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

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

#251

Post by krosaen »

We've lost our sense making ability in our coverage of AV progress. Setting aside Elon's polarizing behavior (which is a big thing to set aside) all of these things seem true:

- Elon bullshits wildly and sometimes delivers

- FSD is far ahead of other available personally owned autonomy - no other system even attempts to drive on surface level streets. FSD works better than you would think - I've been in several flawless rides across town in conditions I didn't expect it to handle.

- FSD doesn't work well enough to rely on it yet, so what's the point for real consumers who don't want to sit there nervously hovering their hands over the wheel even if it is impressive and you might have to ride several hours before anything goes awry.

- We can't really know how close FSD is to being reliable enough because all we have is marketing claims from Tesla, fan boy clips on YouTube, and haters who can't seem to discern where FSD really is ahead, even as it falls far short of hype

What I wish we had was a common metric audited by a third party reliably published in terms of hours until disengagement or something like that across all systems in various conditions.

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

#252

Post by queenkjuul »

KevinMS wrote: post #225

That just seems like bad luck for the experiment. I've never seen anything like that driving on the highway. Was the claim that it could go coast to coast no matter what was thrown at it?

Major debris has been a regular part of highway driving throughout my life

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

#253

Post by foobarian »

ModernMech wrote: post #245
foobarian wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with that characterization of the technical details. However I felt the task those drivers set out was asking a different question: how good would the FSD system be at completing a coast-to-coast trip? I don't think this can be answered after hitting a singular, highly unlikely accident without a lot more trials. Imagine there was a human driver team shadowing the Tesla, and say they got T-boned afte…

If you don't disagree on the characterization of the technical details, then you must realize how very fair it is for us to criticize the system for failing in the exact way it's predicted to fail. We don't need 1000 more trials to know that the system is technically flawed.

What if there is no debris the other 999 times, and the system works fine? The video does not give me that information as a prospective Tesla customer. This looks like a fluke to me.

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

#254

Post by foobarian »

root_axis wrote: post #249
foobarian wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been driving on local and highway roads for 30 years now and I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car. Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure? The thing is, usually there is plenty of traffic ahead that acts very obviously different in situations like this that helps as well. All that to say that I…

> I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car More likely you simply drove around the debris and didn't register the memory because it's extremely unlikely that you've never encountered dangerous road debris in 30 years of driving.

I think it's probably because of mostly driving in enough traffic that other cars would have encountered any critical objects first and created a traffic jam around an impassable section.

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

#255

Post by mynameisvlad »

amelius wrote: post #137
mynameisvlad wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we should not tolerate self-driving systems that are as good as the worst of us The person you replied to didn't do that, though: > But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...

They never said they did.

I mean, those were direct quotes and it was literally half of their comment, but, sure, "they never said they did".

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

#256

Post by JohnFen »

ActionHank wrote: post #250
JohnFen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is. In every place that I've worked, including my current position, acknowledging when you're wrong or have failed at something increases trust in you and your professionalism. People who always have an excuse, try to shift blame, etc., are assumed to be lacking in competency (let alone ethics and trustworthiness).

My point is less around how engineers behave, and more around how organisations behave. If an organisation is constantly retrenching experienced staff and cutting corners to increase earnings rather than being driven by engineering first, it doesn't matter what the engineers do amongst themselves. This culture, in fact, rewards engineers doing a bad job.

Not all organizations behave that way, though. If you reword my comment to indicate the company attitudes themselves, it still largely holds true.

I confess to a selection bias, because I won't work at a company that doesn't behave that way. Life is too short for that BS. However, that I maintain employment at the expected pay rates while doing so indicates that there are a lot of companies who don't behave the way you describe.

All that said, I certainly don't deny that there are also a lot of companies who do behave as you describe.

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

#257

Post by guywithahat »

I sort of thought this was going to be a head on collision; it was a piece of debris in the highway that I think a lot of people may have hit. Still, we expect autonomous vehicles to do better than people, but it didn't hit a car or injure anyone

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

#258

Post by guywithahat »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #109
agildehaus wrote: post #30

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.

[flagged]

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

#259

Post by JohnFen »

q3k wrote: post #82
thefourthchime wrote: post #69

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?

There is in most states. There are often signs periodically telling you what phone number to call to report such hazards. If possible, it's better to call that number than 911, but if you don't know the number, 911 will do. They'll just forward your report to that agency anyway.

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

#260

Post by x187463 »

zzzeek wrote: post #130

I rant about Elon a lot but can someone just explain to me how this keeps going on ? FSD is almost completely a solved problem by the likes of Waymo etc. Why does anyone care what Tesla is failing to do with FSD? Is this all about, "how can we invent FSD without lidar"? Why are we bothering, because cybertruck owners don't want a dorky box on top of their truck? Does their truck already not look ridiculous?

FSD isn't just about the lack of lidar, it's the only system that can be employed everywhere, without any prior special mapping, by private owners. So far, there are no other manufacturers of vehicles available in the US who are meaningfully competing in this space.
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