22 ms·

Tesla FSD Beta Lunges Toward Bicyclist

226 points by codechicago277 5y ago

hnzix 5y ago
Speaking as a cyclist of many years, maybe the system is just modelling human drivers a little too accurately.
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  Ha! Yes. This is definitely terrible, but its some variation of what I survive through every day anyway. But still, even before this clip, I make sure to stay far away from Teslas if I see them out, they are just scary to me..
  - jws 5y ago
    As a driver in the beta program, unless there is a lot of clearance I generally take over when passing a bike. Not so much because I don't trust the software, but because I don't trust the bicyclist! Around here none of them signal. They appear to assume that you recognized the 250ms glance under their armpit they made two seconds ago as a formal and legally binding declaration of intent and just swerve across the non-bike lane to make their left while running the stop sign. (Old suburban smallish grid blocks with >50% stop sign coverage, so I guess it makes them grumpy.) Also, a plea to other drivers… Please! Stay off the bumper of Teslas. The software is generally cautious and gets spooked. It rapidly decelerates a couple miles per hour in preparation for a full on evasion, which wouldn't be a problem for a driver with a sane following distance, but if you are close enough to angrily look down at my speed limit driving head through my glass roof things could get a little awkward.
    - idontknowifican 5y ago
      can u imagine telling other people to drive differently so your car works?
      - they4kman 5y ago
        I do that a lot already, in my dumb car.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Even before self-driving cars, you've always been supposed to leave enough room that you won't rear-end the car in front of you if it suddenly brakes hard.
    - cassianoleal 5y ago
      > Around here none of them signal It is not always safe to remove one hand from the handlebar to signal. In fact, in a lot of urban spaces, it's downright dangerous given the bad quality of the streets. Another reason why cyclists don't signal is when they notice a car too close or too aggressive. In this situation, it's best to have full control of the bike. The cyclist is not a threat to your life. At most to the exterior of your car. You are a threat to their life. They don't want you to crash on them or the other way around. Give them space and it should be fine.
    - ecf 5y ago
      Do you go around posting every anecdote you have about bad drivers too?
- rodgerd 5y ago
  Kind of like running stop signs, I guess.
  - wcarron 5y ago
    [flagged]
- cameronh90 5y ago
  I've had humans literally drive at me with the express intent of seriously injuring or killing me. At least with the Tesla it's just going to kill you through its own stupidity...
  - wcarron 5y ago
    Dead is dead, no? Ride safe and keep it in the big ring, lol.
- nonesuchluck 5y ago
  Pretty poor execution by Tesla though. It didn't even honk and yell "ride on the sidewalk, moron!"
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
    Well that’s what these betas are for, iron out the bugs like this. Rumour has it in the next couple of versions the car will look for cyclists in its rear facing cameras so it can open the door right into them.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Not a far-fetched request given they already have ways to replace the horn via the exterior speaker.
upbeat_general 5y ago
It is funny to me how most of the self-driving industry is hellbent on solving the long-tail problem while Tesla is stuck on…most of it. It’ll be interesting to see if they ever add LIDAR/re-add radar and admits their mistake.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Most of the self driving industry is not operating at scales like Tesla, or in as diverse environments. I'm extremely skeptical they're going to fair much better on scale up: its notable that the Uber crash had LIDAR and still hit a similar object (a metal mesh with lots of gaps and a person).
  - ra7 5y ago
    Uber hit the person because they had disabled automatic emergency braking, not because the sensors failed to detect objects.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Their Lidar wasn't plugged into AEB, so it's not like Lidar would have helped AEB either. The car's built in radar would have triggered a stop.
  - andbberger 5y ago
    right, going to need more data to avoid running over a cyclist, as someone biking on the street is, as we all know, a black swan event. after all, who would want to bike somewhere with no protected bike infrastructure that allows shit like this to happen on public streets?
  - upbeat_general 5y ago
    It seems that Tesla’s main issue is detection, not decision making (well at least their biggest issue). Sure, some environments like extreme weather are not being entered by most self-driving companies. However, their detection stacks in general work fine in the vast majority of places, it’s their decision making that needs work. As others pointed out, Uber failed not because of a lack of detection of the person. Moreover, the cases where Tesla publicly fails aren’t particularly challenging for detection (daylight, good weather).
N_A_T_E 5y ago
What baffles me is that the car doesn’t have any trouble plowing right into things which are visible in the GUI. It looks like it sees the cyclist and goes right ahead into them. Anybody have an explanation for this behavior?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Tesla hired a bunch of vision people, and to their credit, it detects pretty much everything in its FOV all the time. But these results show that vision AI isn't driving AI and the hard part about driving isn't seeing things, it's predicting their future and handling the situation.
- nexuist 5y ago
  The pathfinding algorithm is separate from the object detection neural network. It's possible for it to incorrectly identify paths going through solid objects, however, I would hope they have dumb code to detect that the path is invalid and throw it out when that happens. Maybe they don't? Part of the difficulty of trying to have reasonable discussions about FSD is that so much of it is black-boxy nobody really knows what's going on. I don't care if Tesla wants to keep its ML models proprietary, but I feel like we deserve to know how it uses those models to make driving decisions on public roads. And not just Tesla either; every self driving company should be required to open source their "dumb" code so that we understand them better. The competitive advantage comes from the ML models anyways, so it wouldn't be anti competitive to regulate that disclosure.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    "Don't drive a path through an object" seems like such a core function that a video like this is proof FSD is intrinsically broken.
  - g_p 5y ago
    The most recent proposed legal framework in the UK for self driving vehicles (summary at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60126014 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60126014) recommends that legislation be passed so that "data to understand fault and liability following a collision must be accessible; [There are] sanctions for carmakers who fail to reveal how their systems work" The proposals are very detailed but do seem to be addressing a number of areas around how autonomy is marketed, and how to ensure vehicles are safe and that vehicle makers are making available material information on the inner workings of their software.
_ea1k 5y ago
As much as I like the Tesla vehicles and Autopilot in general, I'm really baffled as to why the FSD beta is allowed in its current form. The beta testers have done well for the most part, but its just such a strange feature to have in the public. It has to be watched really closely and each build seems to replace old problems with new problems.
