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I find it really interesting that for Mercedes L3 self driving they are even willing to put their money where their mouth is and take liability for the car in s

I find it really interesting that for Mercedes L3 self driving they are even willing to put their money where their mouth is and take liability for the car in self driving mode.

BrianOnHN 4y ago
Smart. This will be the move that triggers widespread adoption. Cheaper insurance.
- kukx 4y ago
  It makes sense as long as it is failproof. But is their tech better than Tesla's? I assume it is not and they will have to severely limit the capabilities of the system. Maybe it will work in traffic jams, simple routes.
  - nieve 4y ago
    Why are you assuming it isn't better, just Musk's relentless promotion and exaggerated claims?
natch 4y ago
Read the fine print though. They do disable the system in complex situations. And they give ten seconds warning in advance of this happening. Which sounds great until you think it through… It means they schedule the disabling of the system way earlier in the progression of any potential traffic complication. Ten full seconds is long before incidents even start unfolding. The car has to be psychic, but it's not. So in order to accomplish the ten-second warning, what that means is those warnings need to be on a hair trigger with many false positives. The driver, if they have it enabled, will be constantly getting warnings that the system may disable itself in ten seconds when the car sees even the very slightest possibility that things may potentially get complicated way down the road. I don't see this being endurable for most people. So my conclusion is this is just marketing hype, until they can get rid of the auto disabling thing.
- upbeat_general 4y ago
  I haven’t read the fine print but you can have ten seconds of warning without predicting complications ten seconds in advance. That 10 seconds simply means that the car must handle any situation safely for at least that amount of time. In practice, this means decisions such as emergency braking and steering must be autonomous but possible more complex scenarios (e.g. moving for emergency vehicle on a tight street) can be delegated to a human (or the system can simply pull over and stop). They disable the system in cases of rain but at least from the marketing and videos demonstrating it, there’s no prediction of complex scenarios like you described.
  - natch 4y ago
    No, you are not understanding what I explained. There is a moving horizon of time during which the ten seconds is continually extended, and the system needs to draw the line somewhere. When does the final ten seconds before cutoff begin? Your examples don't explain this. This is not easy stuff to solve without some compromises.
    - AlphaSite 4y ago
      If it’s limited on what roads it can run on the 10 second window makes perfect sense. Just enable when you’re entering an unsupported roadway.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > And they give ten seconds warning in advance of this happening. which is infinitely better than the <1 second that tesla gives you. > those warnings need to be on a hair trigger with many false positives. unless it is actually reasonably good at tracking threats and traffic. look, if you have multiple sensors of different types, then you are able to take firm action when things turn south quicker than a human. A lot of tesla's problems are because they have shit sensors, and a stupid approach to designing the system (no lidar, no radar, no multiview cameras, no high res GPS or maps) They also have an overwhelming pressure to just yolo shit, rather than test, and redesign.
angulardragon03 4y ago
I think the clever thing about this is that it breeds a culture of responsibility at Mercedes - if you are programming the self driving, you will be more considerate of how it works because your company (and perhaps ultimately you) bear that responsibility. The consumer gets confidence in the product, and Mercedes holds itself accountable because it doesn’t want to ship a product that will endanger people.

I find it really interesting that for Mercedes L3 self driving they are even willing to put their money where their mouth is and take liability for the car in self driving mode.

BrianOnHN 4y ago

Smart. This will be the move that triggers widespread adoption. Cheaper insurance.

kukx 4y ago
It makes sense as long as it is failproof. But is their tech better than Tesla's? I assume it is not and they will have to severely limit the capabilities of the system. Maybe it will work in traffic jams, simple routes.
- nieve 4y ago
  Why are you assuming it isn't better, just Musk's relentless promotion and exaggerated claims?

natch 4y ago

Read the fine print though. They do disable the system in complex situations. And they give ten seconds warning in advance of this happening. Which sounds great until you think it through… It means they schedule the disabling of the system way earlier in the progression of any potential traffic complication. Ten full seconds is long before incidents even start unfolding. The car has to be psychic, but it's not. So in order to accomplish the ten-second warning, what that means is those warnings need to be on a hair trigger with many false positives. The driver, if they have it enabled, will be constantly getting warnings that the system may disable itself in ten seconds when the car sees even the very slightest possibility that things may potentially get complicated way down the road. I don't see this being endurable for most people. So my conclusion is this is just marketing hype, until they can get rid of the auto disabling thing.

upbeat_general 4y ago
I haven’t read the fine print but you can have ten seconds of warning without predicting complications ten seconds in advance. That 10 seconds simply means that the car must handle any situation safely for at least that amount of time. In practice, this means decisions such as emergency braking and steering must be autonomous but possible more complex scenarios (e.g. moving for emergency vehicle on a tight street) can be delegated to a human (or the system can simply pull over and stop). They disable the system in cases of rain but at least from the marketing and videos demonstrating it, there’s no prediction of complex scenarios like you described.
- natch 4y ago
  No, you are not understanding what I explained. There is a moving horizon of time during which the ten seconds is continually extended, and the system needs to draw the line somewhere. When does the final ten seconds before cutoff begin? Your examples don't explain this. This is not easy stuff to solve without some compromises.
  - AlphaSite 4y ago
    If it’s limited on what roads it can run on the 10 second window makes perfect sense. Just enable when you’re entering an unsupported roadway.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> And they give ten seconds warning in advance of this happening. which is infinitely better than the <1 second that tesla gives you. > those warnings need to be on a hair trigger with many false positives. unless it is actually reasonably good at tracking threats and traffic. look, if you have multiple sensors of different types, then you are able to take firm action when things turn south quicker than a human. A lot of tesla's problems are because they have shit sensors, and a stupid approach to designing the system (no lidar, no radar, no multiview cameras, no high res GPS or maps) They also have an overwhelming pressure to just yolo shit, rather than test, and redesign.

angulardragon03 4y ago

I think the clever thing about this is that it breeds a culture of responsibility at Mercedes - if you are programming the self driving, you will be more considerate of how it works because your company (and perhaps ultimately you) bear that responsibility. The consumer gets confidence in the product, and Mercedes holds itself accountable because it doesn’t want to ship a product that will endanger people.