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

Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 165 posts

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#31

Post by ajross »

FTA: "For comparison, the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles."

Does anyone know what the cite for this might be? I'm coming up empty. To my knowledge, no one (except maybe insurance companies) tallies numbers for fender bender style accidents. This seems like a weirdly high number to me, it's very rare to find any vehicle that reaches 100k miles without at least one bump or two requiring repair.

My suspicion is that this is a count of accidents involving emergency vehicle or law enforcement involvement? In which case it's a pretty terrible apples/oranges comparison.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#32

Post by jmpman »

I’m still waiting until I see little X Æ A-Xii playing in the street while Tesla Robotaxis deliver passengers before I buy these arguments. Until then, my children are playing in the street while these autonomous vehicles threaten their safety. I’m upset that this is forced upon the public by the government.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#33

Post by 0_____0 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #12
altairprime wrote: post #8

Slap a STUDENT DRIVER bumper sticker on them so we can all give them space!

It should say INDUSTRIAL ROBOT. You wouldn't willingly enter the hazard zone of a KUKA. Why should we casually accept them roaming free?

If you're familiar with industrial hazard mitigation, looking at how roadways are constructed is kind of crazy making.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#34

Post by daheza »

themafia wrote: post #27
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, Robotaxi has a safety driver, whereas Waymo is completely self driving, yet has a very good safety record. That speaks volumes to me. https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

Completely self driving? Don't they go into a panic mode, stop the vehicle, then call back to a central location where a human driver can take remote control of the vehicle? They've been seen doing this at crime scenes and in the middle of police traffic stops. That speaks volumes too.

Incorrect humans never take over the controls. An operator is presented with a set of options and they choose one, which the car then performs. The human is never in direct control of the vehicle. If this process fails then they send a physical human to drive the car.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#35

Post by dylan604 »

jmpman wrote: post #32

I’m still waiting until I see little X Æ A-Xii playing in the street while Tesla Robotaxis deliver passengers before I buy these arguments. Until then, my children are playing in the street while these autonomous vehicles threaten their safety. I’m upset that this is forced upon the public by the government.

This would imply you feel the parent of said kid cares about said kid more than parent's company.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#36

Post by fpoling »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #25
guywithahat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I've looked into the topic the less I think the removal of lidar was a cost issue. I think there are a lot of benefits to simplifying your sensor tech stack, and while I won't pretend to know the best solution removing things like lidar and ultrasonic sensors seem to have been a decision about improving performance. By doubling down on cameras your technical team can remain focused on certain sensor technolo…

Having multiple sources of data is a benefit, not a problem. Entire signal processing and engineering domains exist to take advantage of this. Even the humble Kalyan filter lets you combine multiple noisy sources to get a more accurate result than would be possible if using any one source.

Kalman filters and more advanced aggregators add non-trivial latency. So even if one does not care about cost, there can be a drawback from having an extra sensor.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#37

Post by _aavaa_ »

fpoling wrote: post #36
_aavaa_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having multiple sources of data is a benefit, not a problem. Entire signal processing and engineering domains exist to take advantage of this. Even the humble Kalyan filter lets you combine multiple noisy sources to get a more accurate result than would be possible if using any one source.

Kalman filters and more advanced aggregators add non-trivial latency. So even if one does not care about cost, there can be a drawback from having an extra sensor.

Yes, there are tradeoffs to be made, but having to reconcile multiple sensors is not intrinsically a negative.

But also, if you didn’t get the right result, I don’t care how quickly you didn’t get it.

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#38

Post by dylan604 »

phyzome wrote: post #21
tigranbs wrote: post #16

IMHO, this is not too bad! But obviously, coming from the software product industry, everyone knows that building features isn't the same as operating in practice and optimizing based on the use case, which takes a ton of time. Waymo has a huge head start, and it is evident that the "fully autonomous" robotaxi date is far behind what Elon is saying publicly. They will do it, but it is not as close as the hype suggest…

...why would "more than 10x less safe than a human driver" be "not too bad"?

It could have been 100x or 1000x or...

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#39

Post by dylan604 »

0_____0 wrote: post #33
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should say INDUSTRIAL ROBOT. You wouldn't willingly enter the hazard zone of a KUKA. Why should we casually accept them roaming free?

If you're familiar with industrial hazard mitigation, looking at how roadways are constructed is kind of crazy making.

I'm now imagining Robotaxis with the impact absorbing extensions that highway trucks have when leading the lane closures.

Something like this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh...

Re: Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash

#40

Post by fpoling »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #20
guywithahat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I've looked into the topic the less I think the removal of lidar was a cost issue. I think there are a lot of benefits to simplifying your sensor tech stack, and while I won't pretend to know the best solution removing things like lidar and ultrasonic sensors seem to have been a decision about improving performance. By doubling down on cameras your technical team can remain focused on certain sensor technolo…

Usually you would go in with the max amount of sensors and data, make it work and then see what can be left out. It seems dumb to limit yourself from beginning if you don’t know yet what really works. But then I am not a multi billionaire so what do i know?

Well we know that vision works based on human experience. So few years ago it was a reasonable bet that cameras alone could solve this. The problem with Tesla is that they still continue to insist on that after it became apparent that vision alone with the current tech and machine learning does not work. They even do not want to use a radar again even if the radar does not cost much and is very beneficial for safety.
Post reply on HN