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> Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars.

by diggan 2y ago

> Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars. How come these things are "scrutinized" afterwards instead of before? Governments are severely dragging their feet behind their backs and should clearly outlaw and force certification of these "smart" systems before they're deployed, not afterwards. Bananas how we're letting these companies use public roads with real humans as testing grounds for driver assistance software.

bayarearefugee 2y ago
Even ignoring the FSD aspects of these electric vehicles (which are problematic enough at their current level of technology) the fact that they are allowed to do things like hide away the mechanical release handles (required to get out if power is lost, which is very likely in a crash) in weird barely accessible spots inside the door well seems just absolutely fucking bonkers to me. And this is common, some of Tesla's are actually harder to locate than the ones in this Xiaomi
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? My cheap car has electronic locks on all doors but the mechanical interior releases defeat them (but not on the rear doors). A neat feature I noticed the other day is that operating the release once won't let the door actually open, it only partially unlatches it and to open the door you have to hold the lever open and push the door. Great safety design.
  - qzw 2y ago
    You might have child safety locks engaged on the rear doors by default. If you don’t have small children, you might be able to find a switch or setting to turn that feature off.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      We've had child safety locks for doors long before we had the door handles be electronic.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? For frameless windows. The door needs to retract the window before you open it, otherwise you might damage the window.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
      Yes, pretty framesless windows is surely a justification forsuch a deathtrap.
  - toast0 2y ago
    My fancy new car has push to open doors and monitors the surroundings so it won't open if it detects a car or bicycle moving in the direction of the door. Could be handy. But it's also designed reasonably. The lever you push to open can be pulled twice to open mechanically. There's no secret lever somewhere nobody knows about. Two different sales people told us to push or pull twice to open.
- qzw 2y ago
  Yes that just boggles my mind. Why is there a desire for such designs on a fundamental and safety-critical part of a vehicle? Aesthetic minimalism? But why?! A car door is not a phone screen. There’s plenty of real estate on a car door and it has no other function. It doesn’t need a hamburger menu. Just put a handle there, like we’ve been doing forever. Why does that need to be changed? A decision to hide the handles on a car makes me question and doubt every other design decision that went into the thing, because the designers have obviously lost their minds.
  - xnx 2y ago
    > Aesthetic minimalism? Also cost reduction. Save pennies cost lives.
gruez 2y ago
>How come these things are "scrutinized" afterwards instead of before? Governments are severely dragging their feet behind their backs and should clearly outlaw and force certification of these "smart" systems before they're deployed, not afterwards. What makes you think this wasn't scrutinized by Chinese government before release?
- diggan 2y ago
  > Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars. This part makes me believe it wasn't scrutinized before, because otherwise the wording would have been different. Maybe something like "further scrutinized" or something else that indicates that it's actually been inspected and approved before.
  - gruez 2y ago
    I think you're leaning a bit too hard on the wording here. If we're going randomly speculate based on tenuous reasoning like this, allow me to present the fact that such licensing regime does exist in China, so it's likely that Xiaomi did comply with it, rather than openly flouting the law. https://www.all-about-industries.com/china-is-massively-promoting-autonomous-driving-a-6d2104317309d349100ae929fa70adc8/ https://www.all-about-industries.com/china-is-massively-prom...
maxdo 2y ago
1 incident, how many drunk human drivers, watching their phones on the road. these systems able to solve this problem once and forever, ban human from driving. Humans are extreemly bad at driving. Unless they produce more fatal incidents compared to human it's ok to have such crashes.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I agree. Where I live in Florida, sometimes I look on the road, and there's easily a half dozen Teslas, and I rarely see them in accidents, but the few owners I know personal who have been in accidents have been due to other drivers. You can't make it perfect, but you can definitely get insanely safer. Airplanes are kind of the same, but we don't freak out over it.
  - qzw 2y ago
    A lady in my neighborhood has crashed two different Teslas. Both times she rear ended somebody, judging from the damages. Some people can crash anything.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      Was she like on her phone each time?
AlotOfReading 2y ago
There's two main systems in use globally: 1. The US system, where regulators define a set of tests and manufacturers self certify compliance 2. homologation based systems like China and the EU where those tests are performed by an accredited third party to receive type approval. But testing is ultimately reactive, not proactive. It's hard to write appropriate tests for areas of new technology that don't impose unnecessary or silly constraints. These aren't the kinds of regulations that are easy to put out or roll back either. It takes upwards of a year in the US to go through the NPRM process, and several years for gradual rollout into force. As someone involved in this space, I'm also extremely skeptical that there's any way to develop these kinds of systems without significant testing on public roads. That testing should be monitored and come with explicitly strict development guidelines, but alternative approaches have been tried many times and have not panned out when deployed in practice.
nirui 2y ago
> Bananas how we're letting these companies use public roads with real humans as testing grounds for driver assistance software. Do you know a word called Cronyism? Xi was in a meeting with few Chinese tech leaders just few weeks ago (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-attends-symposium-private-enterprises-delivers-speech-2025-02-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-attends-sympos...), including Xiaomi's leader, probably trying to establish bi-directional support and connections. Under current desperate climate in China, i.e. unemployment number is creeping up, marriage and childbirth are down..., as well as the fact that Xi likes flashy and fancy stuff, I don't think there is any incentive for the gov to put a limit on how those companies develop. I mean... it's not like the leftist undemocratic communist should have any incentive to do things appropriately for people of different orientations anyways. In fact, right now in China, criticize such "high-tech" company may lead to serious trouble for the criticizer, given how easy it is for powerful companies to send criticizers to prison for reasons such as "disturb public peace", "hacking" and/or "spread rumor and lies". Also, let's don't forget Telsa also crash and burns. So it is really tricky to explain to the communist why they must do better.

