Anything remotely supportive of Tesla on lemmy usually results in massive downvotes.
You’ve angered the hive mind by suggesting people are actively trying to bypass teslas saftey system so they can be idiots thus making it not wholly Teslas fault.
And yes, many people are actively using bypass devices, but not all.
You don’t have to disable it to beat the safety system.
They were all pretty much due to inattentiveness, though. Many were drunk drivers.
Many do use defeat devices as well, but not all.
This was all brand new when it first came out and we didn’t really have proper regulations for it. Things have gotten more restrictive, but people do still find ways around it and there’s no fool proof solution to this as humans are smart and will find ways around things.
I realize it’s the pedal that gets stuck, but the computer registers the state of the pedal via a sensor.
The computer should be smart enough to realize something ain’t right when it registers that both the accelerator and brake pedals are being pressed at the same time. And in that case, the brake should always take priority.
There are some real Elon haters out there. I think they’re ugly as sin but I’m happy to see more people driving vehicles with all the crazy safety features, even if they aren’t perfect.
You’re in control of a massive vehicle capable of killing people and destroying property, you’re responsible for it.
You’re in control of a massive vehicle capable of killing people and destroying property, you’re responsible for it.
If only Elon would say something similar when he re-tweets a video of people having sex while the car is on autopilot. Can you guess what he actually said?
I’m quite certain that there will be some humble pie served to the haters in not too distant future. The performance of FSD 12.3.5 is all the proof you need that an actual robotaxi is just around the corner. Disagree with me all you want. All we need to do is wait and see.
However I’m also sure that the cognitive dissonance is going to be so strong for many of these people that even a mountain of evidence is not going to change their mind about it because it’s not based in reason in the first place but emotions.
What makes this time any different from the dozens of other times musk had said we’re six months away from FSD? When do you think Tesla will take responsibility for accidents that happen while using their software?
If they do that in the next year, I’ll gladly eat humble pie. If they can’t, will you?
These are spanning from the earliest adopters, up until August of last year. Plenty of idiots using a cruise control system and trusting their lives to beta software. Not the same as the current FSD software.
Your own car insurance isn’t based on your driving skill when you had your learners permit. When Tesla takes on the liability and insurance for CyberCab, you’ll know it’s much safer than human drivers.
You really want to get into reality versus marketing in this world? Very little marketing actually shows real world products and use cases in a real world environment. Heck, advertising often doesn’t even show the actual product at all.
Your McDonald’s burger is NEVER going to look like the marketing photo. You don’t want to get anywhere near that “ice cream” or “milkshake” from the ad either, mashed potatoes and glue are often used for those advertising replacements.
This doesn’t even get into things like disclaimers and product warnings, or people ignoring them.
Notice, when talking about new features, Tesla shills love to promote how great it is and how often it saves then from problems (I can’t imagine how badly they must drive. We intervened on our grandmother after a couple of close calls). Then, when there is news about these accidents, they are so quick to blame the driver.
Also, all these problems are with the old versions, the new versions clean up everything.
I do agree with OP here about one thing - don’t take anything Tesla and Musk say about the cars’ capabilities seriously (including how that might impact stock price) until Tesla is willing to take financial responsibility for accidents. Until then, it’s all Musk bullshit.
Move fast, break shit. Fake it till you sell it, then move the goal posts down. Shift human casualties onto individual responsibility, a core libertarian theme. Profit off the lies because it’s too late, money already in the bank.
Still the most advanced system that is legal to use on public roads, worldwide. Tesla’s most advanced system is many leagues below that, so not sure why it’s so hard to believe for some people that Tesla is nothing but an also-ran.
Level 3 in the S-Class and EQS has been available since may 2022. And the speed limit is there because that is part of a UN regulation that the Mercedes is certified for. The regulation has been updated since the release of Mercedes Drive Pilot to allow speeds up to 140km/h but Mercedes needs to recertify for that.
When you stop using the Tesla kool-aid marketing terms and start to understand the actual state of the technology and more importantly legislation, we might start to listen to what you are trying to say. Hint: using the term “FSD” or “Autopilot” is an immediate disqualifier
Oops, you fell for the Tesla marketing BS. FSD isn’t actually full self driving like the Mercedes system. With Tesla, you have to keep your hands on the wheel at all times and pay close attention to the road. You are completely responsible for anything that happens. Mercedes takes responsibility for any accidents their software causes.
What Tesla is (falsely IMO) advertising as “full self driving” is available in all new Mercedes vehicles as well and works anywhere in the US.
Mercedes is in the news for expanding that functionality to a level where they are willing to take liability if the vehicle causes a crash during this new mode. Tesla does not do that.
The system Mercedes is using is extremely limited and hardly compareable to FSD in any way.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
That is the new system. Tesla has no equivalent to it. Or to phrase it differently:
Drivers can not activate teslas’s equivalent technology, no matter what conditions are met, including not in heavy traffic jams, not during the daytime, not on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and not when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can never focus on other activities. The technology does not exist in Tesla vehicles
If you are talking about automatic lane change, auto park, etc (what tesla calls autopilot or full self driving) these are all features you can find in most if not all high end cars nowadays.
The new system gets press coverage, because as I understand it, if there is an accident while the system is engaged Mercedes will assume financial and legal responsibility and e.g. cover all expenses that result from said accident. Tesla doesn’t do that.
I genuinely have no idea what you’re on about. YouTube is full of videos of Teslas driving by themselves in cities, highways, parking lots, construction zones etc. To claim that this is something “most high end cars can do” is a blatant lie. Tesla is the only company in the world that offers a system like that.
