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Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#161
post #30
post #6

As someone who works in the autonomous driving space, it is absolutely mind boggling to me how much blind faith Tesla fans put into FSD. When you compare it to any true L4 system it’s not even close and very unlikely to get close any time soon.

When I was in a Tesla Uber, I found watching the front screen that shows where cars are around you frightening. Cars would frequently move around and change position unexpectedly and in a way that had nothing to do with actual car movements, lane markings would be totally off, etc. If that screen is at all representative of what FSD "thinks" is going on, I'm not at all surprised that there are lots of crashes when re…

IT isn't what FSD sees FSD works with voxels, but they aren't rendering that out for the user, they're basically presenting the basic bare eseentials to entertain people and give people a little info.

To see what FSD is actually seeing see the new parking system that shows the voxels, the backend is like that but they cant afford the budget on the CPU to render that at high speed for visualization

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#162
post #144
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So... I guess I repeat the question: where are you seeing "Tesla fans" using FSD unsupervised? One of the biggest Tesla influencers using FSD without his hands on the wheel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFW4e0Pkz_Y This is explicitly disallowed by FSD terms and conditions. He does this all the time.

That seems like a bad faith argument. Do you genuinely feel that driving with your hands in your lap constitutes dangerous operation? The car asks for your hands on the wheel because that's the primary sensor it uses to monitor attention. In particular, do you genuinely feel that driving an FSD car with your hands in your lap constitutes the kind of inattention we were actually talking about (driving with a .26 BAC!)…

Yes, I genuinely feel driving with my hands on my lap is dangerous. I own a Tesla, use Autopilot (not FSD, but applies to that as well) and always have my hands on the wheel because I know, at highway speeds, I may not be able to react quickly that one time. This is the entire reason Tesla has hands on the wheel requirement.

And the reason for having that requirement, which is crux of the problem, is that the system is incomplete and incapable of safe operation.

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#163
post #48

As I said in another comment, these two were idiots driving drunk. Let's get that out of the way. The bigger issue here is how this deniability is all too convenient for Tesla. The process goes like this: 1. Ship a clearly half baked system called "Full Self Driving". 2. Require driver's hands on the wheel at all times. 3. Be extremely non-transparent about your system's safety. Tesla's crash reports in the public NH…

Full disclosure: participated in Tesla's IPO, own a Tesla. Tesla should be doing two things that would greatly reduce their liability while also keeping customers happy. Overall I think it wouldn't change the number of people buying into FSD anyway so there wouldn't be much downside for them. 1. Offer refunds for those for paid for FSD. Full refund until FSD has been enabled for a year and used more than N times, pro…

> Be clearer in their marketing and on the purchase page about the feature.

Do you have any examples in mind of where this feature was billed confusingly?

The product page and Model S purchase page both include clear disclaimers in both the first sentence or directly below the bulleted feature list.

> Full Self Driving

> Your vehicle will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention and will continuously improve.

https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot

https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#164
post #48

As I said in another comment, these two were idiots driving drunk. Let's get that out of the way. The bigger issue here is how this deniability is all too convenient for Tesla. The process goes like this: 1. Ship a clearly half baked system called "Full Self Driving". 2. Require driver's hands on the wheel at all times. 3. Be extremely non-transparent about your system's safety. Tesla's crash reports in the public NH…

> 1. Ship a clearly half baked system called "Full Self Driving".

In my opinion unless the manufacturer accepts legal liability[1], it's not "self-driving" despite any marketing to the contrary. "Put your money where your mouth is."

Tesla's marketing has been extremely misleading in this regard.

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res...

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the quote from the article really sums it up in plain language, and the argument Musk presents should be familiar to anyone here, who's heard the "Robots > Humans in a car" argument. > “Regardless of how drunk Hans was, Musk has claimed that this car can drive itself and is essentially better than a human,” Bass said. “We were sold a false sense of security.”

I'm no Tesla fan boy, but it seems entirely possible that even the limited capability of FSD was better/safer than a driver whose BAC was 0.26%, even if this one ended up in a fatal crash, as that happens to drunk human drivers at the rate of more than 10K deaths per year in the US. If this is the first FSD death in the world, Tesla is probably thankful that it was someone who was hammered.

I believe this is the first fatality where Tesla can't weasel their way out of the cause. There have been multiple crashes, some fatal, where FSD was engaged but disengaged a split second before the crash. So in the mere seconds between the autopilot disengaging and the impact the driver is supposed to be fully up to speed on what's about to happen and avoid it. Also, a lot of these drivers were behaving in a unsympathetic manor (ie sleeping while FSD engaged) and the jury determined they were being a bit more reckless than what the media would let you believe.

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#166

While I don't know how good Tesla's self-driving is, I do have experience with a limited keep-your-lane system in a BMW. The one that actually steers. It requires a lot of force to override it. And remember, it requires you to keep the hands on the wheel. But you are not expecting to have to fight it, so there are some delays there. Then you're fighting a system that you don't know how much force it takes to override…

I think that's fairly common amongst lane centering implementations. One thing I think is unique about Tesla's autopilot is that if you grab the wheel and override the steering, it disengages AP altogether. That is, including the traffic-aware cruise control. I believe most/all other manufacturers maintain speed unless you also hit the brakes.

It does not - my M3 continues to keep the speed if I override autopilot with the steering wheel. If I press the brakes, then both systems are shut down.

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#167
post #26

One thing I hate about Musk saying things like "They have fewer accidents than people" is that it is only able to be engaged in the easiest of scenarios. So per mile, self driving on the easiest roads barely has less accidents than a human in adverse conditions? That doesn't seem to actually be better than people yet.

Only engaged on the easiest of roads? I haven't been on a road my tesla wouldn't enable lol WTF are you talking about, shit mine works in pooring rain, it complains but drives fine.

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be illegal for them to call it full self drive. It's 100% false advertising not to mention the 'danger' that people will assume it is what it says it is.

It probably is illegal...

I agree. I just can't understand why the FTC hasn't done anything.

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#169
post #13

So there's an interesting legal question here. If someone's drunk (i.e diminished reasoning) and steps into the car expecting that a feature named "full self driving" will safely drive them home, how is responsibility divided between the person who got drunk and the entity who created and named the "full self driving" feature? I don't think even a reasonable person could consistently conclude that "full self driving"…

Well keep in mind you can also overide speed with AP enabled, for all we know the drunk guy was in AP with the gas floored to override AP

Re: Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first 'Full Self-Driving' fatality

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to impossible for me to know how difficult level 5 driving even is since we don't have any machine that can do it. Trying to achieve it has been a good example of turtles all the way down. At the same time I feel like people are ignoring how well self-driving works RIGHT NOW, the rate of accidents is still less than with human drivers. So I'm still pretty optimistic.

How can you know if Tesla won't publicly release stats of interventions or accident per 100k miles?

There is Cruise and Waymo data as well. Though I have not seen anyone independent who has access to that data making any claims about it being safer.
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