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Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

economist.com

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Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#101

Post by ghaff »

bsder wrote: post #75
theieindjri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype. How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

> How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence Because it doesn't. The issue is that all the self-driving car companies ignore how people actually drive. People memorize their local driving area--it's why teenagers are so incredibly dangerous and why if you put a new stop sign into an area you cause chaos for several months. A self-driving car needs to do the same--the advantage…

Except that when people travel away from their local area and even rent a car they're not familiar with, they don't go randomly crashing into things. They probably have to pay more conscious attention than on a daily commute. But they don't go around crashing into things.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#102

Post by diffeomorphism »

baroffoos wrote: post #10
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

>While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same Ideally we should not be accepting either. It is outrageous how many people we allow to be killed regularly for slightly more comfortable transport.

Ideally, I would like a pony. Realistically there is no alternative option, so there is no question.

> for slightly more comfortable transport

In some large metro areas, maybe. Outside of that bubble millions of people depend on a car to even be able to work.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#103

Post by koonsolo »

crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

The same can be said about airplanes, which have a way longer history of automation.

Anything in an airplane is automated: takeoff, flying and landing. Pilots make mistakes all the time, but they still need to do things manually to keep their practice high.

People just do not want to go in an airplane without any pilots. In metro's it's not that obvious if someone is driving it or not. But airplanes, 'we' want a human pilot to be in control, else we feel unsafe. I think the same can be said about cars.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#104

Post by josefx »

mlonkibjuyhv wrote: post #90
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to have an opinion, this would be it. I don't see why self-driving vehicles can't be dependant on additional self-driving-vehicle-related-signage or sensors embedded in / around / near roads, etc etc. Humans are fairly dependant on additional signage, maps, and navigation tools (Google / Apple Maps).

I would say safety dictates that the car would still have to be safe when such external signals are either missing, wrong or flat out hostile. At that point I don't really see the value they provide.

Make it self driving on specifically marked highways and switch to manual on normal roads. That would free up hours for many people and might even improve traffic congestion.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#106

Post by random_upvoter »

koonsolo wrote: post #103
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

The same can be said about airplanes, which have a way longer history of automation. Anything in an airplane is automated: takeoff, flying and landing. Pilots make mistakes all the time, but they still need to do things manually to keep their practice high. People just do not want to go in an airplane without any pilots. In metro's it's not that obvious if someone is driving it or not. But airplanes, 'we' want a huma…

> Anything in an airplane is automated: takeoff, flying and landing

With airplanes there's a whole system in place to make sure that every airplane essentially gets its own private road. This simplifies the problem of automation immensely.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#107

Post by rocgf »

_xnmw wrote: post #95
listenallyall wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and think a lot of smart people still don't really comprehend how non-linear the task is. In other words, they believe if a self-driving car handles itself properly in 95% of situations, the final 5% is right around the corner, when in fact the final 5% (often the difference between life and death) may, in all likelihood, take longer to get right than the previous 95%. It's just that much harder to be perfect…

Furthermore, even 99.99999% reliability is not good enough, and that's already incredibly hard to achieve. Five 9s of reliability still means 5 minutes of unreliable behaviour per year, which is unacceptable in the context of driving.

Just being pedantic, but those are seven 9s, not five. For five 9s, the downtime is indeed 5 minutes per year, for seven 9s it's about 3 seconds.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#108

Post by _xnmw »

rocgf wrote: post #107
_xnmw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, even 99.99999% reliability is not good enough, and that's already incredibly hard to achieve. Five 9s of reliability still means 5 minutes of unreliable behaviour per year, which is unacceptable in the context of driving.

Just being pedantic, but those are seven 9s, not five. For five 9s, the downtime is indeed 5 minutes per year, for seven 9s it's about 3 seconds.

Still an interesting question: is 3 seconds of erroneous/unreliable behaviour per year acceptable from an autonomous vehicle?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#109

Post by danboarder »

KaiserPro wrote: post #70
robotresearcher wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming what you say is true, is the Tesla system worse than a human driver overall in its operating domain? Humans have weaknesses too. What do the data say on their relative performance? I’m not taking a position here, just asking for data.

Look, "autopilot" works on highways, where there is a median. Everything goes the same direction, and there is a minimal amount of clutter. Its about as easy as driving gets. This is why a level 2 "autopilot" can parade around the place as something that is both innovate and safe. None of the data compares what happens at junctions, which is where the majority of crashes happen. It cannot work in suburban sprawl, It…

Not sure why you state this. I've used autopilot in a Model 3 on city streets and suburbs, it works pretty great.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#110

Post by Slartie »

Zarath wrote: post #71
zaroth wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quarterly safety numbers that Tesla releases are difficult to draw conclusions from, because they do not represent a controlled experiment over the same road conditions. However here are the numbers for millions of miles per crash (higher is better). With AutoPilot, Without AutoPilot but With Active Safety Measures, Without AutoPilot or Active Safety Measures, and NHTSA Average Vehicle 19Q3 - 4.34 2.70 1.82 0.50…

Good to see improvement, but is this controlled for the fact that autopilot is mostly on highways? I'm not sure what the crash rate per mile is on the highway vs driving in a city.

I would bet a body part on it being way lower, especially if we do not limit it to fatal crashes only (I read that statistic quoted above as "all reported crashes", not just those with fatalities).

I had two crashes in my lifetime. Both occurred when driving backwards out of a parking lot. No fatalities, limited damage. Good luck finding such situations while driving on a highway...

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