18 ms·

I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. If I drove like Tesla's FSD seems to based on the videos I've seen, I'd be

by Syonyk 5y ago

I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. If I drove like Tesla's FSD seems to based on the videos I've seen, I'd be pulled out of my car and arrested on (well founded) suspicions of "driving while hammered." After a decade of work, it's not capable of doing much beyond "blundering around a city mostly without hitting stuff, but pay attention, because it'll try to hit the most nonsensical thing it doesn't understand around the next corner." It drives in a weirdly non-human way - I've seen videos of it failing to navigate things I'm sure I could get my 6 year old to drive through competently. Except, I don't actually let her drive a car on the road. I'm out in a rural area, and while "staying in the lane" is perfectly functional (if there are lanes, which isn't at all the case everywhere on public roads), there's a lot of stuff I do on a regular basis that I've not seen any evidence of. If there's a cyclist on a two lane road, I typically get over well over the center line if there's no oncoming traffic to make room. If there is oncoming traffic, typically one person will slow down to allow the other car to get over, or the lanes just collectively "shift over" - the oncoming traffic edges the side of the road so I can get myself on or slightly over the centerline to leave room for the bike. And that's without considering things like trailers that are a foot or two into the road, passing a tractor with a sprayer (they don't have turn signals, so be careful where you try to pass), etc. If they've got any of this functionality, I'd love to see it, because I've not seen anything that shows it off. At this point, I think we can reasonably say that it's easier to land people on the moon than teach a car to drive.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. Also out in a rural area. Running out to pickup lunch a few minutes ago, a young man flipped their old pickup truck on its side in an intersection, having hit the median for some reason. I too don't understand how humans are allowed to operate on public roads. Most of them are terrible at it. About 35k people a year die in motor vehicle incidents [1], and millions more are injured [2]. Total deaths while Tesla Autopilot was active is 7 [3]. I believe the argument is the software will improve to eventually be as good or better than humans, and I have a hard time not believing that, not because the software is good but because we are very bad in aggregate. [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/winnablebattles/report/motor.html https://www.cdc.gov/winnablebattles/report/motor.html [3] https://www.tesladeaths.com/ https://www.tesladeaths.com/
- Syonyk 5y ago
  Could have been equipment failure on the truck - a tie rod end failing or such will create some interesting behaviors. > I believe the argument is the software will improve to eventually be as good or better than humans, and I have a hard time not believing that. I find it easy to believe that software won't manage to deal well with all the weird things that reality can throw at a car, because we suck at software as humans in the general case. It's just that in most environments, those failures aren't a big deal, just retry the API call. Humans can write very good software. The Space Shuttle engineering group wrote some damned fine software. They look literally nothing like the #YOLO coding that makes up most of Silicon Valley, and deal with a far, far more constrained environment as well than a typical public road. Self driving cars are simply the most visible display of the standard SV arrogance - that humans are nothing but a couple crappy cameras and some neural network mush, and, besides, we know code - how hard can it be? That approach to solving reality fails quite regularly.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Is flying a helicopter on Mars arrogance? Launching reusable space launch vehicles that boost back to the landing site arrogance? I don't believe so. These are engineering challenges to be surmounted, just as safe robotic vehicles are a challenge, and its reasonable (I'd argue) for us as a species to drive towards solutions (no pun intended). Silicon Valley isn't going to suddenly become less arrogant, but that doesn't mean the problems they attempt to solve don't need solving. Incentives are important to coax innovation in a way that balances life safety with progress, and I concede the incentives in place likely need improvement.
    - Syonyk 5y ago
