me hope of my aging Model 3 still seeing impro…

> Model 3 in Europe with the so-called FSD

No Teslas in Europe offer the FSD Beta program.

If you have purchased the "FSD capability," your car should be upgraded to include FSD Beta (or "release") at some point in the future. In the meantime, what you have is essentially Enhanced Autopilot with some bonus features like automatic lane changing on freeways.

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