Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 163 posts

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#31

Post by catillac »

dbsmith83 wrote: post #13

> ...cited the apparent poor performance of what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving beta, a $10,000 option that gives owners advanced automated driving features and allows them to test cutting-edge autonomous technologies on public roads. (Beta is a software term that describes a product not quite ready for general sale to the public.) Wait, does this mean people are actually paying extra money to become test dummies for…

Yes, Tesla owner here. When you buy you’re given the option to purchase “FSD” for $10k. All the caveats reveal that it’s not really FSD though, of course, and you’re essentially paying for these partial FSD features and are a part of the testing (like opting into iOS beta, for example).

You can go through the order flow on Teslas site and see this quickly.

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#32

Post by alistairSH »

lanevorockz wrote: post #8

No wonder Tesla is leaving California, over and over again you see corruption and government control taking over inovation.

Asking why the DMV is allowing beta-quality autonomous driving systems on public roads is “corruption”? Lol.

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#33

Post by mygoodaccount »

mcot2 wrote: post #10
gadnuk wrote: post #2

As they should, from all agencies involved. It is absolutely horrifying to see Tesla do this open beta test on public roads when no other non-Tesla entities (other cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, etc) consented to being a part of a reckless experiment. Moreover, Tesla influencers on social media tend to cherry pick and show only the nicer parts of their FSD Beta drives where no incidents and disengageme…

As someone who is actively participating in the beta you couldn’t be more off base in your assertions. It sucks to see progress stifled by people that have no idea what they are talking about. With the thousands of people actively using the FSD Beta safely, show me significant evidence of an increased level of accidents that have occured. You can’t because the evidence does not exist.

Tesla doesn't publish data nor shares it with the NHTSA, so that's very difficult to do. The only """data""" we have are videos uploaded to YouTube by a select group of Tesla owners who have access to the beta. Even ignoring the bias in videos selected for upload by the beta testers, every single city driving clip I've seen has several illegal maneuvers and many more disengagements.

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#35

Post by bittercynic »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #7
amelius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that self-driving is almost entirely about edge-cases. And machine learning can optimistically only reach about 99% accuracy, so that last 1% of edge cases is where the real problem lies.

Yeah, but the issues the Tesla seems to have in the video above (pedestrians crossing, rail tracks, bus lanes, parked UPS trucks) are hardly 1% edge cases, but common occurrences that are in every city. And it wasn't even rush hour through some crowded European city like Rome with people on scooters zooming in every directions, in poor weather conditions at night, it was broad daylight in a city with barely any traff…

I think there's disagreement about what 1% means - far less than 1% of my time spent operating a car involves interaction with a UPS truck, but more than 1% of my trips do.

Asking as someone with no first hand experience with these systems - do they complete 99% of trips with no disengagements or unexpected behavior, 99% of time driving, something else?

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#36

Post by jondwillis »

dbsmith83 wrote: post #13

> ...cited the apparent poor performance of what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving beta, a $10,000 option that gives owners advanced automated driving features and allows them to test cutting-edge autonomous technologies on public roads. (Beta is a software term that describes a product not quite ready for general sale to the public.) Wait, does this mean people are actually paying extra money to become test dummies for…

yes. and also giving a whole lot of driving data to tesla for use in their insurance program and obviously to train their AI.

i’m one of them AMA

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#37

Post by ximeng »

gadnuk wrote: post #2

As they should, from all agencies involved. It is absolutely horrifying to see Tesla do this open beta test on public roads when no other non-Tesla entities (other cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, etc) consented to being a part of a reckless experiment. Moreover, Tesla influencers on social media tend to cherry pick and show only the nicer parts of their FSD Beta drives where no incidents and disengageme…

You’re saying that Tesla influencers pick and choose only the best videos on social media. This whole article is about videos of poor self-driving of Tesla cars, and you post a video of bad self-driving. The videos I’ve seen show some good and some bad automated manoeuvres.

Even if what you’re saying is right about influencers picking and choosing the best videos, it’s clear that there are videos of poor behaviour as well.

With so many videos out there I think it’s pretty clear what you’re getting with FSD regardless of the name. It is glitchy and unreliable and can get random safety issues with software regressions.

At the same time when it works it works pretty well, and it does also seem to be improving rapidly based on the videos that I’ve seen. A long way to go but it’s getting better.

It’s also not clear they’re dead last - they may be but there’s lots of people using it now and showing videos, which is harder to see for other companies.

You might have good points here but I don’t think it’s as black and white as you make out regarding how effective Tesla’s approach is with respect to safety, degree of progress, feasibility with current sensors, feasibility in general, misleading market, and general motivations and morals.

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#38

Post by mcot2 »

kadoban wrote: post #24
mcot2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is actively participating in the beta you couldn’t be more off base in your assertions. It sucks to see progress stifled by people that have no idea what they are talking about. With the thousands of people actively using the FSD Beta safely, show me significant evidence of an increased level of accidents that have occured. You can’t because the evidence does not exist.

"the evidence does not exist" because it's not true or because Tesla is hiding it? We should know which, and these legislators asking questions seems to be a good start towards getting answers.

Because its not true at all. Most major Tesla incidents of any kind make headlines from fires to accidents on AP. You should do some basic research on the topic.

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/10/21/22738834/te...

The FUD is _insane_ with Tesla.

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#39

Post by m4nu3l »

amelius wrote: post #5
gadnuk wrote: post #2

As they should, from all agencies involved. It is absolutely horrifying to see Tesla do this open beta test on public roads when no other non-Tesla entities (other cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, etc) consented to being a part of a reckless experiment. Moreover, Tesla influencers on social media tend to cherry pick and show only the nicer parts of their FSD Beta drives where no incidents and disengageme…

The problem is that self-driving is almost entirely about edge-cases. And machine learning can optimistically only reach about 99% accuracy, so that last 1% of edge cases is where the real problem lies.

I'd be curious to know what definition of edge-case you are using. I think self-driving can't be entirely about edge-cases by definition (of edge-case).

Re: Alarmed by Tesla’s self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV

#40

Post by numpad0 »

andrelayer wrote: post #6
gadnuk wrote: post #2

As they should, from all agencies involved. It is absolutely horrifying to see Tesla do this open beta test on public roads when no other non-Tesla entities (other cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, etc) consented to being a part of a reckless experiment. Moreover, Tesla influencers on social media tend to cherry pick and show only the nicer parts of their FSD Beta drives where no incidents and disengageme…

There is the argument that they are already safer than human drivers though and it'd be morally objectionable to stop. Not saying I'm completely on that side, but it is a valid utilitarian argument.

There’s no such argument, but a dirty extrapolation and implication. They argue:

a) [Broadly speaking], cars [from traditional big autos] with ADAS features are objectively safer, and,

b) Tesla Autopilot is [in traditional sense] an ADAS system, which,

c) [implies this set of facts alone make Tesla cars and implementations statistically safer] is cool, huh? Would be silly if you didn’t agree with me.

I don’t call it clever.

Post reply on HN