There is nothing Drive Pilot can do that FSD can’t but there’s a ton of stuff FSD can do and Drive Pilot can’t. Yeah the Tesla driver is still ultimately responsible because FSD is level 2 and Drive Pilot is level 3, but it doesn’t take a genious to figure out why it’s easier for the company to take responsibility for something that is essentially a train rather than something that gives you full freedom to go anywhere.
If I understand that person correctly, you are confusing the two systems.
Mercedes has two systems. One of a driver assist system that does everything the current version of FSD can do. It is unlimited in the same way that Tesla’s FSD is unlimited.
They have an additional system, that you cite, that is Level 3, a true hands-off self-driving system. It is geographically limited.
So, the question is, does Tesla have any areas where you can legally drive hands free using their software?
For the target audience they chose that thing is a fucking bargain. Do you know how many people making damn good money sit in hours of 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic every day? “You don’t have to drive and we assume liability if our system fucks up” is a massive value add.
(Not enough that I’d ever consider dealing with that kind of commute no matter what you paid me. But still.)
You can literally type in an address and the car will take you there with zero input on the driver’s part. If that’s not full self-driving then I don’t know what is. What FSD was capable of a year ago and how it performs today is completely different.
Not only does these statistics include the way less capable older versions of it, it also includes accidents caused by autopilot which is a different system than FSD. It also fails to mention how the accident rate compares to human drivers.
If we replace every single car in the US with a self-driving one that’s 10x safer driver than your average human that means you’re still getting over 3000 deaths a year due to traffic accidents. That’s 10 people a day. If one wants to ban these systems because they’re not perfect then that means they’ll rather have 100 people die every day instead of 10.
You can literally type in an address and the car will take you there with zero input on the driver’s part. If that’s not full self-driving then I don’t know what is.
Who is responsible if there is an accident, you or Tesla? That is the difference from true FSD and regular driver assistance features.
Regarding driving regulations -
If we had better raw data, I’m sure we could come up with better conclusions. Knowing the absolutely tremendous amount of BS that Musk spews, we can’t trust anything Tesla reports. We’re left to speculate.
It also fails to mention how the accident rate compares to human drivers.
That may be because Tesla refuses to publish proper data on this, lol.
Yeah, they claim it’s ten times better than a human driver, but none of their analysis methods or data points are available to independent researchers. It’s just marketing.
I’m not claiming it is 10x safer than a human - I’m saying that even if it was there would still be daily deaths despite that.
Tesla has published the data - people just refuse to believe it because it doesn’t show what they think it should. There’s nothing more Tesla can do about it at this point. It’s up to independent researches from now.
I would love to see this data, can you link it? Either a paper by unaffiliated researchers or the raw data is fine.
I am aware their marketing pushes the “10x better” number. But I have yet to see the actual data to back this claim.
Either a paper by unaffiliated researchers or the raw data is fine.
Like I said; the only data available is from Tesla itself which any reasonable person should take with a grain of salt. If you want to see it you can just google it. There’s plenty of YouTubers independently testing it aswell but these are all obviously biased fanboys that can’t be trusted either.
Tesla sues people that criticise them in the media. You really can’t trust most reviews. The reviews are also looking for money from companies like Tesla so their not impartial.
I have a feeling that user blocks people that are critical of Tesla. They are probably oblivious to several comments in this thread. It’s really no wonder why they have no clue about how bad Tesla really is.
It isn’t the average driver. Most cars are equipped with driver assist features, we have to say that is should be better than people using current driver assist features from other companies. If Tesla is behind everyone else, but better than a 20 year-old car, it’s still problematic.
I am so sick and tired of this belief because it’s clear people have no idea what Autopilot on a plane actually does. They always seem to assume it flies the plane and the pilot doesn’t do anything apparently. Autopilot alone does not fly the damned plane by itself.
“Autopilot” in a plane keeps the wings level at a set heading, altitude, and speed. It’s literally the same as cruise control with lane-centering, since there’s an altitude issue on a road.
There are more advanced systems available on the market that can be installed on smaller planes and in use on larger jets that can do things like auto takeoff, auto land, following waypoints, etc. without pilot input, but basic plain old autopilot doesn’t do any of that.
That expanded capability is similar to how things like “Enhanced Autopilot” on a Tesla can do extra things like change lanes, follow highway exits on a navigated route, etc. Or how “Full Self-Driving” is supposed to follow road signs and lights, etc. but those are additional functions, not part of “Autopilot” and differentiated with their own name.
Autopilot, either on a plane or a Tesla, alone doesn’t do any of that extra shit. It is a very basic system.
The average person misunderstanding what a word means doesn’t make it an incorrect name or description.
“But one reason that pilots will opt to turn the system on much sooner after taking off is if it’s stormy out or there is bad weather. During storms and heavy fog, pilots will often turn autopilot on as soon as possible.
This is because the autopilot system can take over much of the flying while allowing the pilot to concentrate on other things, such as avoiding the storms as much as possible. Autopilot can also be extremely helpful when there is heavy fog and it’s difficult to see, since the system does not require eyesight like humans do.”
Does that sound like something Tesla’s autopilot can do?
Flight instructor here. The flying and driving environments are quite different, and what you need an “autodriver” to do is a bit different from an “autopilot.”
In a plane, you have to worry a lot more about your attitude, aka which way is up. This is the first thing we practice in flight school with 0-hour students, just flying straight ahead and keeping the airplane upright. This can be a challenge to do in low visibility environments such as in fog or clouds, or even at night in some circumstances, and your inner ears are compulsive liars the second you leave the ground, so you rely on your instruments when you can’t see, especially gyroscopic instruments such as an attitude indicator. This is largely what an autopilot takes over for from the human pilot, to relieve him of that constant low-level task to concentrate on other things.
Cars don’t have to worry about this so much; for normal highway driving any situation other than “all four wheels in contact with the road” is likely an unrecoverable emergency.