mhh__ 5y ago
Oops, maybe it'll be ready next year instead
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  We're now, what, negative three years since the 2019 date Elon said cars would be full self driving?
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    This year is actually the _ninth_ year in a row Elon has promised that they would be self-driving "this year" or "next".
syspec 5y ago
"… and now with a software update, you can actually make /999/ of people safer"
- senectus1 5y ago
  I mean... both situations could still be true :-P but seriously, that was a serious WTF video. The comedic timing and the horror of what that car just tried to do.
- wanderer_ 5y ago
  Three nines is good enough for Tesla, I guess. It is worth noting that humans make stupid mistakes like this too, but I don't think this excuses the automation's mistake. Cars don't abuse substances (okay, most of the time), so we should be throwing out like 75% of all accidents right there. Do better, Tesla. Beta testing like this is unacceptable when it is fucking with cyclist's safety. On the technical side of things, I can see how a slower-but-still-moving object next to the car might screw with path-making. But this isn't how the bugs should be hammered out. I say we outlaw all OTA updates for vehicles. If it didn't ship with the software it's running, it's not street-legal. (And as for vulnerability fixes, Tesla's smart. Let them figure it out.)
  - randoglando 5y ago
    > It is worth noting that humans make stupid mistakes like this too Humans generally don't. Only humans that are impaired (drunk/lack of sleep) do this more than "autopilot" in its current state: https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1488673180403191808 https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1488673180403191808
    - wanderer_ 5y ago
      True. What I was trying to say is that since the automation does not have this weakness, we should be improving on mistake-rates, not introducing more failure points.
hansendc 5y ago
"It may do the wrong thing at the worst time" -- each FSD Beta announcement email.
- Someone1234 5y ago
  As another driver or cyclist on the road, I don't receive those emails nor did I agree to any terms, yet I am still being put at risk in this "beta." Lucky me, I guess? Where are regulators?
josephcsible 5y ago
Why do so many people want to ban FSD Beta from public roads every time it almost causes an accident, when we usually don't take away people's driver's licenses even when they do cause accidents?
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >when we usually don't take away people's driver's licenses even when they do cause accidents? Huh? Yes, we do?
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Not really. We will take away drivers licenses for driving under the influence or extreme speeding, but a lot of accidents are due to long tail bad drivers (elderly people who just don’t have good reactions, careless people, people who just haven’t learnt to drive well, cell phone users, etc.) who rarely have their licenses taken away. Of course, I think the solution to this is improving public transport and more aggressively taking away people’s driving licenses, rather than giving autopilot a pass.
    - randoglando 5y ago
      > who rarely have their licenses taken away. My understanding is if you accumulate a certain number of points, it gets taken away. The reason DUI etc. receives such harsh penalties is because the number of accidents DUI has caused makes it obvious that drinking is a factor. It should be the same with "autopilot".
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      I agree with what you say and just want to add that the benchmark for FSD shouldn't be the bad drivers, it should be the best ones.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Because a human putting 5 in the field for 1+3 is an isolated mistake, but the machine doing it is the result of a deterministic process that is likely to occur much the same way over and over again. In other words, no, we don't ignore MCAS causing the plane to go into a stall under some isolated circumstance just because humans also put planes into stall.
eanc 5y ago
prof-dr-ir 5y ago
It should by now be pretty clear that Tesla, like Uber before it, are taking the Lord Farquaad approach to self-driving: "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." It does not have to be this way, and these companies and their leadership deserve every bit of reputational damage they will get out of this.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  It's quite literally a public beta, just that the other traffic participants didn't get a say in the opt-in. Given the stakes for them I agree that it begs the question. In the end it's a regulation problem, not a Tesla problem (even though yes, the specific decision to exercise their options is theirs) - do you allow unlicensed drivers to perform this on-road testing of unfinshed vehicles or not? It's not quite a deliberate information hiding campaign as with MCAS (as far as we know). But it is pre-production testing of experimental engineering on safety-critical equipment. Experiments not guaranteed to pan out, and engineering lacking a mature certification process.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    the fact that there is such a thing as a 'public beta' for moving two tons of steel through pedestrian areas at lethal speeds seriously makes me question our collective sanity. Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. "It might fire in random directions at arbitrary intervals 5% of the time, but that's just how innovation goes folks. You don't like that, do you hate progress?"
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. This is a thing. They give marketing samples to organizations they want to sell to on a "try 'em out and let us know if you want to buy more" basis.
      - b112 5y ago
RLN 5y ago
plasma 5y ago
Would be interested to see footage from other companies like Cruise, any open beta testing footage like this?
- api 5y ago
  Bad news about Tesla is better click bait so you won’t hear about screwups with those. It’s like how there are thousands of gasoline fires a year but stop the presses if an EV goes up.
  - randoglando 5y ago
    > It’s like how there are thousands of gasoline fires a year but stop the presses if an EV goes up. It's because EVs are new, and people want to know the risks. Granted, it would be nice for reporting to also mention that gasoline fires are as or more common, and or state the distinctions between fires from a gas vehicle v/s an EV.
- threeseed 5y ago
  No. Because Cruise isn't stupid or reckless enough to (a) have open betas and (b) deliver FSD at all without some form of human backup.
  - aantix 5y ago
    Their taxis they just launched in SF are driverless? https://mobile.twitter.com/kvogt/status/1488559060785975298 https://mobile.twitter.com/kvogt/status/1488559060785975298
    - threeseed 5y ago
      They are monitored by professional humans who take over in the event of any issues. No offence to Tesla owners but too many of them don't take the limitations of FSD seriously enough.
      - 5y ago
wcarron 5y ago
What a load of BS. Regulators need to start stuffing Musk's ideas hard in the paint, and stop trying to goaltend when they realize it was shit. His FSD and AutoPilot naming schemes, tunnel deathtrap, the FSD and AP actual driving errors, horrible Telsa customer service, anti-union and abusive workplaces, the whole pedo-sub-diver debacle, "Funding Secured" tweet, etc. I did not agree to be in the beta experiment, and neither did that cyclist. This is playing with people's lives and someone is gonna get killed again, soon. Will no one rid us of this turbulent priest?!
