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> I'm still waiting for one that advertises that it can drive a rural road in the Midwest after sunset in the winter with poor cell reception as it goes through
by ajross 3y ago
> I'm still waiting for one that advertises that it can drive a rural road in the Midwest after sunset in the winter with poor cell reception as it goes through valleys.
First, this is a fallacy: "products have no value unless they meet the performance of their competition in every possible use case" is simple not true and never has been.
And it's wrong anyway. FSD on my Model Y does great on unlit night time roads in the mountain west. So unless you're positing something special about the "Midwest" I don't see the issue here.
And in fact it's wrong in silly ways. That's not the hard part! Following the pavement is the easy bit, and the car does it more or less perfectly. Where it has trouble is in urban traffic. It's timid[1], it makes poor long-term lane planning choices (i.e. if there's a long line waiting for a left turn it will try to "go around" in the right lane and then get stuck), it will occasionally refuse to pass construction cones if it can't model out what's supposed to happen, it sometimes will slow down to "avoid" cars that are technically on collision courses but will "obviously" stop (e.g. cars on the opposite side of the road pulling into middle turn lanes -- the Tesla hates that).
There's clearly work to do. But it's not the work you think needs to happen, and in particular it's not in areas that impact "safety" in the way you're imagining.
Frankly at this point I'm more comfortable on the roads, especially on the highways, with FSD doing the microdriving for me than I am driving myself. The contention of this article matches my experience more or less perfectly.
[1] A recent regression is that it really doesn't like oncoming motorcycles and will slow down inexplicably for them where it's just fine with the cars in the same lane.
- shagie 3y agoThere is a lot of value in handling the roads in the costal and southern metropolitan areas - a significant portion of the pollution lives there and its the 80% use case. I'm waiting for a car that is able to handle https://www.kttc.com/2022/11/29/current-minnesota-iowa-road-condition-maps/ https://www.kttc.com/2022/11/29/current-minnesota-iowa-road-... without having cell phone connectivity in night time conditions because that more closely resembles my evening commute for a season of the year. Driverless cars may be good for commuting in cities... and highway miles, and fair weather trips (I'd be curious to see someone go driverless all the way to a ski resort in the winter when you need chains on the tires to go on I-80). It may be good for all the driving needs for much of the population. But it's not categorically shown to be safer than human drivers (which is what the article is about) outside of the carefully crafted and restricted areas. I can't take a driverless car to go see my parents for Christmas (rural road, midwest, no cell phone coverage for 25% of the route)... or for them to come visit me - and that's where the driverless car would have a great deal of value if it was safer than me driving there.
- ajross 3y ago> I'm waiting for a car that is able to handle https://www.kttc.com/2022/11/29/current-minnesota-iowa-road- https://www.kttc.com/2022/11/29/current-minnesota-iowa-road-... without having cell phone connectivity in night time conditions because that more closely resembles my evening commute for a season of the year. If you're going to be in the car, why? I mean, what if someone offered you a car that would drive you around except in comically cherry picked conditions of unplowed roads during active snowstorms? Drive yourself if there's snow on the ground[1]. This just seems like a specious and silly argument about vehicle autonomy to me. [1] Or, in fact, don't. Because that shit's dangerous and you know it, no matter how much you protest that the upper midwest is cold. Stay off the roads in snowstorms and let the emergency crews clear the roads, it's their job.
- shagie 3y agoIt's not the utility that I have issue with. It's the claim "driverless cars may already be safer than human drivers" because it leaves out the criteria. I'll accept "driverless cars may already be safer than human drivers when driving in urban conditions in San Francisco or Phoenix." No problem. The unqualified statement however - I haven't seen anything saying (or even attempting to claim) that it is safer than humans when driving in Minneapolis at 5pm on December 1st, 2023. I'm still waiting for the unqualified statement to be attempted to even see if it holds up.