Navigation in a plane means keeping track of your position in 3D space relative to features on the Earth’s surface. What airspace are you in, what features on the ground are you flying over, where is the airport, where’s that really tall TV tower that’s around here? Important for finding your way back to the airport, preventing flight into terrain or obstacles, and keeping out of legal trouble. This can be accomplished with a variety of ways, many of which can integrate with an autopilot. Modern glass cockpit systems with fully integrated avionics can automate the navigation process as well, you can program in a course and the airplane can fly that course by itself, if appropriately equipped.
Navigation for cars is two separate problems; there’s the big picture question of “which road am I on? Do I take the next right? Where’s my exit?” which is a task that requires varying levels of precision from “you’re within this two mile stretch of road” to “you’re ten feet from the intersection.” And there’s the small picture question of “are we centered in the traffic lane?” which can have a required precision of inches. These are two different processes.
Anticollision, aka not crashing into other planes, is largely a procedural thing. We have certain best practices such as “eastbound traffic under IFR rules fly on the odd thousands, westbound traffic flies on the even thousands” so that oncoming traffic should be a thousand feet above or below you, that sort of thing, plus established traffic patterns and other standard or published routes of flight for high traffic areas. Under VFR conditions, pilots are expected to see and avoid each other. Under IFR conditions, that’s what air traffic control is for, who use a variety of techniques to sequence traffic to make sure no one is in the same place at the same altitude at the same time, anything from carefully keeping track of who is where to using radar systems, and increasingly a thing called ADS-B. There are also systems such as TCAS which are aircraft carried traffic detection electronics. Airplanes are kept fairly far apart via careful sequencing. There’s also not all that much else up there, not many pedestrians or cyclists thousands of feet in the air, wildlife and such can be a hazard but mostly during the departure and arrival phases of flight while relatively low. This is largely a human task; autopilots don’t respond to air traffic control and many don’t integrate with TCAS or ADS-B, this is the pilot’s job.
Cars are expected to whiz along mere inches apart via see and avoid. There is no equivalent to ATC on the roads, cars aren’t generally equipped with communication equipment beyond a couple blinking lights, and any kind of automated beacon for electronic detection absolutely is not the standard. Where roads cross at the same level some traffic control method such as traffic lights are used for some semblance of sequencing but in all conditions it requires visual see-and-avoid. Pedestrians, cyclists, wildlife and debris are constant collision threats during all phases of driving; deer bound across interstates all the time. This is very much a visual job, hell I’m not sure it could be done entirely with radar, it likely requires optical sensors/cameras. It’s also a lot more of the second-to-second workload of the driver. I honestly don’t see this task being fully automated with roads the way they are.
At SkyTough, we pride ourselves on ensuring our readers get the best, most helpful content that they’ll find anywhere on the web. To make sure we do this, our own experience and expertise is combined with the input from others in the industry. This way, we can provide as accurate of information as possible. With input from experts and pilots from all over, you’ll get the complete picture on when pilots turn autopilot on while flying!
This is GPT.
After that intro I don’t trust a single word of what that site has to say.
If the writer didn’t bother to write the text, i hope they don’t expect me to bother to read it.
I’d wager most people, when talking about a plane’s autopilot mean the follow waypoints or Autoland capability.
Also, it’s hard to argue “full self driving” means anything but the car is able to drive fully autonomously. If they were to market it as “advanced driver assist” I’d have no issue with it.
I’d wager most people, when talking about a plane’s autopilot mean the follow waypoints or Autoland capability.
Many people are also pretty stupid when it comes to any sort of technology more complicated than a calculator. That doesn’t mean the world revolves around a complete lack of knowledge.
My issue is just with people expecting basic Autopilot to do more than it’s designed or intended to do, and refusing to acknowledge their expectation might actually be wrong.
Also, it’s hard to argue “full self driving” means anything but the car is able to drive fully autonomously. If they were to market it as “advanced driver assist” I’d have no issue with it.
Definitely won’t get an argument from me there. FSD certainly isn’t in a state to really be called that yet. Although, to be fair, when signing up for it, and when activating it there are a lot of notices that it is in testing and will not operate as expected.
At what point do we start actually expecting and enforcing that people be responsible with potentially dangerous things in daily life, instead of just blaming a company for not putting enough warnings or barriers to entry?
Also, it’s hard to argue “full self driving” means anything but the car is able to drive fully autonomously. If they were to market it as “advanced driver assist” I’d have no issue with it.
Definitely won’t get an argument from me there. FSD certainly isn’t in a state to really be called that yet. Although, to be fair, when signing up for it, and when activating it there are a lot of notices that it is in testing and will not operate as expected.
At what point do we start actually expecting and enforcing that people be responsible with potentially dangerous things in daily life, instead of just blaming a company for not putting enough warnings or barriers to entry?
Then the issue is simply what we perceive as the predominant marketing message. I know that in all legally binding material Tesla states what exactly the system is capable of and how alert the driver needs to be. But in my opinion that is vastly overshadowed by the advertising Tesla runs for their FSD capability. They show a 5 second message about how they are required by law to warn you about being alert at all times, before showing the car driving itself for 3 minutes, with the demo driver having the hands completely off the wheel.
At what point do we start actually expecting and enforcing that people be responsible with potentially dangerous things in daily life, instead of just blaming a company for not putting enough warnings or barriers to entry?
Volvo seeks to have zero human deaths in their cars. Some places seek zero fatality driving environments. These are cultures where safety is front and center. Most FSD enthusiasts (see comments in the other threads below) cite safety as the main impetus for these systems. Hopefully we would see similar cultural values in Tesla.