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Where was the car even going? Into the bus lane? It seems like these issues could be easily avoided by putting LIDAR back in. I'm afraid that they're hesitant to do so because they'd have to admit that removing it was a mistake for all of the cars on the road without LIDAR.
- 4khilles 5y ago
  Do you mead radar? I thought Teslas never had LIDAR.
  - vanilla_nut 5y ago
    At least some had LIDAR for a while, but it's all disabled on recent updates because Musk wanted to save some money and trim LIDAR from production.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Lidar was never in a production Tesla, however they do run Lidar cars with manufacturer plates through the streets to keep HD maps up-to-date (I imagine they contract out/buy HD maps for the rest of the US). Radar is also still fully enabled unless they're in a 3/Y with a Radar and they have FSD beta, as up-to-date non-fsd radar cars can still TACC up to 90 MPH. *: HD maps are mainly for complicated interchanges, visualizations, and aid in not curbing the rims of the car; a few early FSD videos show what it does when it really has no map data, and it's less confident overall in turns as it tries to make out the edges of a road.
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  The user had tried to change lanes to (I assume) get into the right turn only lane past the bus lane.
thatswrong0 5y ago
The predicted route line was straight for the first part of the clip (but still wiggling around).. and then it suddenly veers off / disappears for no discernible reason. It doesn't seem like the FSD planner has any "memory" of what it was trying to do just moments ago, meaning it can just randomly change its mind like it did in the clip and surprise the driver. But the only time that should happen is if there's an immediate danger that needs to be avoided. If we're going to have this awkward level 2 style self driving, it should at least be predictable, and preferably inform the driver what it wants to do well ahead of time (e.g. in this case, maybe it wanted to change lanes for an upcoming right turn..?) I would definitely not risk using this thing in a city yet..
- auggierose 5y ago
  I would definitely not risk using this thing ever. The world is going insane.
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  > I would definitely not risk using this thing in a city yet.. ... or anywhere. Highway stakes are just as deadly, just less pedestrians and bicycles. Also, things can go wrong much faster there.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    The one situation where full automation makes sense is traffic jams on highways. Simple control requirements, very hard for the algorithm to catastrophically mess up (or require rapid intervention to prevent life threatening accidents), and it’s extremely boring for humans to drive manually.
    - imoverclocked 5y ago
      Yeah, but my 2017 Subaru does all but the steering with adaptive cruise control in this situation. Given that a driver needs to pay attention anyway, it's not that hard to just sit back and move the wheel a little when needed.
    - 5y ago
nexuist 5y ago
From my perspective, everything went right here. The software screwed up, it alerted the passengers that a collision was going to happen, and a human driver quickly took over and avoided the accident. Is this not what we should expect from a beta? The responsibility is still on the driver even with driver assist / full self driving technology turned on. All this talk of regulating the software when we just saw a worst case scenario resolve with a favorable outcome. "But what if the driver wasn't paying attention?" Then the driver will face the consequences as if he had been driving the car himself, because it's his car and it's his responsibility.
- wonnage 5y ago
  Beta self-driving software shouldn't be on the road in the hands of random drivers. It's crazy to me that people think this is ok because "it's just a beta!" The stakes are vastly different between a bug in a photo sharing app and a 2 ton hunk of metal targeting bicyclists on accident
- jdlshore 5y ago
  What you're missing is that it isn't reasonable to expect people to be paying enough attention to "quickly take over."
  - nexuist 5y ago
    Nobody should be using driver assist technology if they're not ready to accept the consequences it may get them in. We let teenagers buy sports cars despite being totally incapable of understanding the risks that 300+ bhp brings. I don't see the difference between that and FSD.
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      It blows my mind that the US doesn't have any power-to-weight ratios for new drivers. In Australia until you were off your probationary license (which was a minimum of three years after your learners permit, which was either 1 or 2 years, it's been a while), there were power-to-weight restrictions on the vehicles you were allowed to drive. Here? Saw a YouTube video of a seventeen year old doing his driver's license test in a 1500hp Bugatti. That'll end well, no doubt.
Everhusk 5y ago
Looks like a marketing campaign from a competitor to be honest...
- andbberger 5y ago
  I'll give you $20 to be that cyclist
ummonk 5y ago
The fundamental issue with FSD is that it doesn’t seem to actually make driving any easier. If the driver is doing their job and properly babysitting the car against these sorts of mistakes, then driving in FSD mode will be more exhausting than normal driving. Of course, many people will interpret FSD as a convenience feature (as they do for “autopilot”) and will neglect to properly monitor it.
- userbinator 5y ago
  If the driver is doing their job and properly babysitting the car against these sorts of mistakes, then driving in FSD mode will be more exhausting than normal driving. I've heard it described as being like a driving instructor, watching a very inexperienced student who mostly drives fine, but is liable to suddenly make extremely poor decisions.
  - yabones 5y ago
    I think it would be much, much worse than being a driving instructor. When I teach my partner how to drive, they announce their intentions, act cautiously, and make clear what their next moves will be. What I'm seeing here is more like teaching a chimpanzee how to drive. It's irrational, has no clear intent, and does not ever announce what it's trying to do. I've never been in a FSD-beta car, but I would take a novice adult driver over that every day of the week.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
- ummonk 5y ago
  Forget important, this isn’t even a problem to highlight and your comment contributes nothing of value.
jeffbee 5y ago
The question raised here is not whether FSD works. Everyone can see that it does not. The question is why the two people in the video can simultaneously be rich Americans with a fancy new car and also so naïve and gullible about FSD at the same time. Where did we leave our critical thinking skills? How did we manage to structure a society that rewards people who lack it?
andbberger 5y ago
I wonder how many people who think this is okay actually bike in locales with high populations of white teslas?
Havoc 5y ago
Move fast and break cyclists
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
There was a discussion on HN a few days ago about Star Citizen, and I'm realizing that Tesla FSD and Star Citizen have a lot in common. Both were promised to be delivered years ago, beta testers keep showing each to be quite buggy, there is reason to believe it may not even be technically possible to deliver everything that was promised, and they both have their fanboys who are ready to defend it and accuse skeptics of being haters who just want to see it fail.
YaBomm 5y ago
wNjdbfm 5y ago
