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Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day

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  • Yea, this one isn't an issue. If you are dropping off passengers, you are allowed to stop in a fire lane because that is not parking.

    Which brings up an interesting question, when is a driverless car 'parked' vs. 'stopped'?

  • What's crazy is that the safety driver's hair has gone completely grey in just two days.

    That safety driver did not give a single fuck about driving on the wrong side of the road..

  • Tbh it's not as bad as I was expecting. Those clips could definitely have resulted in an accident, but the system seems to actually work most of the time. I wonder if it couldn't be augmented with lidar at this point to make it more reliable? A live stress test is ridiculously irresponsible and will definitely kill people, but at least it's only Texans at risk (for now).

    I was skeptical of the idea of robotaxis, but this kind of sold me on it. If they're cheaper than human drivers, I might even be able to get rid of my car some day. It doesn't change the fact that I'll never get into one because the CEO is a nazi though.

    Keep in mind this is a system with millions of miles under it's belt and it still doesn't understand what to do with a forced left turn lane in a very short trip in a fairly controlled environment with supremely good visual, road, and traffic conditions. LIDAR wouldn't have helped the car here, there was no "whoops, confusining visibility", it just completely screwed up and ignored the road markings.

    It's been in this state for years now, of being surprisingly capable, yet horrible screw ups being noted frequently. They seem to be like 95% of the way there and stuck, with no progress in reality just some willfull denial convincing them to move forward anyway.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    So, Tesla Robitaxis drive like a slightly drunk and confused tourist with asshole driving etiquette.

    Those right turns on red were like, "oh you get to go? That's permission for me to go too!"

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    So it emulates a standard BMW driver. Well done.

  • AI=ALways indian.

    AI = Actually Indians

  • Watch that stock price fall... wheeeee

    It already jumped up about 10% on monday simply because the service launched. Even if the service crashes and burns, they'll jump to the next hype topic like robots or AI or whatever and the stock price will stay up.

  • So it emulates a standard BMW driver. Well done.

    Still work to be done, it uses the blinkers.

  • That safety driver did not give a single fuck about driving on the wrong side of the road..

    He must have seen so much worse to not even be flinching at that.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Woaw! Damn! The robotaxis are a dangerous fuck up!? That's most surprising thing that happened all year! There's literally no way I could've seen that coming.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    A man who can’t launch a rocket to save his life is also incompetent at making self driving cars? His mediocrity knows no bounds.

  • Driving is culturally specific, even. The way rules are followed and practiced is often regionally different

    This is one of the problems driving automation solves trivially when applied at scale. Machines will follow the same rules regardless of where they are which is better for everyone

    The ethics of putting automation in control of potentially life threatening machines is also relevant

    You'd shit yourself if you knew how many life threatening machines are already controlled by computers far simpler than anything in a self driving car. Industrially, we have learned the lesson that computers, even ones running on extremely simple logic, just completely outclass humans on safety because they do the same thing every time. There are giant chemical manufacturing facilities that are run by a couple guys in a control room that watch a screen because 99% of it is already automated. I'm talking thousands of gallons an hour of hazardous, poisonous, flammable materials running through a system run on 20 year old computers. Water chemical additions at your local water treatment plant that could kill thousands of people if done wrong, all controlled by machines because we know they're more reliable than humans

    With humans we can attribute cause and attempted improvement, with automation its different.

    A machine can't drink a handle of vodka and get behind the wheel, nor can it drive home sobbing after a rough breakup and be unable to process information properly. You can also update all of them all at once instead of dealing with PSA canpaigns telling people not to do something that got someone killed. Self driving car makes a mistake? You don't have to guess what was going through its head, it has a log. Figure out how to fix it? Guess what, they're all fixed with the same software update. If a human makes that mistake, thousands of people will keep making that same mistake until cars or roads are redesigned and those changes have a way to filter through all of society.

    I just don't see a need for this at all. I think investing in public transportation more than reproduces all the benefits of automated cars without nearly as many of the dangers and risks.

    This is a valid point, but this doesn't have to be either/or. Cars have a great utility even in a system with public transit. People and freight have to get from the rail station or port to wherever they need to go somehow, even in a utopia with a perfect public transit system. We can do both, we're just choosing not to in America, and it's not like self driving cars are intrinsically opposed to public transit just by existing.

    What are you anticipating for the automated driving adoption rate? I'm expecting extremely low as most people cannot afford new cars. We are talking probably decades before there are enough automated driving cars to fundamentally alter traffic in such a way as to entirely eliminate human driving culture.