Unfortunately, Musk tweets out jokes when responding to a video of people having sex on autopilot. That is Tesla culture. Musk is responsible for putting these dangerous things in consumers hands and has created a culture where irresponsible and possibly fatal abuse of those things is something funny for everyone to laugh at. Of course, punish the individual users who go against the rules and abuse the systems. You also have to punish the company, and the idiot at the top, who holds those same rules in contempt.
I’ve seen autopilot systems that have basically every level of complexity you can imagine. A lot of Cessna 172s were equipped with a single axis autopilot that can only control the ailerons and can only maintain wings level. Others have control of the elevators and can do things like altitude hold, or ascend/descend at a given rate. More modern ones have control of all three axes and integration with the attitude instruments, and can do things like climb to an altitude and level off, turn to a heading and stop, or even something like fly a holding pattern over a fix. They still often don’t have any control over the power plant, and small aircraft typically cannot land themselves, but there are autopilots installed in piston singles that can fly an approach to minimums.
And that’s what’s available on piston singles; airline pilots seldom fly the aircraft by hand anymore.
The short answer is no. Cars suck for many reasons, but it’s a fact in many parts of the world that you cannot be a functioning member of a society without one, especially if your government doesn’t get that cars suck or you live somewhere remote.
How do I feel when I see someone driving a car? Mostly my feelings don’t change, because it is so normalized. But I get somewhat angry when I see uselessly huge cars that are obviously just a waste of resources. I have fun ridiculing car centric road and city design, but it’s the bad kind of fun.
I am also very careful around cars, both while I’m in and outside of them. Cars are very heavy and drivers are infamous for being bad at controlling them. This isn’t their fault, it’s super easy to make mistakes while driving, you just have to move your feet a little too fast or move your hand a little too far and boom, someone is dead.
Think about driving on a highway. If the guy next to you accidentally moves the wheel a little more than usual, that car will crash into you, creating a horrendous scene. It’s just too prone to failure, and failure will probably mean person damages. For this reason, cars are legitimately scaring me, even if I have to deal with it.
Sorry if that does not make sense to you. I’m still trying to figure all this out for myself and I’m not always rational about these topics, because seeing the potential of our cities being wasted by car centric design makes me angry.
I believe what they mean is “fuck car centric societal design”. No reasonable person should be mad that someone is using the current system to live their life (i.e. driving to work). What the real goal is spreading awareness that a car centric society is inherently isolating and stressful, and that one more lane does absolutely nothing to lessen traffic (except for like a month ish)
Probably not you personally, but the system, oil companies, and people like Musk and his followers that want to prioritize private driving over public transportation.
I say fuck cars, and I have one too. I try to avoid using it, but it’s easy to be lazy. I’m also fortunate to live someplace with great public transportation.
Don’t take it personally, just realize life can be better if we could learn to live without these huge power-hungry cargo containers taking us everywhere.
“If you’ve got, at scale, a statistically significant amount of data that shows conclusively that the autonomous car has, let’s say, half the accident rate of a human-driven car, I think that’s difficult to ignore,” Musk said.
That’s a very problematic claim - and it might only be true if you compare completely unassited vehicles to L2 Teslas.
Other brands also have a plethora of L2 features, but they are marketed and designed in a different way. The L2 features are activate but designed in a way to keep the driver engaged in driving.
So L2 features are for better safety, not for a “wow we live in the future” show effect.
For example lane keeping in my car - you don’t notice it when driving, it is just below your level of attention. But when I’m unconcentrated for a moment the car just stays on the lane, even on curving roads. It’s just designed to steer a bit later than I would do. (Also, even before, the wheel turns minimally lighter into the direction to keep the car center of lane, than turning it to the other direction - it’s just below what you notice, however if you don’t concentrate on that effect)
Adaptive speed control is just sold as adaptive speed control - it did notice it uses radar AND the cameras once, as it considers. my lane free as soon the car in front me clears the lane markings with its wheels (when changing lanes)
It feels like the software in my car could do a lot more, but its features are undersold.
The combination of a human driver and the driver assist systems in combination makes driving a lot safer than relying on the human or the machine alone.
In fact the braking assistant has once stopped my car in tight traffic before I could even react, as the guy in front of me suddenly slammed their brakes. If the system had failed and not detected the situation then it would have been my job to react in time. (I did react, but can’t say if I might have been fast enough with reaction times)
What Tesla does with technology is impressive, but I feel the system could be so. much better if they didn’t compromise saftey in the name of marketing and hyperbole.
If Tesla’s Autopilot was designed frim ground up to keep the driver engaged, I believe it would really be the safest car on the road.
I feel they are rather designed to be able to show off “cool stuff”.
Tesla’s autopilot isn’t the best around. It’s just the most deployed and advertised. People creating autopilot responsibly don’t beta test them with the kind of idiots that think Tesla autopilot is the best approach.
If Tesla’s self-driving isn’t the best one around then which one is? I’m not aware of any other system capable of doing what FSD does. Manufacturers like Mercedes may have more trust in their system because it only works on a limited number of hand-picked roads and under ideal conditions. I still wouldn’t say that what essentially is a train is better system for getting around than a car with full freedom to take you anywhere.
It’s level 2 automation, a lot of other makers have that. You need to look past the juicy marketing language, there’s standards and norms which Tesla cannot go beyond because then it’ll be illegal to drive the cars on public roads.
All throughout these comments, you seem deeply, deeply confused. Let’s go over this sloooowly.
Mercedes has two autonomous systems. Let’s call them MB FSD and MB Autodrive.
MB FSD has similar features to Tesla’s. It isn’t geo-restricted. You have to pay attention, just like Tesla. It isn’t true autonomous driving, just like Tesla. If you have an accident, you are responsible, just like Tesla.