I have a Tesla Model Y and I love it so much. I also paid $10k for “full self driving” and I’m in the beta program and I’d ask for a refund for that if I could. It behaves unpredictably - sometimes it seems smarter than you could imagine and then it does something that seems obviously dumb. That unpredictability makes it stressful to drive because being ready to take over instantly means trying to predict what it will do. I couldn’t live with myself if it did something I wasn’t prepared for and someone got hurt. So I don’t use it. It’s unfortunate that Elon has gone all in on self driving being the future of Tesla because they built a hell of a car on its own merits. These Tesla threads are always tense but there’s a lot of important discussions to be had about Tesla and FSD wrt technology and society. That said user: omedyentral seems to be farming anti tesla rage both here on HN and on their Twitter page. I’m not sure that’s in the spirit of what HN is trying to be.
- andrepew 5y ago
  "That unpredictability makes it stressful to drive because being ready to take over instantly means trying to predict what it will do." I feel this. I rarely if ever use autopilot because I find the cognitive load and stress of monitoring it to be higher than just driving the car myself. The exception to this is when the road is absolutely empty.
- ra7 5y ago
  There are a lot of people out there who think Tesla FSD is close to completion, even on HN. What’s wrong in showing the reality of where Tesla stands in terms of a safety critical technology using real world footage? There are anti-{FB, Google, Big Tech} posts on HN all the time. I’ve never seen anyone say that’s against the spirit of HN. What makes Tesla special?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > That said user: omedyentral seems to be farming anti tesla rage both here on HN and on their Twitter page. I’m not sure that’s in the spirit of what HN is trying to be. It's actually your post that is against HN guidelines[1]: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
throwaway2037 5y ago
Does Tesla get sued when people are injured or die due to self-driving failures? This can be people inside or outside the Tesla car. I am surprised that I never saw any press or discussion about settlements with Tesla.
rvz 5y ago
I think this is undisputed evidence that this FSD aka ‘Fools Self Driving’ contraption is beyond defending as it clearly has put the lives of drivers and cyclists at risk. As I have said multiple times. Tesla had a good run with this contraption, but it is time to scrutinize this fraudulent system that does not work as advertised and malfunctions on the public roads to run over or crash into cars and cyclists. This is not even at night that FSD has malfunctioned, let alone night vision support. The car doesn’t even monitor the drivers attention properly (It still uses the wheel). How can FSD be possibly safe to use when not only the system has failed in daylight but it also cannot see at night? Perhaps it is better to not pay and sign up as a crash test dummy with safety-critical software that doesn’t even work. No thanks and absolutely no deal.
dragonsky67 5y ago
We drive significant distances each year and I need to be comfortable when I drive. If the wheel alignment is out, it's an irritation having to continually push the wheel to centre and I get it fixed. If something in the load is continually rattling or squeaking (hate polystyrene) then I pack it so that it doesn't. Distractions like this are tiring and potentially create distractions. I love the idea of fully autonomous driving where I can sit back and read a book or watch a movie, but I cannot imagine what it would be like driving a car where you are not actually driving, but have to be constantly on your guard in case it decides to do something unexpected. Driving with constant attention is fairly easy, I would imagine not driving, but having to continually monitor ready to make split second would be exhausting.
steveBK123 5y ago
As an Tesla driver in the Northeast, I have always felt Tesla AP/FSD dev has a sunny mild/hot weather California bias, and fails to account for the vagaries of driving in the rest of the world. The Northeast has high density, old infrastructure (narrow bridges, tunnels and highways, lack of medians and breakdown lanes, etc which are out of spec to modern standards), fewer sunshine hours, cold weather (and the resulting pot hole & lane line degradation of the streets).. On the other hand, I keep seeing a lot of crazy FDS videos from the Bay Area so clearly they don't even have their home turf covered. I still don't see how local road FSD is going to happen on current hardware - camera resolution, placement, and CPU inability to handle high frame rates.. We are perpetually 5 years away.
Waterluvian 5y ago
In the town where I grew up the police HQ had a Safety Village for teaching rules of road and such to kids. It had a little McDonald’s and a little post office and even a little Tim Horton’s. I loved going there as a field trip. We would get to drive Power Wheels jeeps. How large is the biggest fake city used for soak in testing by one of these autonomous car companies? How much did it cost?
manoDev 5y ago
I believe the way Tesla is approaching autonomous driving is fundamentally flawed by political/ethical reasons. The general public accepts the fact humans may cause fatal mistakes while driving, because responsibility is expected and ultimately there’s someone to punish. But automation making fatal mistakes, even at a lower rate than humans, isn’t accepted the same way, in part because companies are not individuals – Elon Musk isn’t personally responsible for any accidents – and in another part because this space is currently unregulated – unlike in aviation where some body has to vet a manufacturer’s plane project before it can be mass produced. So, Tesla wants to iterate a product with significant risks on the wild while unregulated, at the same time enjoying a lower level of accountability an individual holds while driving – they just put on the contract that “self-driving” feature has to be monitored all times and if it fails the blame is on the driver. This is not a surprise considering Musk apparently extremely libertarian views, but is obviously BS as it’s a way to dodge risk while capturing all the upside. It’s a perfect rational thing to do in his opinion (we’re taking risks to innovate, etc), but it’s ultimately unethical. Maybe self-driving could be more reliably achievable with the help of local government adapting roads so cars don’t have to rely only on their sensors, or the whole industry could agree on a standard so cars can coordinate – but that would mean regulation, and Musk doesn’t believe in that. He believes Tesla can hack their way out of the problem only with technology in computer vision. I don’t think it will succeed, because if you look at aviation, another industry that enjoys a high level of automation and safety, nothing would be possible by initiative of a single plane manufacturer – the automation relies on equipment installed on planes, airports, etc. all standardized, as well as training and processes followed by the entire industry. Time will tell who’s right, but my bet is a reliable self-driving car has better chance of coming out of a place in Europe, Japan, Korea or China, where manufacturers and governments have a better chance of collaborating to achieve a solution that isn’t stuck into the “computer vision” local maxima.
sporkland 5y ago
As a cyclist, I view self driving cars as one of my biggest wins in terms of safety relative to the easily distracted monkeys who drive them now. Sad to see Tesla doing damage to the overall effort with their GSD approach to it. Hope they don't salt the earth behind them. Seems like Google, Cruise and co are doing well enough here to make it look like a tesla problem as opposed to a self driving car problem.

