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US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

reuters.com

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Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#421

Post by TheCleric »

Retric wrote: post #416
concordDance wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the current total liability cost for all Tesla drivers? The average for all USA cars seems to be around $2000/year, so even if FSD was half as dangerous Tesla would still be paying $1000/year equivalent (not sure how big insurance margins are, assuming nominal) per car. Now, if legally the driver could avoid paying insurance for the few times they want/need to drive themselves (e.g. snow? Dunno what FSD support…

Liability alone isn’t nearly that high. Car insurance payments include people stealing your car, uninsured motorists, rental cars, and other issues not the drivers fault. Further insurance payments also include profits for the insurance company, advertising, billing, and other overhead from running a business. Also, if Tesla was taking on these risks you’d expect your insurance costs to drop.

Yeah any automaker doing this would just negotiate a flat rate per car in the US and the insurer would average the danger to make a rate. This would be much cheaper than the average individual’s cost for liability on their insurance.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#422

Post by ben_w »

modeless wrote: post #397
jeffbee wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a dime for every hackernews who commented that FSD version X was like a revelation compared to FSD version X-ε I'd have like thirty bucks. I will grant you that every release has surprisingly different behaviors. Here's an unintentionally hilarious meta-post on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531915

Sure, plenty of people have been saying it's great for a long time, when it clearly was not (looking at you, Whole Mars Catalog). I was not saying it was super great back then. I have consistently been critical of Elon for promising human level self driving "next year" for like 10 years in a row and being wrong every time. He said it this year again and I still think he's wrong. But the rate of progress I see right n…

The most important lesson I've had from me incorrectly predicting in 2009 that we'd have cars that don't come with steering wheels in 2018, and thinking that the progress I saw each year up to then was consistent with that prediction, is that it's really hard to guess how long it takes to walk the fractal path that is software R&D.

How far are we now, 6 years later than I expected?

Dunno.

I suspect it's gonna need an invention on the same level as Diffusion or Transformer models to be able to get all the edge cases we can get, and that might mean we only get it with human level AGI.

But I don't know that, it might be we've already got all we need architecture-wise and it's just a matter of scale.

Only thing I can be really sure of is we're making progress "quite fast" in a non-objective use of the words — it's not going to need a re-run of 6 million years of mammilian evolution or anything like that, but even 20 years wall clock time would be a disappointment.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#423

Post by Forgeties79 »

fallingknife wrote: post #199
Forgeties79 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody who buys a magic eraser thinks it’s literally a magical object or in any way utilizes magic. It’s not comparable.

Just like nobody who buys FSD actually thinks it's really self driving.

Surely you can understand why “magic” and “fully self driving” have different levels of plausibility?

In 2024 if you tell me a car is “fully self driving” it’s pretty reasonable of me to think it’s a fully self driving car given the current state of vehicle technology. They didn’t say “magic steering” or something clearly ridiculous to take at face value. It sounds like what it should be able to do. Especially with “full” in the name. Just call it “assisted driving” or hell “self driving.” The inclusion of “fully” makes this impossible to debate in good faith.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#424

Post by concordDance »

Retric wrote: post #416
concordDance wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the current total liability cost for all Tesla drivers? The average for all USA cars seems to be around $2000/year, so even if FSD was half as dangerous Tesla would still be paying $1000/year equivalent (not sure how big insurance margins are, assuming nominal) per car. Now, if legally the driver could avoid paying insurance for the few times they want/need to drive themselves (e.g. snow? Dunno what FSD support…

Liability alone isn’t nearly that high. Car insurance payments include people stealing your car, uninsured motorists, rental cars, and other issues not the drivers fault. Further insurance payments also include profits for the insurance company, advertising, billing, and other overhead from running a business. Also, if Tesla was taking on these risks you’d expect your insurance costs to drop.

Good points, thanks.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#425

Post by throwaway314155 »

pbasista wrote: post #417
bastawhiz wrote: post #257

Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous. - It failed with a cryptic system error while driving - It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene. - In my opinion, the default setting accelera…

> I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year. I have no illusions about Tesla's ability to deliver an unsupervised self-driving car any time soon. However, as far as I understand, their autosteer system, in spite of all its flaws, is still the best out there. Do you have any reason to believe that there actually is something better?

I believe they're fine with losing auto steering capabilities, based on the tone of their comment.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#426

Post by mrpippy »

Arainach wrote: post #241
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #226

The interesting question is how good self-driving has to be before people tolerate it. It's clear that having half the casualty rate per distance traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? Accidents caused by human drivers are one of the largest causes of injury and death, but they're not newsworthy the way an accident involving automated driving is. It's all too easy to se…

This is about lying to the public and stoking false expectations for years. If it's "fully self driving" Tesla should be liable for when its vehicles kill people. If it's not fully self driving and Tesla keeps using that name in all its marketing, regardless of any fine print, then Tesla should be liable for people acting as though their cars could FULLY self drive and be sued accordingly. You don't get to lie just b…

Tesla officially renamed it to “Full Self Driving (supervised)” a few months ago, previously it was “Full Self Driving (beta)”

Both names are ridiculous, for different reasons. Nothing called a “beta” should be tested on public roads without a trained employee supervising it (i.e. being paid to pay attention). And of course it was not “full”, it always required supervision.