MB Autodrive is another feature set. It is L3 autonomy, which means it is limited geographically and the driver should be available to take over when prompted. It also means that the driving is completely autonomous. The driver can be reading, playing on their phone, or simply laying there with their eyes closed. Mercedes will even take legal and financial responsibility for any accidents that happen on their system.
So, to summarize:
FSD -type systems: Mercedes and Tesla (and many other car makers)
Level 3: not Tesla, Mercedes
True autonomous driving is when the manufacturer takes responsibility for the car’s actions. Anything else is assisted driving. Until Tesla takes responsibility for accidents, you can’t consider them to have certified autonomous driving.
Is that any clearer to you? After seeing some of your other shilling for Tesla in other posts, maybe there is a reason you don’t want to recognize the advantages of other systems?
Absolutely correct. It’s so disheartening how many guys like him out there are hurting us all with their admiration for con-men like Trump and Musk and absolute inability to fact check
Is the investigation exhaustive? If these are all the crashes they could find related to the driver assist / self driving features, then it is probably much safer than a human driver. 1000 crashes out of 5M+ Teslas sold the last 5 years is actually a very small amount
I would want an article to try and find the rate of accidents per 100,00, group it by severity, and then compare and contrast that with human caused accidents.
Because while it’s clear by now Teslas aren’t the perfect self driving machines we were promised, there is no doubt at all that humans are bad drivers.
We lose over 40k people a year to car accidents. And fatal car accidents are rare, so multiple that by like 100 to get the total number of car accidents.
The question isn’t “are they safer than the average human driver?”
The question is “who goes to prison when that self driving car has an oopsie, veers across three lanes of traffic and wipes out a family of four?”
Because if the answer is “nobody”, they shouldn’t be on the road. There’s zero accountability, and because it’s all wibbly-wobbly AI bullshit, there’s no way to prove that the issues are actually fixed.
Accountability is important. If a human driver is dangerous, they get taken off the roads and/or sent to jail. If a self driving car kills somebody, it’s just “oops, oh well, these things happen, but shareholder make a lot of money so never mind”.
I do not want “these things happen” on my headstone.
But if a human driver is dangerous, and gets put in jail or get taken off the roads, there are likely already more dangerous human drivers taking their place. Not to mention, genuine accidents, even horrific ones, do happen with human drivers. If the rate of accidents and rate of fatal accidents with self-driving vehicles is way down versus human drivers, you are actually risking your life more by trusting in human drivers and taking way more risks that way. Having someone be accountable for your death doesn’t matter if you’ve already died because of them.
Is it any better if you have “Killed by Bill Johnson’s SUV” on your headstone?
Because if the answer is “nobody”, they shouldn’t be on the road
Do you understand how absurd this is? Let’s say AI driving results in 50% less deaths. That’s 20,000 people every year that isn’t going to die.
And you reject that for what? Accountability? You said in another comment that you don’t want “shit happens sometimes” on your headstone.
You do realize that’s exactly what’s going on the headstones of those 40,000 people that die annually right now? Car accidents happen. We all know they happen and we accept them as a necessary evil. “Shit happens”
By not changing it, ironically, you’re advocating for exactly what you claim you’re against.
Hmmm I get you point but you seem to be taken the cavalier position of one who’d never be affected.
Let’s proposed this alternative scenario: AI is 50% safer and would reduce death from 40k to 20k a year if adopted. However, the 20k left will include your family and, unfortunately , there is no accountability therefore, nobody will pay to help raise your orphan nephew or help grandma now that your grandpa died ran over by a Tesla… Would you approve AI driving going forward?
Yes, unless you mean I need to literally sacrifice my family. But if my family was randomly part of the 20k, I’d defend self-driving cars if they are proven to be safer.
I’m very much a statistics-based person, so I’ll defend the statistically better option. In fact, me being part of that 20k gives me a larger than usual platform to discuss it.
No, I do mean literally your family. Not because I’m trying to be mean to you, I’m just trying to highlight you’d agree with a contract when you think the price does not apply to you… But in reality the price will apply to someone, whether they agree with the contract and enjoy the benefits or not
It’s the exact same situation with real life with the plane manufacturers. They lobby the government to allow recalls not to be done immediately but instead on the regular maintenance of the planes. This is to save money but it literally means that some planes are put there with known defects that will not be addressed for months (or years, depending on the maintenance needed)
Literally, people who’d never have a loved one in one of those flights decided that was acceptable to save money. They agreed, it’s ok to put your life at risk, statistically, because they want more money
The proposition is stupid. If you told me that ALL future accidents will be prevented if I agree to kill my family, I would still not do it, that’s just a bad faith trolley problem. Let’s alone just recuding it by half.
I reduced it to a more realistic experiment, where my family migth be killed, with the same probability as any other.
If you told me that ALL future accidents will be prevented if I agree to kill my family, I would still not do it
That is exactly the point… Anyone would be 100% happy taking any proposition as long as they don’t have to pay the cost. I was just trying to highlight that
In this case, it was all about liability… We have not even come close to prove the current driverless tech is actually better than people’s skills… We all know that automated driving should be safer but we have no clue if we are even taking the right steps.to get there
Are you 14 and just learned what it is yourself? Everybody knows what a thought experiment is, and what the trolley one is in particular, which you just made a stupid version of.
Would you rather solve word hunger or get kicked in the crotch?
Then it’s not a fair question. You’re not comparing 40k vs 20k, you’re comparing 40k vs literally my family dying (like the hypothetical train diversion thing), that’s fear mongering and not a valid argument.
The risk does not go up for my family because of self-driving cars. That’s innate to the 40k vs 20k numbers.
So the proper question is: if your family was killed in an accident, what would be your reaction if it was a human driver vs AI? For me:
human driver - incredibly mad because it was probably preventable
AI - still mad, but supportive of self-driving improvements because it probably can be patched
The first would make me bitter and probably anti-driving, whereas the second would make me constructive and want to help people understand the truth of how it works. I’m still mad in both cases, but the second is more constructive.
