5 ms·

I've generally always considered level 2 or 3 autonomy to be a recipe for disaster, humans can't be expected to remain alert and respond quickly when they aren'

I've generally always considered level 2 or 3 autonomy to be a recipe for disaster, humans can't be expected to remain alert and respond quickly when they aren't doing anything. But at the same time the way Tesla autopilot woks is congruent to autopilots on boats or airplanes. Those won't avoid other vehicles and are usually perfectly happy to let you crash into shoals or mountains.

ht85 4y ago
Taking human nature into account has driven so much progress in terms of road safety. Cue corporation selling you "Full Self Driving" for 5 figures, allowing your vehicle to become autonomous. Except you have to be alert and behave as if it wasn't. At all times. Of course.
- kylecordes 4y ago
  The usual FSD complaint is that Tesla has been offering it for years, at ascending prices, without any date-certain of delivering it (just tweets predicting it), without refunding it when not delivered after X years. I can easily imagine an eventual class-action suit requiring some % of refund all the way back to the first car purchased with someday-FSD (!). If they deliver it, then (at that time, and depending on how well it works), the complaints of not-good-enough or dangerous-killing-people could come into play. The second thing sounds even more dangerous to Tesla - smart to keep delaying (and building up that first risk higher and higher!)
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    So like Star Citizen bit for cars.
  - FireBeyond 4y ago
    And just one of the disingenuous responses from Tesla is that you could have it all now, or could have, if it wasn't for pesky regulators. There might be an awkward silence when you ask why as recently as six months ago, it was still happily hopping the curb of roundabouts, or why even to this very day, there's no AEB capability in FSD (if your foot is on the accelerator, the car will consider that a higher priority input than an imminent collision).
    - wnkrshm 4y ago
      Probably because of false positives and removing radar, because "it's not needed".
sidewndr46 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're being serious, but the way "autopilot" works in a private yacht is the captain turns it on and goes below deck and gets drunk with the rest of the crew. It just maintains a heading towards a destination at that point. You learn very quickly on the water to get out of the way of large private yachts when in open waters. There is literally no one at the helm. Even if they did notice you, they aren't in a position to halt the boats travel.
- mike_d 4y ago
  You left out the part that if there is a collision or loss of life the captain goes to prison.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Same with cars
    - vkou 4y ago
      Short of being drunk, it's pretty difficult to go to prison for killing someone in a car, even if you were driving like a moron.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Not my experience. I knew a kid who went to prison for years after hitting a biker in black with no reflector at night.
        vkou 4y ago
        Was the biker the police chief's son-in-law, or some rot like that? Did the driver have a few down at the local, but didn't quite blow a 0.08? Most hit-and-runs don't even result in jail time[1]. But sure, I can believe that hitting and killing the wrong person may once in a blue moon result in the law coming down on you like a ton of bricks. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail-time-rarely/story?id=61845988 https://abcnews.go.com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail-t...
treis 4y ago
If anything this just cements why they shouldn't have called it autopilot in the first place.
mrtksn 4y ago
We have a small and cheap Japanese car that features adaptive cruise control and line assist that works pretty alright. So it’s essentially like line following robot that can adjust its speed to keep a safe following distance and do hard breaking if needed. It’s feels almost like full self driving when you drive on the highway. It makes the ride significantly less tiresome but I would say it definitely reduces my attention. I can totally see how people with more capable systems may treat the car as intelligent enough to drive %100 by itself and became negligent.
- cyrux004 4y ago
  See. This is the problem. Where do you draw the line ? I can see somebody who can come and say, adaptive cruise control and lane departure assist which applies slight tourque when the car sees your drift out of lane very helpful to them. next up, adaptive cruise control and lane centering which applies torque most of the time on straight roads but cant do curves. THis is now available most if not all car systems today , in the most basic version without any additional packages. Then comes some smarter ones like Tesla AP or comma.ai which are pretty good at centering on straight roads, curve roads, wide lanes, lane splitting etc.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Are there cars shipping now with lane centering that can only handle perfectly straight roads? In my experience most manufacturers currently offer at least one model & trim that has lane centering & adaptive cruise that is functionally equivalent to basic AP. In some cases, e.g. SuperCruise, it's significantly better.
    - widdakay 4y ago
      Yes there are some. Eg: Acura MDX. It uses the mobileye chipset and can barely make a highway turn. The car is good otherwise, but it in no way compares to the Tesla ADAS (I have daily driven both). The Tesla has done several trips to LA and back with >1hr between touches on California i5. my commute on bay area 280 feels far more natural on Autopilot when cars cut me off etc. I think performance depends significantly on what roads people drive.
GuB-42 4y ago
One significant difference between Autopilot in Teslas and autopilots in airplanes is that in an airplane you typically have to prove that you can use the autopilot correctly in order to be allowed to fly that plane. Another difference is that piloting a boat or a plane is usually much less dependent on quick reactions than when you are driving a car. The skies and seas are much more open, with much less traffic than on the road. On a well trimmed plane, I could probably sleep for 10 minutes and there is a good chance nothing will happen. Obviously, it is excessively dangerous, but I am not almost guaranteed to crash as I would be on a car. Flying or sailing is more about precision and planning than it is about reacting.
- medion 4y ago
  Having crossed oceans on autopilot, I’ve had three very, very near misses - so even in an environment which is virtually an uninhabited desert in comparison to a road, the risk in not maintaining appropriate and proactive watch is real.
  - throw827474737 4y ago
    Curious, what near missed?
    - nsxwolf 4y ago
      "Near miss?! It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss! 'Oh what a shame, they nearly missed'" - George Carlin
      - FpUser 4y ago
        >"George Carlin" - never get tired listening to the guy. He is just amazing.
    - medion 4y ago
      Tanker bound for Panama from Hong Kong, not keeping watch. Woke up to engines and lights. Sailing boat off American Samoa maintaining watch, but watch crew unable to change course (we did). Near miss with unidentified floating object.
davewritescode 4y ago
Just want to chime in and say that I completely agree. From a technology perspective it’s interesting, from a human factors perspective it’s a complete disaster. Automating the easiest parts of driving and just expecting a human to jump in and figure out the tricky stuff in an instant is just such a horrible design that it’s hard to see how it’s gone this far.

