Can you say “Snowcrash”? I thought so.
More seriously it’d be interesting to activate Mad Max mode here in Miami at off peak times and see if it can keep up w the rest of the crazies. I sorta doubt it.
Let’s pause self-driving and work on smartwheels for awhile.
That was my complaint. It would happily rip 60 MPH through a small town that had a 30 MPH speed limit. I believe it still does this. When I had the free month of FSD I reported it everytime I disengaged and it asked why, but nothing has changed. I don’t think FSD works great in remote areas. Not enough data.
Heh, if it drives like the stunt drivers in Mad Max, it’ll fit right in in Dallas. I’m not recommending that for anyone carbon or silicon based, but that’s the facts.
But the real test will be if it can handle the folks exiting from the left lane in Atlanta. I was surprised at how handy a little evasive driving was in that town.
Robotaxi fever is back, baby! After a bunch of automaker-led autonomous driving projects shut down amid concerns over safety and costs, car companies are expressing a renewed interest in self-driving cars, and robotaxis specifically. Stellantis, which oversees brands like Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler, announced today a “new collaboration” with a diverse range of firms, including Nvidia, Foxconn, and Uber, to launch its own robotaxi service.
It will work something like this: Stellantis will build the vehicles, Nvidia and Foxconn will install the self-driving systems, and Uber will deploy them on its ridehailing platform.
I had no idea Nvidia was making this kind of progress [I thought maybe they were at Level 2]. Anyone following them?
want a REAL cliffhanger: try roundabouts in Lima … … they work b/c everybody is Peruvian … having a gringo drive there, is like throwing the proverbial wrench into the gears …
just to stay ON topic: replace the “gringo” with a “self-driving car” … it would really pique my interest to have one of those SF-cars drive there and see what happens …
What, Fast&Furious and GTA were taken?
After a couple days of v14.x…
But first a reminder of how FSD is released. After internal testing it first goes to a small group of what can best be described as Tesla influencers/outside testers. “Dirty Tesla” is probably the best one. They are fanboys but are not afraid to be critical and often are. There might be a few point releases based on their experiences before it gets to the next group. The next group, which includes me, are people who have our updates set to “Advanced”. This is definitely a wide release but minor fixes will happen before the rest of the people with FSD get the next release.
On city streets this version is noticeably better. It’s much smoother and more natural feeling. When you set your destination you can tell it to park at the curb or in a space in the parking lot. This is super cool. There is an occasional bit of shuttering that I noticed before some right turns. This was markedly worse when the influencers have it.
Previously once you got to a parking lot or to a street with parallel parking you and you are driving under (I think) 8mph the UI showed you available parking spaces and you would tell it which one to use. This is a good thing because it didn’t do a good job of knowing that a “space” was in front of a driveway or a handicapped spot. Also previously in a parking lot the only option was to back into a space and only if it wasn’t a slanted space. And it was annoying slow to the point that I wouldn’t use it in a lot with other people driving in it nearby so I wouldn’t piss them off for taking forever.
Now in a lot it will choose a space and back into the straight one and front into the slanted ones. It’s significantly quicker. It doesn’t pick the most optimal/closest spot to the store or whatever in my little bit of experience but that doesn’t bother me. It would make one of my ex-girlfriends lose her shit.
I didn’t notice much difference in the actual driving on the freeway in Standard Mode which is all that I am going to use except for a few things. There were a couple of giant pieces of paper on the road and it artfully slowed down and dodged them. It pulls over from the left lane much sooner if an exit is coming up. This was a big problem for me (especially on the transition from 101N to 405N for those who know).
One problem before is that isn’t good at recognizing that you are going too slow in the left lane and someone behind you wants to go faster. That didn’t come up in this drive.
I only very briefly tried Mad Mad mode, like for less than 30 seconds. It was in stop and go traffic and it tried to cut in and out of lanes to get through more quickly. They may as well call it Douchebag Mode.