Yes, it’s a thought experiment… Not a fair question, just trying to put it in perspective
Anyone who understands stats would agree 40k death is worse than 20k but it also depends on other factors. All things being equal to today, the 20k proposition is only benefit
But if we look into the nuance and details emerge, the formula changes. For example, here it’s been discussed that there may be nobody liable. If that’s the case, we win by halving death (absolutely a win) but now the remaining 20k may be left with no justice… Worse, it absolutely creates a perverse incentive for these companies, without liability exposure, to do whatever to maximize profit
So, not trying to be a contrarian here… I just want to avoid the polarization that is now the rule online… Nothing is just black and white
But they’d get restitution through insurance. Even if nobody is going to jail, there will still be insurance claims.
I agree that there is nuance here, and I think it can largely be solved without a huge change to much of anything. We don’t need some exec or software developer to go to jail for justice to be served, provided they are financially responsible. If the benefits truly do outright the risks, this system should work.
Tesla isn’t taking that responsibility, but Mercedes seems to be. Drivers involved in an accident where the self-driving feature was engaged have the right to sue the manufacturer for defects. That’s not necessarily the case for class 2 driving, since the driver is responsible for staying alert and needs to be in contact with the steering wheel. With class 3, that goes away, so the driver could legitimately not be touching the wheel at all when the car is in self-driving mode. My understanding is the insurance company can sue on their customer’s behalf.
So the path forward is to set legal precedent assigning fault to manufacturers to get monetary compensation, and let the price of cars and insurance work out the details.
But they’d get restitution through insurance. Even if nobody is going to jail, there will still be insurance claims.
And that’s where I’m aiming at… If Mercedes decides, like Ford did before them, that it’s cheaper to pay out the insurance claims they lose instead of fixing their bugs then innocent people will have to die so Mercedes can keep up their profit margins.
That’s exactly the point I’m trying to make
You seem to argue that, on the unproven premise that current AI is better than human drivers, we should let corporations test it out in the real world even if they are not criminally liable ever. For me, that’s a bad deal.
Now, imagine we go down this rabbit hole… It’s already 10x cheaper to lobby USA politicians to limit Mercedes liability than it would be for them to actually start paying wrongly death claims
In Texas, if you doctor shows up drunk for surgery and leaves you quadriplegic or kills you, the biggest liability exposure has been limited to 250k
I love tech and I do believe science, knowledge and the tech it can produce could improve our lives in unimaginable ways… But as long as our approach to it continues to be profit over people, socialise the risk - privatize the profit and corporation being citizens in all aspects except liability, we will never get there
You seem to argue that, on the unproven premise that current AI is better than human drivers, we should let corporations test it out in the real world even if they are not criminally liable ever
I’m arguing on the assumption that it is proven.
Until it’s proven, the driver takes the responsibility if the corporation doesn’t, and insurance costs should reflect that. There are reasons I don’t own a car equipped with self-driving features, and this is one of the big ones, it’s unproven.
But as long as our approach to it continues to be profit over people, socialise the risk
We’ve gotten really far with prioritizing profit, but I agree that socializing the risk is a big problem. However, criminal acts generally require motive, so we’re unlikely to see actual jail time without provable, malicious intent.
So I think we should do the next best thing: fine them. Increase the fines for each infraction in a given year until the problem is fixed. Force them to continue to improve.
A) you do realize cars have insurance and when someone hits you, that insurance pays out the damages, right? That is how the current system works, AI driver or not.
Accidents happen. Humans make mistakes and kill people and are not held criminally liable. It happens.
If some guy killed your nephew and made him an orphan and the justice system determined he was not negligent - then your nephew would still be an orphan and would get a payout by the insurance company.
Exact same thing that happens in the case of an AI driven car hitting someone
B) if I had a button to save 100k people but it killed my mother, I wouldn’t do it. What is your point?
Using your logic, if your entire family was in the 20,000 who would be saved - you would prefer them dead? You’d rather them dead with “accountability” rather than alive?
Your thought experiment doesn’t work. I wouldn’t accept any position where my family members die and beyond that, it’s immaterial to the scope of discussion.
Let’s examine various different scenarios under which someone dies in a car accident.
human driver was negligent and causes a fatal car accident.
Human gets criminal charges. Insurance pays out depending on policy.
human driver was not negligent and causes a fatal car accident.
Human does not get criminal charged. Insurance pays out depending on policy
AI driver causes a fatal accident.
Nobody gets criminal charges. Insurance pays out depending on policy.
You claim that you would rather have 20,000 people die every year because of “accountability”.
Tell me, what is the functional difference for a family member of a fatal car accident victim in those 3 above scenarios? The only difference is under 1) there would be someone receiving criminal charges.
They recieve the same amount of insurance money. 2) already happens right now. You don’t mention that in the lack of accountability.
You claim that being able to pin some accidents (remember, some qualify under 2) on an individual is worth 20,000 lives a year.
Anybody who has ever lost someone in a car accident would rather have their family member back instead.
The point of a thought experiment is to think about that proposition, not to replace with whatever you think makes sense
AI driver causes a fatal accident.
Nobody gets criminal charges. Insurance pays out depending on policy.
Now here is my concern… You are reducing a human life to a dollar amount just like Ford did with the Pinto. If Mercedes (who is apparently liable), decides they are making more money selling their cars than paying out to people injured or killed by their cars, what’s left to force them to recall/change/fix their algorithm?
