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I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Opti

I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. And he’s not wrong that roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach.

NewJazz 9mo ago
Didn't waymo stop operating simply because they aren't as cavalier as Tesla, and they have much more to lose since they are actually self driving instead of just driver assistance? Was the lidar/vision difference actually significant?
- brightball 9mo ago
  The reports I’ve read said that some continued to attempt to navigate with the street lights out, but that the vehicles all have a remote confirmation where they try to call home to confirm what to do. That ended up self DDoSing Waymo causing vehicles to stop in the middle of the road and at intersections with their hazards on. So to clarify, it wasn’t entirely a lidar problem it was an need to call home to navigate.
sroussey 9mo ago
> roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. And people die all the time. > The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach. Huh? Waymo is responsible for injury, so all their cars called home at the same time DOS themselves rather than kill someone. Tesla makes no responsibility and does nothing. I can’t see the logic the brings vision only as having anything to do lights out. At all.
- tonyhb 9mo ago
  > And people die all the time. Yes... but people can only focus on one thing at a time. We don't have 360 vision. We have blind spots! We don't even know the exact speed of our car without looking away from the road momentarily! Vision based cars obviously don't have these issues. Just because some cars are 100% vision doesn't mean that it has to share all of the faults we have when driving. That's not me in favour of one vs the other. I'm ambivalent and don't actually care. They can clearly both work.
- throw20251220 9mo ago
  > And people die all the time. Most of them cannot drive a car. People have crashes for so many reasons.
- brightball 9mo ago
  > And people die all the time. They do, but the rate is extremely low compared to the volume of drivers. In 2024 in the US there were about 240 million licensed drivers and an estimated 39,345 fatalities, which is 0.016% of licensed drivers. Every single fatality is awful but the inverse of that number means that 99.984% of drivers were relatively safe in 2024. Tesla provided statistics on the improvements from their safety features compared to the active population (https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety) and the numbers are pretty dramatic. Miles driven before a major collision 699,000 - US Average 972,000 - Tesla average (no safety features enabled) 2.3 million - Tesla (active safety features, manually driven) 5.1 million - Tesla FSD (supervised) It's taking something that's already relatively safe and making it approximately 5-7 times safer using visual processing alone. Maybe lidar can make it even better, but there's every reason to tout the success of what's in place so far.
  - FireBeyond 9mo ago
    No, you're making the mistake of taking Tesla's stats as comparable, which they are not. Comparing the subsets of driving on only the roads where FSD is available, active, and has not or did not turn itself off because of weather, road, traffic or any other conditions" versus "all drivers, all vehicles, all roads, all weather, all traffic, all conditions? Or the accident stats that don't count an accident any collision without airbag deployment, regardless of injuries? Including accidents that were sufficiently serious that airbags could not or were unable to deploy?
tpm 9mo ago
> Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. Sure, and using lidar means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology too.
amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
What Tesla self driving is that? The one with human drivers? I don't believe they have gotten their permits for self driving cars yet.

NewJazz 9mo ago

Didn't waymo stop operating simply because they aren't as cavalier as Tesla, and they have much more to lose since they are actually self driving instead of just driver assistance? Was the lidar/vision difference actually significant?

brightball 9mo ago
The reports I’ve read said that some continued to attempt to navigate with the street lights out, but that the vehicles all have a remote confirmation where they try to call home to confirm what to do. That ended up self DDoSing Waymo causing vehicles to stop in the middle of the road and at intersections with their hazards on. So to clarify, it wasn’t entirely a lidar problem it was an need to call home to navigate.

sroussey 9mo ago

> roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. And people die all the time. > The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach. Huh? Waymo is responsible for injury, so all their cars called home at the same time DOS themselves rather than kill someone. Tesla makes no responsibility and does nothing. I can’t see the logic the brings vision only as having anything to do lights out. At all.

tonyhb 9mo ago
> And people die all the time. Yes... but people can only focus on one thing at a time. We don't have 360 vision. We have blind spots! We don't even know the exact speed of our car without looking away from the road momentarily! Vision based cars obviously don't have these issues. Just because some cars are 100% vision doesn't mean that it has to share all of the faults we have when driving. That's not me in favour of one vs the other. I'm ambivalent and don't actually care. They can clearly both work.
throw20251220 9mo ago
> And people die all the time. Most of them cannot drive a car. People have crashes for so many reasons.
brightball 9mo ago
> And people die all the time. They do, but the rate is extremely low compared to the volume of drivers. In 2024 in the US there were about 240 million licensed drivers and an estimated 39,345 fatalities, which is 0.016% of licensed drivers. Every single fatality is awful but the inverse of that number means that 99.984% of drivers were relatively safe in 2024. Tesla provided statistics on the improvements from their safety features compared to the active population (https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety) and the numbers are pretty dramatic. Miles driven before a major collision 699,000 - US Average 972,000 - Tesla average (no safety features enabled) 2.3 million - Tesla (active safety features, manually driven) 5.1 million - Tesla FSD (supervised) It's taking something that's already relatively safe and making it approximately 5-7 times safer using visual processing alone. Maybe lidar can make it even better, but there's every reason to tout the success of what's in place so far.
- FireBeyond 9mo ago
  No, you're making the mistake of taking Tesla's stats as comparable, which they are not. Comparing the subsets of driving on only the roads where FSD is available, active, and has not or did not turn itself off because of weather, road, traffic or any other conditions" versus "all drivers, all vehicles, all roads, all weather, all traffic, all conditions? Or the accident stats that don't count an accident any collision without airbag deployment, regardless of injuries? Including accidents that were sufficiently serious that airbags could not or were unable to deploy?

tpm 9mo ago

> Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. Sure, and using lidar means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology too.

amanaplanacanal 9mo ago

What Tesla self driving is that? The one with human drivers? I don't believe they have gotten their permits for self driving cars yet.