That is good progress. Dodging, or even noticing, objects in the road or potholes was completely missing for a long time. I don’t know that v12 has it, or if it does, it does not work well at all.
Odd, because this is often the only reason v12 will get out of the left lane. If there is a car behind, it will move to the right quickly, even if the better move would have been to continue passing cars before getting over.
Wow, all that work and you’re two cars ahead of me at the red light at the bottom of the exit ramp! And now I’m ahead of you because you’re turning left and I’m going straight.
How did it do regarding speed? Or was that always limited by traffic density? I was just reminded that the car has decided (probably since the most recent map update) that the speed limit in my neighborhood is 30, instead of the actual limit of 25, which it has known correctly for years.
In the limit on the streets. It’ll top out at like 72 in a 65 which is moderate in California. The next time I’m driving at night with no traffic I’ll try to remember to give Mad Max a try.
I suspect it’s somewhere between Elon’s perfectly safe and the hysterical hyperbole of that plaintiff’s attorney.
Thinking about this some more, it would move if there was a car sitting on your ass but not if a car was coming up behind you more quickly than you are driving. I have been automatically moving out of the way for a while before it got to that point so I’ll test it a bit going forward.
After a few more freeway drives…
Standard drives flow of traffic and stays in the lane one over from the left unless it’s passing a slower car. Just how I normally drive. Flow of traffic, when the traffic is flowing, is like 72 in a 65.
Mad Max likes to zip around to change lanes and will go a little faster than flow of traffic, like 78 or 80. It didn’t feel unsafe because lots of people drive that way around here but it did seem like you’d be the one to get a ticket if the po po were around.
There’s a current stink in SF after a Waymo killed a beloved cat known as the “Mayor of 16th Street” last week. Waymo says it darted under the car; bystanders say it was sitting in front of the stopped car for 10 seconds before running under it, at which point the car started moving.
Human-piloted cars kill pets (and people) all the time, so it’s not like this really changes the calculus much, other than being a convenient target for those already opposed to self-driving cars. But it does raise an interesting flaw in all the self-driving models – the idea of object permanence.
Once the cat disappeared from the car’s sensors, it ceased to exist, even though deduction would tell you it was now under the car. It’s a similar (or the same) problem as the Cruise that dragged a woman 20 feet two years ago. I don’t know if that’s something trainable.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/waymo-killed-cat-21136038.php
A human might have squashed the cat in the same circumstances if I am reading right but your larger point still stands.
Semi-related thing that I meant to mention earlier. FSD is no able to see objects and pot holes in the street and slow down and avoid them. There are some reports that it’s getting false positives with wind blowing leaves around.
Yeah, and this is a fundamental hurdle to get over. An attentive human would not start moving, knowing a cat is likely under it. But so many humans aren’t attentive, that on balance the self-driving car might kill fewer cats.
Getting autonomous cars to drive better than the average person (including tired and non-sober people) is way easier than getting it to drive better than an attentive driver. But using the average driver as the baseline is a tough sell when we’re all convinced we’re great drivers.
I’m one of the 20% who knows I’m a worse than average driver. The world is safer with me using FSD.
Supposedly cats like to sleep on the top of car tires because it’s warm. I’ve seen PSAs to check your car before you drive off. It seems implausible to me because I’d think that the door slamming would startle them away.
Last week, our NextDoor was outraged by a Waymo that ran over a cat…that was sleeping in the street. Maybe Waymos just don’t like cats?
As I’ve said, I see Waymos all the time, and they’ve never done anything untoward when I was around.
Have you had the chance to try it when there is no traffic? Perhaps LA never gets like that. Even my old v12 FSD does pretty good when there is traffic to flow with.
The most aggravating speed issues are when there are no cars in front of me. The old system used to be fantastic in those circumstances. Set it and forget it. v12, if set and forgotten, will decide that 58 in a 65 is speed it wants to go, even when max is set to 72.
Yes. In Standard it goes like 8mph over the limit.
20% of drivers are responsible for 80% of insured costs. Most of us do drive better than average.