Elon Musk is a nice chap

[CatalinaWOW]

Autonomous cars either have to be perfect without any driver at all, or you need a driver. Anything else is just glorified smart assistance features we've had for decades. And while that's useful, it's not game changing. Games changing requires a level of advancement we aren't even close to attaining yet.

I am certainly not sure you are wrong.  But demanding perfection from an autonomous system is an interesting position.  Without worrying about how far we are from such a system, how proud would you be about keeping a system that was 100 times better than human drivers off of the road, since it is "not perfect"?  How would you explain it to the survivors of un necessary fatal accidents that continued to occur?  And if you agree that it would be hard in good conscience to take that position you logically have to move on to one that is only 10 times better than human and from there to merely better.  As you approach equivalence the position becomes more and more debatable, but there is clearly reason to have the debate.

[EEVblog]

Autonomous cars either have to be perfect without any driver at all, or you need a driver. Anything else is just glorified smart assistance features we've had for decades. And while that's useful, it's not game changing. Games changing requires a level of advancement we aren't even close to attaining yet.

I am certainly not sure you are wrong.  But demanding perfection from an autonomous system is an interesting position.  Without worrying about how far we are from such a system, how proud would you be about keeping a system that was 100 times better than human drivers off of the road, since it is "not perfect"?  How would you explain it to the survivors of un necessary fatal accidents that continued to occur?  And if you agree that it would be hard in good conscience to take that position you logically have to move on to one that is only 10 times better than human and from there to merely better.  As you approach equivalence the position becomes more and more debatable, but there is clearly reason to have the debate.

I am not talking about my position on this, I'm talking about what Joe Public will demand.
We are dealing with human psychology here, not engineering.

[CatalinaWOW]

Yep.  And what we are arguing about is how much better autonomous cars have to be before the majority of John Q Public buys in.  It will never be everyone buying in.  There are still people fighting the idea of electric starters.   Perhaps a somewhat appropriate analogy is automatic transmissions.  Automatic transmissions are better (shift speed, economy etc.) than many humans with a manual transmission.  And are selected on the majority of vehicles partly for that reason and also because a large class of people don't want to be bothered operating the transmission.  Those that favor manuals tout their advantages in fringe cases, their superiority when expertly operated and the joy of control.  Even those these proponents often rarely encounter the fringe cases and many can't operate the transmission well enough to better an automatic.  Somehow the two have managed to coexist.

Autonomy adds the accident responsibility factor more explicitly than automatic transmissions, but I suspect adoption will follow somewhat similar patterns.  Whether that is in our lifetime or later.

[bdunham7]

I am certainly not sure you are wrong.  But demanding perfection from an autonomous system is an interesting position.  Without worrying about how far we are from such a system, how proud would you be about keeping a system that was 100 times better than human drivers off of the road, since it is "not perfect"?  How would you explain it to the survivors of un necessary fatal accidents that continued to occur?  And if you agree that it would be hard in good conscience to take that position you logically have to move on to one that is only 10 times better than human and from there to merely better.  As you approach equivalence the position becomes more and more debatable, but there is clearly reason to have the debate.

There's never going to be an exact way to compare the two and the way people perceive incidents will matter.  For example, what is perfection?  I think totally autonomous systems would have to get to the point where they never make errors that a competent human could avoid before they would be widely accepted.  There's a lot more potential for driver assistance and monitoring systems to increase safety in the near and mid-term and I don't understand the pressing need for 'full-autonomous' other than to show off. 

Also, when people start trotting out numbers regarding 'average' accident and fatality rates, remember that a large portion of human-caused accidents are due to things like gross negligence, drug or alcohol use or outright criminality.  I'm not keen on being required to ride in a car that is better than the 'average' with all those things thrown in, but not better than I imagine myself to be on a good day.  Get back to me when the autonomous cars stop running into the back of emergency vehicles with flashing lights.

[wilfred]

Autonomy adds the accident responsibility factor more explicitly than automatic transmissions, but I suspect adoption will follow somewhat similar patterns.  Whether that is in our lifetime or later.