by diggan 2y ago

bayarearefugee 2y ago

Even ignoring the FSD aspects of these electric vehicles (which are problematic enough at their current level of technology) the fact that they are allowed to do things like hide away the mechanical release handles (required to get out if power is lost, which is very likely in a crash) in weird barely accessible spots inside the door well seems just absolutely fucking bonkers to me. And this is common, some of Tesla's are actually harder to locate than the ones in this Xiaomi

dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? My cheap car has electronic locks on all doors but the mechanical interior releases defeat them (but not on the rear doors). A neat feature I noticed the other day is that operating the release once won't let the door actually open, it only partially unlatches it and to open the door you have to hold the lever open and push the door. Great safety design.
- qzw 2y ago
  You might have child safety locks engaged on the rear doors by default. If you don’t have small children, you might be able to find a switch or setting to turn that feature off.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    We've had child safety locks for doors long before we had the door handles be electronic.
- gruez 2y ago
  >Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? For frameless windows. The door needs to retract the window before you open it, otherwise you might damage the window.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    Yes, pretty framesless windows is surely a justification forsuch a deathtrap.
- toast0 2y ago
  My fancy new car has push to open doors and monitors the surroundings so it won't open if it detects a car or bicycle moving in the direction of the door. Could be handy. But it's also designed reasonably. The lever you push to open can be pulled twice to open mechanically. There's no secret lever somewhere nobody knows about. Two different sales people told us to push or pull twice to open.
qzw 2y ago
Yes that just boggles my mind. Why is there a desire for such designs on a fundamental and safety-critical part of a vehicle? Aesthetic minimalism? But why?! A car door is not a phone screen. There’s plenty of real estate on a car door and it has no other function. It doesn’t need a hamburger menu. Just put a handle there, like we’ve been doing forever. Why does that need to be changed? A decision to hide the handles on a car makes me question and doubt every other design decision that went into the thing, because the designers have obviously lost their minds.
- xnx 2y ago
  > Aesthetic minimalism? Also cost reduction. Save pennies cost lives.

gruez 2y ago

>How come these things are "scrutinized" afterwards instead of before? Governments are severely dragging their feet behind their backs and should clearly outlaw and force certification of these "smart" systems before they're deployed, not afterwards. What makes you think this wasn't scrutinized by Chinese government before release?

diggan 2y ago
> Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars. This part makes me believe it wasn't scrutinized before, because otherwise the wording would have been different. Maybe something like "further scrutinized" or something else that indicates that it's actually been inspected and approved before.
- gruez 2y ago
  I think you're leaning a bit too hard on the wording here. If we're going randomly speculate based on tenuous reasoning like this, allow me to present the fact that such licensing regime does exist in China, so it's likely that Xiaomi did comply with it, rather than openly flouting the law. https://www.all-about-industries.com/china-is-massively-promoting-autonomous-driving-a-6d2104317309d349100ae929fa70adc8/ https://www.all-about-industries.com/china-is-massively-prom...

maxdo 2y ago

1 incident, how many drunk human drivers, watching their phones on the road. these systems able to solve this problem once and forever, ban human from driving. Humans are extreemly bad at driving. Unless they produce more fatal incidents compared to human it's ok to have such crashes.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
I agree. Where I live in Florida, sometimes I look on the road, and there's easily a half dozen Teslas, and I rarely see them in accidents, but the few owners I know personal who have been in accidents have been due to other drivers. You can't make it perfect, but you can definitely get insanely safer. Airplanes are kind of the same, but we don't freak out over it.
- qzw 2y ago
  A lady in my neighborhood has crashed two different Teslas. Both times she rear ended somebody, judging from the damages. Some people can crash anything.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    Was she like on her phone each time?

AlotOfReading 2y ago

There's two main systems in use globally: 1. The US system, where regulators define a set of tests and manufacturers self certify compliance 2. homologation based systems like China and the EU where those tests are performed by an accredited third party to receive type approval. But testing is ultimately reactive, not proactive. It's hard to write appropriate tests for areas of new technology that don't impose unnecessary or silly constraints. These aren't the kinds of regulations that are easy to put out or roll back either. It takes upwards of a year in the US to go through the NPRM process, and several years for gradual rollout into force. As someone involved in this space, I'm also extremely skeptical that there's any way to develop these kinds of systems without significant testing on public roads. That testing should be monitored and come with explicitly strict development guidelines, but alternative approaches have been tried many times and have not panned out when deployed in practice.

nirui 2y ago

> Bananas how we're letting these companies use public roads with real humans as testing grounds for driver assistance software. Do you know a word called Cronyism? Xi was in a meeting with few Chinese tech leaders just few weeks ago (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-attends-symposium-private-enterprises-delivers-speech-2025-02-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-attends-sympos...), including Xiaomi's leader, probably trying to establish bi-directional support and connections. Under current desperate climate in China, i.e. unemployment number is creeping up, marriage and childbirth are down..., as well as the fact that Xi likes flashy and fancy stuff, I don't think there is any incentive for the gov to put a limit on how those companies develop. I mean... it's not like the leftist undemocratic communist should have any incentive to do things appropriately for people of different orientations anyways. In fact, right now in China, criticize such "high-tech" company may lead to serious trouble for the criticizer, given how easy it is for powerful companies to send criticizers to prison for reasons such as "disturb public peace", "hacking" and/or "spread rumor and lies". Also, let's don't forget Telsa also crash and burns. So it is really tricky to explain to the communist why they must do better.