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Every time I say this people lose their heads: Tesla's FSD/Enhanced AP cannot be safer than a human driver + passive aids like LKA and AEB. The statistics that

Every time I say this people lose their heads: Tesla's FSD/Enhanced AP cannot be safer than a human driver + passive aids like LKA and AEB. The statistics that constantly get paraded about AP are vs all cars, not just cars with passive aids. It's simple enough: If FSD would catch a hazard with the sensor suite, so would the passive aids. But if the sensor suite would miss a hazard, it's not an issue unless the human does too when it comes to passive aids. If the human misses it and the sensor suite misses it, so will FSD. The problem is this: With FSD the car will actively do the wrong thing in response to the missed hazard instead of doing nothing. Now the human has to correct after the wrong action has already been taken. - So if you visualize a venn diagram of accident conditions, the ones prevented by FSD will fit inside the ones prevented by passive aids, since FSD is actively creating accidents where they couldn't exist before.

tux1968 5y ago
That assumes that the human driver responds appropriately to the passive aids. But an electronic system that never gets tired or distracted may eventually perform much better and more consistently in this regard.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  That's the trick people keep falling for... Tesla FSD still requires a fully attentive driver, so it has almost nothing in common with the systems you're describing. It sounds like a small difference, but it completely upends 99% of the assumptions you can make about its performance. - For example you can't response to passive aids, you can't use FSD. Look at the video we just watched, would a tired or distracted driver have been able to make that correction? - Passive aids even handle tired drivers _better_ than FSD. Toyota's aids will warn the driver they are drowsy if the passive aids are intervening too often. They've done this for years now, even in their most basic cars. FSD is assuming computer control with human backup, so the human backup isn't being engaged enough to make calls that well. At best it can use proxies like wheel jiggling and gaze.
ajross 5y ago
I don't see how that follows. You're assuming the human always makes the right decision, which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up. I mean, you're right that if you take a putative autonomy solution and add another redudant sensor system (not even a human) that you'll catch situations the first wouldn't. But if that system is then allowed to demand control, then you open the possibility of mistakes in the "supervisor layer". So you're still limited by the best available quality of one system. Specific example: go watch highway crash videos on youtube for a while. A very common situation is a "late stop" situation on the highway where a car fails to see the one its following stop in time. Most drivers just slam on the brake and hit the car ahead, but a significant fraction swerve instead. And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. So... how does your hypothetical "human driver + passive aids" prevent the driver from incorrectly swerving at high speeds?
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  This comment is kind of all over the place but I'll try to follow... > You're assuming the human always makes the right decision, which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up. I don't really get what you mean here. "which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up." I read that like 5 times now and it doesn't parse. I'm not assuming the human is right. I'm saying if the human would do the wrong thing, the passive systems take over and do the right thing. If the passive systems can't figure out what the right thing is, FSD can't either. They're all using the same source of truth, Tesla isn't shipping an AEB implementation that performs worse than FSD... - > I mean, you're right that if you take a putative autonomy solution and add another redudant sensor system (not even a human) that you'll catch situations the first wouldn't. But if that system is then allowed to demand control, then you open the possibility of mistakes in the "supervisor layer". So you're still limited by the best available quality of one system. But you seem to have gotten the point and just not applied the right direction. Imagine the supervisor layer is FSD. You're still limited by the best available quality of the system... the human. - > Specific example: go watch highway crash videos on youtube for a while. A very common situation is a "late stop" situation on the highway where a car fails to see the one its following stop in time. Most drivers just slam on the brake and hit the car ahead, but a significant fraction swerve instead. And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. This is a pretty dense example... you're talking about several different scenarios that each deserve their own points. But to go with just the part you focused on at the end: > And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. >So... how does your hypothetical "human driver + passive aids" prevent the driver from incorrectly swerving at high speeds? Passive systems already exist in almost every car on the road to make those swerves safer and rollovers less likely. That's Electronic Stability Control. Thousands of times a second your car is monitoring for the conditions that would cause a rollover. The best cars will actively straighten the car after the swerve to allow the driver full control. It's smart enough to sacrifice responsiveness to give the driver a predictable result. Watch how the car ends up sliding thus "failing", but does so perfectly facing the original direction of travel, almost as if the car was capable of driving sideways. Done with incredibly millisecond precision in the application of the brakes, something no human could ever replicate: https://www.carthrottle.com/post/porsche-has-issued-a-response-about-the-macan-moose-test-failure/ https://www.carthrottle.com/post/porsche-has-issued-a-respon... ESC systems are already designed to work in harmony with AEB: https://www.zf.com/products/en/cars/products_31616.html https://www.zf.com/products/en/cars/products_31616.html So now the ESC system can be designed to operate in a manner that does even better when short stops occur (the "ESC high dynamic" mode is designed for the AEB's sudden application and the resulting driver inputs that will happen after) - Seriously, 99% of the hype about FSD seems to be people who don't realize what how active "passive" systems are when they are activated. That is the key difference, only working when the human is already in full control, so that if the passive system is wrong, the human is already providing the correct input. It's like trying to correct FSD running towards a pole, vs just ignoring an incorrect LKA system that tries to guide you towards the pole. With one you're already headed for a pole. With the other, you were never headed for the pole, the only way you hit it is deciding "yes I would like to hit a pole". Worst case for both is the same, but average case is better when you're ignoring something, vs correcting for a mistake already made.

tux1968 5y ago

That assumes that the human driver responds appropriately to the passive aids. But an electronic system that never gets tired or distracted may eventually perform much better and more consistently in this regard.

