Self driving cars are still decades away

In My Humble Opinion
2808

This may be the kind of mapping error that I occasionally see. Sometimes it is undeniably a mapping error, in that the chosen route does not actually work to reach the destination. Other times it is like what happens here. Turning at the wrong time.

Many supposed FSD related accidents just don’t seem like FSD errors to me, but this one is exactly the kind of error I experience, and why FSD now has the (supervised) moniker.

Last week FSD tried to take me the wrong way up a Burger King drive through. I was not even going to Burger King. Its first error was taking the wrong entrance to a parking lot, which wasn’t a big deal, just drive a short way in the parking lot instead of on the street. Instead of turning on the row that the correct entrance goes to, it again turned early, this time into the exit of the drive through. I took over before it could complete the turn. It was like the GPS accuracy was off by 100 feet.

Conversely, on Monday FSD successfully drove me 60 miles from the top of Berthoud Pass to the northern suburbs of Denver. That route included a mountain road with tight switch backs, one lane construction zones, a steep and curvy interstate, and rush hour traffic.

2809

I’m going to bet that mapping accuracy inside a parking lot is pitiful compared to that on the roads outside that very same parking lot.

I do note that Google Streetview seems now to be placing more emphasis on sending a survey vehicle through parking lots. So probably a problem the whole industry is working towards solving. But it’s a big planet.

2810

StreetView went through my workplace parking lot six or seven years ago. They caught a few of my buddies. To briefly continue the hijack. A couple of months ago I was walking out to my garage and saw the Google car go by. It’s up live now but even though my face is fuzzed out, it is clearly me.

To bring this back to the subject, the train track thing was very likely a GPS error FSD should have a way to realize that the GPS is wrong. People have died with regular driving too blindly following GPS of course. This is the perfect example of people needing to be paying attention even with FSD.

2811

I caught a neighbor walking her dog when I checked out our street a while back. “Hey, Adele, you and Quinn are stars on Google Streetview!”

2812

Did they blur the face of the dog?

2813

Depends on which end of the dog was facing the street. :wink:

2814

Side view. And Quinn was furry enough that no “parts” were visible.

2815

Jacksonville has implemented autonomous transportation vans!

(Footnote, to be imagined in a rushed, hushed tone: each van cost $400,000 and will operate out of the $40 million transportation hub. Each vehicle carries nine passengers. Each vehicle requires an attendant to monitor the vehicle and operate the doors.)

2816

I was going to say “This is why we can’t have nice things,” but it’s Jacksonville, so…

2817

The article does mention switching to Holon’s “Mover” in 2027. Unlike those retrofitted Fords that they are starting with, it doesn’t have a steering wheel (but does have a joystick that I assume could be used if absolutely necessary) and can carry up to 15, 9 seated and 6 standing. The new vehicle uses MobilEye Drive, which utilizes cameras, long range LiDAR, short range LiDAR, as well as radar.

No clue if they’ll meet delivery dates, but it will be interesting to see how a purpose built autonomous vehicle does.

2818

The upcoming VW robotaxi also uses MobilEye. Sensibly (to me), VW isn’t getting into the taxi-operating business, they’re just selling the vehicles.

Volkswagen Will Sell You An ID. Buzz Robotaxi

2819

Tesla has lost an autopilot lawsuit:

In 2019, George McGee was operating his Tesla Model S using Autopilot when he ran past a stop sign and through an intersection at 62 mph then struck a pair of people stargazing by the side of the road. Naibel Benavides was killed and her partner Dillon Angulo was left with a severe head injury.

While Tesla said that McGee was solely responsible, as the driver of the car, McGee told the court that he thought Autopilot “would assist me should I have a failure or should I miss something, should I make a mistake,” a perception that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk has done much to foster with highly misleading statistics that paint an impression of a brand that is much safer than in reality.

The jury heard from expert witnesses about Tesla’s approach to human-machine interfaces and driver monitoring, as well as its use of statistics, then considered their verdict on Thursday afternoon and Friday before deciding that, while McGee was two-thirds responsible for the crash, Tesla also bore a third of the responsibility for selling a vehicle “with a defect that was a legal cause of damage” to Benavides’ relatives and Angulo.

That seems high.

2820

Tesla found 33% liable (driver 67%) in Cybertruck with FSD crash. Awards $329M total.

2821

(Model S with Autopilot)

2822

I don’t believe that version of autopilot stopped at stop signs or red lights, as they tragically discovered. It was just spicy cruise control with lane keeping. Though the manual and on-screen warnings made that clear, I think it is about time there are consequences for the lying and exaggerating from Musk.

I don’t know that the correct division of blame is 66/33 for McGee/Tesla, but Tesla is not blameless. You can’t have the CEO making statements and promises of one thing, and then have the manual deny those things to make it all acceptable.

These are almost always reduced on appeal, and Tesla’s share is only $243 million.

2823

We’re at least a decade beyond time and yet there doesn’t seem any ref willing and able to ‘red card’ Musk on his unending diarrhea of exaggerations, falsehoods, and patent bullshit. And yet, you’ll still find his defenders here and elsewhere insisting that he has been unfairly maligned, misinterpreted, or at most is just doing what every startup founder does to keep their businesses afloat. Even self-proclaimed radical liberal journalist Ezra Klein, formerly of Vox and now The New York Times still can’t help himself from occasionally praising Musk and playing professional apologist to his plenitude of fabrications and obvious nonsense suggesting that his companies will save us from climate change even while he openly promotes fascism and buys his way into government. Nobody in charge cares that his shitty cars regularly behave like a drunken idiot is driving, or slam in the brakes for no reason, or drive themselves into parked emergency vehicles, and he’ll SLAPP sue anyone who criticizes him too fiercely or just send his legions of adoring X-ites after them.

Stranger

2824

Is that the correct amount?

2825

I would have had a nose in the tent of that camp 5-10 years ago. Founders have to be cheerleaders, and name one major corporate CEO who isn’t an asshole, at least some of the time. Klein, and I, give him credit for jump starting the EV market. It isn’t that nobody else could do it, but rather that nobody else did. (And Klein is a complex topic where I think I’m pissed off at him, but then I agree with him, and it all just is nuance, complexity, and no-win situations.)

Of course any of the credit I’d extend to Musk has long been spent.

Scroll up a thousand posts or so in this thread, and you’ll see I’m uncomfortable (perhaps a stronger emotion, I don’t know?) with his rhetoric on autopilot/FSD that conflicts directly with reality.

Even if he was just celebrity-CEO levels of asshole, I could put up with it, but he’s mismanaged Tesla with bad decision, after bad decision. Just using Tesla resources to prop up his other companies should have been enough to get him kicked out.

The best I heard it put was he set out to save the world, but only if he got to save the world. He’d rather watch it burn than have someone else save it.

None of that is even getting to the part where he starts flying a Nazi flag.

Hellifiknow. On the serious side, there are various things courts use to estimate the value of a life based on expected earnings, and the cost of providing a life time of care for injured people. It all sounds cold and heartless, but when you’re trying to use money to replace a life, it’s always going to be that way.

Usually what happens is things like $200 million in punitive damages are reduced to the state law maximum of $500k (invented number), or whatever kind of thing. Or they appeal, and then settle for a lower amount because the injured people just want some money this decade.

Second edit: Did you mean is $243 million the correct amount Tesla owes? That’s what some news stories show, which is 33% of the compensatory damages, and then $200 million of punitive damages.

2826

Well I sure fucked that up. Thanks

2827

I have some issues with Musk, but that amount for damages seems sort of unreasonable to me.