This is what I believe to be the critical point. Someone has to be able to be held to account for an accident. It cannot be no-one and it can't be the amorphous cloud of past and present engineers and companies. For a plane or train crash and extensive investigation is carried out to ensure the cause is understood and then assurances can be given to the traveling public that consequential steps can then be taken to reduce the likelihood  of repeat occurrences. That's not practical with car accidents. But ideally the victims require someone to be accountable in order for justice to be achieved. Or at least the insurance companies know which must pay.

What happens if it is just a firmware issue at fault? Look at the airbag recalls. These faulty airbags can kill if they detonate unexpectedly. And then there is the Dieselgate fiasco with Volkswagen. Are people going to accept a situation where a company is the only entity that can be held accountable for a device that can kill or injure someone. It is not a direct analogy. You can verify the car you drive in has not got a known faulty airbag if you wish to. You can choose to not drive a diesel Volkswagen but it is not realistic to not travel on public roads in an autonomous vehicle.

Then there is the old chestnut about how the firmware is programmed to respond in an accident situation. Save the occupants or sacrifice the pedestrians or other car occupants. That's not going to go away.

The solution in my view will have to have someone input their accident response preferences, say via inserting a personal choices card, an then they become the designated driver for the purposes of accountability when victims seek justice. No trying to shift blame to the firmware engineers of the car company. If one car company chooses swerving then another will prefer to hold the line under brakes in some form of game of chicken. It will lead to some bizarre arms race of firmware choices if the car can identify the tactics of their "opponent". Is that an example of "reductio ad absurdum"?

In any case this is all moot. Until a car can find a place to park and doesn't have a driving position it isn't self driving. It needs someone as the driver with a license. And furthermore any future which seeks even more dense traffic is just not the right approach. You want to get human drivers off the road by designing the future to not be so dependent on mobility. Leave the roads for moving goods.

[james_s]

Yep.  And what we are arguing about is how much better autonomous cars have to be before the majority of John Q Public buys in.  It will never be everyone buying in.  There are still people fighting the idea of electric starters.   Perhaps a somewhat appropriate analogy is automatic transmissions.  Automatic transmissions are better (shift speed, economy etc.) than many humans with a manual transmission.  And are selected on the majority of vehicles partly for that reason and also because a large class of people don't want to be bothered operating the transmission.  Those that favor manuals tout their advantages in fringe cases, their superiority when expertly operated and the joy of control.  Even those these proponents often rarely encounter the fringe cases and many can't operate the transmission well enough to better an automatic.  Somehow the two have managed to coexist.

I loathe automatic transmissions and wish they had never been invented. They are silly devices for lazy people, and they enable less skilled and less engaged people to drive and give them a free hand to hold their phone, latte or whatever else they're paying attention to instead of the road. If I were in charge I would make manual shift proficiency mandatory to get a license, barring physical disability if someone can't be bothered to at least learn how to drive a manual they shouldn't be driving. If my elderly and mechanically inept mother can do it proficiently then anybody can do it and I think a lot more people would choose one if they ever had the opportunity to try. You really have to go out of your way to even experience one these days so most people don't even know what they're missing.

[Jan Audio]

The programmer have to decide if the car wants to drive 2 old persons or 1 young kid flat, or risk the driver.
Not really suited for open source, the car user becomes self aware and program the death toll to 100.000(eu notation) persons before scratching the paint.

*pre-defined society, programmed by law the king cant die in any car-accident.

[CatalinaWOW]

Yep.  And what we are arguing about is how much better autonomous cars have to be before the majority of John Q Public buys in.  It will never be everyone buying in.  There are still people fighting the idea of electric starters.   Perhaps a somewhat appropriate analogy is automatic transmissions.  Automatic transmissions are better (shift speed, economy etc.) than many humans with a manual transmission.  And are selected on the majority of vehicles partly for that reason and also because a large class of people don't want to be bothered operating the transmission.  Those that favor manuals tout their advantages in fringe cases, their superiority when expertly operated and the joy of control.  Even those these proponents often rarely encounter the fringe cases and many can't operate the transmission well enough to better an automatic.  Somehow the two have managed to coexist.

