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Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

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101–110 of 410 posts

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#101
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with ‘driver in the loop only for emergencies’ is that it’s harder for someone to be prepared to react only occasionally (but still promptly and correctly) when outlier behavior happens, not easier. For automated tools like CNC machines, there is a reason it’s just ‘emergency stop’ for instance, not ‘tap the correct thing we should do instead’. But doing an e-stop on a road at speed is a very dangerous acti…

There's sort of an analogous conundrum with Airbus-style automation: the system has various levels of automation and protection (e.g. preventing you from stalling the plane) And then when something goes wrong, you are unceremoniously handed a plane with potentially some or all of those protections no longer active. As an analogy, imagine your FSD car was trying to slow down for something, but along the way there is s…

It’s important to point out that airline pilots are trained to handle sudden emergencies. This has been incredibly successful at scale. But it came great expense of both money and lost lives. And it still isn’t perfect.

The level of training required to oversee full automation is non-trivial if you have to do more than press a stop button.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#102
post #43

A friend of mine who loves Tesla watched this video and said "many humans would have hit that". I feel we'll be hearing a lot of that excuse.

Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations, and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations. But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road a…

I'm not convinced. The debris is clearly visible to the humans a long way off and the adjacent lane is wide open. Avoiding road debris is extremely common even in more congested and treacherous driving conditions. Certainly it's possible that someone texting on their phone or something might miss it, but under normal circumstances it could have been easily avoided.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#103
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the stock price would go up. His detour to fascism and megalomania has chased off tons of liberal environmentalists like myself that are the target audience for electric cars. I cancelled what would have been our replacement Tesla when he was implying on Twitter there can be good reasons for sneaking into the speaker of the house’s house and hitting her husband in the head with a hammer.

The issue is that if you look at Tesla as a normal car company (without an iconoclast CEO/personality), then you need to do normal P/E math, which is going to be sub-100 for sure. Right now it’s easily double to triple that, even with Musks behavior.

Normal P/E math for a car company would put it in more like the 10-20 region - we’re not talking it being double to triple a sensible valuation but seriously something like 15 times…

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#104
post #79

Tangentially - If you as a European happen to drive on US highways, you will noticed that they are heavily littered with fallen cargo, aluminum ladders, huge amount of shredded tires and occasionally a trailer without a towing car... It has been so bizarre for me to observe this. Nobody is cleaning that?

Why are Dutch or Swiss highways so much more pristine than French and German ones? Have you compared distances?

You don't need to drive far, just get on a US highway and there is dangerous litter every few hundred meters. In extreme cases it goes down to few dozens meters. Sometimes it was like driving in some Mad Max movie.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#105
post #95

Tangentially - If you as a European happen to drive on US highways, you will noticed that they are heavily littered with fallen cargo, aluminum ladders, huge amount of shredded tires and occasionally a trailer without a towing car... It has been so bizarre for me to observe this. Nobody is cleaning that?

It depends where in the US you drive. It’s a big country with independent state governments. It’s like saying I was driving in Romania and I was shocked by how bad European highways are. I lived in Texas and the stuff I saw on the highway was crazy, vacuum cleaners, decorated Christmas trees and refrigerators. Most parts of the country interstate and highway systems are pretty clean.

I lived in two parts of California, and New Jersey for almost three decades and I've traveled to a lot of the US for leisure or work.

I honestly can't recall ever feeling like I was going through a markedly different area in either better or worse directions.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#106

> Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises I don't think that's right; I think the stock price entirely depends on people seeing it a vehicle to invest in Musk. If Musk died tomorrow, but nothing else changed at Tesla, the stock price would crater.

The world’s best selling vehicle means nothing? Extremely safe vehicles mean nothing?

I get that it’s way over hyped, but they have real results that can’t be denied

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#107
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people call it in and cops clean it up. We just have a lot of roads and people that poorly packed stuff in trucks

... cops? There's no, like, highway traffic authority with their own maintenance force to take care of this?

I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? I couldn't make out what you said clearly?

All I heard was "taxes".

/s

On a more serious note, in the US we generally go in the direction of fewer services rather than more services. It, of course, leads to massive inefficiencies, like police removing shredded tires. But it's very difficult here, politically speaking, to get Americans to agree to add government services.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#108

A lot of apologists say that "a human would have hit that". That's kind of irrelevant, this technology is meant to be safer and held to a higher standard. Comparing to a human is not a valid excuse...

> That's kind of irrelevant, this technology is meant to be safer and held to a higher standard

I don't think that is the case. We will judge FSD whether you make more or less accidents than humans, not necessarily in the same situations. The computer is allowed to make mistakes that a human wouldn't, if in reverse the computer makes a lot less mistakes in situations where humans would.

Given that >90% of accidents are easily avoidable (speeding, not keeping enough safety distance, drunk/tired driving, distraction due to smartphone usages) I think we will see FSD be safer on average very quickly.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#109

A friend of mine who loves Tesla watched this video and said "many humans would have hit that". I feel we'll be hearing a lot of that excuse.

The humans in the video spotted it far in advance. I think that any human watching the road could easily avoid that.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#110

Tangentially - If you as a European happen to drive on US highways, you will noticed that they are heavily littered with fallen cargo, aluminum ladders, huge amount of shredded tires and occasionally a trailer without a towing car... It has been so bizarre for me to observe this. Nobody is cleaning that?

It's been years since I've seen anything you couldn't drive over that wasn't in the travel lane.

Around here anything big enough to matter gets reported, the cops fling it to the side of the road and it gets picked up on a schedule because they always pick things up a few weeks before they mow (presumably because hitting garbage isn't great for the mowers).

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