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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

theregister.com

281–290 of 778 posts

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#281
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example! I hope people will take the time to click and watch it drive. I think it’s a tough call in this case. The Tesla is trying not to block an intersection where a light is green but there’s no room to clear the intersection on the other side due to traffic ahead. In fact an oncoming car is able to turn left in front of the Tesla because it waited. Probably the law is that you should NOT enter the…

LA has an unwritten law where 2-3 cars make unprotected lefts after oncoming traffic has cleared on yellow/red lights. Letting FSD drive, it can’t honor this “cultural” (technically illegal) behavior. If I am operating it, off goes FSD in that moment.

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

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#282
post #258
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In minor traffic a week or so ago, I ended up next to a Tesla for a few minutes where the driver had zero hands on the wheel, and her eyes were buried in her phone, with her head angled downward. Whatever system was running seemed to be totally fine with that situation; if that's the most advanced driver attention monitoring system available, we're in a lot of trouble. Tesla caring so much about safety is so obviousl…

I don’t believe you. Teslas have a cabin camera that monitors your gaze and quickly emits warnings if you look at your phone while autopilot is on. If you ignore the warnings, the car puts it emergency flashers on, pulls over, and disables autonomous driving until your next trip. If you do the five times with the FSD beta, you are banned from using FSD.

> are banned from using FSD

Do you get a refund?

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#283
post #189
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Liability isn't generally something that is granted, it's either there or not. If Tesla FSD causes an accident, they can absolutely be sued for that in the US. That’s not what liability means here. Assuming the story is true, it means Mercedes is responsible for damages caused when the system is engaged and the users know that when they buy the car. Being sued afterwards is not the same thing. > The reason that "Te…

> Not to mention, Tesla is openly violating at least CA DMV regulations that require reporting of all disengagements and contact events. Tesla letters to CA DMV claim they don't participate because their system isn't a self-driving system. Which is fine, other than they're telling customers it is at the same time.

A word's meaning is a specific legal document can be different than a word's meaning in a product's marketing material.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#284
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…

A few weeks ago, i saw a Tesla suddenly go 90 degrees on a small road downtown Atlanta ... It took a while for it to get going again... Of course I don't know if it was FSD but I have never seen a human do something this dumb.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA has an unwritten law where 2-3 cars make unprotected lefts after oncoming traffic has cleared on yellow/red lights. Letting FSD drive, it can’t honor this “cultural” (technically illegal) behavior. If I am operating it, off goes FSD in that moment.

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.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#286
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…

Yeah this isn’t beating Tesla to anything.

If you constrain a system to where it’s effectively useless and declare victory, that’s worse than trying to actually solve the problem and saying you’re not there yet.

It’s lowering the goal precipitously until you can achieve and then pretending you did it. Tesla has flaws, but this is a dumb article.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#287
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…

Yeah this isn’t beating Tesla to anything. If you constrain a system to where it’s effectively useless and declare victory, that’s worse than trying to actually solve the problem and saying you’re not there yet. It’s lowering the goal precipitously until you can achieve and then pretending you did it. Tesla has flaws, but this is a dumb article.

> Yeah this isn’t beating Tesla to anything.

They beat Tesla to being certified in California as Level 3, with restrictions.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#288
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "certain amount of time" is variable, but in practice is on the level of 10-15 seconds for the Mercedes system - at least that's what it was when it was first certified in Germany some time ago. It is designed to let you take your hands off the wheel and look at the scenery, but anything more than that is too much distraction for when it requires you to take over. And it will, because it's really not very capabl…

For person like me that takes very light naps when sitting, 10 seconds is plenty to wake up and take control. Also if I am using a tablet doing email or browsing or even playing games, 10 seconds is plenty of time to put the tablet away and grab the wheel.

>For person like me that takes very light naps when sitting, 10 seconds is plenty to wake up and take control.

I'd argue that isn't remotely enough time to safely take control. You're betting your brain wakes up sufficiently in that time, and if it doesn't the consequences are potentially deadly.

>Also if I am using a tablet doing email or browsing or even playing games, 10 seconds is plenty of time to put the tablet away and grab the wheel.

That's a bit better from an alertness standpoint, but not from a situational awareness one. You're deprived of both context and situational awareness on the road.

Some key details extend far beyond a 10-15 seconds, such as: another car driving erratically, lanes ending, line of sight on pedestrians or cyclists visible prior that are now occluded by traffic. The list goes on.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#289
post #262
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…

> Tesla FSD navigating the complex city streets of LA for 60 minutes with zero human intervention. 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a...

Without any comparison to humans those numbers are completely meaningless

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#290
post #61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define better? A Tesla will do exactly the same thing[1] and just nag you every few minutes to tug on the steering wheel (those nags are getting rarer every release as the driver monitoring camera improves, FWIW). The Mercedes driver can have their hands doing other things, but still needs their eyes out of the cockpit because the second traffic speeds up to 40mph they need to take over. In practice, this is "Level 3…

People forget the status quo is millions of deaths and trillions in property and economic damages. Moving slow condemns millions more to die.

Those millions (especially in developed countries where the per capita number of accidents is highest) won't be able to buy Teslas anyway.

Statically you could decrease the number of deaths by 20-30% by just banning cars older than 10 years. There are some other (cheaper) things that can be done as well.

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