I loathe automatic transmissions and wish they had never been invented. They are silly devices for lazy people, and they enable less skilled and less engaged people to drive and give them a free hand to hold their phone, latte or whatever else they're paying attention to instead of the road. If I were in charge I would make manual shift proficiency mandatory to get a license, barring physical disability if someone can't be bothered to at least learn how to drive a manual they shouldn't be driving. If my elderly and mechanically inept mother can do it proficiently then anybody can do it and I think a lot more people would choose one if they ever had the opportunity to try. You really have to go out of your way to even experience one these days so most people don't even know what they're missing.

You have demonstrated my point.  Personally I learned on three on a tree and have driven many manuals including non synchro transmissions and dual gearboxes.  But for almost all situations prefer an automatic.  I use a car to get someplace, not for entertainment.

As a refinement of your point should driving a multiple gearbox non-synchro transmission be part of your recommended driving test?

[nctnico]

Autonomous cars either have to be perfect without any driver at all, or you need a driver. Anything else is just glorified smart assistance features we've had for decades. And while that's useful, it's not game changing. Games changing requires a level of advancement we aren't even close to attaining yet.

I am certainly not sure you are wrong.  But demanding perfection from an autonomous system is an interesting position.  Without worrying about how far we are from such a system, how proud would you be about keeping a system that was 100 times better than human drivers off of the road, since it is "not perfect"?  How would you explain it to the survivors of un necessary fatal accidents that continued to occur?  And if you agree that it would be hard in good conscience to take that position you logically have to move on to one that is only 10 times better than human and from there to merely better.  As you approach equivalence the position becomes more and more debatable, but there is clearly reason to have the debate.

I am not talking about my position on this, I'm talking about what Joe Public will demand.

I'm quite sure you are wrong. Joe public didn't wait with buying smart phones until they could be used to watch Youtube videos. Autonomous driving will trickle into cars in the form of driving assistance features becoming better every year. Look at how anti-skid / electronic stability even has become a mandated feature in cars sold in the EU as a good example where the electronics do a better job compared to the best driver.

[Marco]

There's a lot more potential for driver assistance and monitoring systems to increase safety in the near and mid-term and I don't understand the pressing need for 'full-autonomous' other than to show off.

Part of Tesla's value is that lazy people like not looking at the road and want to believe that their Tesla won't drive them into road dividers and fire trucks ... unfortunately, it will.

Tesla has been lucky it's only killed some poorfags in an economy car as of yet and their reality distortion field has protected them. If they kill someone more visible it's going to be Uber all over again. Then again their doubling down on promises of FSD long past where it made sense has become a huge risk as well, exiting from that bullshit is going to be tricky.

Exiting from letting people drive without looking is impossible at this point, it's too core to their brand. They absolutely need to make the collision avoidance foolproof in the short term.

[bdunham7]

Look at how anti-skid / electronic stability even has become a mandated feature in car sold in the EU as a good example where the electronics do a better job compared to the best driver.

First, it took many decades between the introduction of ABS as an option that worked in some circumstances but was disastrous in others--early systems would fail miserably in certain conditions like deep snow--to a system that was unquestionably better than humans at controlling the brakes during a loss of traction event.  The first system that I would acknowledge as absolutely superior to my own abilities in any conditions (so far) is the ABS/ESC/ROPS system first introduced in the 2003 Volvo XC90.  And it is taking even more time for the rest of the automotive world to catch up to that--the Tesla Model 3 was dinged by Consumer Reports for long braking distances caused by poorly programmed ABS, which Tesla then patched.  I doubt it has been tested as extensively as it should be, like most of Tesla's products.