Speaking as a cyclist of many years, maybe the system is just modelling human drivers a little too accurately.

beepbooptheory 5y ago
Ha! Yes. This is definitely terrible, but its some variation of what I survive through every day anyway. But still, even before this clip, I make sure to stay far away from Teslas if I see them out, they are just scary to me..
- jws 5y ago
  As a driver in the beta program, unless there is a lot of clearance I generally take over when passing a bike. Not so much because I don't trust the software, but because I don't trust the bicyclist! Around here none of them signal. They appear to assume that you recognized the 250ms glance under their armpit they made two seconds ago as a formal and legally binding declaration of intent and just swerve across the non-bike lane to make their left while running the stop sign. (Old suburban smallish grid blocks with >50% stop sign coverage, so I guess it makes them grumpy.) Also, a plea to other drivers… Please! Stay off the bumper of Teslas. The software is generally cautious and gets spooked. It rapidly decelerates a couple miles per hour in preparation for a full on evasion, which wouldn't be a problem for a driver with a sane following distance, but if you are close enough to angrily look down at my speed limit driving head through my glass roof things could get a little awkward.
  - idontknowifican 5y ago
    can u imagine telling other people to drive differently so your car works?
    - they4kman 5y ago
      I do that a lot already, in my dumb car.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Even before self-driving cars, you've always been supposed to leave enough room that you won't rear-end the car in front of you if it suddenly brakes hard.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    > Around here none of them signal It is not always safe to remove one hand from the handlebar to signal. In fact, in a lot of urban spaces, it's downright dangerous given the bad quality of the streets. Another reason why cyclists don't signal is when they notice a car too close or too aggressive. In this situation, it's best to have full control of the bike. The cyclist is not a threat to your life. At most to the exterior of your car. You are a threat to their life. They don't want you to crash on them or the other way around. Give them space and it should be fine.
  - ecf 5y ago
    Do you go around posting every anecdote you have about bad drivers too?
rodgerd 5y ago
Kind of like running stop signs, I guess.
- wcarron 5y ago
  [flagged]
cameronh90 5y ago
I've had humans literally drive at me with the express intent of seriously injuring or killing me. At least with the Tesla it's just going to kill you through its own stupidity...
- wcarron 5y ago
  Dead is dead, no? Ride safe and keep it in the big ring, lol.
nonesuchluck 5y ago
Pretty poor execution by Tesla though. It didn't even honk and yell "ride on the sidewalk, moron!"
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  Well that’s what these betas are for, iron out the bugs like this. Rumour has it in the next couple of versions the car will look for cyclists in its rear facing cameras so it can open the door right into them.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Not a far-fetched request given they already have ways to replace the horn via the exterior speaker.

It is funny to me how most of the self-driving industry is hellbent on solving the long-tail problem while Tesla is stuck on…most of it. It’ll be interesting to see if they ever add LIDAR/re-add radar and admits their mistake.

XorNot 5y ago
Most of the self driving industry is not operating at scales like Tesla, or in as diverse environments. I'm extremely skeptical they're going to fair much better on scale up: its notable that the Uber crash had LIDAR and still hit a similar object (a metal mesh with lots of gaps and a person).
- ra7 5y ago
  Uber hit the person because they had disabled automatic emergency braking, not because the sensors failed to detect objects.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Their Lidar wasn't plugged into AEB, so it's not like Lidar would have helped AEB either. The car's built in radar would have triggered a stop.
- andbberger 5y ago
  right, going to need more data to avoid running over a cyclist, as someone biking on the street is, as we all know, a black swan event. after all, who would want to bike somewhere with no protected bike infrastructure that allows shit like this to happen on public streets?
- upbeat_general 5y ago
  It seems that Tesla’s main issue is detection, not decision making (well at least their biggest issue). Sure, some environments like extreme weather are not being entered by most self-driving companies. However, their detection stacks in general work fine in the vast majority of places, it’s their decision making that needs work. As others pointed out, Uber failed not because of a lack of detection of the person. Moreover, the cases where Tesla publicly fails aren’t particularly challenging for detection (daylight, good weather).

N_A_T_E 5y ago

What baffles me is that the car doesn’t have any trouble plowing right into things which are visible in the GUI. It looks like it sees the cyclist and goes right ahead into them. Anybody have an explanation for this behavior?

judge2020 5y ago
Tesla hired a bunch of vision people, and to their credit, it detects pretty much everything in its FOV all the time. But these results show that vision AI isn't driving AI and the hard part about driving isn't seeing things, it's predicting their future and handling the situation.
nexuist 5y ago
The pathfinding algorithm is separate from the object detection neural network. It's possible for it to incorrectly identify paths going through solid objects, however, I would hope they have dumb code to detect that the path is invalid and throw it out when that happens. Maybe they don't? Part of the difficulty of trying to have reasonable discussions about FSD is that so much of it is black-boxy nobody really knows what's going on. I don't care if Tesla wants to keep its ML models proprietary, but I feel like we deserve to know how it uses those models to make driving decisions on public roads. And not just Tesla either; every self driving company should be required to open source their "dumb" code so that we understand them better. The competitive advantage comes from the ML models anyways, so it wouldn't be anti competitive to regulate that disclosure.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  "Don't drive a path through an object" seems like such a core function that a video like this is proof FSD is intrinsically broken.
- g_p 5y ago
  The most recent proposed legal framework in the UK for self driving vehicles (summary at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60126014 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60126014) recommends that legislation be passed so that "data to understand fault and liability following a collision must be accessible; [There are] sanctions for carmakers who fail to reveal how their systems work" The proposals are very detailed but do seem to be addressing a number of areas around how autonomy is marketed, and how to ensure vehicles are safe and that vehicle makers are making available material information on the inner workings of their software.