    In response to the "humans are fallible" bit ill remark again that algorithms are very fallible. Statistically, even. And while lots of automated algorithms are controlling life and death machines, try justifying that to someone who's entire family is killed by an AI. How do they even receive compensation for that? Who is at fault? A family died. With human drivers we can ascribe fault very easily. With automated algorithms fault is less easily ascribed and the public writ large is going to have a much harder time accepting that.

    Also, with natural gas and other systems there are far fewer variables than a busy freeway. There's a reason why it hasn't happened until recently. Hundreds of humans all in control of large vehicles moving in a long line at speed is a very complicated environment with many factors to consider. How accurately will algorithms be able to infer driving intent based on subtle movement of vehicles in front of and behind it? How accurate is the situational awareness of an algorithm, especially when combined road factors are involved?

    Its just not as simple as its being made out to be. This isnt a chess problem, its not a question of controlling train cars on set tracks with fixed timetables and universal controllers. The way cars exist presently is very, very open ended. I agree that if 80+% of road vehicles were automated it would have such an impact on road culture as to standardize certain behaviors. But we are very, very far away from that in North America. Most of the people in my area are driving cars from the early 2010s. Its going to be at least a decade before any sizable amount of vehicles are current year models. And until then algorithms have these obstacles that cannot easily be overcome.

    Its like I said earlier, the last 10% of optimization requires an exponentially larger amount of energy and development than the first 90% does. Its the same problem faced with other forms of automation. And a difference of 10% in terms of performance is... huge when it comes to road vehicles.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Watching anything that fElon fail sparks joy.

  • What real world problem does this solve?

    Nothing that a train + scooter / bicycle cannot solve imo

  • I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.

    Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It's almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.

    To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.

    Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they're making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt "flashy enough" for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.

    I always have the same thought when I see self driving taxi news.

    "Americans will go bankrupt trying to prop up the auto/gas industries rather than simply building a train".

    And it's true. So much money is being burned on a subpar and dangerous product. Yet we've just cut and cancelled extremely beneficial high speed rail projects that were overwhelmingly voted for by the people.

  • Public transport systems are just part of a mobility solution, but it isn't viable to have that everywhere. Heck, even here in The Netherlands, a country the size of a post stamp, public transport doesn't work outside of the major cities. So basically, outside of the cities, we are also relying on cars.

    Therefore, I do believe there will be a place for autonomous driving in the future of mobility and that it has the potential to reduce number of accidents, traffic jams and parking problems while increasing the average speed we drive around with.

    The only thing that has me a bit worried is Tesla's approach to autonomous driving, fully relying on the camera system. Somehow, Musk believes a camera system is superior to human vision, while it's not. I drive a Tesla (yeah, I know) and if the conditions aren't perfect, the car disables "safety' features, like lane assist. For instance when it's raining heavily or when the sun is shining directly into the camera lenses. This must be a key reason in choosing Austin for the demo/rollout.

    Meanwhile, we see what other manufacturers use and how they are progressing. For instance, BMW and Mercedes are doing well with their systems, which are a blend of cameras and sensors. To me, that does seem like the way to go to introduce autonomous driving safely.

    I believe Austin was chosen because they're fairly lax about the regulations and safety requirements.

    Waymo already got the deal in Cali. And Cali seems much more strict. Austin is offering them faster time to market as the cost of civilian safety.

  • A man who can’t launch a rocket to save his life is also incompetent at making self driving cars? His mediocrity knows no bounds.

    To be fair Musk only has money and doesnt Do shit at either Company

  • Which brings up an interesting question, when is a driverless car 'parked' vs. 'stopped'?

    When the engine is off?

    Of course, how to tell this with an electric car?

  • It already jumped up about 10% on monday simply because the service launched. Even if the service crashes and burns, they'll jump to the next hype topic like robots or AI or whatever and the stock price will stay up.

    And its fallen back down about 30% of those gains already. Hype causes spikes.. that's nothing new.

  • You seem to have missed the point. Whether or not you think that would be an easy job, the whole reason you'd be there is to be the one that takes all the blame when the autopilot kills someone. It will be your name, your face, every single record of your past mistakes getting blasted on the news and in court because Elon's shitty vanity project finally killed a real child instead of a test dummy. You'll be the one having to explain to a grieving family just how hard it is to actually pay complete attention every moment of every day, when all you've had to do before is just sit there.

    How about you pay attention and PREVENT the autopilot from killing someone? Like it's your job to do?