      Aviation and space are a very, very different problem space from surface street navigation, because they rely, almost entirely, on "nothing else being there." We've had good automation in aviation for decades. It doesn't handle anything else in the way very well at all, and while there's some traffic conflict avoidance stuff, it's a violent "Oh crap!" style response, nothing you actually want to get anywhere close to triggering. Automated approaches down to minimums require good equipment at the airport as well as on the airframe, and if there's a truck on the runway, well. Shouldn't have been there. Same thing for landing boosters. There's nothing it really has to look at and understand that it can't easily get from some basic sensor data - speed, attitude, location, etc. It's an interesting challenge, certainly, but it's of a very different form from understanding all the weird stuff that happens in a complex, messy, uncontrolled 3D ground environment. Self driving on a closed track is a perfectly well solved problem. Self driving in an open world is clearly very far from solved.
serverholic 5y ago
We are going to need a fundamental breakthrough in AI to achieve the level of FSD that people expect. Like a convolutional neural network level breakthrough.
- belter 5y ago
  I suggest some simple Smoke Tests. I love that concept for software testing. It could be applied here to test if we are getting closer or further from what humans can do. Some examples: Smoke Test 1: Driving with Snow Smoke Test 2: Driving with Rain Smoke Test 3: You are driving to a Red sign and you notice 50 meters ahead a pedestrian has its headphones on. The pedestrian is distracted and looking at traffic coming from the other way. You notice from the pedestrian gait and demeanor its probably going to cross anyway and its not noticing you. So you instinctively slowly reduce your speed and keep a sharp eye on its next action. Smoke Test 4: Keep eye contact with a Dutch cyclist as they look at you across a roundabout. You realize they will cross in front of your car, so you already inferred their intentions. Today the cyclist bad humor will not make them raise their hand or make any other signs to you other than an angry face. You however already know they will push forward... Smoke Test 5: A little soccer ball just run across your vision field. You hit the breaks hard, as you instinctively think a child might show up any second running after it. Failing any of these scenarios would make you fail the driving license exam so I guess its the minimum we should aim for. Call me back when any AI is able to even start tackling ANY of these, much less All of these scenarios. :-)
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    This "FSD" package is still at the "Don't hit this balloon we dressed up to look like a human" stage.
  - jtvjan 5y ago
    >the cyclist bad humor slecht humeur? That's "bad mood".
    - belter 5y ago
moralestapia 5y ago
Because Elon doesn't operate under the same jurisdiction as us common people. Try calling out a random diver a 'pedo', or perform the most cynical kind of market manipulation (then laughing to the SEC at their face) and your outcome will be very different. It's Animal Farm all over.
- optimiz3 5y ago
  > Elon doesn't operate under the same jurisdiction as us common people. Elon doesn't get any special treatment. You can do all these things as well if you're willing to expend resources when faced with repercussions. My suspicion though is society will give you more slack if you dramatically increase access to space for your nation state or make credible progress against a global ecological problem humanity is facing. > It's Animal Farm all over Don't get the Animal Farm reference as we're not talking about some sort of proto-communist utopia. Everyone is playing in the same sandbox.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm all pro-capitalism and I love my money, so, with that said. >Everyone is playing in the same sandbox. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!
    - optimiz3 5y ago
      > HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA! Defeatist thinking. As they say, pessimists get to be right, but optimists get to be rich.
      - arrow7000 5y ago
        How's that working out for you?
        optimiz3 5y ago
        My oldest TSLA shares are from back in 2013; other decisions along these lines have given me the freedom to pursue what I love in life.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. It's important to point out that this software is currently only offered as a private beta to deliberately selected testers. Now, maybe they shouldn't be using it on public roads either, but at least it's not available to the general public.
- mosselman 5y ago
  Because the self driving stuff in the other Teslas works well?
  - eclipxe 5y ago
    Yes
- alkonaut 5y ago
  It's being tested with the general public the oncoming lane, so it's effectively tested "on the public" even if at limited scale.
- atoav 5y ago
  As long as all the people in traffic with this experiment signed this agreement as well, all is good.
  - deegles 5y ago
    "By existing in the vicinity of this vehicle, you consent to Tesla's FSD software holding your life in its hands."
AndrewBissell 5y ago