_ea1k 5y ago

As much as I like the Tesla vehicles and Autopilot in general, I'm really baffled as to why the FSD beta is allowed in its current form. The beta testers have done well for the most part, but its just such a strange feature to have in the public. It has to be watched really closely and each build seems to replace old problems with new problems.

mhh__ 5y ago

Oops, maybe it'll be ready next year instead

qbasic_forever 5y ago
We're now, what, negative three years since the 2019 date Elon said cars would be full self driving?
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  This year is actually the _ninth_ year in a row Elon has promised that they would be self-driving "this year" or "next".

syspec 5y ago

"… and now with a software update, you can actually make /999/ of people safer"

senectus1 5y ago
I mean... both situations could still be true :-P but seriously, that was a serious WTF video. The comedic timing and the horror of what that car just tried to do.
wanderer_ 5y ago
Three nines is good enough for Tesla, I guess. It is worth noting that humans make stupid mistakes like this too, but I don't think this excuses the automation's mistake. Cars don't abuse substances (okay, most of the time), so we should be throwing out like 75% of all accidents right there. Do better, Tesla. Beta testing like this is unacceptable when it is fucking with cyclist's safety. On the technical side of things, I can see how a slower-but-still-moving object next to the car might screw with path-making. But this isn't how the bugs should be hammered out. I say we outlaw all OTA updates for vehicles. If it didn't ship with the software it's running, it's not street-legal. (And as for vulnerability fixes, Tesla's smart. Let them figure it out.)
- randoglando 5y ago
  > It is worth noting that humans make stupid mistakes like this too Humans generally don't. Only humans that are impaired (drunk/lack of sleep) do this more than "autopilot" in its current state: https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1488673180403191808 https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1488673180403191808
  - wanderer_ 5y ago
    True. What I was trying to say is that since the automation does not have this weakness, we should be improving on mistake-rates, not introducing more failure points.

hansendc 5y ago

"It may do the wrong thing at the worst time" -- each FSD Beta announcement email.

Someone1234 5y ago
As another driver or cyclist on the road, I don't receive those emails nor did I agree to any terms, yet I am still being put at risk in this "beta." Lucky me, I guess? Where are regulators?

josephcsible 5y ago

Why do so many people want to ban FSD Beta from public roads every time it almost causes an accident, when we usually don't take away people's driver's licenses even when they do cause accidents?

moralestapia 5y ago
>when we usually don't take away people's driver's licenses even when they do cause accidents? Huh? Yes, we do?
- ummonk 5y ago
  Not really. We will take away drivers licenses for driving under the influence or extreme speeding, but a lot of accidents are due to long tail bad drivers (elderly people who just don’t have good reactions, careless people, people who just haven’t learnt to drive well, cell phone users, etc.) who rarely have their licenses taken away. Of course, I think the solution to this is improving public transport and more aggressively taking away people’s driving licenses, rather than giving autopilot a pass.
  - randoglando 5y ago
    > who rarely have their licenses taken away. My understanding is if you accumulate a certain number of points, it gets taken away. The reason DUI etc. receives such harsh penalties is because the number of accidents DUI has caused makes it obvious that drinking is a factor. It should be the same with "autopilot".
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    I agree with what you say and just want to add that the benchmark for FSD shouldn't be the bad drivers, it should be the best ones.
stefan_ 5y ago
Because a human putting 5 in the field for 1+3 is an isolated mistake, but the machine doing it is the result of a deterministic process that is likely to occur much the same way over and over again. In other words, no, we don't ignore MCAS causing the plane to go into a stall under some isolated circumstance just because humans also put planes into stall.

eanc 5y ago

prof-dr-ir 5y ago

It should by now be pretty clear that Tesla, like Uber before it, are taking the Lord Farquaad approach to self-driving: "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." It does not have to be this way, and these companies and their leadership deserve every bit of reputational damage they will get out of this.

sho_hn 5y ago
It's quite literally a public beta, just that the other traffic participants didn't get a say in the opt-in. Given the stakes for them I agree that it begs the question. In the end it's a regulation problem, not a Tesla problem (even though yes, the specific decision to exercise their options is theirs) - do you allow unlicensed drivers to perform this on-road testing of unfinshed vehicles or not? It's not quite a deliberate information hiding campaign as with MCAS (as far as we know). But it is pre-production testing of experimental engineering on safety-critical equipment. Experiments not guaranteed to pan out, and engineering lacking a mature certification process.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  the fact that there is such a thing as a 'public beta' for moving two tons of steel through pedestrian areas at lethal speeds seriously makes me question our collective sanity. Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. "It might fire in random directions at arbitrary intervals 5% of the time, but that's just how innovation goes folks. You don't like that, do you hate progress?"
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. This is a thing. They give marketing samples to organizations they want to sell to on a "try 'em out and let us know if you want to buy more" basis.
    - b112 5y ago

RLN 5y ago

plasma 5y ago

Would be interested to see footage from other companies like Cruise, any open beta testing footage like this?

api 5y ago
Bad news about Tesla is better click bait so you won’t hear about screwups with those. It’s like how there are thousands of gasoline fires a year but stop the presses if an EV goes up.
- randoglando 5y ago
  > It’s like how there are thousands of gasoline fires a year but stop the presses if an EV goes up. It's because EVs are new, and people want to know the risks. Granted, it would be nice for reporting to also mention that gasoline fires are as or more common, and or state the distinctions between fires from a gas vehicle v/s an EV.
threeseed 5y ago
No. Because Cruise isn't stupid or reckless enough to (a) have open betas and (b) deliver FSD at all without some form of human backup.
- aantix 5y ago
  Their taxis they just launched in SF are driverless? https://mobile.twitter.com/kvogt/status/1488559060785975298 https://mobile.twitter.com/kvogt/status/1488559060785975298
  - threeseed 5y ago
    They are monitored by professional humans who take over in the event of any issues. No offence to Tesla owners but too many of them don't take the limitations of FSD seriously enough.
    - 5y ago

wcarron 5y ago

What a load of BS. Regulators need to start stuffing Musk's ideas hard in the paint, and stop trying to goaltend when they realize it was shit. His FSD and AutoPilot naming schemes, tunnel deathtrap, the FSD and AP actual driving errors, horrible Telsa customer service, anti-union and abusive workplaces, the whole pedo-sub-diver debacle, "Funding Secured" tweet, etc. I did not agree to be in the beta experiment, and neither did that cyclist. This is playing with people's lives and someone is gonna get killed again, soon. Will no one rid us of this turbulent priest?!

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Where was the car even going? Into the bus lane? It seems like these issues could be easily avoided by putting LIDAR back in. I'm afraid that they're hesitant to do so because they'd have to admit that removing it was a mistake for all of the cars on the road without LIDAR.