ht85 4y ago

Taking human nature into account has driven so much progress in terms of road safety. Cue corporation selling you "Full Self Driving" for 5 figures, allowing your vehicle to become autonomous. Except you have to be alert and behave as if it wasn't. At all times. Of course.

kylecordes 4y ago
The usual FSD complaint is that Tesla has been offering it for years, at ascending prices, without any date-certain of delivering it (just tweets predicting it), without refunding it when not delivered after X years. I can easily imagine an eventual class-action suit requiring some % of refund all the way back to the first car purchased with someday-FSD (!). If they deliver it, then (at that time, and depending on how well it works), the complaints of not-good-enough or dangerous-killing-people could come into play. The second thing sounds even more dangerous to Tesla - smart to keep delaying (and building up that first risk higher and higher!)
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  So like Star Citizen bit for cars.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  And just one of the disingenuous responses from Tesla is that you could have it all now, or could have, if it wasn't for pesky regulators. There might be an awkward silence when you ask why as recently as six months ago, it was still happily hopping the curb of roundabouts, or why even to this very day, there's no AEB capability in FSD (if your foot is on the accelerator, the car will consider that a higher priority input than an imminent collision).
  - wnkrshm 4y ago
    Probably because of false positives and removing radar, because "it's not needed".

sidewndr46 4y ago

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but the way "autopilot" works in a private yacht is the captain turns it on and goes below deck and gets drunk with the rest of the crew. It just maintains a heading towards a destination at that point. You learn very quickly on the water to get out of the way of large private yachts when in open waters. There is literally no one at the helm. Even if they did notice you, they aren't in a position to halt the boats travel.