You would think that just the name "Tesla Full Self Driving Beta 9.0" would be giving people some pause here.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I thought you were making a joke but it really seems to be called "Full Self Driving Beta 9.0". It's hillarious, do they think by adding the "Beta" it makes it ok to hit stuff unless the driver intervenes instantaneously?. How are they even allowed to call it "FSD" (Full self driving) if in fact it doesn't do that at all?
  - dyingkneepad 5y ago
    Well, everything is Beta these days! Is gmail still beta? I wouldn't be surprised to find out Playstation 5 is still marked as Beta.
    - cakemuncher 5y ago
      Gmail has been out of beta since 2009.
mortenjorck 5y ago
The monorail video is jaw-dropping. Nine versions in, I would expect ongoing challenges with things like you mention. But continued failure to even see large, flat obstacles is no longer something that needs to be fixed – that it has persisted this long (even after killing someone as in the case of T-boning a semi trailer at highway speeds) is an indictment of the entire approach Tesla has been taking to FSD. I used to think FSD was just a matter of getting enough training for the models, but this has changed my mind. When you still require a disengagement not to negotiate some kind of nuanced edge case, but to avoid driving straight into a concrete pylon, it's time to throw it all out and start over.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I agree. Not sure if I'd be able to trust it again after an incident like this at least in similar situations where there are obstacles so close to the road.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- flutas 5y ago
  I think a big issue with that instance (monorail) is probably because they just threw out years of radar data without having a comparable reliability in place with the vision only. Completely mental that they are allowed to run this on public roadways.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    I'm not sure radar would help - the pillar is a stationary object, and car based radar tends to drop all returns at the same rate as the car is moving forward. Radar isn't terribly precise, so you end up with tons of returns off signs, bridge abutments, etc. Remember, with radar, Teslas will happily autopilot themselves into a semi truck across the road, stopped fire trucks, concrete road barriers, etc. I see no reason to believe that a stationary concrete pillar in the middle of the road would be avoided any better with radar than without.
foobarbazetc 5y ago
The thing is... everyone knows this. The people writing the code, the people designing the cars, the people allowing the testing, etc etc. What we're seeing in these videos is basically unusable and will never be cleared to drive by itself on real roads. It's just the "the last 10% takes 90% of the time" adage but applied to a situation where you can kill the occupant of the car and/or the people outside it. And that last 10% will never be good enough in a general way.
- moepstar 5y ago
  I'm really not sure if we've seen the same videos - do you really think we're 90% there? No, i don't think this is really more than maybe 30% of the journey to FSD - and, most likely, according to what has been shown this time (and the last times) it'll never get there.
ricardobeat 5y ago
This is a collection of videos from thousands of hours of driving. I’m sure you can do much worse from human drivers…
- carlivar 5y ago
  Yep, cars are bouncing off Seattle monorail pillars constantly.
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  There's probably barely even 1000 hours on all of youtube of FSD Beta 9.0. It looks like these clips are actually from just 3 videos which in total are less than 1 hour of video.
protastus 5y ago
> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. Legislators are slow and ignorant about technology. There's also perception that everyone who dies on a Tesla accident is a tech bro who defeated software safeguards (e.g., chose to ride on the back seat in full self-driving mode). If automotive history is any guide, scrutiny and regulation only appear after a lot of people get killed. It's not obvious what the threshold will be, with Elon Musk being louder than anyone else in this debate and early adopters being comfortable experimenting with the lives of others.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
>At this point, I think we can reasonably say that it's easier to land people on the moon than teach a car to drive. I think this is pretty well understood to be the case. Level 5 FSD is magnitudes harder.
xyst 5y ago
And people are paying an additional $10K to be part of the development process of FSD. You would think risking your life to fine tune a broken product would at least be free, but Tesla seems to think otherwise. With that being said, even if it comes out of beta. I would likely only use it for extended highway travel in clear conditions.