And “Full Self Driving (supervised)” is an absurd oxymoron. Given the deaths and crashes that we’ve already seen, I’m skeptical of the entire concept of a system that works 98% of the time, but also needs to be closely supervised for the 2% of the time when it tries to kill you or others (with no alerts).

It’s an abdication of duty that NHTSA has let this continue for so long, they’ve picked up the pace recently and I wouldn’t be surprised if they come down hard on Tesla (unless Trump wins, in which case Elon will be put in charge of NHTSA, the SEC, and FAA)

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#427

Post by itsoktocry »

eric_cc wrote: post #379
bastawhiz wrote: post #257

Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous. - It failed with a cryptic system error while driving - It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene. - In my opinion, the default setting accelera…

That sucks that you had that negative experience. I’ve driven thousands of miles in FSD and love it. Could not imagine going back. I rarely need to intervene and when I do it’s not because the car did something dangerous. There are just times I’d rather take over due to cyclists, road construction, etc.

These "works for me!" comments are exhausting. Nobody believes you "rarely intervene", otherwise Tesla themselves would be promoting the heck out of the technology.

Bring on the videos of you in the passenger seat on FSD for any amount of time.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#428

Post by eptcyka »

pmorici wrote: post #238
smdyc1 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that when you can't see, you slow down? Does the self-driving system do that sufficiently in low visibility? Clearly not if it hit a pedestrian with enough force to kill them. The article mentions that Tesla's only use cameras in their system and Musk believes they are enough, because humans only use their eyes. Well firstly, don't you want self-driving systems to be better than humans? Secondly, human…

The Tesla knows when it's cameras and blinded by sun and act accordingly or tells the human to take over.

If we were able to know when a neural net is failing to categorize something, wouldn’t we get AGI for free?

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#429

Post by shepherdjerred »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #183
hedora wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our non-Tesla has steering assist. In my 500 miles of driving before I found the buried setting that let me completely disable it, the active safety systems never made it more than 10-20 miles without attempting to actively steer the car left-of-center or into another vehicle, even when it was "turned off" via the steering wheel controls. When it was turned on according to the dashboard UI, things were even worse. It…

Ive had similar experience with a Hyundai with steering assist. It would get confused by messed road lining all the time. Meanwhile it had no problem climbing a road curb that was unmarked. And it would try to constantly nudge the steering wheel meaning I had to put force into holding it in place all the time since it which was extra fatigue. Oh and it was on by default, meaning I had to disable it every time I turne…

What model year? I'm guessing it's an older one?

My Hyundai is a 2021 and I have to turn on the steering assist every time which I find annoying. My guess is that you had an earlier model where the steering assist was more liability than asset.

It's understandable that earlier versions of this kind of thing wouldn't function as well, but it is very strange that they would have it on by default.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#430

Post by V99 »

gambiting wrote: post #251
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #226

The interesting question is how good self-driving has to be before people tolerate it. It's clear that having half the casualty rate per distance traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? Accidents caused by human drivers are one of the largest causes of injury and death, but they're not newsworthy the way an accident involving automated driving is. It's all too easy to se…

>>. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? The answer is zero. An airplane autopilot has increased the overall safety of airplanes by several orders of magnitude compared to human pilots, but literally no errors in its operation are tolerated, whether they are deadly or not. The exact same standard has to apply to cars or any automated machine for that matter. If there is any issue discovered in any car with this tech then…

Airplane autopilots follow a lateral & sometimes vertical path through the sky prescribed by the pilot(s). They are good at doing that. This does increase safety, because it frees up the pilot(s) from having to carefully maintain a straight 3d line through the sky for hours at a time.

But they do not listen to ATC. They do not know where other planes are. They do not keep themselves away from other planes. Or the ground. Or a flock of birds. They do not handle emergencies. They make only the most basic control-loop decisions about the control surface and power (if even autothrottle equipped, otherwise that's still the meatbag's job) changes needed to follow the magenta line drawn by the pilot given a very small set of input data (position, airspeed, current control positions, etc).

The next nearest airplane is typically at least 3 miles laterally and/or 500' vertically away, because the errors allowed with all these components are measured in hundreds of feet.

None of this is even remotely comparable to a car using a dozen cameras (or lidar) to make real-time decisions to drive itself around imperfect public streets full of erratic drivers and other pedestrians a few feet away.

What it is a lot like is what Tesla actually sells (despite the marketing name). Yes it's "flying" the plane, but you're still responsible for making sure it's doing the right thing, the right way, and not and not going to hit anything or kill anybody.

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