Second, ABS/ESC is a function that benefits from the possibility of greater sensing and control by a computer than is possible with human controls.  The controller receives more inputs and has more controls and can operate them more rapidly than the human, so the function is much better suited for an electronic system vs. a person.  You would need 4 brake pedals and 4 feet to even try to compete. Perhaps octopi would be better at than humans at this.  Operating a car in traffic relying on visual images is much, much harder for a computer and a properly operating human brain is still much superior in making the complex decisions required.  Look at the video I posted above and imagine how hard it would be to have a program that would analyze the situation the way a human would. Driver assistance systems, especially those with enhanced sensors, can both assist the human and warn when the human is underperforming, but replacing the human entirely seems to be pretty far off to me.

[james_s]

I'm quite sure you are wrong. Joe public didn't wait with buying smart phones until they could be used to watch Youtube videos. Autonomous driving will trickle into cars in the form of driving assistance features becoming better every year. Look at how anti-skid / electronic stability even has become a mandated feature in cars sold in the EU as a good example where the electronics do a better job compared to the best driver.

Smartphones weren't used to control large, heavy, deadly machines. People weren't putting their life in the hands of their smartphone, a smartphone was a toy and a potentially useful tool, it was not a big deal if it didn't quite work the way it was supposed to. To refer to that as comparing apples to oranges would be an understatement. Tesla has already drastically over-promised on the driver assistance features and people are going to abuse them by using them for what they are implied to be capable of. People are going to die directly because of this, and the more of these cars we have on the road and the more affordable they become, the more people we are going to have at the controls who do not understand what the systems are really capable of and the worse it will get. I suspect it's only a matter of time before autopilot plows a car into a street fair or farmers market at full speed while the driver is busy playing a game on the smartphone in their lap.

[james_s]

As a refinement of your point should driving a multiple gearbox non-synchro transmission be part of your recommended driving test?

No, not unless they're going to drive a semi or something. I think there is a big advantage to learning to drive a manual, it creates more engaged, more knowledgeable, more attentive drivers. I think there are diminishing returns to making the process more complicated beyond that. With a conventional manual gearbox they've already got both hands and both feet busy, they're already paying attention to the sound of the engine, they already have to have their mind on what the car is doing. Also the far too common scenario of someone mistaking the gas and brake pedals and smashing through the front of a building is impossible, if you mash any two pedals at once on a manual car it will not accelerate.

[Zero999]

Automatic transmissions are better (shift speed, economy etc.) than many humans with a manual transmission.  And are selected on the majority of vehicles partly for that reason and also because a large class of people don't want to be bothered operating the transmission.

That's not true at all in the UK, where most cars still have a manual transmission. I don't know whether it's purely a cultrual thing, or if the roads here lend themselves better to manual.

I don't think the media help with self-driving cars: every single accident will make headline news. It's similer with the COVID-19 vaccines, which are safer than most over the counter painkillers, yet every single death, or adverse effect is shouted about by the media.

Yes driver assist will gradually become more compehensive and common, but I doubt fully self-driving will ever take of, due to the liability reasons mentioned above. Self driving cars will be more submissive and less agressive than human drivers, which will cause other road users to take the piss. If a cyclist knows the self-driving car will stop, if they pull out infront of them, without beeping the horn and swearing at them, they'll be more likely to do it. I can imagine a situation with a fully self-driving car stopped for ages, whist pedestrians and cyclists keep crossing the road in front of it, because they know it'll wait for them.

What about situations when you need to just go, because you're being threatened by another road user? A few years ago, I was riding my motorcycle, along a road full of parked cars. I was going slow, around 10mph because it wasn't safe to go any faster. A group of youths decided to line up across the road, blocking my path. I felt threatened, so sped up a little and reved the engine, to show I wasn't going to stop. When they realised I would run them down, they moved and let me pass. There was no way I would have stopped. They might have had knives, stabbed me and stolen my bike.

[james_s]

Yes driver assist will gradually become more compehensive and common, but I doubt fully self-driving will ever take of, due to the liability reasons mentioned above. Self driving cars will be more submissive and less agressive than human drivers, which will cause other road users to take the piss. If a cyclist knows the self-driving car will stop, if they pull out infront of them, without beeping the horn and swearing at them, they'll be more likely to do it. I can imagine a situation with a fully self-driving car stopped for ages, whist pedestrians and cyclists keep crossing the road in front of it, because they know it'll wait for them.