BoorishBears 5y ago
That's the trick people keep falling for... Tesla FSD still requires a fully attentive driver, so it has almost nothing in common with the systems you're describing. It sounds like a small difference, but it completely upends 99% of the assumptions you can make about its performance. - For example you can't response to passive aids, you can't use FSD. Look at the video we just watched, would a tired or distracted driver have been able to make that correction? - Passive aids even handle tired drivers _better_ than FSD. Toyota's aids will warn the driver they are drowsy if the passive aids are intervening too often. They've done this for years now, even in their most basic cars. FSD is assuming computer control with human backup, so the human backup isn't being engaged enough to make calls that well. At best it can use proxies like wheel jiggling and gaze.

ajross 5y ago

I don't see how that follows. You're assuming the human always makes the right decision, which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up. I mean, you're right that if you take a putative autonomy solution and add another redudant sensor system (not even a human) that you'll catch situations the first wouldn't. But if that system is then allowed to demand control, then you open the possibility of mistakes in the "supervisor layer". So you're still limited by the best available quality of one system. Specific example: go watch highway crash videos on youtube for a while. A very common situation is a "late stop" situation on the highway where a car fails to see the one its following stop in time. Most drivers just slam on the brake and hit the car ahead, but a significant fraction swerve instead. And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. So... how does your hypothetical "human driver + passive aids" prevent the driver from incorrectly swerving at high speeds?

BoorishBears 5y ago
This comment is kind of all over the place but I'll try to follow... > You're assuming the human always makes the right decision, which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up. I don't really get what you mean here. "which is wrong by construction in this particular situation as the problem being solved is the fact that drivers mess up." I read that like 5 times now and it doesn't parse. I'm not assuming the human is right. I'm saying if the human would do the wrong thing, the passive systems take over and do the right thing. If the passive systems can't figure out what the right thing is, FSD can't either. They're all using the same source of truth, Tesla isn't shipping an AEB implementation that performs worse than FSD... - > I mean, you're right that if you take a putative autonomy solution and add another redudant sensor system (not even a human) that you'll catch situations the first wouldn't. But if that system is then allowed to demand control, then you open the possibility of mistakes in the "supervisor layer". So you're still limited by the best available quality of one system. But you seem to have gotten the point and just not applied the right direction. Imagine the supervisor layer is FSD. You're still limited by the best available quality of the system... the human. - > Specific example: go watch highway crash videos on youtube for a while. A very common situation is a "late stop" situation on the highway where a car fails to see the one its following stop in time. Most drivers just slam on the brake and hit the car ahead, but a significant fraction swerve instead. And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. This is a pretty dense example... you're talking about several different scenarios that each deserve their own points. But to go with just the part you focused on at the end: > And those swerves cause rollovers and jacknifes and all sorts of worse accidents. >So... how does your hypothetical "human driver + passive aids" prevent the driver from incorrectly swerving at high speeds? Passive systems already exist in almost every car on the road to make those swerves safer and rollovers less likely. That's Electronic Stability Control. Thousands of times a second your car is monitoring for the conditions that would cause a rollover. The best cars will actively straighten the car after the swerve to allow the driver full control. It's smart enough to sacrifice responsiveness to give the driver a predictable result. Watch how the car ends up sliding thus "failing", but does so perfectly facing the original direction of travel, almost as if the car was capable of driving sideways. Done with incredibly millisecond precision in the application of the brakes, something no human could ever replicate: https://www.carthrottle.com/post/porsche-has-issued-a-response-about-the-macan-moose-test-failure/ https://www.carthrottle.com/post/porsche-has-issued-a-respon... ESC systems are already designed to work in harmony with AEB: https://www.zf.com/products/en/cars/products_31616.html https://www.zf.com/products/en/cars/products_31616.html So now the ESC system can be designed to operate in a manner that does even better when short stops occur (the "ESC high dynamic" mode is designed for the AEB's sudden application and the resulting driver inputs that will happen after) - Seriously, 99% of the hype about FSD seems to be people who don't realize what how active "passive" systems are when they are activated. That is the key difference, only working when the human is already in full control, so that if the passive system is wrong, the human is already providing the correct input. It's like trying to correct FSD running towards a pole, vs just ignoring an incorrect LKA system that tries to guide you towards the pole. With one you're already headed for a pole. With the other, you were never headed for the pole, the only way you hit it is deciding "yes I would like to hit a pole". Worst case for both is the same, but average case is better when you're ignoring something, vs correcting for a mistake already made.