PS: I also never claimed I rather have 20000 more people die for accountability… So, I guess you have to argue that with the part of your brain that made it up
PS: I also never claimed I rather have 20000 more people die for accountability…
You said it’s not a question of how much safer it is. You said it’s a question of accountability. So even if it were 50% safer, you claimed it was wrong.
And here’s the thing man, I understand where you’re coming from ij that you shouldn’t reduce a life to numbers. But how does AI driving fundamentally change the current situation?
Car companies already do this. They calculate whether or not fixing a safety problem will cost more or less than the lawsuits from all the dead people. There’s a famous documented case of this. Maybe it’s the Ford / Pinto thing you are referencing.
If you think of AI driving as a safety feature - like seatbelts - would you support it? I don’t know what the actual statistics are, but presumably it’s only going to get better over time.
The question for me is not what margins the feature is performing on, as they will likely be better than human error raters, but how they market the product irresponsiblely.
Tesla makes it very clear to the driver they you still have to pay attention and be ready to take over any time. Full self driving engages the in cabin nanny cam to enforce that you pay attention, above and beyond the frequent reminders to apply turning force to the steering wheel.
Now, once Tesla goes Mercedes and says you don’t have to pay attention, it’s gonna be the company that should step in. I know that’s a big old SHOULD, but right now that’s not the situation anyway.
There will be legal battles for sure. I don’t know how you can argue for anything besides the manufacturer taking responsibility. I don’t know how that doesn’t end up with auto pilot fatalities treated as a class where there’s a lookup table of payouts though. This is the intersection of liability and money/power, so it’s functionally uncharted territory at least in the US.
Now, once Tesla goes Mercedes and says you don’t have to pay attention, it’s gonna be the company that should step in
That doesn’t give me warm and fuzzies either… Imagine a poor dude having to fight Mercedes or Testla because he was crippled by a sleeping driver and bad AI… Not even counting the lobbying that would certainly happen to reduce and then eliminate their liability
The question isn’t “are they safer than the average human driver?”
How is that not the question? That absolutely is the question. Just because someone is accountable for your death doesn’t mean you aren’t already dead, it doesn’t bring you back to life. If a human driver is actively dangerous and get taken off the road or put in jail, there are very likely already plenty more taking that human drivers place. Plus genuine accidents, even horrific ones, do happen with human drivers. If the death rate for self-driving vehicles is really that much lower, you are risking your life that much more by trusting in human drivers.
Yeah that person’s take seems a little unhinged as throwing people in prison after a car accident only happens if they’re intoxicated or driving recklessly. These systems don’t have to be perfect to save lives. They just have to be better than the average driver.
We should solve the accountability problem, but the metric should be lives and accidents. If the self-driving system proves it causes fewer accidents and kills fewer people, it should be preferred. Full stop.
Throwing someone in jail may be cathartic, but the goal is fewer issues on the road, not more people in jail.
Making a human go to prison for wiping out a family of 4 isn’t going to bring back the family of 4. So you’re just using deterrence to hopefully make drivers more cautious.
Yet, year after year… humans cause more deaths by negligence than tools can cause by failing.
The question is definitely “How much safer are they compared to human drivers”
It’s also much easier to prove that the system has those issues fixed compared to training a human hoping that their critical faculties are intact. Rigorous Software testing and mechanical testing are within legislative reach and can be made strict requirements.
For example, I dont really trust mine and mostly use it in slow bumper to bumper traffic, or so I can adjust my AC on the touchscreen without swerving around in my lane.
Only Elon calls his level 2 automation “FSD” or even “Autopilot”. That alone proves that Tesla is more guilty of these deaths than other makers are who choose less evil marketing terms. The dummies who buy Elon’s crap take those terms at face value and the Nazi CEO knows that, he doesn’t care though because just like Trump he thinks of his fans as little more than maggots. Can’t say I blame him.
I know this is going to sound bad but bear with me and read my entire post. I think in this case it might be that people are trying to hate on Tesla because it’s Elon (and fair enough) rather than self-driving itself. Although there’s also the side of things that self-driving vehicles are already very likely safer than human-driven ones, have lower rates of accidents, etc but people expect there to be zero accidents whatsoever with self-driving which is why I think self-driving may never actually take off and become mainstream. Then again, there’s the lack of accountability, people prefer being able to place the blame and liability on something concrete, like an actual human. It’s possible I’m wrong but I don’t think I am wrong about this.
edit: I looked further into this, and it seems I am partially wrong. It seems that Tesla is not keeping up with the average statistics in the automotive industry in terms of safety statistics, the self-driving in their vehicles seem less safe than their competitors.
This table was probably most interesting, unfortunately the formatting doesn’t work on mobile, but I think you can make sense of it.
Car 2021 Sales So Far Total Deaths
Tesla Model S 5,155 40
Porsche Taycan 5,367 ZERO
Tesla Model X 6,206 14
Volkswagen ID 6,230 ZERO
Audi e-tron 6,884 ZERO
Nissan Leaf 7,729 2
Ford Mustang Mach-e 12,975 ZERO
Chevrolet Bolt 20,288 1
Tesla Model 3 51,510 87
So many cars with zero deaths compared to Tesla.
It isn’t if Tesla’s FSD is safer than humans, it’s if it’s keeping up with the automotive industry in terms of safety features. It seems like they are falling behind (despite what their marketing team claims).
That’s kind of a tough article to trust if I’m being honest. It may in fact be true, but it’s an opinion piece.
I find it a little weird to look only within sales for the year and also not to discuss the forms of autopilot or car use cases.
For example, are we talking about highway only driving, lane keeping assist, end to end residential urban, rural unmarked roads? Some of these are harder problems than others. How about total mileage as well? I’m not sure what the range is on a Nissan leaf, but I think comparing it to a Taycan or mach e seems disingenuous.