Not only that but how many teenagers will turn trolling self driving cars into a game? That's something I could see my youthful self doing, standing in a place that makes the car stop or choose a path that ends in a dead end, or putting up something the car will mistake for a stop sign along a busy arterial. There aren't enough (any) self driving cars around yet for this to be a problem but if they become mainstream so will these sort of incidents.

[nctnico]

Yes driver assist will gradually become more compehensive and common, but I doubt fully self-driving will ever take of, due to the liability reasons mentioned above. Self driving cars will be more submissive and less agressive than human drivers, which will cause other road users to take the piss. If a cyclist knows the self-driving car will stop, if they pull out infront of them, without beeping the horn and swearing at them, they'll be more likely to do it. I can imagine a situation with a fully self-driving car stopped for ages, whist pedestrians and cyclists keep crossing the road in front of it, because they know it'll wait for them.

Not only that but how many teenagers will turn trolling self driving cars into a game? That's something I could see my youthful self doing, standing in a place that makes the car stop or choose a path that ends in a dead end, or putting up something the car will mistake for a stop sign along a busy arterial. There aren't enough (any) self driving cars around yet for this to be a problem but if they become mainstream so will these sort of incidents.

If you ever want to have a perfect example of a strawman argument, then you can use what you typed above. With the same line of reasoning you could say EVs never become mainstream because youngsters disconnect the charging cables and shove potatos in the charger outlets at night.

[james_s]

If you ever want to have a perfect example of a strawman argument, then you can use what you typed above. With the same line of reasoning you could say EVs never become mainstream because youngsters disconnect the charging cables and shove potatos in the charger outlets at night.

You really don't think people will troll self driving cars? I think it would be funny to mess with them and I haven't been a teenager in a long time. I recently saw an article about some kind of robotic delivery rover some company was developing and the first thing I thought was that I bet it would be amusing to mess with it and see how it responds. Maybe people are more polite in your country but over here I can virtually guarantee that kids will turn messing with them into a game.

This is nothing even remotely like unplugging charging cables, where is the fun in that? It's completely obvious what will happen, it will stop charging, gee, how exciting. Not a lot of people are going to directly vandalize something like that, but a much more passive act like painting a line on the road that makes all the cars stop or directs them down a dead end or something annoying but not actually dangerous, someone will do that just so they can watch from a distance and giggle at the scene they caused.

[bdunham7]

A little programming adjustment will fix all that.

[nctnico]

If you ever want to have a perfect example of a strawman argument, then you can use what you typed above. With the same line of reasoning you could say EVs never become mainstream because youngsters disconnect the charging cables and shove potatos in the charger outlets at night.

You really don't think people will troll self driving cars?

Not to a greater extend than setting cars on fire, slashing tyres, steeling airbags, mess with charging cables and other nuisances car drivers have to deal with. At some point sh!t just happens.

[Zero999]

Yes driver assist will gradually become more compehensive and common, but I doubt fully self-driving will ever take of, due to the liability reasons mentioned above. Self driving cars will be more submissive and less agressive than human drivers, which will cause other road users to take the piss. If a cyclist knows the self-driving car will stop, if they pull out infront of them, without beeping the horn and swearing at them, they'll be more likely to do it. I can imagine a situation with a fully self-driving car stopped for ages, whist pedestrians and cyclists keep crossing the road in front of it, because they know it'll wait for them.

Not only that but how many teenagers will turn trolling self driving cars into a game? That's something I could see my youthful self doing, standing in a place that makes the car stop or choose a path that ends in a dead end, or putting up something the car will mistake for a stop sign along a busy arterial. There aren't enough (any) self driving cars around yet for this to be a problem but if they become mainstream so will these sort of incidents.