4khilles 5y ago
Do you mead radar? I thought Teslas never had LIDAR.
- vanilla_nut 5y ago
  At least some had LIDAR for a while, but it's all disabled on recent updates because Musk wanted to save some money and trim LIDAR from production.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Lidar was never in a production Tesla, however they do run Lidar cars with manufacturer plates through the streets to keep HD maps up-to-date (I imagine they contract out/buy HD maps for the rest of the US). Radar is also still fully enabled unless they're in a 3/Y with a Radar and they have FSD beta, as up-to-date non-fsd radar cars can still TACC up to 90 MPH. *: HD maps are mainly for complicated interchanges, visualizations, and aid in not curbing the rims of the car; a few early FSD videos show what it does when it really has no map data, and it's less confident overall in turns as it tries to make out the edges of a road.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
The user had tried to change lanes to (I assume) get into the right turn only lane past the bus lane.

thatswrong0 5y ago

The predicted route line was straight for the first part of the clip (but still wiggling around).. and then it suddenly veers off / disappears for no discernible reason. It doesn't seem like the FSD planner has any "memory" of what it was trying to do just moments ago, meaning it can just randomly change its mind like it did in the clip and surprise the driver. But the only time that should happen is if there's an immediate danger that needs to be avoided. If we're going to have this awkward level 2 style self driving, it should at least be predictable, and preferably inform the driver what it wants to do well ahead of time (e.g. in this case, maybe it wanted to change lanes for an upcoming right turn..?) I would definitely not risk using this thing in a city yet..

auggierose 5y ago
I would definitely not risk using this thing ever. The world is going insane.
imoverclocked 5y ago
> I would definitely not risk using this thing in a city yet.. ... or anywhere. Highway stakes are just as deadly, just less pedestrians and bicycles. Also, things can go wrong much faster there.
- ummonk 5y ago
  The one situation where full automation makes sense is traffic jams on highways. Simple control requirements, very hard for the algorithm to catastrophically mess up (or require rapid intervention to prevent life threatening accidents), and it’s extremely boring for humans to drive manually.
  - imoverclocked 5y ago
    Yeah, but my 2017 Subaru does all but the steering with adaptive cruise control in this situation. Given that a driver needs to pay attention anyway, it's not that hard to just sit back and move the wheel a little when needed.
  - 5y ago

nexuist 5y ago

From my perspective, everything went right here. The software screwed up, it alerted the passengers that a collision was going to happen, and a human driver quickly took over and avoided the accident. Is this not what we should expect from a beta? The responsibility is still on the driver even with driver assist / full self driving technology turned on. All this talk of regulating the software when we just saw a worst case scenario resolve with a favorable outcome. "But what if the driver wasn't paying attention?" Then the driver will face the consequences as if he had been driving the car himself, because it's his car and it's his responsibility.

wonnage 5y ago
Beta self-driving software shouldn't be on the road in the hands of random drivers. It's crazy to me that people think this is ok because "it's just a beta!" The stakes are vastly different between a bug in a photo sharing app and a 2 ton hunk of metal targeting bicyclists on accident
jdlshore 5y ago
What you're missing is that it isn't reasonable to expect people to be paying enough attention to "quickly take over."
- nexuist 5y ago
  Nobody should be using driver assist technology if they're not ready to accept the consequences it may get them in. We let teenagers buy sports cars despite being totally incapable of understanding the risks that 300+ bhp brings. I don't see the difference between that and FSD.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    It blows my mind that the US doesn't have any power-to-weight ratios for new drivers. In Australia until you were off your probationary license (which was a minimum of three years after your learners permit, which was either 1 or 2 years, it's been a while), there were power-to-weight restrictions on the vehicles you were allowed to drive. Here? Saw a YouTube video of a seventeen year old doing his driver's license test in a 1500hp Bugatti. That'll end well, no doubt.

Everhusk 5y ago

Looks like a marketing campaign from a competitor to be honest...

andbberger 5y ago
I'll give you $20 to be that cyclist

ummonk 5y ago

The fundamental issue with FSD is that it doesn’t seem to actually make driving any easier. If the driver is doing their job and properly babysitting the car against these sorts of mistakes, then driving in FSD mode will be more exhausting than normal driving. Of course, many people will interpret FSD as a convenience feature (as they do for “autopilot”) and will neglect to properly monitor it.

userbinator 5y ago
If the driver is doing their job and properly babysitting the car against these sorts of mistakes, then driving in FSD mode will be more exhausting than normal driving. I've heard it described as being like a driving instructor, watching a very inexperienced student who mostly drives fine, but is liable to suddenly make extremely poor decisions.
- yabones 5y ago
  I think it would be much, much worse than being a driving instructor. When I teach my partner how to drive, they announce their intentions, act cautiously, and make clear what their next moves will be. What I'm seeing here is more like teaching a chimpanzee how to drive. It's irrational, has no clear intent, and does not ever announce what it's trying to do. I've never been in a FSD-beta car, but I would take a novice adult driver over that every day of the week.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

ummonk 5y ago
Forget important, this isn’t even a problem to highlight and your comment contributes nothing of value.

jeffbee 5y ago

The question raised here is not whether FSD works. Everyone can see that it does not. The question is why the two people in the video can simultaneously be rich Americans with a fancy new car and also so naïve and gullible about FSD at the same time. Where did we leave our critical thinking skills? How did we manage to structure a society that rewards people who lack it?

andbberger 5y ago

I wonder how many people who think this is okay actually bike in locales with high populations of white teslas?

Havoc 5y ago

Move fast and break cyclists

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

There was a discussion on HN a few days ago about Star Citizen, and I'm realizing that Tesla FSD and Star Citizen have a lot in common. Both were promised to be delivered years ago, beta testers keep showing each to be quite buggy, there is reason to believe it may not even be technically possible to deliver everything that was promised, and they both have their fanboys who are ready to defend it and accuse skeptics of being haters who just want to see it fail.