All that being said, yeah Tesla has a lot of deaths comparatively, but still way less than regular human drivers. I worry that a truly autonomous experience will not be available until and unless a manufacturer like Tesla pushes the limits on training data and also the fed responds by making better laws. Considering Elon douchiness, I’m also kinda happy Tesla is doing that and catching flak, but paving the way for more established manufacturers.
We were early adopters of Tesla, and trust me the cars are made cheap and the “autopilot” drives like shit even now, but it’s amazing the progress that has been made in the last 6 years.
You’re happy that a racist, misogynist billionaire whose companies have some of the worst employee safety data in the industries he’s involved in is pushing these cars onto public roads? Musk doesn’t care about our safety. Like everything else, he lies about it to make money.
We have no clue if Tesla’s are safer than humans drivers in any other car. Tesla publishes those charts, but the data is no where to be found.
Musk lies to make money. You can’t trust anything Tesla publishes.
I don’t want Tesla testing their shit on the public roads and putting me at risk so that Musk can make more money. I don’t opt in to be one of his beta testers.
We get it, you hate Elon Musk. That’s a fine position to take.
You are beta testing for anyone and everyone who is doing anything on the road. You can say “look at this lending tree report” and see accident rates, or look at the article you posted, and compare to human drivers to know which is safer. Or you can say it’s an unknowable lie in which case why are we citing anything besides you saying I hate Musk? Again valid.
He’s making money regardless, so yeah I’m glad that spaceX lands reusable boosters and Tesla pushes the limits of what is possible with an EV so at least we get something back. Considering how many other people hate the shit out of Tesla, I’m sure every time someone hits a raccoon in a Tesla we will get to read about it.
It’s not just hatred for Musk. Yes, he is a racist that had a place in his factory called “the plantation” for black workers. He swatted the wife and children of a whistleblower. There is so much shit he does, but that isn’t what makes Teslas dangerous.
Teslas are dangerous because he creates a culture that despises safety engineering practices. When someone has sex on autopilot and endangers everyone on the road around them, does Musk rebuke them? No, he makes a joke. Now, good followers think that the silly little warning that pops up every time probably doesn’t mean much. If a worker says that something probably needs more testing before release, do you think he pauses to consider the safety implications? I can guarantee he doesn’t care.
So, you get someone who runs into a fireman on the road and kills them because they were using autopilot while distracted. Or you back over a motorcycle driver and kill them, or plow into a firetruck and kill some more people.
Musk and sycophants like you that think it’s okay to have a cavalier attitude about safety because people just have to be sacrificed for technology. You are menaces. We don’t have to sacrifice passengers to make airlines safer. We have proper testing and systems in place to integrate better technology at very little risk. In the same way, we don’t have to sacrifice motorcycle drivers, first responders, other drivers or pedestrians just because you think your technology is worth it. Other car manufacturers have implemented those safety test systems. Tesla just doesn’t want to spend the money so Musk can get his payout.
You also forgot to mention that the damned things are rolling death traps since the doors arent properly mechanical. Why the fuck should I trust something that requires power to work in an emergency. Any number of things can knock out power and disable the doors if I back my 20+ year old jeep into a fucken river I could still open the door the seals are all shot as well so reduced pressure issues.
There is no obligation to sacrifice anybody. This is a question of risk vs law vs driver requirement which has got to be sorted out. Sure, point out that musk is shit and his factories are shit, it’s true. He’s also a liar. All true. What I take issue with is saying that the cars are 4 wheeled death machines killing everyone in their path. That is not true. It is also not true that other companies are solving the same problem without risk. They are solving a different problem of highly mapped cities and solutions for specific scenarios.
It’s a people problem and drivers (people) are irresponsible. I bet lift kits have killed more people than Tesla has had autopilot accidents by people not adjusting headlights. People are gonna fuck up. It has to happen, then laws have to be implemented and revised. There’s no hop skip and jump that solves autopilot on a closed course and has zero incident in practice. Conditions on the whole are just too varied. Of course, machine learning is my job so maybe I’m just a pessimist in this regard.
What I take issue with is saying that the cars are 4 wheeled death machines killing everyone in their path. That is not true. It is also not true that other companies are solving the same problem without risk.
I never said that. It isn’t black or white. I said musk creates a culture that despises safety engineering. Other companies like Volvo embrace it. Different companies embrace it to different degrees. As a result, you have wildly different fatality rates. Teslas happen to be the worst (although, like you said, it’s impossible to get good data that accounts for all the factors).
Yes, it is a people problem, but it is also a systems problem. Volvo has aimed for zero fatalities in their cars. They engineer for problematic people. They went 16 years without a fatality in the UK in one of their models. Tesla simply doesn’t care about problematic people. In fact, problematic people may even get a boost from a Musk re-tweet.
I agree, zero incidents may be impossible and people are problematic. But attitudes, practices, cultures and systems can either amplify those problems or dampen their effects. Musk and Tesla amplify the negative effects. It doesn’t have to be that way.
He said “within our lifetimes” so it only makes sense that I assumed that he’s talking about currently living generations and not himself or a specific generation. :p
Is linked to excess deaths? Technically it could be saving lives at a population scale. I doubt that’s the case, but it could be. I’ll read the article now and find out.
Edit: it doesn’t seem to say anything regarding “normal” auto related deaths. They’re focusing on the bullshit designation of an unfinished product as “autopilot”,and a (small) subset of specific cases that are particularly aggregious, where there were 5-10 seconds of lead time into an incident. In these cases a person who was paying attention wouldn’t have been in the accident.
As I said! People in this thread are dumb (IMO). If they read the article they would literally see most of these crashes were because of autopilot misuse. I’m highly confident even with these deaths - there would be more then this if there was no autopilot at all and if these people were driving manually. I got no data on this but that’s just my hunch.
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