Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day
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I mean Waymo is way better at their job than Tesla and are more responsible, but this rant makes them out to seem perfectly safe. Whilst they are miles safer than Tesla, they still struggle with edge cases and aren't perfect.
Human drivers struggle with edge cases also. I've seen a lot you drive, and as an old medic who has done his share of MV accidents, I can tell you y'all ain't that good at it.
While I have no dog in this hunt, all any self driving vehicle needs to be is just a bit better than a human one to be an improvement and a net win, (never let perfect be the enemy of good enough). And historically, as soon as any new technology becomes affordable, humans adopt it and use the snot out of it. The problem is, humans aren't very good at projecting future harm that any new tech tends to drag along with it.
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Behave like machines? Wtf are you on about? It's paying attention and preventing accidents. Like a train conductor does. Or a lifeguard. Or a security guard. I get the tesla hate, but this is ridiculous.
Lifeguards have very short periods of diligence before they take mandatory breaks in an extremely controlled environment. Train conductors operate on grade separated infrastructure. Security Guards do not have to take split second action or die.
Putting a warm body in a mind-numbing situation and requiring split second response to a life or death situation at a random time is a recipe for failure.
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Lifeguards have very short periods of diligence before they take mandatory breaks in an extremely controlled environment. Train conductors operate on grade separated infrastructure. Security Guards do not have to take split second action or die.
Putting a warm body in a mind-numbing situation and requiring split second response to a life or death situation at a random time is a recipe for failure.
Well, put the drivers on a similar mandatory break schedule. Done.
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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.
Doesn't sound too safe
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Well, put the drivers on a similar mandatory break schedule. Done.
Lifeguards take breaks every ~20 minutes, not just to look down or zone out, to get up and move around. And again, are in an extremely controlled environment looking for a very small number of specific problems.
Elon is making programmers sleep at their desks.
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So it emulates a standard BMW driver. Well done.
Tesla driver are the new BMW drivers. And since Tesla uses their customers driving data to train their AI it’s not a surprise that the AI drives like an asshole.
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Lifeguards take breaks every ~20 minutes, not just to look down or zone out, to get up and move around. And again, are in an extremely controlled environment looking for a very small number of specific problems.
Elon is making programmers sleep at their desks.
Programmers are no lifeguards.
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Doesn't sound too safe
So, just the right amount of safe then?
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Human drivers struggle with edge cases also. I've seen a lot you drive, and as an old medic who has done his share of MV accidents, I can tell you y'all ain't that good at it.
While I have no dog in this hunt, all any self driving vehicle needs to be is just a bit better than a human one to be an improvement and a net win, (never let perfect be the enemy of good enough). And historically, as soon as any new technology becomes affordable, humans adopt it and use the snot out of it. The problem is, humans aren't very good at projecting future harm that any new tech tends to drag along with it.
All other things being equal, it would save a lot of lives to replace every human driver with a Waymo car right now. They're already significantly better than the average driver.
But, there are a few caveats. One is that so far they've only ever driven under relatively easy conditions. They don't do any highway driving, and they've never driven in snow. Another one is that because they all share one "mind", we don't know if there are failure modes that would affect every car. Every human driver is different, but every human is more or less the same. If a human sees a 100 km/h or 60 mph speed limit on a narrow, twisty, suburban street with poor visibility, most of them are probably going to assume it was a mistake and won't actually try to drive 100 km/h. We don't know if a robo-vehicle will do that. AFAIK they haven't found any way to emulate "common sense". They might also freak out during an eclipse because they've never been trained for that kind of lighting. Or they might try to drive at normal speeds when visibility is obscured by forest fire smoke.
There's also the side effects of replacing millions of drivers with robo-cars. What will it do to people who drive for a living? Should Google/Waymo be paying most of the cost of retraining them? Paying their bills until they can find a new job? What will it do to cities? Will it mean that we no longer need parking lots because cars come and drop people off and then head off to take care of someone else? Or will it mean empty cars roaming the city causing gridlock and making it hell for pedestrians and bikers? Will people now want to live in the city because they don't need to pay for parking and can get a car easily whenever they need one? Or will people now want to live even farther out into the suburbs / rural areas because they don't need to drive and can work in the car on the way into the city?
Personally, I'm hopeful. I think they could make cities better. But, who knows. We should move slowly until we figure things out.
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He meddles. That much is apparent. The cybertruck is obviously a top down design as evidenced by the numerous atrocious design compromised the engineers had to make just to make it real. From the glued on "exoskeleton" to the hollowed ALUMINUM frame to the complete lack of physical controls to the default failure state turning it into a coffin to the lack of waterproofing etc.
Every time I see it it just looks like the earth ran out of memory and set resolution too low
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A good example is ADHD. I have severe ADHD so I take meds to manage it. If I am driving an automatic car on cruise control I find it very difficult to maintain long term high intensity concentration. The solution for me is to drive a manual. The constant involvement of maintaining speed, revs, gear ratio, and so on mean I can pay attention much easier. Add to that thinking about hypermiling and defensive driving and I have become a very safe driver, putting about 25-30 thousand kms on my car each year for over a decade without so much as a fender bender. In an automatic I was always tense, forcing focus on the road, and honestly it hurt my neck and shoulders because of the tension. In my zippy little manual I have no trouble driving at all.
Are you me? I love weaving through traffic as fast as I can... in a video game (like Motor Town behind the wheel). In real life I drive very safe and it is boring af for my ADHD so I do things like try to hit the apex of turns just perfect as if I was driving at the limit but I am in reality driving at a normal speed.
Part of living with severe ADHD is you don't get breaks from having to play these games to survive everyday life, as you say it is a stressful reality in part because of this. You brought up a great point too that both of us know, when our focus is on something and activated we can perform at a high level, but accidents don't wait for our focus, they just happen, and this is why we are always beating ourselves up.
We can look at self driving car tech and intuit a lot about the current follies of it because we know what focus is better than anyone else, especially successful tech company execs.
Yeah, it is absolutely insane to think that as a person with a literal disability in attentional regulation I have had fewer collisions than most people who are not disabled. It seems like if it is too easy people stop trying and don't take it seriously, so they text or change the music or reach over the back. I know I can't do that without risking a major issue and I actively have to maintain focus, so I simply do not ever "let it slide" or "just this once". Rules can save lives if followed, but do nothing if ignored.