by Syonyk 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago

> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. Also out in a rural area. Running out to pickup lunch a few minutes ago, a young man flipped their old pickup truck on its side in an intersection, having hit the median for some reason. I too don't understand how humans are allowed to operate on public roads. Most of them are terrible at it. About 35k people a year die in motor vehicle incidents [1], and millions more are injured [2]. Total deaths while Tesla Autopilot was active is 7 [3]. I believe the argument is the software will improve to eventually be as good or better than humans, and I have a hard time not believing that, not because the software is good but because we are very bad in aggregate. [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/winnablebattles/report/motor.html https://www.cdc.gov/winnablebattles/report/motor.html [3] https://www.tesladeaths.com/ https://www.tesladeaths.com/

Syonyk 5y ago
Could have been equipment failure on the truck - a tie rod end failing or such will create some interesting behaviors. > I believe the argument is the software will improve to eventually be as good or better than humans, and I have a hard time not believing that. I find it easy to believe that software won't manage to deal well with all the weird things that reality can throw at a car, because we suck at software as humans in the general case. It's just that in most environments, those failures aren't a big deal, just retry the API call. Humans can write very good software. The Space Shuttle engineering group wrote some damned fine software. They look literally nothing like the #YOLO coding that makes up most of Silicon Valley, and deal with a far, far more constrained environment as well than a typical public road. Self driving cars are simply the most visible display of the standard SV arrogance - that humans are nothing but a couple crappy cameras and some neural network mush, and, besides, we know code - how hard can it be? That approach to solving reality fails quite regularly.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Is flying a helicopter on Mars arrogance? Launching reusable space launch vehicles that boost back to the landing site arrogance? I don't believe so. These are engineering challenges to be surmounted, just as safe robotic vehicles are a challenge, and its reasonable (I'd argue) for us as a species to drive towards solutions (no pun intended). Silicon Valley isn't going to suddenly become less arrogant, but that doesn't mean the problems they attempt to solve don't need solving. Incentives are important to coax innovation in a way that balances life safety with progress, and I concede the incentives in place likely need improvement.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    Aviation and space are a very, very different problem space from surface street navigation, because they rely, almost entirely, on "nothing else being there." We've had good automation in aviation for decades. It doesn't handle anything else in the way very well at all, and while there's some traffic conflict avoidance stuff, it's a violent "Oh crap!" style response, nothing you actually want to get anywhere close to triggering. Automated approaches down to minimums require good equipment at the airport as well as on the airframe, and if there's a truck on the runway, well. Shouldn't have been there. Same thing for landing boosters. There's nothing it really has to look at and understand that it can't easily get from some basic sensor data - speed, attitude, location, etc. It's an interesting challenge, certainly, but it's of a very different form from understanding all the weird stuff that happens in a complex, messy, uncontrolled 3D ground environment. Self driving on a closed track is a perfectly well solved problem. Self driving in an open world is clearly very far from solved.

serverholic 5y ago

We are going to need a fundamental breakthrough in AI to achieve the level of FSD that people expect. Like a convolutional neural network level breakthrough.

belter 5y ago
I suggest some simple Smoke Tests. I love that concept for software testing. It could be applied here to test if we are getting closer or further from what humans can do. Some examples: Smoke Test 1: Driving with Snow Smoke Test 2: Driving with Rain Smoke Test 3: You are driving to a Red sign and you notice 50 meters ahead a pedestrian has its headphones on. The pedestrian is distracted and looking at traffic coming from the other way. You notice from the pedestrian gait and demeanor its probably going to cross anyway and its not noticing you. So you instinctively slowly reduce your speed and keep a sharp eye on its next action. Smoke Test 4: Keep eye contact with a Dutch cyclist as they look at you across a roundabout. You realize they will cross in front of your car, so you already inferred their intentions. Today the cyclist bad humor will not make them raise their hand or make any other signs to you other than an angry face. You however already know they will push forward... Smoke Test 5: A little soccer ball just run across your vision field. You hit the breaks hard, as you instinctively think a child might show up any second running after it. Failing any of these scenarios would make you fail the driving license exam so I guess its the minimum we should aim for. Call me back when any AI is able to even start tackling ANY of these, much less All of these scenarios. :-)
- dragontamer 5y ago
  This "FSD" package is still at the "Don't hit this balloon we dressed up to look like a human" stage.
- jtvjan 5y ago
  >the cyclist bad humor slecht humeur? That's "bad mood".
  - belter 5y ago

moralestapia 5y ago

Because Elon doesn't operate under the same jurisdiction as us common people. Try calling out a random diver a 'pedo', or perform the most cynical kind of market manipulation (then laughing to the SEC at their face) and your outcome will be very different. It's Animal Farm all over.

optimiz3 5y ago
> Elon doesn't operate under the same jurisdiction as us common people. Elon doesn't get any special treatment. You can do all these things as well if you're willing to expend resources when faced with repercussions. My suspicion though is society will give you more slack if you dramatically increase access to space for your nation state or make credible progress against a global ecological problem humanity is facing. > It's Animal Farm all over Don't get the Animal Farm reference as we're not talking about some sort of proto-communist utopia. Everyone is playing in the same sandbox.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm all pro-capitalism and I love my money, so, with that said. >Everyone is playing in the same sandbox. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!
  - optimiz3 5y ago
    > HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA! Defeatist thinking. As they say, pessimists get to be right, but optimists get to be rich.
    - arrow7000 5y ago
      How's that working out for you?
      - optimiz3 5y ago
        My oldest TSLA shares are from back in 2013; other decisions along these lines have given me the freedom to pursue what I love in life.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. It's important to point out that this software is currently only offered as a private beta to deliberately selected testers. Now, maybe they shouldn't be using it on public roads either, but at least it's not available to the general public.

mosselman 5y ago
Because the self driving stuff in the other Teslas works well?
- eclipxe 5y ago
  Yes
alkonaut 5y ago
It's being tested with the general public the oncoming lane, so it's effectively tested "on the public" even if at limited scale.
atoav 5y ago
As long as all the people in traffic with this experiment signed this agreement as well, all is good.
- deegles 5y ago
  "By existing in the vicinity of this vehicle, you consent to Tesla's FSD software holding your life in its hands."