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  • Thank you Pewdiepie!!

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    nasi_goreng@lemmy.zipN
    He stopped being edgy more than five years ago after backlash from his own community. No racist joke, no rage baiting, no channel wars. His content this days is just wholesome family interaction, art journey, or tech experimentation.
  • I started running openSUSE Tumbleweed full time at the beginning of this year!

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    Never expected to see a shoutout for my project on here. Thanks, glad it has helped you.
  • inb4 Linux users sweepingly get declared as criminals for some flimsy reason.

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    J
    The software tech bro thing started with a letter from Bill Gates to the hobbyists that despite learning to program on freely available software, and copying a freely available language with his new version of Basic, everyone needs to stop sharing and pay to use software. They all have wet dreams of pulling out the ladder and owning everything. I wouldn’t put it past them to try to nullify copyleft or something like that.
  • We're Not Innovating, We’re Just Forgetting Slower

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    P
    Gotcha, thank you for the extra context so I understand your point. I'll respond to your original statement now that I understand it better: I ALSO think the author would prefer more broad technical literacy, but his core arguement seemed to be that those making things dont understand the tech they’re built upon and that unintended consequences can occur when that happens. I think the author's argument on that is also not a great one. Lets take your web app example. As you said, you can make the app, but you don't understand the memory allocation, and why? Because the high level language or framework you wrote it in does memory management and garbage collection. However, there are many, many, MANY, more layers of abstraction beside just your code and the interpreter. Do you know the webserver front to back? Do you know which ring your app or the web server is operating in inside the OS (ring 3 BTW)? Do you know how the IP stack works in the server? Do you know how the networking works that resolves names to IP addresses or routes the traffic appropriately? Do you know how the firewalls work that the traffic is going over when it leaves the server? Back on the server, do you know how the operating system makes calls to the hardware via device drivers (ring 1) or how those calls are handled by the OS kernel (ring 0)? Do you know how the system bus works on the motherboard or how the L1, L2, and L3 cache affect the operation and performance of the server overall? How about that assembly language isn't even the bottom of abstraction? Below that all of this data is merely an abstraction of binary, which is really just the presence or absence of voltage on a pit or in a bit register in ICs scattered across the system? I'll say probably not. And thats just fine! Why? Because unless your web app is going to be loaded onto a spacecraft with a 20 to 40 year life span and you'll never be able to touch it again, then having all of that extra knowledge and understanding only have slight impacts on the web app for its entire life. Once you get one or maybe two levels of abstraction down, the knowledge is a novelty not a requirement. There's also exceptions to this if you're writing software for embedded systems where you have limited system resources, but again, this is an edge case that very very few people will ever need to worry about. The people in those generally professions do have the deep understanding of those platforms they're responsible for. Focus on your web app. Make sure its solving the problem that it was written to solve. Yes, you might need to dive a bit deeper to eek out some performance, but that comes with time and experience anyway. The author talks like even the most novice people need the ultimately deep understanding through all layers of abstraction. I think that is too much of a burden, especially when it acts as a barrier to people being able to jump in and use the technology to solve problems. Perhaps the best example of the world that I think the author wants would be the 1960s Apollo program. This was a time where the pinnacle of technology was being deployed in real-time to solve world moving problems. Human kind was trying to land on the moon! The most heroic optimization of machines and procedures had to be accomplished for even a chance for this to go right. The best of the best had to know every. little. thing. about. everything. People's lives were at stake! National pride was at stake! Failure was NOT an option! All of that speaks to more of what the author wants for everyone today. However, that's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist today. Compute power today is CHEAP!!! High level program languages and frameworks are so easy to understand that programming it is accessible to everyone with a device and a desire to use it. We're not going to the moon with this. Its the kid down the block that figured out how to use If This Then That to make a light bulb turn on when he farts into a microphone. The beauty is the accessibility. The democratization of compute. We don't need gatekeepers demanding the deepest commitment to understanding before the primitive humans are allowed to use fire. Are there going to be problems or things that don't work? Yes. Will the net benefit of cheap and readily available compute in the hands of everyone be greater than the detriments, I believe yes. It appears the author disagrees with me. /sorry for the wall of text
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    J
    my question was not directed at you Sorry for that, but you could say "it's NoneOfUrBusiness" (their username)
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    A
    Watch the videos, believe your own eyes instead of billionaire propaganda.
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    A
    In this case, it's for the benefit of fossil fuel related Robber Barons. plus just ending the subsidies in general, no doubt to float more tax reductions next year.