If you ever want to have a perfect example of a strawman argument, then you can use what you typed above. With the same line of reasoning you could say EVs never become mainstream because youngsters disconnect the charging cables and shove potatos in the charger outlets at night.

Fair enough he's taking it to the extreme, but why do you think the fact that most road users often break the rules, but a self-driving cars will follow the rules all the time, won't cause any problems? It will be fine if there are places where only self-driving cars are allowed, but I can see it being a huge problem, when they're mixed with unruly road users.

[nctnico]

Yes driver assist will gradually become more compehensive and common, but I doubt fully self-driving will ever take of, due to the liability reasons mentioned above. Self driving cars will be more submissive and less agressive than human drivers, which will cause other road users to take the piss. If a cyclist knows the self-driving car will stop, if they pull out infront of them, without beeping the horn and swearing at them, they'll be more likely to do it. I can imagine a situation with a fully self-driving car stopped for ages, whist pedestrians and cyclists keep crossing the road in front of it, because they know it'll wait for them.

Not only that but how many teenagers will turn trolling self driving cars into a game? That's something I could see my youthful self doing, standing in a place that makes the car stop or choose a path that ends in a dead end, or putting up something the car will mistake for a stop sign along a busy arterial. There aren't enough (any) self driving cars around yet for this to be a problem but if they become mainstream so will these sort of incidents.

If you ever want to have a perfect example of a strawman argument, then you can use what you typed above. With the same line of reasoning you could say EVs never become mainstream because youngsters disconnect the charging cables and shove potatos in the charger outlets at night.

Fair enough he's taking it to the extreme, but why do you think the fact that most road users often break the rules, but a self-driving cars will follow the rules all the time, won't cause any problems? It will be fine if there are places where only self-driving cars are allowed, but I can see it being a huge problem, when they're mixed with unruly road users.

I guess you are referring to keeping to the speed limit. First of all it seems Waymo's algorithms allow to go over the speed limit because driving slower than the other traffic -even though at the speed limit- is very dangerous. Secondly the EU has plans mandate cars to have active speed limiting on all cars sold within a few years. In the end self driving car algorithms will need to deal with other road users. Waymo et all probably have collected tons of data for that purpose.

[sandalcandal]

Tesla making strong moves to remove radar https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-pure-vision-update-configurator/

[bdunham7]

"At this point, it appears that the Tesla community could only see and test for themselves if Elon Musk’s idea of a vision-only driver-assist system is really feasible. "

[Ed.Kloonk]

Tesla making strong moves to remove radar https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-pure-vision-update-configurator/

From the comments section

    Lock McShane
    I wish my M3 would stop seeing every blinking yellow light on signs as a trafic light and stop slowing down every time it sees one.
       
        XSR900
        Yes, that is so annoying. I preemptively put by foot on the accelerator every time.

 

[eti]

Autonomous cars either have to be perfect without any driver at all, or you need a driver. Anything else is just glorified smart assistance features we've had for decades. And while that's useful, it's not game changing. Games changing requires a level of advancement we aren't even close to attaining yet.

I am certainly not sure you are wrong.  But demanding perfection from an autonomous system is an interesting position.  Without worrying about how far we are from such a system, how proud would you be about keeping a system that was 100 times better than human drivers off of the road, since it is "not perfect"?  How would you explain it to the survivors of un necessary fatal accidents that continued to occur?  And if you agree that it would be hard in good conscience to take that position you logically have to move on to one that is only 10 times better than human and from there to merely better.  As you approach equivalence the position becomes more and more debatable, but there is clearly reason to have the debate.

I am not talking about my position on this, I'm talking about what Joe Public will demand.

I'm quite sure you are wrong. Joe public didn't wait with buying smart phones until they could be used to watch Youtube videos. Autonomous driving will trickle into cars in the form of driving assistance features becoming better every year. Look at how anti-skid / electronic stability even has become a mandated feature in cars sold in the EU as a good example where the electronics do a better job compared to the best driver.

One doesn’t put one's life, and that of others, in the hands of a smartphone, does one!