mike_d 4y ago
You left out the part that if there is a collision or loss of life the captain goes to prison.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Same with cars
  - vkou 4y ago
    Short of being drunk, it's pretty difficult to go to prison for killing someone in a car, even if you were driving like a moron.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Not my experience. I knew a kid who went to prison for years after hitting a biker in black with no reflector at night.
      - vkou 4y ago
        Was the biker the police chief's son-in-law, or some rot like that? Did the driver have a few down at the local, but didn't quite blow a 0.08? Most hit-and-runs don't even result in jail time[1]. But sure, I can believe that hitting and killing the wrong person may once in a blue moon result in the law coming down on you like a ton of bricks. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail-time-rarely/story?id=61845988 https://abcnews.go.com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail-t...

treis 4y ago

If anything this just cements why they shouldn't have called it autopilot in the first place.

mrtksn 4y ago

We have a small and cheap Japanese car that features adaptive cruise control and line assist that works pretty alright. So it’s essentially like line following robot that can adjust its speed to keep a safe following distance and do hard breaking if needed. It’s feels almost like full self driving when you drive on the highway. It makes the ride significantly less tiresome but I would say it definitely reduces my attention. I can totally see how people with more capable systems may treat the car as intelligent enough to drive %100 by itself and became negligent.

cyrux004 4y ago
See. This is the problem. Where do you draw the line ? I can see somebody who can come and say, adaptive cruise control and lane departure assist which applies slight tourque when the car sees your drift out of lane very helpful to them. next up, adaptive cruise control and lane centering which applies torque most of the time on straight roads but cant do curves. THis is now available most if not all car systems today , in the most basic version without any additional packages. Then comes some smarter ones like Tesla AP or comma.ai which are pretty good at centering on straight roads, curve roads, wide lanes, lane splitting etc.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Are there cars shipping now with lane centering that can only handle perfectly straight roads? In my experience most manufacturers currently offer at least one model & trim that has lane centering & adaptive cruise that is functionally equivalent to basic AP. In some cases, e.g. SuperCruise, it's significantly better.
  - widdakay 4y ago
    Yes there are some. Eg: Acura MDX. It uses the mobileye chipset and can barely make a highway turn. The car is good otherwise, but it in no way compares to the Tesla ADAS (I have daily driven both). The Tesla has done several trips to LA and back with >1hr between touches on California i5. my commute on bay area 280 feels far more natural on Autopilot when cars cut me off etc. I think performance depends significantly on what roads people drive.

GuB-42 4y ago

One significant difference between Autopilot in Teslas and autopilots in airplanes is that in an airplane you typically have to prove that you can use the autopilot correctly in order to be allowed to fly that plane. Another difference is that piloting a boat or a plane is usually much less dependent on quick reactions than when you are driving a car. The skies and seas are much more open, with much less traffic than on the road. On a well trimmed plane, I could probably sleep for 10 minutes and there is a good chance nothing will happen. Obviously, it is excessively dangerous, but I am not almost guaranteed to crash as I would be on a car. Flying or sailing is more about precision and planning than it is about reacting.

medion 4y ago
Having crossed oceans on autopilot, I’ve had three very, very near misses - so even in an environment which is virtually an uninhabited desert in comparison to a road, the risk in not maintaining appropriate and proactive watch is real.
- throw827474737 4y ago
  Curious, what near missed?
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    "Near miss?! It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss! 'Oh what a shame, they nearly missed'" - George Carlin
    - FpUser 4y ago
      >"George Carlin" - never get tired listening to the guy. He is just amazing.
  - medion 4y ago
    Tanker bound for Panama from Hong Kong, not keeping watch. Woke up to engines and lights. Sailing boat off American Samoa maintaining watch, but watch crew unable to change course (we did). Near miss with unidentified floating object.

davewritescode 4y ago

Just want to chime in and say that I completely agree. From a technology perspective it’s interesting, from a human factors perspective it’s a complete disaster. Automating the easiest parts of driving and just expecting a human to jump in and figure out the tricky stuff in an instant is just such a horrible design that it’s hard to see how it’s gone this far.