YaBomm 5y ago

wNjdbfm 5y ago

I have a Tesla Model Y and I love it so much. I also paid $10k for “full self driving” and I’m in the beta program and I’d ask for a refund for that if I could. It behaves unpredictably - sometimes it seems smarter than you could imagine and then it does something that seems obviously dumb. That unpredictability makes it stressful to drive because being ready to take over instantly means trying to predict what it will do. I couldn’t live with myself if it did something I wasn’t prepared for and someone got hurt. So I don’t use it. It’s unfortunate that Elon has gone all in on self driving being the future of Tesla because they built a hell of a car on its own merits. These Tesla threads are always tense but there’s a lot of important discussions to be had about Tesla and FSD wrt technology and society. That said user: omedyentral seems to be farming anti tesla rage both here on HN and on their Twitter page. I’m not sure that’s in the spirit of what HN is trying to be.

andrepew 5y ago
"That unpredictability makes it stressful to drive because being ready to take over instantly means trying to predict what it will do." I feel this. I rarely if ever use autopilot because I find the cognitive load and stress of monitoring it to be higher than just driving the car myself. The exception to this is when the road is absolutely empty.
ra7 5y ago
There are a lot of people out there who think Tesla FSD is close to completion, even on HN. What’s wrong in showing the reality of where Tesla stands in terms of a safety critical technology using real world footage? There are anti-{FB, Google, Big Tech} posts on HN all the time. I’ve never seen anyone say that’s against the spirit of HN. What makes Tesla special?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
heavyset_go 5y ago
> That said user: omedyentral seems to be farming anti tesla rage both here on HN and on their Twitter page. I’m not sure that’s in the spirit of what HN is trying to be. It's actually your post that is against HN guidelines[1]: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

throwaway2037 5y ago

Does Tesla get sued when people are injured or die due to self-driving failures? This can be people inside or outside the Tesla car. I am surprised that I never saw any press or discussion about settlements with Tesla.

rvz 5y ago

I think this is undisputed evidence that this FSD aka ‘Fools Self Driving’ contraption is beyond defending as it clearly has put the lives of drivers and cyclists at risk. As I have said multiple times. Tesla had a good run with this contraption, but it is time to scrutinize this fraudulent system that does not work as advertised and malfunctions on the public roads to run over or crash into cars and cyclists. This is not even at night that FSD has malfunctioned, let alone night vision support. The car doesn’t even monitor the drivers attention properly (It still uses the wheel). How can FSD be possibly safe to use when not only the system has failed in daylight but it also cannot see at night? Perhaps it is better to not pay and sign up as a crash test dummy with safety-critical software that doesn’t even work. No thanks and absolutely no deal.

dragonsky67 5y ago

We drive significant distances each year and I need to be comfortable when I drive. If the wheel alignment is out, it's an irritation having to continually push the wheel to centre and I get it fixed. If something in the load is continually rattling or squeaking (hate polystyrene) then I pack it so that it doesn't. Distractions like this are tiring and potentially create distractions. I love the idea of fully autonomous driving where I can sit back and read a book or watch a movie, but I cannot imagine what it would be like driving a car where you are not actually driving, but have to be constantly on your guard in case it decides to do something unexpected. Driving with constant attention is fairly easy, I would imagine not driving, but having to continually monitor ready to make split second would be exhausting.

steveBK123 5y ago

As an Tesla driver in the Northeast, I have always felt Tesla AP/FSD dev has a sunny mild/hot weather California bias, and fails to account for the vagaries of driving in the rest of the world. The Northeast has high density, old infrastructure (narrow bridges, tunnels and highways, lack of medians and breakdown lanes, etc which are out of spec to modern standards), fewer sunshine hours, cold weather (and the resulting pot hole & lane line degradation of the streets).. On the other hand, I keep seeing a lot of crazy FDS videos from the Bay Area so clearly they don't even have their home turf covered. I still don't see how local road FSD is going to happen on current hardware - camera resolution, placement, and CPU inability to handle high frame rates.. We are perpetually 5 years away.

Waterluvian 5y ago

In the town where I grew up the police HQ had a Safety Village for teaching rules of road and such to kids. It had a little McDonald’s and a little post office and even a little Tim Horton’s. I loved going there as a field trip. We would get to drive Power Wheels jeeps. How large is the biggest fake city used for soak in testing by one of these autonomous car companies? How much did it cost?

manoDev 5y ago

I believe the way Tesla is approaching autonomous driving is fundamentally flawed by political/ethical reasons. The general public accepts the fact humans may cause fatal mistakes while driving, because responsibility is expected and ultimately there’s someone to punish. But automation making fatal mistakes, even at a lower rate than humans, isn’t accepted the same way, in part because companies are not individuals – Elon Musk isn’t personally responsible for any accidents – and in another part because this space is currently unregulated – unlike in aviation where some body has to vet a manufacturer’s plane project before it can be mass produced. So, Tesla wants to iterate a product with significant risks on the wild while unregulated, at the same time enjoying a lower level of accountability an individual holds while driving – they just put on the contract that “self-driving” feature has to be monitored all times and if it fails the blame is on the driver. This is not a surprise considering Musk apparently extremely libertarian views, but is obviously BS as it’s a way to dodge risk while capturing all the upside. It’s a perfect rational thing to do in his opinion (we’re taking risks to innovate, etc), but it’s ultimately unethical. Maybe self-driving could be more reliably achievable with the help of local government adapting roads so cars don’t have to rely only on their sensors, or the whole industry could agree on a standard so cars can coordinate – but that would mean regulation, and Musk doesn’t believe in that. He believes Tesla can hack their way out of the problem only with technology in computer vision. I don’t think it will succeed, because if you look at aviation, another industry that enjoys a high level of automation and safety, nothing would be possible by initiative of a single plane manufacturer – the automation relies on equipment installed on planes, airports, etc. all standardized, as well as training and processes followed by the entire industry. Time will tell who’s right, but my bet is a reliable self-driving car has better chance of coming out of a place in Europe, Japan, Korea or China, where manufacturers and governments have a better chance of collaborating to achieve a solution that isn’t stuck into the “computer vision” local maxima.

sporkland 5y ago

As a cyclist, I view self driving cars as one of my biggest wins in terms of safety relative to the easily distracted monkeys who drive them now. Sad to see Tesla doing damage to the overall effort with their GSD approach to it. Hope they don't salt the earth behind them. Seems like Google, Cruise and co are doing well enough here to make it look like a tesla problem as opposed to a self driving car problem.