AndrewBissell 5y ago

You would think that just the name "Tesla Full Self Driving Beta 9.0" would be giving people some pause here.

barbazoo 5y ago
I thought you were making a joke but it really seems to be called "Full Self Driving Beta 9.0". It's hillarious, do they think by adding the "Beta" it makes it ok to hit stuff unless the driver intervenes instantaneously?. How are they even allowed to call it "FSD" (Full self driving) if in fact it doesn't do that at all?
- dyingkneepad 5y ago
  Well, everything is Beta these days! Is gmail still beta? I wouldn't be surprised to find out Playstation 5 is still marked as Beta.
  - cakemuncher 5y ago
    Gmail has been out of beta since 2009.

mortenjorck 5y ago

The monorail video is jaw-dropping. Nine versions in, I would expect ongoing challenges with things like you mention. But continued failure to even see large, flat obstacles is no longer something that needs to be fixed – that it has persisted this long (even after killing someone as in the case of T-boning a semi trailer at highway speeds) is an indictment of the entire approach Tesla has been taking to FSD. I used to think FSD was just a matter of getting enough training for the models, but this has changed my mind. When you still require a disengagement not to negotiate some kind of nuanced edge case, but to avoid driving straight into a concrete pylon, it's time to throw it all out and start over.

barbazoo 5y ago
I agree. Not sure if I'd be able to trust it again after an incident like this at least in similar situations where there are obstacles so close to the road.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
flutas 5y ago
I think a big issue with that instance (monorail) is probably because they just threw out years of radar data without having a comparable reliability in place with the vision only. Completely mental that they are allowed to run this on public roadways.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  I'm not sure radar would help - the pillar is a stationary object, and car based radar tends to drop all returns at the same rate as the car is moving forward. Radar isn't terribly precise, so you end up with tons of returns off signs, bridge abutments, etc. Remember, with radar, Teslas will happily autopilot themselves into a semi truck across the road, stopped fire trucks, concrete road barriers, etc. I see no reason to believe that a stationary concrete pillar in the middle of the road would be avoided any better with radar than without.

foobarbazetc 5y ago

The thing is... everyone knows this. The people writing the code, the people designing the cars, the people allowing the testing, etc etc. What we're seeing in these videos is basically unusable and will never be cleared to drive by itself on real roads. It's just the "the last 10% takes 90% of the time" adage but applied to a situation where you can kill the occupant of the car and/or the people outside it. And that last 10% will never be good enough in a general way.

moepstar 5y ago
I'm really not sure if we've seen the same videos - do you really think we're 90% there? No, i don't think this is really more than maybe 30% of the journey to FSD - and, most likely, according to what has been shown this time (and the last times) it'll never get there.

ricardobeat 5y ago

This is a collection of videos from thousands of hours of driving. I’m sure you can do much worse from human drivers…

carlivar 5y ago
Yep, cars are bouncing off Seattle monorail pillars constantly.
ahahahahah 5y ago
There's probably barely even 1000 hours on all of youtube of FSD Beta 9.0. It looks like these clips are actually from just 3 videos which in total are less than 1 hour of video.

protastus 5y ago

> I don't understand how something this broken is allowed to operate on public roads. Legislators are slow and ignorant about technology. There's also perception that everyone who dies on a Tesla accident is a tech bro who defeated software safeguards (e.g., chose to ride on the back seat in full self-driving mode). If automotive history is any guide, scrutiny and regulation only appear after a lot of people get killed. It's not obvious what the threshold will be, with Elon Musk being louder than anyone else in this debate and early adopters being comfortable experimenting with the lives of others.

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

>At this point, I think we can reasonably say that it's easier to land people on the moon than teach a car to drive. I think this is pretty well understood to be the case. Level 5 FSD is magnitudes harder.

xyst 5y ago

And people are paying an additional $10K to be part of the development process of FSD. You would think risking your life to fine tune a broken product would at least be free, but Tesla seems to think otherwise. With that being said, even if it comes out of beta. I would likely only use it for extended highway travel in clear conditions.