Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#61

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:15 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #29

belltaco wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Mercedes-Benz system is a glorified adaptive cruise control and has several limitations that Tesla autopilot does not have. > There must be a vehicle in front of your car, reasonable road conditions with readable markings and lines, and clear weather and light conditions. Drive Pilot can’t be used at night or in the rain, and the headlights and wipers must be set to auto for it to work. > It’s also only availabl…

It is just very fancy cruise control but it's still very significant to the whole "will a person ever get in trouble for taking over from the automated system" discussion that they're the only ones taking legal responsibility while the system is active. Everyone else including Tesla puts all the legal weight on you to stay constantly alert and take over for the system.

> they're the only ones taking legal responsibility while the system is active

They are the only ones using the consequences of general principles of product liability as a selling point, might be more accurate.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#62

Post by natch » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #58

natch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that system turns itself off on the slightest hair trigger if it gets any inkling that another car might be present within ten miles.

I haven't seen any video of it actually in use or reviews. Have a link showing that?

No.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#63

Post by TeeMassive » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #13

> Asked if the unexpected happened, would he be able to react as quickly as a person with their hands on the steering wheel, he said “I would be unsure of that.” > Judge Hughes asked if he accepted it would be better to have two hands on the wheel to take control of the vehicle, and he answered: “Probably yes”. If these were candid responses, rather than coached with lawyer, sounds like a real engineer. And the inter…

They sound like honest answers. The question is more if it is dangerous enough to constitute actual negligence. I'd argue that self driving cars are statically safer that having your arms crossed doesn't really constitute a risk.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#64

Post by epivosism » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:00 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #53

epivosism wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the european style of driving on the right, but blaming Tesla for not following it in California where doing the opposite is standard seems like going too far. I think Tesla reasonably is trying to match local conditions, and why shouldn't they? Making California drivers not pace each other on 2 lane roads & block all traffic, or making them cruise in the right lane rather than the left when they have the opti…

> is a tough mission to add on top of creating FSD To be blunt, "sucks to be them". They want to make billions from the technology, there's going to be some tough problems along the way. That doesn't make it incumbent on anyone else to allow, excuse, or otherwise give them a pass.

So you're saying that if anyone wants to interact with FSD & american drivers, you're requiring them to also solve this problem?

How far would you go here, balancing this added feature to the benefit of making FSD release sooner and lowering traffic accidents? What's your exchange rate in time - there are ~100 fatalities nationally per day - would delaying FSD by 10 days to fix this annoying behavior be worth the delay? What if the delay was longer? How long would you wait? Or what if the delay were unknown - would you assert you are sure it's short, and ram it through? What if you were wrong, that including this behavior caused a long delay in FSD - would you feel bad then?

Or are you certain that they're just being obtuse by not including it? Or do you have another theory for why Tesla isn't including bundling this specific software behavior along with their efforts to create superhuman safety FSD?

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#65

Post by epivosism » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:03 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #60

epivosism wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the european style of driving on the right, but blaming Tesla for not following it in California where doing the opposite is standard seems like going too far. I think Tesla reasonably is trying to match local conditions, and why shouldn't they? Making California drivers not pace each other on 2 lane roads & block all traffic, or making them cruise in the right lane rather than the left when they have the opti…

if (isSafeToMergeRight and not rightLaneTrafficPaceAddsTimeToEstimate): mergeRight() So complicated... the hard part is the first test but that's expected to be part of FSD already. And the second test is a simple state estimation procedure on top of the relatively harder detect-cars function, which also should be part of FSD already. So I'm not sure what you think this suggestion adds in complexity.

I would rather let people who are experienced in low-cost manufacturing of cars, batteries, rocket engines, etc make decisions about what features they think would add complexity to themselves, rather than me deciding from the outside what I would like to force them to do, as a prerequisite to improving the number one cause of death for large age ranges of Americans.

Would you delay solving this problem in favor of improving the annoying way people drive on the left in California? I hate it too but if we can get FSD soon, it'd save a lot of people's lives.

Re: Tesla owner who drove with 'arms folded' cleared of dangerous driving

#66

Post by epivosism » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:08 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #30

uoaei wrote: post #21

I saw a Tesla driving down I-5 yesterday and the person in the driver's seat was wearing headphones and holding their phone in a way that made it seem like they were playing video games (landscape mode, both thumbs hovering). In the passing lane. Barely doing the speed limit. Simply unacceptable on this highway where the right lane typically travels 0-5mph below the speed limit and the left lane travels 5-15mph over.…

> At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. You expect this from a company that writes software that will intentionally roll through stop signs?!? Or that lets you set parameters on how much to exceed the speed limit by?

In California Tesla is not allowed to roll-through stops at the present time.

Source: I have a model Y and regularly use FSD on roads in CA with stop signs and observe it coming to a full stop.