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Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

thedetroitbureau.com

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Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#291

Post by kortilla »

maxerickson wrote: post #232
ghostpepper wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the company's point of view this is correct reasoning. The sooner people realize companies do not have any responsibility to be moral the better

They absolutely do have responsibility. There's no reason we should allow investors limited liability if they are going to be assholes about it. Corporations should only exist because they are net beneficial to the public! I do agree that enough companies are unethical that it is reasonable to expect it.

This is just naive. Every company that makes any kind of product has made some kind of trade like this.

Costco sells you knives cheaply because they will not be liable if you murder people with them. If the Costco investors were liable for murder every time one of their knives was used to kill someone, you can bet they would just not sell them entirely.

Just because a company thinks about liability doesn’t mean it’s immoral. Individuals avoid liability as much as possible too (see insurance).

The world is dangerous and “fault” is everywhere.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#292

Post by syntheweave »

zydex wrote: post #281

A point I commonly hear made from both Tesla and Comma.ai for example is that Lidar is far too expensive with Waymo's vehicle costing a total of $200,000 and that cameras alone are sufficient for full self driving. I do think that cameras alone are probably sufficient for full self-driving but every time I hear this point I think to myself that self driving progress is moving so slowly on the camera-only front that L…

It's a question that ultimately depends on the utilization economics pathway, which if you listen to folks like Tony Seba, is going to come from the side of robotaxi fleets, not personally owned vehicles.

If you own a taxi fleet, the cost structure will favor spending more on Lidar if it gets you to a level 4 or 5 result faster. Cars designed for personal use will tend towards seeing the feature as a consumer "add-on" and prefer cameras. Tesla's business has focused on this latter path, trying to capture high end users first and then mainstream the results.

But if Seba is correct and we take a logistic curve pathway with both EV and self-driving tech, the cost curve will price robotaxi fleets underneath all forms of ownership within just a few years; you get much better utility from your sensor investment if the same car is making a dozen trips every day, and the consumer pays "for what they use" instead of having an unused hunk of metal taking up parking space. At that point, adoption shoots up and the consumer add-on model doesn't have a leg to stand on. Camera tech might still get better and replace the sensor package, but the race, such as it is, would be won by whomever deploys a fleet at scale first.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#293

Post by whazor »

I really wish cars removed from residential areas and inner city, basically anywhere people are walking around.

It makes self driving much easier and also eliminate the need for parking. You would walk a bit more (like five minutes), to a bus stop and be picked up by a car. Much healthier and probably causes less congestion too.

Within city's and residential areas you can have nice bike and walking paths and more room for nature.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#294

Post by mwint »

Animats wrote: post #160

This is real progress. Ad video.[1] Still very limited. Won't work at night. Has a LIDAR, but it's in the front grille, which only gives it enough of a view for anti-collision. We should be seeing review videos soon. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ue7ISC3eHQ

That video is completely animated.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#295

Post by hda2 »

cortesoft wrote: post #269
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'This is a tectonic shift in liability. ' Its the only form of liability i consider acceptable - I woupd never use autopilot where I would be to blame if i fail to react in 50 milliseconds once the car fucks up

You are already going to be to blamed if you get in an accident for most hardware failures in a car. Why is this one so different?

Because you can't control it. Drivers aren't liable for design flaws in their cars be they faulty self-driving, unintended acceleration, etc.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#296

Post by hedora »

deaddodo wrote: post #181
stavros wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I didn't expect to read a comment saying "it's OK if 100 times more cars have accidents as long as a company isn't liable".

From a corporate perspective, of course it is. It's the Ford Pinto study all over again. This is why corporate influence on legislation is bad, as their "best interests" often come at odds with morality-based ones.

Fight Club summarized the Pinto thing nicely:

https://www.quotes.net/mquote/31826

without providing the illusion that such cost benefit analyses are a thing of the past.

(Pintos had a problem with the gas tank, not the differential, but it's pretty clear what they were referring to.)

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#298

Post by hedora »

coredog64 wrote: post #187
slg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But haven't we all seen Fight Club? It isn't a question a confidence, it is a question of financial math. This decision tells us nothing about the safety of the Mercedes system compared to its competitors. All it tells us is that adding these limitations to ensure the system is only used in the safest possible scenarios makes taking over liability more reasonable. That isn't surprising. Their competitors' systems are…

The “Fight Club” math is incomplete for the sake of a good story. Regulators can force a recall on manufacturers and insurance companies can make a car uneconomical to buyers by appropriately pricing in risk. You may argue that the former has been undone by regulatory capture (something I would dispute), but I think we all recognize that insurance companies aren’t particularly charitable.

The Fight Club math is complete. They specifically quote the cost of out of court settlements, implying hush money.

This has been done successfully before. One model of elevators used to turn kids into ground beef (under a dozen a year -- the gap between the inner and outer door was too big).

Eventually they were almost all replaced, the deaths tapered off and everyone involved retired.

One year, much later, one of the few left in service killed a kid. No one working at the elevator company knew what was going on, and all hell broke loose. The remaining surviving culprit was in an old folks home at that point. The company ended up recalling something like two or three antique elevators.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#299

Post by fh973 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #290
zydex wrote: post #281

A point I commonly hear made from both Tesla and Comma.ai for example is that Lidar is far too expensive with Waymo's vehicle costing a total of $200,000 and that cameras alone are sufficient for full self driving. I do think that cameras alone are probably sufficient for full self-driving but every time I hear this point I think to myself that self driving progress is moving so slowly on the camera-only front that L…

I would say the race isn’t over yet. One thing to consider is the training dataset. By using only vision, Tesla was able to start collecting data with their entire fleet starting many years ago. They probably have more edge case data than anyone else, in more diverse driving situations. They would not have been able to do this if they needed to use expensive lidar on company owned training vehicles. What we will like…

This point about Tesla has been made frequently in this discussion. I still wonder: how does Tesla store any meaningful video data in customer vehicles and transfer it?

I know that other vendors have a hard time putting the necessary fast storage in the trunk and get the data off with 100G cables in the garage.

Re: Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

#300

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

daenz wrote: post #29
gitfan86 wrote: post #10

"it's geofenced to certain roads, and only work under 40mph", " you should not use this in the rain" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMNnOosjrBo&ab_channel=Engad...

I wonder if 40mph is a magic number that is a good tradeoff between speed and survivability (and injury-related out-of-court settlements)

I don't think it's magic, but:

1) Stopping distances go up as the square of speed, so 40mph has huge advantages over, say 70mph.

2) Survivability of accidents at 30-40 are way higher 70 (unless pedestrians are involved, in which case 30-40 is already too high.)

3) Radars and Lidars really can't see/classify things very well at the distances required to do comfortably stop for obstacles at highway speeds.

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